Undercover Hunter by Rachel Lee Page A

it’s so general. Young guy, probably white, probably abused as a kid, maybe some head injury...thing is, I could point to hundred guys around here. Child abuse happens here as much as anywhere. Kids get thrown from horses or bang their heads other ways.”
    “What about somebody who went away for around five years and came back?” Cade asked the question and it settled in the room like a pall.
    “Gage is working on that,” Nate replied. “Thing is, youngsters leave looking for a better life. Then when all those jobs opened up at the ski resort last year, a whole bunch of them came back. Maybe forty or fifty. I didn’t take a head count. Most of them the right age.”
    “So, many came back for a temporary job?” DeeJay asked. She seemed ready to leap on that.
    “Not temporary,” Nate said. “You need to talk to Luke Masters, the guy who’s heading up the whole thing. These folks were promised they’d get trained for other work once construction is finished. According to Luke, this company prefers to hire locally because employees stay.”
    “Hell,” said DeeJay. “That almost looked like a clue.”
    Nate nodded. “Crossed my mind, too. Then we got a number of others who finished sowing their wild oats and came home to work the family land. Kind of a dribble, but still there. Moving away and coming back isn’t exactly unheard-of around here. Hell, I did the same thing myself back when. Did my six years for Uncle Sam, then came to stay put. You’ll find a few of those around here, too. We’re getting our vets back from the wars. Now, you could look for head injuries there, I suppose.”
    DeeJay shook her head. “I’m not going to sift that way.”
    “She’s army,” Cade said.
    At that, Nate smiled faintly.
    “That’s not what I meant,” DeeJay said sharply. “Not because they’re vets, but because that’s a limiting sieve for this thing. We can’t afford to limit the search too much without better information. Besides, at his heart this creep is a coward. Picking on small boys. A real coward.”
    “Or a driven man,” Nate remarked. “Either way, it doesn’t strike me that he’d fit too well in a uniform. This sumbitch likes to write his own rules.”
    Nate reached for his mug, drinking some more coffee, clearly thinking. DeeJay let him, and Cade didn’t say a word.
    Then Nate asked, “You ever hear of a killer hanging his trophies like that before?”
    Both DeeJay and Cade shook their heads. “Doesn’t mean it never happened,” DeeJay remarked. “Just that we don’t know about it.”
    “I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about that cargo netting. It was made of rope, which meant it was old. Now at one time or another we can have call for stuff like that around here. So it’s not a clue by itself. Anyone could have had some of that lying around in a barn or shed. It was big enough to be used to cover a flatbed for a truck, or to keep bales of hay in line for some reason. Probably a hundred other uses. But it’s still an interesting choice. Why hang them on the netting? Why not line them up somewhere he could look at them from time to time?”
    Cade spoke. “It’s interesting that he put them outside, too. Why not a basement or something like that?”
    “Because,” DeeJay said, “there was someone at home who might have discovered them. He put them as far as he could to keep them out of sight, and it worked for years. But he also had to be able to reach them to enjoy them.”
    Cade leaned forward. “Now I’m wondering if he might have come back a few times to take a look.”
    “I’m sure he did when he came back for good,” DeeJay answered.
    Nate spoke. “Never would have found ’em except for the resort surveyor. Bet he didn’t plan on that. You think he’s still hanging them outdoors? In these temperatures they wouldn’t leave an infrared signature. Too cold.”
    “But
he
might,” said DeeJay. “If he’s hanging them in the woods again.” She sighed and reached