Cold Case at Carlton's Canyon. Rita Herron

streamed down her cheeks as the fingers dug deeper into her throat.

      “No...”

      Her attacker’s bitter laugh echoed through the canyon, and Kelly gagged.

      Her life flashed in front of her like a series of movie clips. Her mother braiding her hair before she’d died. Easter egg hunts, Christmases, proms and dance lessons.

      High school boyfriends and college parties and...her upcoming wedding...

      She had her dress picked out. The flowers...roses...the bridal shower she was supposed to have today.

      And the honeymoon...a honeymoon she would never get to have.

      Panic seized her, and pain knifed through her chest as the belt crushed her windpipe. Nausea mingled with terror and her head spun.

      Then the lush green of spring faded into black as death came for her.

      Chapter One

      Sergeant Justin Thorpe was a loner. Always had been. Always would be.

      It was the very reason he was good at his job. No entanglements to tie him down or distract him.

      He stared at the decomposed body of the girl floating in Camden Creek, trepidation knotting his gut.

      He had a hunch this was one of the girls who’d disappeared from Sunset Mesa, although the medical examiner would have his work cut out to identify what was left of her. Other girls who’d gone missing from various counties across Texas were possibly connected, as well.

      Too many girls.

      At first no one had connected the disappearances, but Justin had noted that the women went missing in the spring, and that one fact had raised a red flag in his mind.

      So far though he hadn’t found any other connection. But he would. He just needed time.

      Dr. Sagebrush, the ME who’d also worked a case in Camden Creek involving a serious bus crash that had killed several teenagers a few years back, stooped down to study the body as two crime techs eased it onto the creek bank.

      Thick trees shaded the area so the ME shone a flashlight over the corpse while crime techs searched the water and embankment with their own.

      A tangled web of hair floated around the young woman’s mud-streaked face, bones poked through the already decaying skin and there were bruises, scratches and teeth marks from animals that had picked at her marred body.

      She was still clothed, her thin T-shirt torn and tattered, her jeans full of holes and layered in dirt.

      The CSU team snapped pictures while Dr. Sagebrush adjusted his glasses and examined her.

      “How long do you think she’s been dead?” Justin asked.

      “Hard to say yet,” Dr. Sagebrush replied. “The temperature of the water could have slowed down decomp, but I’d guess a while. Maybe a couple of months.”

      Two young women had disappeared within that time frame.

      Justin eyed the creek, scanning the terrain up and downstream with his flashlight. “You think she was dumped in the creek or floated in from the river?”

      “Don’t know.” Dr. Sagebrush shrugged, his eyes narrowed as he pushed strands of wet hair away from the girl’s face. “Look at this.” The ME pointed to the bruises on her neck.

      “She was strangled,” Justin said, frowning at the angry, inch-wide red lines cutting into the woman’s throat. “Looks like the killer used a belt.”

      Dr. Sagebrush nodded. “Probably the cause of death, but I can’t say for sure till I get her on the table. If there’s water in her lungs, she might have been alive when she was dumped.”

      Justin’s stomach knotted as an image of the girl fighting for her last breath flashed in his eyes. The current in this part of the creek was strong, the rocks jagged. Kayakers and raft guides trained on the wider, rougher sections as practice for the river. If she was alive, she’d probably been too weak to fight the current and save herself.

      But the doctor lifted the girl’s eyelids, and Justin saw petechial hemorrhaging and guessed she’d died of strangulation.

      One of the crime techs dragged a tennis shoe from the muddy bank, then compared it to the girl’s foot. “Could have belonged to her. We’ll bag it and see if we find anything on it.”

      Justin nodded. “I’ll look around for forensics although, like you say, she probably wasn’t killed here.”

      Justin knew the drill. He’d been working homicide cases, hunting serial killers and the most wanted, for ten years now. Nothing surprised him.

      Yet a young woman’s senseless murder still made sorrow fill his chest.

      He walked over to the edge of the river and studied the foliage, then dipped deeper into the woods to search for any sign that the girl had lost her life nearby.

      If they found hair or clothing, even a footprint, it might help track down the killer.

      Anxiety twitched at his insides. Only two of the girls who’d gone missing in the past few years had been found. One dead; the other had run away.

      But there was no sign of the others. No notes goodbye. No phone calls or ransom requests.

      No bodies, making the police wonder if the girls were alive or dead.

      So why had this woman’s body been dumped where it could be found?

      Were the cases connected? And if so, were any of the other young women still alive?

      * * *

      SHERIFF AMANDA BLAIR sipped her umpteenth cup of coffee for the day while she skimmed the mail on her desk. An envelope stamped with the high school’s emblem and a sketch of the canyon for which the school had been named, Canyon High, caught her eye, and she ripped it open.

      The invitation to her high school class reunion filled her with a mixture of dread and wariness.

      She’d moved away from Sunset Mesa after her senior year when her father had been transferred. Having grown up with a Texas Ranger for a father, she’d known she’d wanted to follow in his footsteps and work in law enforcement. And there had been nothing for her in Sunset Mesa. No best friend. No boyfriend.

      No one who’d missed her or written her love letters or even asked what her plans were for the future.

      Truthfully she’d been glad to move. She’d always been a loner, a tomboy, more interested in her father’s cases than joining the girly girls at school with their silly obsessions with makeup, fashion and boys.

      She’d chosen softball and the swim team over cheerleading and dance competitions and had felt more comfortable hanging out with guys at sports events than having sleepovers or going shopping with her female peers.

      The one event that had colored her entire high school experience was her classmate Carlton Butts’s death.

      Juniors in high school were not supposed to die. They especially weren’t supposed to commit suicide.

      Regret, that she hadn’t been a better friend to him and sensed how deep his depression ran, taunted her. She’d had nightmares about him plunging to the bottom of the canyon for years. In fact, most people in town now referred to the canyon as Carlton’s Canyon—some even called the high school Carlton Canyon High.

      Occasionally she even thought she heard Carlton whispering her voice in the night. Calling to her for help.

      Begging her to save him from himself.

      Only she’d missed the signs.

      Guilt had driven her to search for answers, only none had ever come. Then young women had started disappearing across Texas, two from Sunset Mesa, and she’d felt her heart tugging at her to return to the town.