The Perfect Fiancé: A totally gripping psychological thriller packed with twists by T.J. Brearton

Author:T.J. Brearton [Brearton, T.J.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Joffe Books psychological thrillers, suspense and crime
Published: 2024-05-21T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twenty-Nine

The vehicles moved along in the darkness, going slow in the storm, lights flashing, everything eerily silent in the falling snow.

That buzz of excitement stayed with Stamper, tingling the base of his skull. But something heavier grew alongside it, a dread for what they might find.

They turned off from Route 30, which had been slick. The plows were out working, but this storm was really blanketing the region. The secondary road up the mountain was unplowed and unsalted. Cuthbert was grateful for four-wheel drive.

“Hang on,” Stamper said. “Let me out a sec.”

She slowed down and parked, forcing the troopers behind them to do the same.

He felt the wet kisses of snow on his face, getting into his eyes as he examined a shallower patch of snow off to the side of the road in the shape of a car. Something had been parked here, he thought. Footprints came from one direction, tire tracks led off in another, toward the main road, all of it barely discernible. He took a few pictures anyway, then got back in with Cuthbert.

The next seven-tenths of a mile were slow-going. The road was long and winding through snow-covered evergreens.

In the end, the FBI hadn’t been so bad. They were actually monitoring the case and had planned to reach out. More importantly, they gave up the location of Dale Rossi’s cabin when Stamper had asked.

It was more, now, than playing a hunch. Someone who’d looked a great deal like the half-brother of Colton Rossi was caught on video chasing people with a gun. And his father was a known associate of a regional organized crime family. To not follow this up — and proceed with an abundance of caution — would be ludicrous.

Again, though, the dread.

“I keep having these dreams.”

Cuthbert felt herself bracing. In three years working together, they’d never gotten personal. But they’d never had a case so sudden and high-profile. It was testing them, pulling at their emotional fibers.

“I have kids,” Stamper said, about his dreams. “And it’s so vivid. You know? It’s like I’ve been raising them for years. It feels like that.”

Cuthbert cleared her throat when she felt something catch. “Maybe your subconscious is trying to tell you something.”

He kept thinking about Jennifer Holt, never a free moment to herself. She’d had to call back an investigator on a case about her own brother while shushing boys in the backseat. Or Cuthbert’s husband, a veritable homemaker who spent most of his time feeding children and cleaning up baby poo. There were reasons Stamper hadn’t had kids yet.

And some of them, maybe . . .

Well, you saw certain things as a cop, things that made the whole idea of bringing life into the world seem a bit crazy.

The road bent around to the left, opening up to a small clearing with a log cabin and a couple of outbuildings.

“Holy shit,” Cuthbert said.

The vehicle sitting under four inches of snow was the exact right dimensions to be a cargo van.

They got out, trudged to it and wiped away the snow to reveal a white paint job, the smudgy outline of a removed decal.

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