“You don’t think this was an accident? He was hurrying away, maybe from the avalanche, and got too close to the trees? Maybe the snow obscured his vision.”
“He wanted to talk to me about something. Minutes later someone sets off an avalanche. Next thing we know he’s dead. In the same area where he was trapped last week. That feels like too big a coincidence to be believable to me.”
She shuddered. Was Jace’s death her fault, too? She bit her lip, fighting tears. She was a federal agent. She wasn’t going to cry. Later, in the shower, when no one could see or hear her, she would give in to tears. But not now.
Connor sat up. “Someone’s coming.”
She stood, and together they watched the snowmobiles come through the trees. Doug and a man she didn’t recognize was on one, the sheriff on the second. They parked and tramped over to Connor and Stacy.
The sheriff stared down at the body. “Do we know his name?”
“Jason Dennison,” Connor said. “I pulled him out of a tree well last week. Alive that time.”
The second man—middle-aged with thinning blond hair and pale blue eyes—knelt beside the body.
“This is Dr. Monroe,” the sheriff said.
“I’m the coroner.” The doctor was already putting on latex gloves.
Stacy turned away. Doug moved in beside her. “Was that avalanche caused by one of the stolen cast boosters?” he asked.
“I can’t say for certain, but it seems likely,” she said.
“Do we have any idea who did it?”
“No.” She steeled herself against his protests that she wasn’t doing enough. “I’m going to call my superiors and ask for more agents to be put on this case,” she said. “It needs to be a priority.”
“We don’t want to frighten the public with an army of law enforcement officers,” Doug said.
“We know how to be discreet.” Though Nina had recognized her as law enforcement, and her father, too. What had tipped her off?
The coroner stood and stripped off his gloves. “You can transport the body now.”
“What can you tell us about how he died?” Connor asked.
“Obviously, he suffocated in the tree well,” Doug said.
“I won’t know the answer to that until after the autopsy,” Dr. Monroe said. “But I can tell you he also has a fractured skull.”
“Did he hit his head on a rock or something when he fell?” Doug asked.
Connor moved over to the tree. “We didn’t find any rocks when we were digging.”
The doctor followed Connor to the tree well. “What was his position when you found him?”
“Pretty much vertical at the base of the tree.”
“He was hit on the back of the head.” The doctor put a hand to the base of his own skull.
“So maybe he was hit before he ended up in this hole,” Connor said.
“The blow to the head might have killed him fairly quickly, or he might have fallen because of it and suffocated,” the doctor said. “We’ll know more after the autopsy.”
“Who hit him?” Connor asked. “The man who found him didn’t mention anyone else here.”
“He probably fell and hit his own head,” Doug said.
“You’ll need to close this run until we’ve determined cause of death,” the sheriff said.
