Icy Betrayal Read Online Free

is 56-year-old George Lombard of Castle Springs. Best we can figure, he was out deer hunting off Highway 46 early yesterday morning when he was struck by a car and killed. The driver, 32-year-old Lisa Sullivan from Rosebud, says Lombard suddenly appeared out of nowhere. Speed was 25-30, she says she had no time to react and hit him head on. He was thrown onto the hood of her Ford Fiesta, his head hit the windshield, which didn’t break, and he was thrown clear to the shoulder face down and dead.”
    “Okay, so far so good,” McCallister replied.
    “Well, not for him,” she replied with a bit of a smile. She cursed silently to herself at the feeble attempt at being cute with her boss.
    Their affair hadn’t ended badly; Mia Serrano and Mick McCallister parted on good terms and remained friends, seeing each other nearly every day at the station. They both knew their relationship was against RCSO policy given Mia worked in McCallister’s division. The couple had managed to keep the tryst a secret from both their co-workers and the command staff for eight months. But as Mick’s career blossomed, and he became the “talked about guy” to replace the sheriff when he retired, they decided it would be best to cool it.
    The relationship had started off innocently, mostly playful flirting. There were a few emails and before they knew it they were having drinks at a small neighborhood bar in Denver. Over time, the relationship became serious, but there was always concern that they’d be discovered.
    A holiday weekend trip to Las Vegas turned out to be the deal breaker, thanks to a close call with a RCSO deputy renowned for his big mouth. Fortunately, they saw him before he saw them, and while they were able to quickly switch hotels, they spent the weekend looking over their shoulders. Romance is hard, they’d learned, when you’re always watching your back.
    Both had a lot to lose. Married and divorced in his early twenties, Mick’s life was more or less the RCSO. A department romance could do a lot of damage to a career he’d poured his heart and soul into. And Mia had a lot to lose as well. If word got out there would be rumors and claims she’d slept her way to her coveted investigator position. It wasn’t fair, but it was department politics and human nature. They’d both worked too hard to see it all go down the drain.
    Still, neither Mick nor Mia had closed the book on the relationship completely. Maybe as they advanced, perhaps into different divisions at RCSO, they could give it another go. There were plenty of personnel at RCSO involved with each other, either in dating relationships or marriages. It was a very common thing in law enforcement. But most everywhere, relationships between bosses and subordinates were simply forbidden, and RCSO was no exception.
    “Anyway,” she continued, “this seemed like a pretty cut-and-dried fatality, car versus pedestrian.”
    “So, what’s the problem?”
    “The autopsy. Lots of issues, I’m afraid.”
    “Like what?”
    “Glass splinters in the victim’s scalp, for starters.”
    “But he didn’t break the windshield,” Mick said, proud that he could keep his concentration. He loved it when she wore her hair back. “What else?”
    “The victim’s core body temperature was much colder than it should have been given the pathology. The ME tech on scene had him at 89.3 just four hours after the accident.”
    “It was pretty damn cold that morning.”
    “We asked about that, but Dr. Mora says while the weather may have been a contributing factor, no way does it explain a nine degree drop.”
    “Shit.”
    “There’s more. Mora found lividity that was consistent with a victim found on his back. My vic was found face down. He also looked at the stomach contents of our vic—looks like his last meal was a nice big steak. Problem is, unless he had that steak dinner at 3:30 in the morning, the digestive time line doesn’t add up. That steak hadn’t been in his