the eye of Sheriff Jericho Crockett, no doubt one of the first responders to the small ranch in Appaloosa Pass. This was the sheriff’s jurisdiction. Jericho normally doled out glares and hard looks to Cord, but tonight he just lifted an eyebrow.
Cord lifted one of his own and felt that knot tighten even more.
“Miss Southerland insisted on seeing you,” Jericho told Cord. “Said she wouldn’t get in the ambulance until you got here.”
Yeah, Jericho had relayed something similar about Karina Southerland when he’d phoned Cord about twenty minutes earlier. Jericho had asked him to come to the rental house on a local ranch and had rattled off the address. As an agent, Cord got plenty of bad calls in the middle of the night, some even from local sheriffs, but this one wasn’t DEA-related.
This one was, well, personal.
“Karina said it was the Moonlight Strangler who attacked her?” Cord asked the sheriff.
Jericho nodded. “The guy had on a ski mask, came at her from behind. It fits the MO, too.” He glanced up at the night sky, where there was a full moon.
The glancing hadn’t been necessary, though. A full moon was always a reminder of murder. That could happen when a person had a personal connection to a vicious serial killer known as the Moonlight Strangler.
And when the killer was Cord’s biological father.
It didn’t matter that Cord didn’t personally know the man. Though they had met. In a way. When Cord had been on the receiving end of the Moonlight Strangler’s knife only a month ago. But because the Moonlight Strangler had pumped him full of drugs, Cord didn’t have many memories of the incident at all.
Only the scars.
And while Cord would never—never—think of that snake as his father, they would always share the same blood.
“How bad is Karina hurt?” Cord added.
Jericho hitched his thumb to the rear of the barn. “See for yourself. It’s not nearly as bad as it could have been.”
True. She could be dead. “Did she say how she got away from...her attacker?”
“Oh, she’s got plenty to say. Thought you’d want to hear it for yourself so you can try to make sense of it.” Jericho paused. “Is there any sense to be made from this?”
Cord hoped there was. But he wasn’t seeing it so far.
“The sooner you talk to her,” Jericho continued, “the sooner she’ll be in that ambulance so I can get the CSIs in here to examine the place.”
Cord wanted that, as well. Because the CSIs had to find something, anything.
Making sure he didn’t step on the blood or any other item that could possibly be evidence, Cord made his way toward the two paramedics who weren’t looking any happier about this situation than Jericho or him. The ambulance was parked at the front of the barn, the red lights still on and slashing through the night. That alone spiked his adrenaline and so did the fear of what he might see when he spotted the woman on the floor by some stacked hay bales.
Karina Southerland.
Over the past month he’d met with her at least a dozen times. In those confrontations—and they were confrontations, all right—she’d been intense but composed.
There wasn’t much left of that composure now.
Her dark brown hair was a tangled mess, strands of it sticking to the perspiration on her face. No jeans and working cowboy boots as she’d worn during their previous meetings. Tonight, she had on just an oversize plain white T-shirt that she was obviously using as a nightgown. It was cut low enough at the neck that he could see the bruises there. She had bruises on her knees, too, and scrapes and nicks on her hands that looked like defensive wounds.
And there was the blood, of course.
A smear of it was still on her left cheek, which one of the paramedics was tending. Another cut on her left arm. She had yet another small one near her shoulder.
Along with the two paramedics, there was a third guy with graying brown hair. Lanky to the point of being scrawny, he was pacing just outside the rear entrance of the barn. The guy was chewing on his left thumbnail, had a cell phone gripped in his right hand and was tossing some very concerned glances at Karina. He was in his fifties, and it looked as if he’d dressed in a hurry. No boots, just his socks. But there was a gun tucked at an angle in the waist of his baggy jeans.
“Who are you?” Cord asked the guy right off.
He stopped chewing on his thumbnail long enough to answer. “Rocky Finney. I’m a ranch hand here. You need to help Karina.”
“He works for me,” Karina volunteered. “And he saved my life.”
Cord stared at Rocky to let him know he wanted a lot more details than the ranch hand had just doled out to him.
“I was sleeping in the bunkhouse.” Rocky glanced at the small barn-shaped building about twenty yards from the main house. Such that it was. The main house was small, too. “I heard Karina scream, and when I came out, this man wearing a mask was choking her. I shot at him. I think I hit him in the shoulder. And he ran off.”
Maybe some of the blood belonged to the attacker. If Rocky was telling the truth, that is.
“Where did the man run?” Cord continued.
Rocky pointed in the direction of a heavily wooded area. Which was also the direction of the road since it was just on the other side of all those trees.
“There’s no blood trail immediately around the barn,” Jericho quickly informed Cord. “But the CSIs will look. I don’t want anyone in that area until they’ve searched it.”
Neither did Cord. Because blood could give them the DNA of the person responsible for this.
“She needs stitches,” the paramedic said when he snared Cord’s gaze.
The bulky, bald paramedic looked at Cord as if he could magically make Karina get in that ambulance and head to the hospital. But Cord had less influence on her than anyone else in this barn.
“I told you Willie Lee was innocent,” Karina said, her mouth tight, “that he wasn’t the Moonlight Strangler.” Her voice was raspy but clear enough for Cord to hear the accusation in there.
The Moonlight Strangler had been a source of contention between Karina and him after Willie Lee Samuels was identified as the serial killer. And then captured. That had happened a month ago, after he’d attacked Cord.
Of course, Willie Lee didn’t know about the multiple murder charges against him yet because he’d sustained a gunshot wound and been in a coma ever since being taken into custody.
And Cord had been the one to shoot him.
Willie Lee hadn’t been able to confess. Hadn’t been able to confirm anything related to the dozens of murders he’d committed as the Moonlight Strangler. Or any of the other crimes for that matter. Still, Cord had been sure Willie Lee was the right man.
Until tonight.
If the Moonlight Strangler was in a coma, then who the heck had attacked Karina?
“He’s your father,” Karina added. “Don’t you feel in your bones that he’s innocent?”
“No. I don’t feel anything about him one way or another.”
It was a lie. Cord felt plenty. Plenty that he didn’t intend to share with her or anyone else for that matter.
Cord knelt down to make better eye contact with Karina. “Why don’t you go ahead and get in the ambulance? We can talk this out on the way to the hospital.”
She didn’t budge, probably because she didn’t trust him. She’d wanted him here only so she could say that she had told him so, that the cops had