Secrets And Lies

“There was a shooter,” Tristan assured him. “I’m going to take Jesse into the building and secure the scene. There’s an ambulance on the way. Can you stay with the victim until it arrives? Until we know what the perp is after, we can’t assume he’s not going to try to strike again.”

“In other words, you want me to take guard duty,” Eddie said, crossing his arms over his belly and eyeing Tristan dispassionately.

“Right.”

“I guess I can do that.” Eddie shrugged. “Easier than walking around the building looking for the perp.”

That’s exactly what Tristan figured he’d say.

He met Ariel’s eyes. She still looked scared. She also looked exhausted, her face pale, her cheekbones gaunt. He hadn’t noticed that before, but then he’d been telling himself for months that he shouldn’t be noticing anything about Mia’s teacher. His life was filled up with work and with his sister. He didn’t have time for relationships. Especially not complicated ones. A pregnant widow? That was way more than he had room for in his life.

“This might take a while. When I finish, I’ll check back in with you.”

She nodded, and he called Jesse to heel and jogged to the building. The perp hadn’t gone out the front. Jesse would have scented him when they’d walked back to the SUV.

“Where is he?” Tristan asked, and Jesse’s ears perked, his nose going to the air and then the ground. Tristan would have preferred to have Shane Weston and his apprehension dog, Bella, there tracking the perp, but waiting was out of the question.

“Find him!” he urged, and Jesse ran to the back of the school, nosing the cement path that led to double-wide doors. They yawned open, the corridor beyond silent and empty. This had to have been the entrance point. The exit point, too, if the guy was gone.

Tristan followed the dog across the threshold, calling out as he entered the building, warning that police were present. No response. He hadn’t expected one. He really didn’t expect the perp to have hung around.

Jesse tugged him through the hall, passing classroom after classroom. The lab stopped at room 119, sniffing the floor before walking inside. There, he nosed around near a teacher’s desk, sniffing a dark blue sweater that hung over the back of a chair. He huffed quietly and left it, continuing across the room to a storage closet that stood open.

Had the guy been in the closet? Maybe waiting for Ariel to return to the classroom? The thought turned Tristan’s stomach. Master police dog trainer Veronica Earnshaw had been murdered in her place of employment, shot to death while microchipping a new litter of puppies for the Canyon County K-9 Training Center. Since then, Desert Valley had been on edge. That wasn’t the first murder in the area. Five years ago, K-9 officer Ryder Hayes had lost his wife on the night of the annual Desert Valley Police Department dance and fund-raiser. She’d been shot and killed while carrying her dress home just hours before the party.

The perp had shot at Ariel. Was this newest incident somehow related to the other two?

Jesse left the closet, tracing a path from there back to the desk and then out into the hallway. They moved through the dimly lit corridor, the dusky sunlight barely penetrating this far into the building. They reached the corner where the east and west wings jutted to either side of the main building, and Jesse barked, prancing around what looked like bits of concrete and wallboard.

“Front!” Tristan commanded, and the dog returned, dropping down on his haunches.

“Stay!” he said, motioning for the dog to lie on the floor, then moving past and looking at the debris that littered the gray-white tiles. A chunk of wall had been blown from the corner, the bullet still lodged in concrete. Tristan called for Jesse and continued on past several closed doors. He didn’t need the dog to show him where Ariel had been hiding. The door to the room had been shot through, the old wood caving in from the force of a foot kicked into it over and over again. Another few well-placed kicks and the door would have caved in, giving the gunman a clear shot at his intended victim.

A random act of violence?

Tristan didn’t think so. Everything about this seemed premeditated—the perp hiding in the closet, the mask that had hidden his features, the determination to get through a locked door. The guy had been after blood, and if Tristan hadn’t had a meeting scheduled with Ariel, he might have gotten it.

God always has a way.

It’s what his father had told him over and over again. It’s what Tristan’s mother had repeated during Tristan’s challenging teenage years. Since they’d died, Tristan had been too busy trying to raise Mia to spend much time trying to figure out what God’s way was.

Maybe that had been his mistake. Maybe it was the reason why Mia was struggling so much in school and with making friends. Becoming a K-9 police officer had seemed like the perfect transition from being an army dog handler into civilian life, but that wasn’t the reason Tristan had signed on to the Canyon County K-9 Center Training Course. He’d joined in honor of his army buddy and good friend Mike Riverton who’d died the previous May.

Mike had sung the praises of the K-9 program, and he’d been trying to get Tristan to apply. Then Mike had died—killed when he’d fallen down steep stairs at his home. That’s the story Tristan had been told, and that’s what the medical examiner’s records said, but Tristan wasn’t buying it. A guy like Mike—trained in mountain climbing and free-climbing rock walls—would never have fallen and not been able to catch himself.

Yeah. Things around Desert Valley weren’t what they’d seemed when Tristan had moved there for the program. Small towns, he was learning, often hid big secrets.

He frowned, his thoughts going back to Ariel, the way she’d looked when she’d been struggling to escape through the broken window, the fear in her eyes, the subtle trembling of her voice.

Sometimes, small towns also hid murderers.

Not for long, though.

Tristan knew the Desert Valley PD was closing in on the killer. He was certain it was just a matter of time before the perpetrator was found. But, time wasn’t anyone’s friend when a murderer was on the loose.

A murderer, he thought, eyeing the splintered door and the bullet hole, who might have just attempted to strike again.

TWO (#ulink_7a020aba-dccb-576d-98b3-6300287849e2)

She’d almost died.

Ariel couldn’t shake the thought, and she couldn’t ignore it as an EMT leaned over her cut palm, eyeing the still-bleeding wound.

“You’re going to need stitches,” the young woman said brusquely. “We can transport you to the hospital for that, or you can go to the clinic. Your call.”

“I’ll go to the clinic,” Ariel responded by rote.

If she’d died, the baby would have died. Thinking about that was worse than thinking about herself, broken and bleeding on the floor of the resource room.

She shuddered, and the EMT frowned.

“Are you sure?” she asked, her tone a little gentler. “You seem shaky, and they could check on the baby. It might give you a little peace of mind.”

Aside from the guy who’d shot at her being thrown in jail, there wasn’t much of anything that could give her that. “I’m sure.”

The woman nodded, pressing thick gauze to the wound and wrapping it with a tight layer of surgical tape. “That should hold it until you get to the clinic. Have someone drive you. Husband, family.”

“All right.” Except that Ariel didn’t have a husband and she didn’t have any family. She was making new friends at church and at work, but even after five months, they weren’t the kind of relationships she could count on in a pinch.

If the principal came to check out the damage to the school, she’d probably offer to give Ariel a ride. Pamela Moore’s daughter, Regina, had been Ariel’s best friend from kindergarten through their sophomore year of high school. They’d stayed close after Ariel had moved away, and when Regina had taken her dream job working as NICU nurse in Phoenix, Ariel had cheered her on.

Regina had been the reason Ariel had been offered the job in Desert Valley. She’d contacted her mother, pleaded Ariel’s case and gotten her an interview for a job that had opened up when another teacher had gotten married and left town.

It had seemed like a God-thing, the opportunity coming out of left field at a time when Ariel had been desperate to get away from Las Vegas and all the memories it held. She’d wanted a quiet little town to raise her daughter in. She’d wanted a safe environment where everyone knew everyone and where small crimes were considered a big deal. She’d thought that was what Desert Valley offered, all her sweet childhood memories leading her to believe the place would be perfect. Now, she wasn’t so sure.

Several Desert Valley police vehicles had pulled into the parking lot and K-9 teams were spread out across the school grounds. Ariel could see a female officer walking through the gym field, her long hair pulled back in a ponytail, a golden retriever trotting in front of her. Ellen Foxcroft. A nice young woman who everyone in town seemed to like. Her mother was a different story. Marian Foxcroft was notorious for sticking her nose in where it didn’t belong. She had money and influence in Desert Valley, and she wasn’t afraid to throw both around to get what she wanted.

Unfortunately she also had enemies. She’d been attacked a few months ago and left in a coma. It was one of the many crimes that had been taking up the front page of the town’s newspaper.

Ariel had tried not to pay much attention to the stories. She had enough stress and worry in her life. She hadn’t wanted to add to it, and she’d been afraid...so afraid that she’d made another mistake—just like the one she’d made when she’d married Mitch.

She touched her stomach, feeling almost guilty for the thought.

“Ma’am?” the EMT said. “Would you like me to call someone for you?”

“No. I’m fine.” She stood on wobbly legs and moved past the EMT just to prove that she could. Her keys were in her classroom. So were her purse and her cell phone. The house she’d bought with money her great-aunt had left her a decade ago was only two miles from the school, but walking there wasn’t an option. Not with the gunman still out there somewhere.

Had Tristan found any sign of the guy in the school? Was he okay? She’d watched him walk toward the building, and she’d wanted to caution him to be careful, because the gunman had meant business. He’d been bent on murder, and if Ariel had walked into her classroom, she’d have probably been shot before she’d even realized she was a target.