Girl without a chance, p.1
Girl Without A Chance, page 1
G I R L W I T H O U T A C H A N C E
(A Tara Strong Mystery—Book 1)
R y l i e D a r k
Rylie Dark
Bestselling author Rylie Dark is author of the SADIE PRICE FBI SUSPENSE THRILLER series, comprising six books (and counting); of the CARLY SEE FBI SUSPENSE THRILLER series, comprising six books (and counting); of the MIA NORTH FBI SUSPENSE THRILLER series, comprising six books (and counting); of the MORGAN STARK FBI SUSPENSE THRILLER series, comprising five books (and counting); of the HAILEY ROCK FBI SUSPENSE THRILLER series, comprising five books (and counting); and of the TARA STRONG MYSTERY series, comprising five books (and counting).
An avid reader and lifelong fan of the mystery and thriller genres, Rylie loves to hear from you, so please feel free to visit www.ryliedark.com to learn more and stay in touch.
Copyright © 2023 by Rylie Dark. All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior permission of the author. This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return it and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictionally. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. Jacket image Copyright Christopher Kane, used under license from Shutterstock.com.
BOOKS BY RYLIE DARK
TARA STRONG MYSTERY
GIRL WITHOUT A CHANCE (Book #1)
GIRL WITHOUT A HOME (Book #2)
GIRL WITHOUT A TRACE (Book #3)
GIRL WITHOUT A NAME (Book #4)
GIRL WITHOUT A PRAYER (Book #5)
HAILEY ROCK FBI SUSPENSE THRILLER
BEHIND YOU (Book #1)
BESIDE YOU (Book #2)
AFTER YOU (Book #3)
WATCHING YOU (Book #4)
JUDGING YOU (Book #5)
SADIE PRICE FBI SUSPENSE THRILLER
ONLY MURDER (Book #1)
ONLY RAGE (Book #2)
ONLY HIS (Book #3)
ONLY ONCE (Book #4)
ONLY SPITE (Book #5)
ONLY MADNESS (Book #6)
MIA NORTH FBI SUSPENSE THRILLER
SEE HER RUN (Book #1)
SEE HER HIDE (Book #2)
SEE HER SCREAM (Book #3)
SEE HER VANISH (Book #4)
SEE HER GONE (Book #5)
SEE HER DEAD (Book #6)
CARLY SEE FBI SUSPENSE THRILLER
NO WAY OUT (Book #1)
NO WAY BACK (Book #2)
NO WAY HOME (Book #3)
NO WAY LEFT (Book #4)
NO WAY UP (Book #5)
NO WAY TO DIE (Book #6)
MORGAN STARK FBI SUSPENSE THRILLER
TOO LATE (Book #1)
TOO CLOSE (Book #2)
TOO FAR GONE (Book #3)
TOO LOST (Book #4)
TOO BROKEN (Book #5)
CONTENTS
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR
CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE
CHAPTER TWENTY SIX
CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN
CHAPTER ONE
“You know, that sun is looking pretty low,” Adriana said, shivering lightly. She couldn’t help but worry as she hugged her arms against herself.
Krystin looked and checked the reflection in the lake.
“We’ll set up the tent quickly,” she said. “How hard can it be, right? We’ll be tucked up safely in our sleeping bags before the monsters come out.”
Adriana shuddered, getting out of the car. She wondered for the hundredth time if it had been a good idea to come with Krystin on this camping trip. She loved her friend, but all her ideas usually led to trouble.
Adriana followed Krystin as she walked around to the back of the car and opened the trunk. The heavy bag containing the tent was there, waiting for them.
“My brother said not to damage it. If we manage to lose any stakes or unravel any guy ropes, he said he’ll go into my room and break one thing at random for each bit of damage to the tent.”
Adriana reached for the straps of the bag and hefted it, managing to lift it down to the ground and drop it with a heavy clunk. There was a metallic rattling of poles and stakes as it landed.
They heaved it with a joint effort, throwing the whole kit onto the ground with a thud and rattle and stopping to catch their breaths. Adriana put her hands on her hips and turned her head in all directions from their car.
“This is the best spot ever,” Krystin said.
They had found a secluded camping area just out of sight of the lake, back in the trees. There was only one other camper in this part of the park, far enough away that their lights were just a dim glow.
“I love this side of the lake,” she went on. “The mountain kind of starts not far from here and the trees are thicker. It feels like we’re in the middle of nowhere. Like a real camping trip.”
“This is a real camping trip,” Adriana said, annoyed. “We’re sleeping in a tent.”
“You know what I mean,” Krystin said, rolling her eyes. “Like, s’mores and campfires and talking to boys under the light of the moon.”
Adriana looked around at the darkening horizon.
“Are you sure this is safe? There’s only one other camper over there – and it’s so far away.”
“It should be fine,” Krystin shrugged. “We can go over there if we need help.”
Adriana sighed and tried to be calm. It was Krystin’s birthday, after all.
“This is the best eighteenth birthday trip anyone has ever planned,” Krystin giggled. “And we haven’t put the tent up yet.”
“It’s going to be even better,” Adriana promised.
She smiled for the first time as she walked to the backseat of the car and pulled out a sports duffel bag that normally held tennis rackets and gym clothes—now hiding bottles of beer.
“You are so bad,” Krystin said, grinning.
“Let’s get this tent set up,” Adriana grinned. “And be glad that there’s no one out here to check if we’re underage.”
“Where do the poles go?” Adriana asked, experimentally lifting the tent canvas in a few places. “And what are those sheets for?”
“I don’t know. Maybe to keep us dry while we put the tent up in case it rains?” Krystin said.
“I think the poles kind of click together like this,” Krystin said, spotting two metal ends that looked like they fit together and joining them with a satisfying clink. “Then we just have to figure out where to put them.”
“Through these loops, I think,” Adriana said. “Or maybe we use the rope to tie the pole to the tent? No… no, I think it’s these loops and tubes.”
Adriana started to work, increasingly frustrated, trying to figure it out as Krystin joined in. With one pole safely through the outer tubing of the tent, they stared at the piece of canvas flat on the ground.
“Now what?” Krystin asked. “It’s, like, not going up, or whatever.”
“I don’t know,” Adriana said.
“Didn’t you ask your brother how it worked?”
“I told you what an asshole he was being,” Adriana exclaimed, throwing her hands up in the air. “Maybe we should have come here earlier. I didn’t think it was going to take this long.”
“We’re going to run out of light soon,” Krystin acknowledged, looking up.
Adriana noticed with a pang of fear that the sun had already dropped far enough that she couldn’t see it beyond the trees. There was just an orange glow as a promise that it still existed over there, and that wasn’t going to last long.
“Crap. Maybe we should have asked someone for help,” Adriana said doubtfully. She looked around. “Where’s the light from that other camper?”
“They must have turned it off,” Krystin said. “Maybe they went to bed already. Or drove away or something.”
“Maybe there’s something online…”
Adriana grabbed her cell phone and started tapping the screen. A shiver ran down her spine, full of unease and trepidation.
“Perfect. There’s no signal out here.”
Then Adriana froze, mid-step. The hair rose on the back of her neck.
“Did you hear something?” she asked.
Krystin looked around, nervous.
And then Krystin straightened up. She must have heard it too.
It sounded to Adriana like…the
Adriana looked back at the car, wondering if they should just leave.
“Krystin--” Adriana started.
But her warning was lost completely as a figure burst out of the woods in front of them, emerging from the thicker trees into the wider space they had chosen.
She was screaming, screaming something incoherent at the top of her lungs, her arms flailing beside her pale face as she ran headlong toward them.
“Oh, my God!” Krystin screamed, leaping toward Adriana as if they could have some safety in numbers, or to hide behind her friend, or maybe to defend her.
Adriana grabbed at her, pulling her close, as the woman continued to run right at them. She was saying something – something that wasn’t quite clear – something lost in the screaming. The same phrase, it sounded like, over and over again.
“HEEZOWINTAKULMEEEE! HEEZOWINTAKULMEEEE!”
She ran right to Adriana and Krystin’s feet and fell, tumbling right onto the ground, reaching out to clutch at their feet. They girls screamed again and jumped back, out of her reach.
“Oh my God, oh my God,” Krystin said over and over again. The woman – her hand was bloodied. She was dirty and panting for breath like she’d run so far and so fast she couldn’t take another step. She was sobbing into the dirt.
Adriana’s brain rearranged the sounds she had heard into words. Words she didn’t want to hear. Words that had her staring up at the tree line and whimpering, grabbing Krystin’s arm.
And then, the woman, desperate, looked up and screamed right at them:
“He’s going to kill me!”
CHAPTER TWO
Tara checked that her radio was on, and pulled it away from her Deputy Sheriff uniform to see the switch on the side.
“It’s on,” Glenn chuckled, as he drove them slowly down the back streets of Wyatt, Colorado. “There’s just nothing happening.”
Tara sighed. “I was just making sure,” she said quietly.
The town was almost silent at this time of day, right at the beginning of their shift. The only people stirring were those who worked on the land - mountain rangers and park guides and campsite staff.
Glenn grinned at her.
“Sorry, you’re stuck with me on the drunkard beat,” he said. “If we don’t find Billy Westfoot in one of these alleys, you can start to get excited that maybe he wandered off somewhere and died.”
Tara stared at him, shaking her blonde ponytail off her shoulder and behind her head.
“I don’t want Billy Westfoot to die,” she said. “Though the way he drinks, it’s probably coming sooner or later no matter who wants it. I just want a bit of excitement. Something more important than tracking down the local drunk every time he doesn’t come home at night.”
Glenn braked, the patrol car coming to an abrupt stop.
“Found him,” he says. “I think I see him breathing. Anyway, aren’t you looking forward to the excitement of dinner with your folks tonight?”
Tara ignored what had to be a joke – since dinner with her parents was rarely exciting, and if her sister was there, usually cause for dismay – and leaned forward to look past him out of the car window. She spotted the familiar form of Billy slumped in the alley. He was sitting up with his back against the brick wall of one of the local bars, his arm over a crate and his head pillowed on it. He was asleep.
He was so drunk that he fell asleep in the alley, like he did at least once a week, and this was the job Tara had signed up for when she wanted to protect and serve her county. Even if it wasn’t very exciting, it was necessary. Without her and Glenn coming out here every Monday morning to find him, Billy Westfoot probably would be in trouble.
She took hold of her radio as Glenn got out of the car. “Dispatch, we have a ten-ninety-eight. Billy looks like he spent the night in the elements again. Deputy Grayson is looking him over now.”
“Ten-four on that, Deputy Sheriff Strong,” the reply crackled back over the radio. “I’ll call Mrs. Westfoot and let her know.”
Tara put the radio back in its cradle, glancing up toward the two figures. Glenn turned and gave her a thumbs up: Billy Westfoot was fine, probably still drunk from the night before like he always was. Glenn’s dark curls caught the morning light filtering down the alley as the sun finally rose high enough to hit him, reminding her of just how early it was. Behind him, framed between the gap of the two buildings, the mountain rose high and hazy in the distance.
She got out of the car on her side, stretching out her back a little, and joined Glenn.
“I’m fine here,” Billy slurred, trying to push Glenn’s helping hand away. “Jus’ leave me.”
“Billy, you’ve got to get on home,” Glenn said, trying to persuade him gently. Billy Westfoot was a big man; he had maybe a hundred pounds on Glenn. Tara knew from experience that it would take both of them to get the habitual drunk up and into the car if he didn’t want to go. “Your wife called us in a panic again this morning. She thought you’d gone and got yourself lost or something.”
“Come on, Billy,” Tara said, trying a more no-nonsense tone. “You have to get up now. We can’t leave you here, you know that. Either we annoy each other for the next hour and then you come, or you just come anyway and cut out the middle part.”
Billy heaved a sigh, his whole heavyset frame wobbling. “She’s a nag, isn’t she?”
Glenn shot a look of dark, mischievous amusement in Tara’s direction. Coupled with his curly dark hair and the somewhat elfin set to his features, it made him look like a dark sprite there to cause her trouble. “A nag, you say, Billy? You sure you want to use that word?”
“I swear to God,” Tara muttered under her breath so Billy couldn’t hear her, looking back toward the mouth of the alley and the car they had left undefended. She pretended she was checking it over just in case someone was trying to steal it, but she knew Glenn had known her long enough to realize that she was actually seething. She needed a moment to calm down and put her professional face back on, so she could smile at Billy like she hadn’t heard him.
“All women nag,” Billy went on, and Tara had to walk away toward the car. There were certain things she had a hard time tolerating, and discrimination of any kind was one of them.
Dealing with this kind of small-town misogyny was bad enough, but doing it in hot pursuit of lost drunks and cats up in trees was the injury added to the insult. Not for the first time and almost definitely not for the last, Tara’s frustration took her to thoughts of her sister. Jessy Strong had joined law enforcement just the same way that Tara had, but the oldest Strong child had already managed to get herself a position as Sheriff in the next county over. Not only that, but it was a bigger county, and they had actual crimes to deal with on a daily basis. Exciting things happened over there. Not here.
Tara was going to spend thirty years of her life, if she was lucky, getting called darling and heckled as a nag by the drunks, domestic abusers, and petty small-time thieves of Wyatt, and then she was going to retire early just to get out of the place, and Jessy was going to keep getting accolades and her name in the paper.
Not that being in the paper bothered Tara. But just getting her hands on a real case would make a nice break from the monotony. Just once. She didn’t want to wish bad things on the town. But she wanted to do something that mattered – something that made it feel like her life had been time well spent.
“That’s it,” Glenn was saying behind her, and Tara glanced over her shoulder to see Billy Westfoot shuffling along, one hand on the brickwork for support. She opened the door to the backseat and stood aside, watching the sky and the mountain beyond. It looked peaceful up there.
Billy got in, Glenn holding his head to make sure he didn’t hit it, and Tara closed the door. She looked at Glenn, who stood about an inch taller than she did, and he grinned.
“All in the glamorous day’s work of a deputy in Edgar County,” he said.
Tara couldn’t quite hold back her smile of amusement at how he’d managed to figure out what she was thinking, but she stifled it quickly. She put on a faux stern look befitting his superior.
“Oh, come on, T,” he said, patting her on the shoulder. “Maybe it won’t catch any headlines, but it’s still important work.” He moved around to the driver’s seat and got in, leaving her to walk to the passenger side.
