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  Throttled

  A Rylie Cooper Mystery

  Stella Bixby

  Ferry Tail Publishing LLC

  This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2019 by Crystal S. Ferry

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system presently available or yet to be invented without permission in writing from the publisher, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Created with Vellum

  For My Amazing Husband

  I love doing life with you. Thank you for all your support.

  1

  Two thousand dollars.

  Two thousand dollars per month.

  How could an apartment where I could cook an egg on the stove while simultaneously taking my morning poo cost two thousand dollars a month?

  I prided myself on being a multi-tasker, but that was so not happening.

  “What do you think dear?” The property management lady raised her white caterpillar eyebrows.

  “I think it’s lovely,” my mother said beside me. She’d set up this whole meeting when I mentioned I’d finally saved enough to move out of her basement—or at least I thought I’d saved enough. Somehow Mom and this woman knew each other. Possibly through friends or a book club or, perhaps, Meddlers Anonymous. “Don’t you think it’s lovely, Rylie?” she asked as if she couldn’t see my jaw hanging open.

  “It’s—um—small but . . .” lovely definitely wasn’t the word. The exposed brick was pretty cool, but I suspected that was more a feature of disrepair than a stylistic choice. “Does the two thousand a month include utilities or a garage?”

  “Goodness no.” The woman laughed, and my mother laughed with her as if I’d said the funniest thing in the entire world. “All utilities are the responsibility of the tenant,” she croaked, “and where you parked is the lot for the building. It was empty today because most people are at work, but it’s first come, first serve with an additional $150 monthly parking pass.”

  My head spun. It wasn’t as if I was trying to rent a fancy downtown Denver apartment. This was borderline bad side of town. And it would still cost more than half of what I made every month.

  “I’m sorry, I don’t think I can afford—”

  “This is the cheapest unit in the metro area,” she said matter-of-factly.

  Mom had to have put her up to this. I gave her a sideways glance, but she was off inspecting the tiny toilet in the corner of the room. There was no way this-this . . . room was worth more than two thousand dollars a month. Well, other than for the fact it would get me out of my parents’ basement.

  Even so . . . I shook my head.

  I couldn’t do it. I wouldn’t have money left to eat, let alone feed my dog, Fizzy.

  “Thank you for showing me the place. I’ll . . . think about it.” As in, I’d be lucky to afford a cardboard box on the curb out front.

  The woman’s deeply creased face remained unchanged. “Are you sure? This one will be gone by tomorrow.”

  “I’m sure.”

  Gone by tomorrow? I wanted to meet the person who would shell out the kind of money to live in what felt more like a prison cell than a home.

  I shook her wrinkled hand and Mom hugged her. “Thank you so much for meeting with us. Let me know if you find anything less expensive.” I could have sworn Mom gave her a sly wink.

  The parking lot was completely covered in slush from the previous night’s snowfall and subsequent sunshine of this morning. A hundred and fifty bucks and they didn’t even hire someone to plow? I’d be lucky if Cherry Anne, my Mustang, got out without getting stuck.

  I turned the ignition over, and my heart raced with the power rumbling beneath me. The sound of 435 horses begging to be released never got old.

  My mom sat in the passenger seat unusually quiet.

  “What?” I finally asked.

  “I feel terrible that you haven’t been able to find an affordable place to rent.”

  Sure she did. “I’m sure I’ll find something soon.”

  “You know, maybe you should wait.” She looked straight ahead when she talked. “I have a feeling Garrett is going to propose soon, and you wouldn’t want to be locked into a lease when you get married.”

  “I highly doubt I’ll get engaged and married in the matter of a year.” Just the thought seemed incomprehensible. “Plus, Garrett and I have only been dating a couple months. We’re nowhere near getting married.”

  Mom quirked an eyebrow up at me.

  “What? We’re not.”

  “I see how he looks at you. And he’s pretty wonderful.”

  She had conveniently forgotten about when she’d absolutely forbidden me from seeing him. I guess he had been a suspected murderer, but still, I knew he was innocent.

  “One step at a time.” I put the car in gear and inched forward so as not to dig my rear tires further into the slush only to spin out on the ice below.

  “Just don’t let him get away like you did with Luke.”

  “Luke chose to go in a different direction. I didn’t let him get away.” In fact, I’d practically thrown myself at him just to have him say we needed space so he wouldn’t be my rebound. Now he was dating one of my co-workers.

  “If you’d done more maybe . . .”

  This conversation was going nowhere. “How’s Megan?”

  “She’s been training for her ultra run thing.”

  Megan, my older sister, has the most energy of anyone I’ve ever known. Not only does she run marathons and triathlons, she also has four rambunctious little boys to keep her busy.

  “How has work been now that you got the full-time position?” she asked. “I feel like I never see you anymore.”

  “It’s been good,” I said ignoring the passive aggressive comment. “Not that much different.”

  “Same job, better pay. That’s great,” Mom said. “And if you could just get away from homicides, it would be perfect.”

  As much as I wanted to roll my eyes, she was right. I never thought being a park ranger would mean seeing so many dead bodies.

  “I get my bulletproof vest soon.” The moment the words escaped my lips, I wanted to shove them back in.

  Mom’s face turned a sickly grey almost as if she were about to pass out.

  “It’s just a precaution. None of the rangers have been shot at.” I pulled into the driveway of my parents’ upscale two-story house, and my mom got out of the car before I could even put it in park.

  She slammed Cherry Anne’s door so hard, it rattled my seat.

  I should have known better than to bring up the safety aspect of the job. Mom had always thought being a ranger was too dangerous for me.

  I followed her inside and was instantly greeted by Fizzy. “Hey, buddy.” I scratched behind his ears.

  “Hi, kiddo. What’d you do this time?” My dad joked from the comfort of his recliner.

  “I mentioned my bulletproof vest,” I replied sitting down on the couch next to his chair. He folded the paper and put it on the stand.

  “You know your mother. Always worried about you and your sister.”

  I nodded. It wasn’t as if her worries were completely unfounded. Less than a month into being a park ranger, I’d nearly been strangled to death by one of my co-workers. Then only a couple of months ago I’d been trapped in my boyfriend’s basement by two murderous psychopaths—one of them Garrett’s twin brother. I h
adn’t brought myself to tell Mom about the second incident though.

  “I’m more careful now. I haven’t encountered a murder in over two months. No dead people at all. Heck, I haven’t had to take care of so much as a hangnail.”

  In all honesty, it had been a boring couple of months once summer had ended and the weather turned cold. People didn’t spend much time at a reservoir when the water was too cold to boat on, and the ice was too unstable to do any ice fishing. They all went up to the mountains to ski and snowboard and snowshoe and snowmobile . . . my heart ached for those sports. I missed living in the mountains.

  “Maybe I could take Mom snowboarding one of these weekends.” I’d have to take a day off, but it would be fun. “And Megan could come too.”

  “I think that sounds like a wonderful idea,” Dad said bringing out his proud smile. “When is the ice going to be strong enough for fishermen? I’ve thought about dusting off my old gear and trying my hand at catching some trout.”

  “I don’t know. We’ve had some cold nights so I could see it being any time now.”

  Dad used to take Megan and me ice fishing when we were kids. Though we fished, our favorite part was riding the snowmobiles around on the ice. As a kid I never knew how dangerous it could be. Then I became a firefighter and had to go through ice rescue training.

  “Maybe I could go with you sometime,” I said.

  “Sounds like a plan.”

  If I ever found an apartment that was even remotely affordable, I’d miss these moments.

  2

  “Ice rescue training,” Greg—Ranger One—said as we stood at the edge of the ice waiting to be assigned a role. “Most of you have been through this, so it’ll be a refresher. But we do have a first-timer.” He smiled at Nikki with his grandfatherly smile—his salt and pepper mustache twitching upward.

  Nikki looked stylish in her white ski pants and matching jacket. Her long auburn hair was pulled back into two French braids, and her makeup would probably stay absolutely perfect even getting in and out of the icy cold water.

  No wonder Luke was dating her.

  “Who would like to be the first victim?” Greg asked the group. Everyone hesitated.

  “I can do it,” I finally said.

  “Great. Go ahead and put on the Gumby suit.” He motioned to where we’d laid several billowing orange rubber suits over the hoods of our four-door Chevy ranger trucks. “And who wants to be the rescuer?”

  Almost every hand shot up. Most of the guys wanted to be the hero. But Nikki stood off to the side looking like she might actually be nervous. I walked over to her once Greg had named Ben the rescuer and released us to get into position.

  “You okay?” I asked.

  “Of course I’m okay.” Nikki bit back.

  “It’s okay to be scared. I was scared the first time I—”

  “Shut it, Rylie. We all know you’ve done this before when you were a fancy firefighter.” Every head turned at her outburst.

  I put my hands up in surrender and walked away.

  “What’s the difference between a fancy firefighter and a regular one?” Seamus asked in his Irish brogue when I approached the trucks.

  “Shut up,” I muttered under my breath.

  “I’m just jokin’ with ya, blondie.”

  He and I had spent way too much time together the past two months. He was dating my best friend, Shayla, who had been a summer park ranger but was now finishing up police academy.

  I pulled off my snow boots and stepped into the dry orange rubber suit. It was made to accommodate men much larger than my five-seven athletic frame making it billow out around me. Before putting my hands into the gloves, I pulled the hood over my head and down across my forehead, pushing the stray blonde hairs that hadn’t fit in my ponytail up into the suit. Then I pulled on each sleeve as if I were pulling on a winter jacket only with gloves attached to the ends. My fingers were tiny compared to the massive gloves, but the wrist straps helped keep my hands from slipping out.

  “Can you zip me up?” I asked Antonio who had just finished zipping up Ben’s suit for him.

  Antonio acted as if he hadn’t heard me—I suppose maybe he actually hadn’t—and walked away.

  “I’ll do it,” Seamus said. He carefully zipped the suit up from my waist past my chin and over my mouth. “Looks like yeh won’t be talking much.” He laughed.

  I pulled the suit down so I could still speak. “Yeah, fat chance.”

  “You ready?” Ben asked, his hulking frame nearly filling out the suit. For an older guy, he was in the best shape of all the rangers. Well, besides Dusty—he may have had Ben beat.

  “Yep.” I stepped gingerly through the snow and onto the ice where Antonio and Dusty had cut a hole earlier that morning.

  The thrill of doing something I knew so well coursed through me. I may have been terrified the first time I’d had this training, but the minute I realized the suit made me practically invincible, my fears had been replaced with sheer excitement. Even when we’d been paged for ice rescue calls, there wasn’t a sense of worry or dread because I knew we’d be able to get the person out of the water as long as they were still holding onto that ice shelf. My suit made me something of a superhero in my head and a giant floating bobber in reality.

  I eased myself into the hole about fifty feet from shore. The air in the suit put me off balance until I tucked my legs up into my chest and curled into the tiniest ball I could make. A whoosh of air rushed out of my suit at the neck sucking the suit tighter to my body and giving me more control of my movement. Then I thrust my feet down toward the icy depths as hard as I could helping me to stay upright.

  “Okay, Ben. Make sure you go through all the steps,” Greg reminded him.

  I pulled myself up to the ice shelf—the ice at least four inches thick—as Ben reached for my hand first. When that didn’t work, he threw a rope to me.

  “Don’t grab it, Rylie,” Greg instructed. “Pretend you’re too cold.”

  I didn’t do anything with the rope. Just let it skitter past my gloved hands.

  “I’m going in,” Ben notified the other rangers who held the rope attached to his suit at the waist.

  Ben approached on hands and knees from the back of the hole, careful not to break the ice shelf I was holding onto. He eased himself into the water and curled into a ball like I had.

  “Rylie, move your feet,” Ben said. “Tuck them under the ice.”

  “They are tucked under the ice,” I replied.

  “Then what is below me?”

  “What do you mean, what’s below you?”

  “I mean, there’s something down there. And it’s not a fish.”

  Instantly my mind went through all the possible scenarios.

  Seaweed. Sunken boat. Dead body.

  Oh God, please don’t let it be a dead body.

  “What’s going on?” Greg asked. “Why aren’t you rescuing her?”

  Ben fumbled around behind me trying to pull whatever it was to the surface. I paddled my arms to slowly turn around.

  “No, Rylie, you’re supposed to stay on the ice shelf. What are you doing?” I had never heard Greg shout, but his voice was definitely more stern than usual.

  I looked Ben in the eye, ignoring Greg. “What is it?”

  Ben’s face was red from the cold, but the look in his eyes was the same one I’d seen when we’d found a body stuck in a catfish trap over the summer.

  “No,” I said. “It can’t be.”

  He pulled a bit harder and what looked like a human hand popped up to the surface.

  I fought the urge to crawl out of the hole. There was not enough room for three of us in such a small piece of open water.

  “I think we need some help over here,” I yelled.

  Greg walked up behind me and caught a glimpse of what had us completely distracted from the task at hand.

  “Not another one,” he murmured, his hand rubbing his forehead.

  3

  Whi
le Ben and Greg worked on hauling the body out of the water, I pulled myself up onto the ice shelf and rolled away from the hole like we were taught in the self-rescue section of the training.

  Greg yanked on the hand and Ben helped him lift the body onto the ice. The cold water had done nothing to preserve the person’s features. It looked like a big blob of human flesh.

  Ben pulled himself out of the water as Greg took a pulse. I guess it was standard operating procedure, but anyone could have seen this person had been dead for a while.

  “Yeh did not seriously find another dead body?” Seamus asked.

  I shrugged. Maybe being a park ranger wasn’t for me. They’d found more dead bodies since I’d worked here than ever in the history of the ranger program.

  “Someone should probably call the police,” Greg said. “It looks like our training is over.”

  Nikki’s face was the only one of joy. I almost felt bad for her. I knew how it felt to be afraid of ice rescue. But she didn’t have to be such a jerk to anyone who tried to help her.

  “Don’t be so sure,” Dusty said, his biceps bulging from under his white long-sleeved shirt that complemented his dark brown skin. “I don’t think we’re going to need the police.”

  “Just because the body is obviously cold and dead, doesn’t mean we shouldn’t call it in,” Greg said.

  “Look at it more closely.”

  We all turned and looked harder.

  Then, one by one, we all began to chuckle then laugh then gasp for air.

  It wasn’t a dead body. It was the dummy the lifeguards lost over the summer.

  Ben’s face returned to normal, and Nikki’s went back to a state of fear. Thank goodness I wouldn’t have to deal with yet another dead body and subsequent murder investigation.

  “Great job,” Greg said as he handed us our official Ice Rescue Certificates. “Now everyone can respond to ice rescue calls as needed.”

  The training room was quiet with exhaustion. As the sun had risen, we’d each taken our turn as rescuer, victim, and rope puller. Nikki went last and busted through the training as if it were nothing. My sympathy for her fear flew away on the cool winter breeze as she self-rescued effortlessly, stomped over to the ranger trucks, and peeled off her suit declaring we could all go in now.