LITMIR.BIZ

       Chapter 1

      Aisha Allen took a slice of piping-hot pizza, folded it in half and bit in. Warm, gooey cheese blended with the tangy bite of tomato sauce, all wrapped up in a doughy pocket that was the very essence of life.

      Which made it the perfect antidote to the increasingly gruesome pictures of the dead she’d stared at for the past three hours.

      Six bodies. Or seven if you counted the body of Lucy Reese, aka Bianca Rouge, a Vegas prostitute inconveniently called to Roaring Springs, Colorado, the prior January to entertain a high-end client.

      And Aisha was counting.

      Technically, she didn’t have a right to the photos or the background details already collected by law enforcement. Her credentials as a psychologist extended only to the projects she was actually invited to consult on. But Trey needed help and since she was in a position to give it, she wasn’t going to back down.

      Besides, it gave her an additional opportunity to keep an eye on him. He was her best friend and they hadn’t spent many days since the age of eight without talking. Even in the years she spent up in New York getting her “fancy Ivy League degree,” as he loved to tease her about, they’d remained close.

      And if she’d like to be closer, well, that was on her. The man had his mind on other things, not his moony-eyed best friend. Their current sheriff and all-around most honorable citizen, Trey Colton, was the heartbeat of Bradford County. And he was in the fight of his life:

      A serial killer on the loose dubbed by the press as the “Avalanche Killer.”

      A battle brewing for reelection in November that was going to be horribly tight and already fraught with contention.

      And an extended family that was...challenging on the very best of days.

      No one would ever accuse the Colton family of being quiet, unobtrusive or unnoticeable. They collectively lived life large, and that would have been true in Roaring Springs even without the family legacy of a former US president who bore the Colton surname.

      Having a legendary politician in the family only made the spotlight that much brighter.

      Aisha knew Trey wasn’t above using the Colton name when he had to, but he hated depending on it. Just like he hated what was going on in his town right now.

      Patting her lips with a napkin, she wiped lingering flour dust from her fingers and spread out several of the images. Six bodies, all in various stages of decomposition, from the more recent to practically nothing but bones. The two oldest bodies had also been discovered the farthest down in the shallow grave. Enough depth to hide them and protect them from the elements, but close enough to the surface that they’d been discovered with the impact of a late-spring avalanche.

      Although all the victims would need to be identified and ultimately processed as individual crimes, the more recent bodies held Aisha’s focus. Especially the characteristics that appeared common. Eerily so, she thought as she pulled one of the photos closer. Sabrina Gilford, twenty-two, was identified as the most recent victim, her long, dyed dark hair and eyes two of her most distinctive features.

      Along with the hair color match, she was roughly the same age as the other victims and she had the same physical build. Medium height. Slender. Petite frame. The sort of young woman who turned heads when she walked into a room.

      A young woman was supposed to turn heads, Aisha thought, the frustration and anger for these unfortunate six rising up in her chest. You were supposed to be young and free and silly and sometimes a little stupid. You weren’t supposed to be dead.

      And all these victims would still be missing if it weren’t for the overwhelming avalanche that still defied explanation. They’d had late snows before—Mother Nature was always unpredictable if nothing else—but this was something else. A large, prodigious disaster that had killed a ski guest at The Lodge as it did its destructive work.

      A while later these six bodies were discovered during the clearing of brush and debris. Although two of the six had been identified, Sabrina Gilford and another young woman who’d gone missing in Roaring Springs the prior winter, April Thomas, Trey was working day and night to identify the others. It was maddeningly slow work and had kept Trey and his best deputy, Daria Bloom, in constant motion for months now.

      And then, a few weeks ago, they had a new, potentially disturbing problem fall in their laps. Trey’s cousin Skye had gone missing. Marketing director for The Colton Empire—an enterprise that encompassed nearly half of Roaring Springs, including The Lodge, the town’s major ski resort—Skye was vivacious and always on the move. Aisha had met her off and on through the years at various events held by Trey’s parents and even now she could picture the once small redhead who used to race around Trey’s parents’ ranch with her quieter twin, Phoebe, in tow.

      It was her busy, whirlwind personality that they were all counting on now. Skye rarely sat still and they’d all retained a stubborn hope that she was off on an adventure. Hopefully as far away from Roaring Springs as she could be. Only none of them could ward off the more disturbing idea that Skye had attracted the attention of the Avalanche Killer. Her vivid red hair didn’t fit the pattern, but beyond that, her slim frame and age were a direct match.

      Thoughts of Skye were inevitably tied to The Lodge and the strange circumstances that had led to the discovery of the bodies. Even with his 24/7 work schedule running down leads, Trey had spoken more than once about the circumstances that caused the avalanche. He was so busy dealing with the voracious press as he tried to investigate the murders that any further investigation into Mother Nature’s vagaries had to wait.

      Even as the freak incident clearly gnawed away at him.

      The ski slopes were groomed regularly, specifically to avoid nature’s wrath in the form of an avalanche. Yet here was one, overpowering in scale and scope and late in the season, no less. It was odd. And it was one more thing on Trey’s overfull plate that Aisha knew bothered him.

      She knew a lot of things

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