Marty couldn’t return the smile; frustration had her gut in a vise. Needing to do something productive, she started toward her makeshift office. “I need to make some calls,” she said.
“Let me know if I can help,” Jo Nell called to her back. “At least we’re safe here.”
Even though they were in the police station, this was one time when Marty felt anything but safe.
“I don’t want to go to Aunt Debbie and Uncle Jack’s.”
Clay glanced down at the pink overnight case Erica was forcefully tossing jeans and T-shirts into and sighed. “Why not? You love Debbie and Jack.”
“I don’t want to miss the barrel race on Sunday.”
“There’ll be another race, honey.”
“Dad, please—”
“It’ll only be a couple of days. Three days max.” He sat on the bed. “Aunt Deb says you can sleep with Ripley.” Ripley was his sister’s obese but very sweet tomcat.
“Why can’t you come, too?”
“I have to work, honey. We think there might be some bad guys in the area. I want to make sure they don’t try to hurt someone I care about.”
Her eyes widened. “You mean me?”
Clay nodded, maybe because he couldn’t bring himself to say the words aloud. He’d debated on how much to tell her. But Erica was mature and smart for a ten-year-old. If he tried to sugarcoat the truth or feed her some passable lie, she would call him on it. As a cop, he’d always been a firm believer that an informed child was a safer child. In this day and age, it wasn’t always prudent for a parent to protect a child too much. Kids needed the truth even when it was ugly.
“I still don’t want to go,” she said.
Clay firmed his voice. “The decision’s been made. You’re going and that’s final. No more arguing.”
“It’s not fair.”
The words made him think of Marty. She hadn’t been happy about being relegated to the sidelines. But as a cop, she realized the dangers. She might be willing to accept the risks, but Clay wasn’t.
Erica slammed her overnight bag closed and yanked at the zipper, using a bit too much force. Clay reached out to help, but she pulled it away.
At the bedroom door, Jett leaned against the jamb with his arms crossed over his chest, looking as out of his element as a priest in a girls’ locker room. “Anything I can do, Chief?”
Clay shook his head. “You got the map?” He’d downloaded a map with directions to his sister’s place in Tucumcari.
Jett patted his breast pocket. “Right here.”
“When you get back, we’ll meet with the Deaf Smith Sheriff’s Office. I’m going to brief them on the situation and share everything we have on Ivanov, so they can step up patrols in the area.”
“Hogan?”
“I yanked her off patrol.”
Jett smiled. “Bet she’s not happy about that.”
“Bet you’re right.”
Both men shared a moment of amusement before the gravity of the situation kicked back in.
Erica finished with her overnight bag, slid it off the bed and dropped it on the floor.
Sighing, Clay bent and kissed the top of her head. “Call me on my cell when you get to Aunt Deb’s, okay?”
She rolled her eyes. “Fine.”
He turned to Jett. “If you run into any problems on the way, call me.”
“Will do.”
“If Deb invites you inside, tell her you have to get back. She can’t cook worth a damn, anyway.”
Smiling, Jett picked up the overnight case. “No problem.”
“I’ll see you in about four and a half hours.”
Marty was on hold with the New York State Police and
tapping her finger forcefully against her desktop when outside her office door some subtle, intangible shift snagged her attention. For the last half hour, the switchboard and phones and background noise of the radio had been nothing more than babble. The chief checking in from his place. Dugan patrolling the canyon. Jo Nell’s country music.
Giving the phone-hell music only half her attention, she listened for Jo Nell. Marty’s cop’s instincts jumped to attention when she discerned stress in the woman’s voice. Hanging up the phone, she walked to the reception area to see Jo Nell sitting behind her desk, her face white as pasteurized milk.
“I just got the weirdest dispatch from Dugan,” Jo Nell said.
“What about?”
“He radioed that he’d pulled someone over in the canyon when the radio went dead.”
Both women jumped when Marty’s police radio cracked to life.
“This is 452!” came Dugan’s voice. “I got fuckin’ shots fired in the canyon!”
Marty hit her radio. “What’s your twenty?”
“FM 3553!” Terror laced the man’s voice as he screamed into the mike. “I’m under heavy fire!
Shit!
”
Marty could hear the
pop! pop! pop!
of gunfire over his quickened breaths. Adrenaline rushed her system.
“Get out of there!” Clay’s voice cracked over the radio.
“I’m pinned. Wrecked out.” He screamed a curse. “I’m returning fire, but I need help down here!”
“I’m on my way,” Clay said.
Clay’s place was on the other side of town from the canyon. Marty hit her mike. “What’s your ETA?”
“You stay put, god damn it,” Clay ordered.
He was at least ten minutes away. Marty was five at most. Scant minutes that could mean the difference between life and death when you were in dire straits.
Putting her face in her hands, Marty walked to the chair opposite Jo Nell’s desk and sat down hard. Dugan screamed into the mike. Marty closed her eyes against his cries for help. The need to assist her fellow officer hammered at her. Frustration and impotence ate at her. She’d felt that jumpy need before. Something happened inside a cop’s head when one of their own was in trouble. An overriding instinct to back up a brother in blue. An instinct that sometimes overrode all else, even common sense.
Feeling helpless, Marty looked at Jo Nell. “I can’t stand it. I’m going.”
“Chief ain’t going to like it.”
“Dugan’s out there all alone.”
“Don’t do it.”
She didn’t remember getting to her feet. She was midway to the door when Jo Nell called out her name. “At least take this.”
Marty spun, caught the Kevlar vest with one hand.
“Do an old lady a favor and put it on.”
The gesture touched Marty with unexpected force. Modesty forgotten, she turned away, tore off her uniform shirt and donned the vest.
“Be careful,” Jo Nell called out as Marty went through the door.
Marty was still buttoning up when she jammed herself behind the wheel of her Mustang and rammed the car into gear. Her tires screeched when she hit the gas and sped south on the main road. A sense of urgency flooded her, and the speedometer cranked up to ninety miles per hour when she passed the city limit sign.
Around her the wind kicked up swirls of dust, driving sand and small debris against the windshield like a sand-blaster. Tumbleweeds careened across the road like shy, bony mammals. On the radio station, the announcer bemoaned a high wind warning with downslope gusts as high as seventy miles per hour in the western counties. Marty barely heard it above the whine of the engine and the roar of her heart.
Ever aware that Dugan had gone silent, Marty entered the canyon at nearly one hundred miles per hour. The Mustang fishtailed as she made the turn onto FM 3553. Despite the dust, visibility was relatively good, and she spotted Dugan’s vehicle on the shoulder two hundred yards ahead. The strobes flashed blue and white, giving the dusty air an eerie countenance.
She picked up the radio. “I’m 10-23,” she said, letting Clay know she’d arrived on the scene.
“Hogan, what the hell are you doing?” The anger came across loud and clear over the scratch and hiss of the radio.
“I got a visual on Dugan’s car.”
He cursed. “Roger that.”
“You there, Dugan?” Her eyes scanned the ridges and heavy brush as she drew closer to the abandoned cruiser.
Silence hissed over the radio.
Racking the mike, Marty stopped twenty yards from the cruiser and shut down her engine. Drawing her weapon, she opened her car door and got out. “Dugan!”
No answer.
Despite the fact that she was sweating beneath her uniform, gooseflesh raced down her back. Leaning into her car, she hit the siren for a second to let him know she’d arrived, in case he’d taken cover in the rocks above.
When he didn’t immediately appear, she knew something was wrong. A prickly sensation crept over the back of her neck like the trace of a cold finger.
Squinting against the dust and wind, Marty thumbed off the safety and approached the cruiser with caution.
“Any sign of Dugan?” came Clay’s voice over her radio.
Marty hit her lapel mike. “Negative.”
“I’m almost there.”
“Roger that.”
Marty stopped a few feet from the car. Weapon poised to fire, she sidled to the right so she could see through the open driver’s-side door without getting too close.
Dugan lay slumped across the seat. Blood oozed from a hole the size of her fist in the back of his head. It dripped from the seat and pooled on the floor. His pale, red-spattered hand still gripped his revolver. His eyes were open and glazed. Blowback from the horrific head wound covered the inside of the passenger door.
The roar of wind through the mesquite and juniper drowned out the scream that sounded inside her head. Visions of the young girl she’d seen shot to death six months earlier flashed vividly in her mind’s eye. Blood matted in blond hair. A wound big enough to put your fist through.
“Oh God. Dugan. Ohmigod.” Her first instinct was to help him. Touch him. Assess him. But Marty knew she was too late. His staring eyes and blue black lips told her he was already gone.
Panic bubbled inside her as she stumbled back. In some small corner of her mind it registered that she was standing in the midst of a crime scene. That the shooter could be nearby. That she could be in the crosshairs of a rifle at this very moment.
Her fingers shook violently as she hit her lapel mike. “Dugan’s down!” she cried. “I need an ambulance! Get someone out here now!”
She looked around wildly, her eyes scanning the surrounding scrub and rock and open land. It wasn’t an ideal place for an ambush, but it was desolate. Someone could shoot from a distance then get the hell out.
Clay cursed. “Get out of there!”
Marty ran toward her Mustang. Vaguely, she was aware of Clay’s voice coming over her radio. She was midway there when movement in her peripheral vision caught her eye. Someone in the gully that ran alongside the road. Bringing up her weapon, she spun. “Police! Step out with your hands up now!”
But it was panic more than authority she heard in her voice. Ducking low, keeping her weapon level, Marty backed toward the cover of her car.
Relief flitted through her when a bullet didn’t come. Using one hand, she opened the car door, stepped behind it. An instant before she slid behind the wheel, she saw a flash of red from the passenger seat. Stupid, she thought as she stumbled back from the vehicle.
She caught a glimpse of dark hair, a pale face and a flash of chrome as a woman leveled a semiautomatic pistol at Marty’s chest. “This is for my brother, you fuckin’ bitch.”
Marty didn’t hear the gunshot. The impact hit her like an invisible baseball bat slamming into her chest. She flew backward. The breath left her lungs in a rush. All she could think was that she wasn’t ready to die.
The force knocked her four feet from the vehicle. The ground hit her square in the back. She tried to suck in a breath. Pain seized her chest. Her vision blurred. She tried to move, ended up making an undignified sound.
In the distance Marty heard the sound of a police siren. Vaguely, she was aware of movement a few feet away. Turning her head, she saw blue-jean-clad legs and dust-covered high-heeled boots as the shooter fled.
Hurry,
she thought, and prayed her would-be killer didn’t finish the job before Clay arrived.
SEVENTEEN
Clay hit the lights and siren as he barreled toward the
scene, praying a vociferous approach would buy him precious seconds. He couldn’t get the sound of gunfire out of his head. The panic in Marty’s voice. The fear clutching his heart.
He spotted the vehicles the instant he turned onto the farm-to-market road. Dugan’s cruiser sitting on the shoulder at a tilted angle. The driver’s-side door open. Hogan’s Mustang was parked behind it. The driver’s-side door open.
The world crashed to a halt around him when he spotted her lying a few feet from the vehicle. “Hogan!” he shouted.
“Marty!”
The Explorer skidded to a halt ten feet from her car. Clay drew his weapon and hit the ground running. He saw cinnamon-colored hair against the parched earth. The blue of her uniform. For a horrible instant he thought she was dead, found himself looking for blood. Then she groaned and hope leapt into his heart.
“Hogan.” He slid to a stop and landed on his knees beside her. “What happened?”
“Bitch . . . shot me.”
“How bad are you hurt?”
“Vest,” she ground out and opened her eyes.
Clay was nearly overcome with relief. That she was alive. That she was able to speak. “A female?”
“Yeah.”
He glanced over his shoulder, scanned the immediate vicinity. “Where?”
“Don’t know. She must have . . . heard siren . . . and run. Could still be here. Be careful.”
He looked around. Though he saw no movement, he knew that didn’t mean the shooter wasn’t nearby, hoping to finish the job.
“Be still,” he said, “I need to move you to cover.” Bending slightly, he looped his hands beneath her arms. She groaned when he dragged her to the cover of the Explorer.
“Stay put.”
Pistol leading the way, he approached Dugan’s cruiser from the driver’s side. He saw the blood first. A river of it on the seat and dripping into the carpet like a macabre oil slick. The sight of his dead officer hit him like power punch to the gut.
“Aw, Dugan,” he whispered. “Aw, no.”
He scanned the surrounding countryside. The rocks to the south. The stand of mesquite and juniper to the east. The gully that ran alongside the road. The vast yellow plain. Clay saw no movement, no flash of color or glint of light. He glanced down at the tire tracks in the dust. He was able to identify Dugan’s and Hogan’s. A third set headed into the canyon.
In that instant, a small, angry part of him wanted to jump into the Explorer and go after the bitch. He wanted to hunt her down and put a bullet between her eyes. But Marty lay injured just a few yards away. Another officer was dead.
Straightening, Clay fumbled for his cell phone, hit the speed dial for the Deaf Smith County Sheriff’s Office. “This is Caprock Canyon. I’ve got a 10-35. I repeat 10-35. Officer down. Need assistance at FM 3553, south rim of the canyon.” He thought of Dugan and swore. “All available units. Use extreme caution.”
He clipped the phone to his belt. Back at the Explorer, Marty had struggled to her hands and knees. She was looking at him, her hair loose and spiraling around her face. Her eyes were dark with fear, her complexion so pale it was almost translucent. He started toward her, looking for blood on her uniform.
“Dugan?” she asked.
Clay dropped to his knees beside her and shook his head. “How bad are you hurt?”
“Vest protected me.” Her face screwed up. “Knocked the wind out of me.”
Emotion washed over him with such force that he couldn’t speak. He ran his hands over her shoulders and down the sides of her rib cage, praying he wouldn’t find blood. “Did you get a look at the shooter?”
“Female. Mid-thirties. Brown. Brown. Shot me with a chrome Sig Sauer.” Marty shifted, tried to get her legs under her.
“Vehicle?”
“I didn’t see one.”
She struggled to her feet, raised her gaze to his. “If you hadn’t shown when you did, she would have killed me.”
Wrapping his fingers around her biceps, he gently pulled her to him. “I’m glad you’re okay.”
Clay staved off another wave of emotion by clamping his jaws together so hard his teeth ground. The sirens of approaching emergency vehicles blared in the distance. Unable to speak, he raised his hand and touched her temple. Gazing into her eyes, he traced his fingertips over her cheekbone to her lips.
“I told you not to leave the station,” he whispered.
“Dugan was in trouble.”
“If I didn’t like you so much, I’d fire you.”
She closed her eyes. “I like you, too, Settlemeyer.”
“You’re too damn brave for your own good, you know that?”
“That’s what cops do.”
He wanted to yell at her for disobeying a direct order. For almost getting herself killed. He wanted to kiss her. Wanted even more to crush her body to his and never let her go. This wasn’t the time or place for any of that.
Instead, he brushed the hair from her eyes, stepped away from her and tried like hell not to think of how this might have turned out if she hadn’t worn that vest.
Clay and a Deaf Smith County Sheriff’s deputy by the
name of Justin followed the tire tracks into the canyon, but lost the trail once the dirt road became paved. They ascertained the driver had gone north, but it was impossible to determine where she’d gone after that.
As he worked the scene, Clay couldn’t stop thinking about Marty and how easily he could have lost her today. The thought put an uneasy fear right in the center of his chest.
Of course she’d wanted to work the scene, but he’d refused to allow it. When she argued, he’d sicced one of the paramedics on her, a buff gal Clay had known since sixth grade. Ruby ushered Marty into the ambulance like a world-class cutting horse penning a recalcitrant calf. There, she checked her for broken ribs and other possible injuries.
Clay spent half an hour photographing Dugan and the scene where the shooting had occurred. He’d seen a lot of terrible things in the years he’d been a cop, even more as an MP. He’d seen death up close and personal more times than he wanted to think about. Still, this shocked him. And it hurt.
One of his officers was dead. Dugan had been a good man. He’d been a husband. A father. Clay hadn’t been close to him; still, it hurt. It hurt so badly that several times he had to walk away just so he could catch his breath.
Once the ambulance removed the body for transport to the hospital morgue, Clay spent another twenty minutes walking the immediate area. He talked to Sheriff Shawn McNulty and was relieved to know a forensics team from Lubbock had been called in to take tire tread imprints. Once they were finished, the images entered into the computer, they would be run through several law enforcement databases in an effort to determine the make of the car and ascertain where the tires had been purchased. You never knew when you might catch a break.
Clay wanted to drive Marty to Amarillo and get her checked into a hotel until this nightmare was over. But duty called, and he asked one of the sheriff’s deputies to do it. Marty wasn’t happy about it. But then most cops didn’t make very good victims.
With the crime scene in good hands, Clay left to do the one thing he hated more than anything else in the world. The responsibility of breaking the news of Dugan’s death to his wife fell upon his shoulders. He bore that weighty responsibility in stoic silence. He called the Lutheran minister, Larry Gilmore, on his way into town and requested his presence at Dugan’s house.
Clay parked curbside and waited for the minister. Dugan lived in a modest frame house on a narrow street shrouded with fruitless mulberry trees and neatly trimmed boxwood shrubs. A PT Cruiser sat in the driveway next to a kid’s red wagon full of blooming geraniums.
A few minutes later, Gilmore pulled in behind Clay. Clay disembarked and wished like hell he didn’t have to do this.
“Looks like she’s home,” the pastor said.
“Yeah.” Clay knew it was selfish of him, but he didn’t want to go inside. He did not want to be the one to shatter this woman’s life.
His feet felt as if they were weighted by concrete as he took the sidewalk toward the front door. He was aware of Gilmore beside him, but the minister’s presence offered little comfort. Some moments were so dark nothing offered even a glimmer of light. This was one of those times.
Sweat slicked his back as he rang the doorbell. His heart hammered steady and hard against his rib cage as he waited. He could hear the TV on inside. The pound of footsteps against hardwood floors, and then the door swung open.
Teresa Dugan’s smile fell as she took in the sight of Clay and Pastor Gilmore. Clay saw knowledge swim into her eyes followed by a rush of fear, of denial.
“Where’s Jimmy?” Her eyes swept past them toward the cruiser in the driveway. “Where’s he at?”
Setting his hands on her shoulders, Clay stepped inside. “We need to talk to you about Jimmy.”
“Just tell me where he is.”
Clay forced the words he didn’t want to say. “Jimmy was killed in the line of duty tonight.”
“What?”
She jerked back. “No. I don’t believe you.”
Pastor Gilmore stepped forward. “I’m afraid it’s true, Teresa. I’m so very sorry.”
She turned away. Her hands shook as they covered her face. A horrific sound of grief tore from her throat. Clay could feel that same grief sounding in his chest, a silent scream of outrage and denial and the unfairness of death.
She spun back to him, her gaze going from Pastor Gilmore to Clay. “There’s got to be some kind of mistake.”
Clay shook his head. “I wish this was a mistake, honey, but it’s not. Jimmy’s gone. I’m sorry.”
“How could this happen?” Hugging herself, she began to pace. “How did he die?”
Clay could feel his emotions shutting down. There were some things a man was better off not feeling. He couldn’t afford to join this woman in her grief and outrage. He had a cop killer to find.
“He was shot and killed tonight,” he heard himself say.
“Shot?”
She spat a sound that was part gasp, part sob. “How could he have been shot?”
“We don’t know exactly how it happened. He was in the canyon. In his cruiser. We’re still investigating.”
“Oh my God no! Oh God no! Jimmy!” Sobs choked her. “Not my Jimmy.”
Pastor Gilmore placed his hand on her shoulder. “I’m going to call your mother, Teresa.”
The woman was so engulfed in grief, she didn’t acknowledge the minister. “Jimmy can’t be gone. He just can’t.”
The pastor unclipped his cell phone. “Teresa, honey, what’s your mama’s number? I’m going to call her and ask her to come over if that’s all right with you. You need family right now.”
The woman blinked at him through tear-filled eyes as if he were speaking in a language she didn’t understand. The pastor repeated his question, and she finally choked out the number.
“Who did it?” she asked after a moment. “Who shot my Jimmy?”
Clay crossed to her, set his hands on her shoulders and squeezed gently. “We don’t know yet, but we’re looking.”
“Find him!” she screamed.
“Find him and make him pay!”
Twenty minutes later Clay sat in his cruiser and
scrubbed his hands over his face. Teresa Dugan’s mother had arrived. Jimmy’s mother had shown up a few minutes later. Clay had fielded more questions, some of them angry. There was a part of him that felt he deserved their anger. Jimmy Dugan, after all, had been his officer.
Clay couldn’t dwell on his own shortcomings or the grief that had his chest in a vise. He had a cop killer to find. A town to protect. If he was going to do either of those things, he had to focus on the living, not the dead.
But he felt sick inside as he pulled the Explorer onto the street. Around him, afternoon sun bathed Caprock Canyon in golden light. Two boys passed a football back and forth, oblivious to the bottomless grief occurring just down the street. But the innocence of his town had been shattered, its citizens under siege.
The steel resolve to protect what was his engulfed him. He looked at his watch and thought of Erica. She and Jett would be arriving at his sister’s house before long. He was glad he’d sent her away where she would be safe.
He wondered how Marty was handling Dugan’s death. Relegated to a hotel room in Amarillo, alone with her thoughts, she was more than likely bouncing off the walls. He understood her need to be involved, but he didn’t share it. She’d taken a bullet in the chest from the same gun that had killed her counterpart. If it hadn’t been for the Kevlar vest, Clay would be dealing with two dead cops instead of one. The thought frightened him in a way that was as black and cold as death itself.
He’d almost lost her tonight. Funny and infuriating Marty. The quirky, stubborn cop from Chicago who charmed and tempted him at once. She made him smile when no one else could. Made him want her when he knew better. She could send his blood pressure into the red zone without even trying. Just thinking of her comforted him in a way he hadn’t been comforted in a very long time.
He wanted her now.
Clay looked at his watch again. He should go back to the crime scene, but he knew there was little he could do there. The forensic team from Lubbock would be working the scene by now. The sheriff’s department would still be there. He could drive to Amarillo and see if Marty had remembered anything new. Some minute detail that might help the investigation.
But Clay knew that was a flimsy excuse. The truth of the matter was he wanted to see her. He wanted to hear her voice, touch her, talk to her. He wanted all of those things more than he wanted his next breath.
The need ate at him as he pulled onto Cactus Street. He could be in Amarillo in twenty minutes if he hurried . . .
Clay didn’t let himself debate the matter as he sped past the city limit sign and headed toward Interstate 40. He didn’t let himself think about right or wrong or that he might be getting in too deep. He wouldn’t let himself feel anything until she opened her hotel room door and he saw her face.