Payne Landon didn’t like the cold, but he hated the scent of extremely expensive perfume left on a dead man’s collar even more.
He stood in the center of the debris field, the search-and-rescue team moving around him as ghost ships lost in the night fog. They were looking for a body; Payne, however, was looking for the mistake. He had spent ten years as a lead investigator for the regional bureau, and he knew that even the most perfect killers grew bored. They left either a footprint, a strand of hair, or, more likely, a flicker of ego.
He walked toward the ridgeline, his black police-issued boots sinking immediately into the snow's crust. He drew a flashlight from his belt, its bright beam cutting through the gray mourning haze.
“Any luck, Detective?” A young deputy stepped forward, his face pale, his breath hitching in the subzero cold.
“Luck isn’t how I’d describe it, Deputy,” Payne muttered. He knelt; his light fixed on a patch of snow near the fracture’s edge.
There, perfectly tucked into the ice, was a single silver cufflink. It wasn’t Mark Sterling’s. It was too delicate, too ornate. He reached out with his gloved hand to retrieve the delicate new piece of evidence, but the deputy’s radio crackled to life, drawing his attention away.
“Sir, we’ve got a hit on the thermal scan, ten yards down near the ravine.”
Payne slipped the cufflink into his pocket, his jaw tightening. He looked back toward the lodge, where the wealthy residents of Blackbear Ridge stood behind a police cordon, sipping coffee and looking just a little too relieved it hadn’t happened to them.
He didn’t believe in accidents. Especially not when the mountain decided to become an assassin. As he walked toward the body, dread settled in his gut. He wasn’t just investigating a death. He was chasing a ghost that had just learned to move mountains.