Cop by Her Side

A burst of gunfire from the small room brought Clay’s head around and an expletive escaped him. That was where she’d seen the kid.

Don’t be stupid. Make sure it’s secured in here first.

They all had assignments. Raynor had gone after the boy.

Like Jane, Clay was turning carefully, looking for targets. All four were being cuffed or lay still on the floor. Clay checked to be sure the guy he’d shot no longer held a weapon, then crouched by him. His eyes were open and sightless. Dead. And no wonder—his body was riddled with bullet holes.

Clay was the closest to the open door that led into the tack room. He spun in, weapon extended, and found two more bad guys down, one dead, the other bleeding and cuffed. The kid was alive but bloody. Chief Raynor was trying to yank the boy’s T-shirt off, hampered by the duct tape binding his hands and ankles. Clay had forgotten the poor kid wore a cast on one arm already.

“Where are you hurt?” Raynor was saying in a voice Clay hadn’t heard from him before.

“I’m okay.” The boy’s voice was thin and high. “I’m okay.” And, damn, the skin where the duct tape had been ripped off his face was painfully red.

Clay saw the moment relief hit Raynor. “I need a knife,” he said hoarsely.

“I’ve got one,” Clay said. He’d worn a backup .38 on one ankle and a knife sheathed on the other. He pushed up his pant leg, took out the knife and sliced the duct tape, freeing the boy’s ankles and then his hands.

Matt Raynor leaped into his uncle’s arms, clutching on with his one good arm while the chief grabbed tight and bowed his head over the boy’s.

Clay backed away, feeling an unfamiliar sting behind his eyelids.

It was all over but the mop-up.

* * *

WITH THE TAILGATE of her Yukon open again, Jane peeled off the vest. She felt...weird.

She was in the here and now, but every blink brought a miniflashback. The effect was like a strobe light.

Dark, slow shapes moving in the pasture—horses.

Diving in the window, shards of glass ripping at her vest and clothing. Fear.

Blue, white and red lights swirling atop aide cars.

Knowing she couldn’t totally evade the chair swung at her. Dodging, feeling it connect.

She gingerly fingered her shoulder and upper arm and knew there’d be a bruise. A whopper.

The weapon jumping in her hand. Blood. Astonishment on the man’s face as he stumbled and began to fall.

Men’s voices on the other side of her SUV, a rumble that might be comprehensible if she could bring herself out of this fugue state.

The slackness of death. Death she had caused.

Jane heard herself make a sound. Either she had killed a man tonight—or Clay Renner had. Or both of them.

“You okay?”

Of course it was his voice. Of course she hadn’t heard him coming.

“Why wouldn’t I be?” she said sharply.

“You ever shot anybody before?”

The angle at which she thrust her jaw forward made her neck hurt. Pride was a powerful force. Even so, she hesitated. “No,” she admitted, grudgingly.

He swung the back door of the Yukon wider open and half sat on the back, one booted foot braced on the ground. “I have,” he said, tone flat, reminding her of his military service. “This is the first time as a cop I’ve killed a man.”

“You sure you did? I thought I killed a man.” The words were no sooner out than she cringed at the hostility in her voice. What? Was she turning this into a competition?

And what did that make her?

Clay didn’t say anything for a minute, only watched her. Uneasily, she wondered how much he could see.

Finally he stirred. “The M.E. will let us know eventually. My guess is, we killed him a couple of times over.”

She squeezed her eyes shut and saw it all over again.

Astonishment on the man’s face as he stumbled and began to fall. She swallowed and opened her eyes.

“We all hope we’ll never have to do that,” Clay said, in a tone so gentle she didn’t recognize it coming from him.

Jane was suddenly horrified at how terribly she was behaving. If he could be decent, she could, too.

“No,” she said. “Or yes. I never wanted—” At the taste of bile, she had to swallow again. She turned her back on Clay.

The faint sound of the Yukon sighing made her realize he’d risen to his feet and stood behind her.

“Jane.”

“Don’t say anything,” she whispered.

A pause. “Why?” His voice, too, was so soft he wouldn’t have been heard by anyone more than a foot or two away.

“Because—I can’t talk to you.”

“You don’t trust me.” Now he sounded harsh.

“No.” She steadied. “I can’t.”

“You can, but you’ll never believe it, will you?”

She held herself together by pure force of will. “No.”

It was as if they were in a bubble of silence. Everything around them seemed far away. Jane didn’t move, wasn’t sure she breathed.

Then the bubble popped and she heard him walking away. One of the aide cars was pulling out, accelerating. She realized she should have been out there while the wounded were loaded, not hiding here in the darkness.

Following Clay, she reached a second aide car and saw that Ryan Dunlap had been hoisted aboard on a gurney. He was swearing, an impressive litany that made her smile despite everything. Thank God he’d regained consciousness. Apparently the bullet had only grazed his skull.

She leaned into the back of the ambulance. “Headache?”

“Like I got slammed with a two-by-four.” He swore a little more. “Sorry, Lieutenant.” Then, “Is it true? The kid’s okay?”

“It’s true. He’s safe. We did our job.”

One of the EMTs hopped to the ground. “Lieutenant, we have to go.”

“See you at the hospital,” she told Ryan, and stepped back as the doors were slammed and, a moment later, the aide car pulled away.

She watched it drive away for a minute, then trudged toward the barn, wishing Sergeant Clay Renner wasn’t sure to be there.

CHAPTER TWO

CLAY WAS SITTING behind the desk in the captain’s office frowning over a weekly report he’d been too busy yesterday to study, the reason he’d come in on a Saturday he’d intended to take off, when he heard raised voices and a scuffle in the squad room. Nothing unusual in that, but he glanced out the open doorway of the office anyway in case someone needed a hand.

“What are you doing? Why are you grabbing me?” A man was trying to explode upward as one of the detectives pressed him into a chair.

He wasn’t the usual lowlife being hauled in. The guy was in his thirties, good-looking, thin and maybe earnest when he wasn’t distraught. More like a computer geek than anything. He wore wire-rimmed glasses and had dark, curly hair poking out every which way.

There wasn’t a lot of help to be had out there right now in case this guy went off the deep end, so Clay headed toward the disturbance, cutting his way between desks. “What’s going on?” he asked, when he got close.

“I just want to report my wife and kid missing, and nobody will listen!” the computer nerd said frantically. “We need an Amber Alert or—I don’t know. Something.”

“We’ll listen,” Clay said, “but you’ve got to calm down so we can understand what happened.”

Wild eyes pinned Clay for a couple of heartbeats, and then the guy sagged. Bent forward with a moan until his elbows were braced on his knees and his head hung.

The detective, Steve Atwood, cautiously removed his hands and, when the guy didn’t erupt into motion, stepped back. After a moment, he took his own seat behind the desk. He was nearing retirement, solid but not imaginative and not real big on empathy, in Clay’s opinion.

“All right, sir,” Atwood said. “Let’s start with your name.”

It looked like he could handle it now, and Clay turned to leave them to it.

“Andrew Wilson,” he heard the guy say. “Drew Wilson. My wife is Melissa.”

Garden-variety names, but Clay stopped where he was. He’d heard those names before.

“It’s my daughter Brianna.” The name rode a dry sob. “She’s only seven. She’s with Lissa.”

Lissa. Drew. Bree...and Alexis.

Stunned, Clay turned around, taking in this man’s face. He was Jane Vahalik’s brother-in-law. Had to be. She’d talked about him and her sister and the nieces she loved.

Drew Wilson looked up and saw Clay’s stare. He didn’t even seem to question it. “Where can they be?”

“Your other daughter,” Clay said. “Alexis. Where’s she?”

“Alexis.” He tore at his hair. “She’s... A neighbor has her.” Confusion altered his features, and Clay realized Atwood was looking at him in puzzlement, too. “You know her?” the guy said.

“I know Lieutenant Vahalik. She’s talked about all of you.”

The softening he saw rubbed Clay the wrong way. He had a sister-in-law who was a nice enough woman, but he knew his face didn’t look like that when someone mentioned her.

“I would have gone to her, but we don’t live in Angel Butte.”

“Okay,” Clay said, shoving down a reaction he knew to be irrational. He had a hell of a lot of feelings for Jane Vahalik that fell on the hopeless to downright crazy spectrum. Seeing her again two weeks ago for the joint operation had stirred up too much. “Tell us why you think your wife and daughter are missing.”

The story poured out. They’d gone for a brief errand, to Rite Aid in town. Melissa really hadn’t wanted to take Brianna because the store had a whole aisle of toys, not to mention the candy, and Bree would beg, but his wife had finally succumbed and let her go along. Alexis was still napping, so she’d stayed home with her dad.

“Lissa called me on the way back. I’d asked her to pick up some stuff for athlete’s foot.” He started to lift one foot as if he was going to take off his shoe and show them his problem, but his thoughts moved on and his foot thumped back down. “She’d forgotten it and she wanted to know if it was important enough to go back for. I said no, I could pick some up the next time I went out. She said okay and then she—” He struggled for words. “She yelled. And I heard Bree screaming something like, ‘Mommy, what are you doing?’ or ‘What are they doing?’ And then the phone went dead.”

Breath shuddered in and out a few times before he resumed his story. He’d tried calling his wife back, but the phone rang and rang and then went to voice mail. He tried again; same thing. Although alarmed, he figured she’d pull in any minute. Melissa had probably dropped the phone and couldn’t reach it.

Only, she hadn’t shown up. He’d waited for a bit, although it wasn’t clear whether that was ten minutes or thirty. Finally, he got his younger kid up, put her in the family’s second car and took her to the neighbor’s. “We’re on an acreage,” he explained. Clay knew, pretty close, where the address he gave was. It was an area of nice, modern homes that were each on two-and-a-half or five-acre lots. Clay couldn’t have afforded any of them on his salary from the county. He tried to remember what Jane had said the brother-in-law did for a living, but failed and didn’t want to interrupt him now.

Drew went on to explain he’d then gone home again to be sure Melissa hadn’t showed up, after which he’d driven her logical route to the outskirts of Angel Butte where the Rite Aid was located. He didn’t spot her Toyota Venza anywhere.

Clay made another mental note. If he wasn’t mistaken, the Venza, a crossover, had been new in 2013. It wasn’t the most expensive vehicle on the road, but it didn’t come cheap, either. The Wilsons must have money. He wondered what Drew drove.

Drew had called his wife’s mobile phone half a dozen more times. He’d driven alternate routes. He’d gone home again to find she still hadn’t returned. Scared, he’d come to the sheriff’s department, from which, ironically, the Rite Aid could be seen.

“Let’s back up here,” Atwood said. “Any chance your wife is prone to impulse shopping expeditions? Say she remembered Target is having a back-to-school sale, and since she had your daughter with you she decided to stop?”

“What about the last thing I heard on the phone?”

“Maybe another driver cut her off.”

Drew shook his head and kept shaking it. He seemed to have forgotten Clay had propped himself against a nearby vacant desk and was listening without intruding himself. He didn’t kid himself that Atwood had also forgotten he was there.

“Maybe she didn’t call you back because she was annoyed at you,” the detective suggested in a tone of “it happens to all of us.” “She as good at sulking as my wife is?”

“No!” Drew scowled. “She’s—” He seemed to fumble with how to describe his wife. “She’s...”

“Fiery, huh?” Atwood’s eyebrows rose. “Say, you didn’t have an argument before she left, did you? Maybe she’s pissed because you expected her to buy something like athlete’s foot powder? Or because you pressed her to take the kid when she didn’t want to?”

An expression crossed Wilson’s face so fast, Clay couldn’t quite pin it down. “She didn’t want to take her,” he admitted, sounding as if he wished he didn’t have to. “I told you. But...it wasn’t like that. Anyway, she wouldn’t disappear if she was mad at me. Especially not with Brianna.”

Clay was getting a bad feeling about this. He excused himself to check on recently reported vehicular accidents, abandoned cars and the like while Atwood nailed down more details, especially a more precise time frame. Exactly when had Melissa called? Three hours ago or forty-five minutes ago?

The bad feeling got a hell of a lot worse when he reached the desk officer, who immediately said, “Yeah, there’s been one possible fatality accident.”

Jane’s sister, dead? Shaken, Clay learned that Melissa Wilson had suffered a head injury and had been transported to the hospital in critical condition. Deputies were investigating the cause of the accident.

Clay called a deputy who was actually at the accident site.

“A kid?” He sounded appalled. “There was no kid in the vehicle when it was spotted.” He swore. “You’re sure?”

“I’m sure,” Clay said grimly. “Unless there’s another explanation—or we’re being fed a line of bull by the father.”

He strode across the squad room to where Drew Wilson sat with his head buried in his hands.

“Mr. Wilson,” Clay said formally, “do you have a home phone?”

Jane’s brother-in-law straightened, having aged even in the past five minutes. “Sure, but Lissa wouldn’t have called it.”

“I’m afraid,” Clay told him, “there was an accident involving a Toyota Venza registered to you and your wife. The woman driver has been taken to the hospital. Last we know, she was unconscious. A police deputy has been trying to reach you, but unfortunately would have used your home phone rather than a cell number.”

“The hospital?” Drew repeated numbly. But then his face changed and he lunged to his feet. “Bree. Is she okay?”

Clay didn’t like saying this, but there was no alternative. “Your daughter wasn’t in the vehicle, Mr. Wilson.” Seeing the horror in a father’s eyes, he raised his hand. “It’s likeliest that your wife dropped her off somewhere before the accident. At a friend’s house, perhaps?” He hesitated. “Especially given that the Venza wasn’t found between your home and Rite Aid.”

“But...I heard Bree when she called.” His wild glance swung between Clay and Detective Atwood. “I know I heard her!”

* * *

JANE WAS CHEWING the hide off two detectives who had allowed half the citizens of Angel Butte to tromp through a crime scene when her desk phone rang. She gave it an irritated glance. She’d asked not to be interrupted and decided to let it go.

“And what about the log?” She stabbed the document in question with her forefinger. “I know for a fact that patrol officer Gwen Schneider walked through the house. Perhaps you can explain what she contributed to the investigation.”

Kyle Griffin’s mouth opened and closed a couple of times.

She leaned forward. They’d get back to the reason why a pretty young patrol officer had been given a tour of a nasty home-invasion scene. Now, though, she turned the log around so they could see the list of names with times of arrival and departure. Both sets of eyes were drawn irresistibly to it. “Perhaps,” she said with silky menace, “you can point out to me where her name is.”

“How did you know—?” Phil Henry was stupid enough to blurt.

Her cell phone began to ring. She shot it an exasperated glance, having already ignored a call from her brother-in-law, then felt a weird clench in her chest when she saw the displayed name. Clay Renner. Somehow she’d never deleted his phone number from her address book. Why would he be calling in the middle of the afternoon?

She wanted to mute the damn phone and ignore him—but he was one of her counterparts at the sheriff’s department.

Jane blistered the two detectives sitting across from her with a stare, said, “Excuse me, I need to take this,” and picked up the phone. “Vahalik.”

“Jane, Clay Renner here.”

Conscious of her audience, she said stiffly, “Sergeant.”

“This is about your sister.” He hesitated. “Your brother-in-law came in to report her and their daughter Brianna missing. Melissa’s vehicle was located in a ditch. I’m at the scene. She suffered a head injury, Jane. She’s in ICU, still unconscious. I’m afraid I don’t know more. I’m focusing on another problem. The girl is missing.”

“Oh, dear God,” she whispered. “Drew... Is he all right? What about Alexis?”

“Alexis is safe with a neighbor.”

“Did anyone see the accident?”

“No. A young couple on a day hike popped out of the woods just down the road from the SUV. They say another car had stopped. When the man called, ‘Hey, is anybody hurt?’ they heard a car door slam and the vehicle sped off. Fortunately, they were carrying a cell phone. They didn’t try to move your sister once they realized she was unresponsive.”

“If the other car caused the accident and the driver freaked...?” Even in shock, she knew that was stupid.

“A logical assumption, except that we’ve so far been unable to locate Brianna. Your brother-in-law went home to get his wife’s address book and lists of names and phone numbers for Brianna’s summer day camp and her first-grade classroom. Mr. Wilson started with the kids he thought she might be friends with, but so far no one has heard from her or Melissa today. We still haven’t given up hope that your sister dropped her off somewhere—a friend’s mother might have called to see if they could take her on a picnic or something that means they’re not answering their phone. But at this point—”

“You have no idea where she is.” Oh, God. She sounded so harsh.

“Thanks for the vote of confidence, Lieutenant.”

She closed her eyes. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean...”

“Working on the assumption that she was a passenger when the accident occurred, we’re organizing a search. Volunteers are already arriving.”

“I don’t know whether to help or to go to the hospital.”

“Your brother-in-law is now at the hospital.”

She swallowed, trying to think. “Then I’ll come help search. If Bree’s hurt or hiding for some reason, she’d recognize my voice.”

“All right,” Clay said. He told her where the SUV had gone off the road, and when she asked what Melissa could have been doing there, he said only, “At this point, we don’t know. You okay to drive?”

“Of course I am!”

“Then I’ll look for you.” He disconnected.

Jane pushed her chair back and rose, looking at the two men in front of her. “You disgraced your shields today. Straight out of the academy, you should have known how to secure a crime scene. You are both on suspension until we can discuss this further.”

They argued. She told them to go home, then detoured by Captain McAllister’s office, found him there—another workaholic—and told him what she’d done and why, and where she was going.

He listened and shook his head. “Family comes first,” he said, and asked if she should be driving.

She stared at him. He was serious. Colin McAllister was more like Clay Renner than she’d wanted to admit. She couldn’t imagine either man would have asked that question if she’d been male.

“I’m fine,” she said shortly, and left.

* * *

EVEN AS SHE DROVE, Jane puzzled over what Lissa had been doing out on 253rd, a little-traveled back road that would, heading west as Lissa had apparently been, have ultimately bisected a somewhat busier road that meandered between Angel Butte and Sun River far to the north. If she’d wanted to go to Sun River, though, it would have made a lot more sense to backtrack east to Highway 97, the major north-south route. And there were way more logical ways to return home or even to go into Angel Butte.

Okay, people did live along 253rd, so she might have taken Bree to some friend’s house out there. But then, if she’d already dropped Bree off, why wasn’t she heading back toward home? And—there weren’t that many houses out here. Probably fortunately, as Jane was ignoring posted speed limits.

Bear Creek ran on the right of the road, which was several miles outside the Angel Butte city limits; she vaguely recalled a picnic area that shut down in the winter. She passed the decrepit sign for a long-since-closed resort and recalled a shooting that had happened there last December involving Colin’s wife, Nell. Maybe this stretch of woods had some kind of bad karma.

Slowing at the sight of a dozen vehicles ahead parked along the shoulder, she shook off thoughts of Lissa’s motives. Lissa would open her eyes anytime and tell them what she was doing here. Jane loved her sister fiercely even though she didn’t always like her. She refused to even consider the possibility the head injury was severe enough that Lissa wouldn’t be opening her eyes.

She parked at the end of the long line of cars, pickups and SUVs, then locked her vehicle and hurried forward. The burble of the creek, running low in late summer, and voices calling from the woods drifted to her ears as she rushed along the pavement toward the closer sound of other voices ahead.

Several men stood just outside the yellow tape surrounding her sister’s red Toyota. Aware one of those men was Clay and that he’d turned when he heard her hurried footsteps, Jane initially ignored them to gape at her sister’s Venza, a sporty crossover. Ditch had been a misnomer. Really, it was more of a bank that dropped toward the creek. It appeared as if a cluster of small alders and shrubbery was all that had kept the Venza from plunging another ten feet down into Bear Creek.

Clay separated himself from the group and approached her, his blue eyes intent on her face. He wore chinos and a polo shirt. She wondered if he’d been working today anyway, or if he had been called in. But no, she realized right away—that made no sense. Like her, he worked major crimes, not traffic accidents. In fact...what was he doing here?

“Jane,” he said with a nod.

As always, she reacted to his physical presence in a way that aggravated her. Even his stride was so blasted male.

“Have you learned anything?” she asked, although she knew better. He’d have called if her sister had regained consciousness or a search-and-rescue volunteer had found her niece.

“I’m afraid not.” He sounded regretful. “We’ve been going over the ground around the vehicle without finding a damn thing.” Lines furrowed his forehead. “We need to find the driver of the other car that stopped. I’d hoped for a tire impression that would give us something to go on to locate it.”

“Can’t the hikers you said called tell you a make and color?”

He grimaced. “They think it was a car rather than a pickup or SUV. But it was apparently parked in front of your sister’s SUV, which blocked their view. They were standing—” he turned and pointed back the way she’d come “—probably fifty yards away. They were aiming to come out at the picnic ground where they’d left their car, but they heard the sound of what they thought was a small waterfall and cut through the woods.”