Trigger Effect

“Might have been smarter to let the guy have your briefcase. Especially if you think it could have been the escaped shrink.”

“Like I said, I’ve got my doubts it was Isaac.” With the after-attack adrenaline still pricking at her wrists, Paige stared out the windshield toward the cement fence the scum had slithered over. “The voice didn’t sound like Isaac’s. And his waging an assault like that doesn’t fit his profile. He first likes to play mind games with his prey. Attack comes later. When that happens, he doesn’t leave his victim behind. He takes her with him.”

“You said he called you after he escaped. Maybe he’s ready for a face-to-face.”

“Anything’s possible.”

“But you don’t think it’s probable.”

“I don’t know. He’s been locked in a cell for three years. That changes a person.” Paige pursed her mouth. “My partner and I suspected Isaac had an accomplice, but we could never prove it. If we were right, that could have been who mugged me.”

Vawter nodded. “Let’s look at things from another angle,” he said. “In my experience, a run-of-the mill mugger wants cash, credit cards. Stuff a woman carries in her purse.”

“You’re wondering why he stole my briefcase. Maybe because I slammed it into his gut? Though he didn’t even try for my purse.”

“Plus, hanging around the police training center is a strange place for a masked mugger. Unless he’s got a specific target.”

“You’re not saying anything I haven’t already thought of, Sergeant.” Fingering her cheekbone, Paige winced when she hit an extratender spot. “The briefcase is old. It first belonged to my mother, so it shows a lot of wear and tear. If the guy was some druggie aiming to boost something he could pawn for enough money to score a hit, he struck out.”

Vawter studied the list he’d jotted on the report form. “Inside the briefcase was an extra training manual, a file folder with copies of reports and newspaper articles on Edwin Isaac, another file containing personal papers, written assignments the people in your workshop turned in and a premeasured syringe of epinephrine, used to treat your allergy to peanuts.”

“And one banana,” Paige added. Luckily, she’d left her laptop at the hotel.

“So, you said you cut the guy’s neck with your car key?”

“I was aiming for his eye. He dodged.”

“What color were his eyes?”

“I couldn’t tell. The mask wasn’t just your ordinary leather one. It fit over his entire head and had some sort of gauzy material over the eye holes. It looked like some kinky sex mask.”

“Guess we’d better take a look at the local deviates. And we’ll alert clinics and hospitals, in case someone with a wound to the neck comes in.”

“I doubt I hurt him badly enough to need stitches.”

“Gonna do the alert before my shift ends, just in case.”

Paige furrowed her brow. “It just hit me that I forgot to put the original assignments in my briefcase, so I stuffed them in here.” She patted her suede purse on the seat beside her.

“Are there just police officers in your workshop?”

“No, I’ve got some civilians who run security for local corporations. The subject I teach, statement analysis, can help them zero in on potential problem areas when they conduct hiring interviews. And if they discover their employer is being ripped off by someone on the inside, they can use S.A. to develop questionnaires to be filled out by possible suspects.”

“So, it doesn’t sound like you’ve got any criminal types for students.” Vawter considered her for a second. “You ever been to Oklahoma City before? Made any enemies here?”

“My mom and I spent a day here a couple of years ago at the Murrah bombing memorial,” Paige said quietly. “I haven’t been back until last night.”

“Did you manage to ruffle anyone’s feathers today?”

Paige shifted her gaze out the windshield at the bushy shrub where her attacker had hidden. “I got on the wrong side of one of your Homicide cops.”

“Yeah? Which one?”

“Nate McCall.”

Vawter barked a laugh. “His daddy was my training officer when I was a rookie. You maybe got on the wrong side of Nate, but I don’t expect he’d have mugged you for doing it.”

“I agree.” Paige thought of the way McCall had advanced on her, angry for picking on him in class. “Sergeant McCall utilizes a more direct approach.”

“From what I hear, lots of women would agree with you on that.”

Paige was determined to have what was left of her day end on a positive note. So, the first thing she did when she limped into her hotel suite was pour herself a glass of merlot. While sipping her wine she soaked out the majority of her aches in a tub frothing with vanilla-scented bubbles. Then she treated herself to the priciest steak on the Waterford Hotel’s expansive room service menu.

Now, dressed in a white cashmere tunic and black tights, she sat cross-legged on the bed’s sapphire-and ruby-toned comforter, her laptop humming, the assignment sheets from the workshop stacked beside her. The suite was large and airy with heavy, dark wood furnishings. Floor-to-ceiling windows bordered by emerald drapes spanned one entire wall. A love seat and chair upholstered in a rich, muted tapestry and a coffee table polished to a mirror finish were tucked into a cozy sitting area. On the table sat a silver bowl piled with fresh fruit that had been delivered sometime during the day. The accompanying card said the bowl was compliments of the Waterford’s manager.

On the few times she’d had to travel during her tenure as a Homicide cop, the department’s budget had barely covered a room in some concrete-block motel with a dollar-a-minute surcharge on the telephone.

Her present employer, the Lassiter Group, was Dallas’s most elite security, protection and private investigations firm. Paige’s generous salary and fat expense account definitely had its perks. Perks that she would give up in a heartbeat if she could have her badge back, she thought as thunder rumbled in the distance.

Flexing her fingers, she stared down at the scar. Where would she be if certain events on that night three years ago had never happened? If she and her partner had taken down Edwin Isaac before he’d squeezed off the one shot. If she hadn’t wound up in that hospital’s E.R. and summarily found out…

She shook her head. She had found out. And she’d dealt with the emotional upheaval that came from learning the husband she’d loved and trusted had betrayed her. She’d gotten on with her life. No sense dwelling on it.

She had work to do.

The rumble of thunder drew nearer while she began processing the workshop assignments. She circled pronouns, sketched boxes around phrases that indicated gaps in time, inserted asterisks in places where words had been omitted, drew lines to connect similar words and phrases.

After processing each assignment, she typed notes into her laptop. She paused after analyzing five assignments. Her word-by-word analysis revealed that several of the attendees had gotten caught in unmentioned time crunches at a point during their day. Some had spats with spouses, others unwittingly revealed frustrations over dealing with children, in-laws and neighbors. By the time she read to the end of an individual’s statement, Paige knew far more about the life of that person than she was sure they intended.

She plucked the next statement off the stack and went to work. When she’d finished her analysis, she leaned back against the bank of pillows while she slid her pen end-over-end through her fingers. The author of this statement was clearly one of the female cops enrolled in the workshop. The woman had written about a family gathering she’d attended, listing her husband only after mentioning several other people. Without meaning to, she had revealed that she considered her husband the least important of those people. Not the best of relationships, Paige mused. If anything criminal happened to the husband, and the wife claimed they’d been close, the statement in Paige’s hand would shine an entirely different light on the relationship.

She was adding information to her typed notes when her cell phone rang. Paige reached for it, then hesitated. After Isaac called her two weeks ago and left the voice mail message, she’d been tempted to get a new number and list it under an alias. Doing so, though, wouldn’t help track the bastard. So she’d allowed the cops to insert a state-of-the-art tracking chip inside her phone. If Isaac called again, they had a good chance of nailing his location.

She checked the phone’s display. The number beaming via the caller ID feature had her smiling.

“Hey, handsome.”

“How’s my favorite girl?”

She relaxed against the pillows. “How’s my favorite guy?”

“I asked first.”

“Couldn’t be better, Grandpa.” Toying with the long silver chain she always wore around her neck, Paige gave silent thanks that the rough-hewn retired Texas Ranger couldn’t see her bruised cheek. Not only would Tate Carmichael grill her like a rack of ribs about every aspect of the mugging, he would strap on a revolver and hightail it to Oklahoma City to act as her personal bodyguard. “What are you and Mom up to?”

“Sara Sue’s off doing her volunteer work at the legal aid clinic tonight. We’ve been thinking a lot about you today.”

Because it’s February tenth, Paige thought. If it hadn’t been for her grandfather and mother, she wasn’t certain she’d have gotten back on her feet after her life upended. Even now, whenever she found time to visit her grandfather’s small cattle ranch outside of Dallas, she occasionally caught one or both of them watching her with narrow-eyed concern.