Classified K-9 Unit Christmas
“Yes, and we’re not proud of it. We were moving him to a new location when someone shot out one of the tires on our transport vehicle and snatched the witness, after shooting two of our officers. They both survived, but didn’t see the shooter.”
“I took a different jogging path and came up on them tonight,” Nina said, a delayed reaction coursing through her body. She set her coffee on the table and held her hands in her lap so he wouldn’t see how they were beginning to shake. “I didn’t have my weapon. Not even a Taser. I should have at least had that, or pepper spray. I didn’t identify myself as FBI, but I did my best to stop him from killing her.”
“You had Sam,” he replied, his astute eyes watching her.
“Yes, my strongest weapon. That and lots of prayers.” Sam was resting in his kennel in the training area while they talked. “I planned to order him to attack, but the man turned and shot at me and then turned the gun on the girl. Then I needed Sam to protect us while I tried to...save her.”
She’d taken her shower while Thomas talked to some of the other agents, but she could still see the blood on her clothes and hands, could remember the girl’s cold, pale body. A shiver moved down Nina’s spine, reminding her how close that poor young woman had come to being murdered.
Help her, Lord. Help this poor girl so we can find out what’s going on.
“And you did save her,” Thomas said, as if he knew exactly what she was thinking. “She’s alive because you came along at the right time.”
“She’s in surgery, so let’s hope everything will be okay. He planned to kill her and dump her just like the others.”
“So you think the other two females were killed by this same man?”
“I don’t know. I’m speculating. But it makes sense because he purposely brought her to that spot, from what we can tell. I’m waiting to hear from the medical examiner regarding their cause of death and their IDs. We’ll have to notify their next of kin, too.”
“A grisly undertaking,” Thomas replied. “My gut tells me Russo is your man for all three crimes.”
“I’ll have to wait to concur with you on that, but yes, it’s looking like a possibility.”
He nodded. “Understood.”
She leaned forward. “Sam must have picked up a strong scent, because after the shooter shot the girl and ran away, Sam immediately alerted on the two other graves. Shallow graves, a little over a foot and a half deep. The gunman knew that would keep anyone from detecting the scent of decaying bodies. Until Sam got a whiff anyway. I can’t say how long they’ve been there, but the ME said maybe months.”
Putting her head in her hands and raking her wet hair back, she said, “Sam and I have jogged by those woods for months now and...those girls were out there. All alone. Now, I’m questioning if Sam tried to alert me before and I maybe thought he’d seen a squirrel or some other animal. I should have caught this sooner.” Lifting her head, she added, “The killer must be using that site as his burial ground since, according to the ME, one body has been there longer than the other one.”
“Sam knows his business. He wasn’t working when you jogged by before and he could have false alerted, since he was on downtime. But tonight, like you said, he picked up on the dangerous situation. The shooter’s scent—maybe a cologne or aftershave, or maybe even from the coat he was wearing—caused Sam to search the area, and then he alerted on the bodies. Which makes it highly likely the same man killed those two.”
“Not good news for any family, especially this time of year.”
“No,” the marshal said, his expression grim. “But it sounds as if you have a strong faith to carry you through. That’s a plus.”
“I couldn’t do this without it,” she admitted.
“I hear that,” he said, that long Texas drawl moving like gentle fingers across her heart.
Nina didn’t talk about her faith much but it was there, instilled in her by a strong, loving family. She was glad to hear Thomas apparently had the same shield.
They continued to talk about the details until she’d given him as much information as she could and he’d done the same for her.
“I think I’m going home,” she said, standing to stretch. “I’ll pick back up on the details there, since I probably won’t get any sleep.”
“I’ve got a room at the Wild Iris Inn,” he said. “Sounded like a nice out-of-the-way spot. I didn’t want to stay in Billings.”
“The inn is the only place available near Iris Rock, and not far from my house,” she said with a grin. “But you’re in good hands. Miss Claire still works there part-time, but she’s turned over management to Penny Potter, soon to be Penny Morrow. Penny plans to marry one of our agents—Zeke Morrow—on Valentine’s Day next year.”
She went on to tell him how Jake Morrow had been a double agent and how his half brother, Zeke, had come to help track him and had been in on his capture and death. But in spite of the horrible tragedy, several of the team members had somehow found true love. Why Nina had decided to share the joy with the marshal, she didn’t know. Except that she wanted to believe in hope and love, even if she didn’t have a significant other in her life right now.
And she didn’t need anyone. She had enough trouble trying to prove herself as an agent.
“This year was rough for all of you,” Thomas said, bringing her back to reality. “I’m glad everyone is safe and sound.” They’d reached the doors to the parking garage. “Speaking of that, I’m walking you to your vehicle.”
Nina blinked and stared up at him. “I’m parked near you, anyway, and I have Sam.”
Thomas shook his head. “Look, let’s get this part over with. I know you’re strong and capable and tough or you wouldn’t be here, but...a killer saw you tonight. You’re a witness to an attempted murder by a very dangerous man. You’re gonna need someone to watch your back.”
She turned when they were almost to her vehicle. “Have you appointed yourself for that job?”
Before he could respond, a shot rang out and the windshield of the car next to them shattered. Thomas threw his body over Nina and pushed her to the ground. Another shot rang out, blasting a nearby wall.
Nina’s heart pressed beats against her lungs. She couldn’t breathe. And she couldn’t get past the sure knowledge that Thomas had probably just saved her life.
* * *
An hour later, Nina and Thomas were back inside headquarters filing yet another report, and Thomas was now a partner in this investigation. He didn’t mind that, since he needed to be a part of it if Russo was involved.
But that hadn’t been established. This pattern didn’t match Russo’s way of taking care of business.
The shooter was nowhere to be found, and surveillance cameras didn’t show anyone sneaking into the garage. So the shooter must have had a good view of where they were parked from an off-site spot. They’d canvassed the whole place and the surrounding buildings, and they’d put out more alerts on Russo. The techs were still trying to establish where he’d been hidden. But the destruction from the shots indicated a shotgun. Which meant he’d been close. Too close.
“He’s after you,” Thomas said to Nina, when they were alone. “You can’t go back to your place tonight.”
“I’ll bunk here,” Nina retorted, obviously not in the mood to be told what to do. “I’ve done it before. And I intend to keep digging. Dylan O’Leary is our best tech and he’ll be back on this tomorrow. He’ll do research based on what you’ve told us. Thanks for your help.”
Thomas put his hands on his hips. “Are you dismissing me, Agent Atkins?”
She gave him a tired glare. “It’s almost two in the morning. Don’t you ever sleep?”
“Do you?”
She stood and paced, her green sweater long and droopy, her jeans old and worn. Locker clothes. But she looked cute in them. “Have you considered that he might have been aiming at you, Thomas?”
He rubbed his jaw. “Always a possibility, and yes, he could have taken both of us out and called it a day. But he missed, which is kind of surprising.”
“Do you think he blinked, got the shakes?”
Thomas figured this man knew how to use any kind of weapon. “He could have been interrupted or startled, but why a shotgun? Maybe the darkness and seeing both of us together shook him. He sure wasn’t expecting to see me here.”
“Now he knows you’re in town,” she said, her fingers twisting in the cuffs of her sweater. “You might need to bunk here tonight, too.”
Thomas hadn’t planned on that. “I could hang around.”
“That’s not what I said.”
“And I’m saying I can hang around.” Seeing the objection on her heart-shaped face, he held up his hands in defense. “Hey, neither of us is gonna get much sleep. We can get a head start on the facts and get our ducks in a row.”
She stared at him, her eyes changing so swiftly he felt as if he was chasing glints of pure copper. “Are you hungry?” she finally asked.
Did this mean she would listen to reason and let him do his job?
“Starving. That snack cake I found in the machine went stale in my stomach a couple hours ago.”
“I think we have leftover hamburgers in the fridge. Somebody brought in a whole dozen or so from our favorite downtown eatery.”
“Sounds good. Lead me to the kitchen.”
Nina shot him another mixed-message glance. “We’re in this together now, Deputy Marshal. And I have orders from my SAC to cooperate with you whether I like it or not.”
“Won’t be the first time a woman has tried to resist my charms,” he quipped, hoping to lighten the mood.
“I’m an agent first,” she retorted. “And a woman second.”
Okey-dokey. “Whatever you say, ma’am.”
Thomas followed her through the maze of offices and cubicles, thinking at least he had someone interesting to work with. This one would try her best to keep him on his toes.
And he’d try his best to keep her alive.
THREE
“The girl’s awake.”
Nina rose from her chair, boots hitting the floor, and followed Dylan O’Leary, the agency’s tech expert, down the hallway. “Is she talking?”
Thomas saw them and came out of the chair he’d found in a corner of the big cubicle-filled room. “Identity?”
Dylan kept right on going, his glasses stuck to his nose as always. “Kelly Denton. Twenty-four years old. College student who grew up in Helena and worked for former State Senator Richard Slaton. She’d moved away from Helena this year but went home to visit her parents for Christmas. They’ve verified that and said she had left a message that she was spending the night with a friend. That was night before last. They’re on their way here.” Dylan hurried off and then turned back around. “Oh, and don’t mention the other girls to her yet. We’re still trying to establish if they’re connected. She could voluntarily fill in the blanks.”
“Got it. We’re on our way to investigate.” Nina turned to Thomas. “Ready to question our witness?”
“Been ready,” he said, grabbing his coat.
Soon, they were in Nina’s SUV headed east to the Billings Medical Center.
“How’d you sleep?” Nina asked, recalling how she’d tossed and turned and had nightmares the entire three hours she’d tried to sleep.
“Like a baby,” he quipped with a wry smile. “I was exhausted after that long drive from Texas.”
“Why’d you drive across the country in the dead of winter?”
“I like long drives. Helps me think. Plus I was trying to track Russo’s every step so I could establish that he drove here, too. Found some rental cars he’d used here and there, but nothing concrete. So you didn’t see or hear him leaving in a vehicle last night?”
Nina shook her head and merged into traffic. “Nope. He ran away, headed into the woods. I still don’t get it. He could have shot me, too.”
“Maybe Sam distracted him. Sam would have gone after him, don’t you think?”
“Possibly. I’m sure he’d have brought down the man. But I was worried that he’d shoot Sam and return to finish the job. Why do you think he ran like that?”
“He panicked. He wasn’t expecting anyone to stumble on the scene.”
“Yes. Sam and I did surprise him. I know the woods beyond that spot and across the stream are on private property. Someone owns a hunting lodge up there. He could have hidden in it, possibly, but until we find out who owns that place, we can’t get a warrant to look.”
“But he shot at you—shot at us—last night,” Thomas reminded her. “And missed. Russo’s trained never to miss. Something’s not right about this whole thing.”
“I’m kind of glad he missed,” Nina replied, wondering what was bugging Thomas. “So...we both think something’s off here, right?”
“He’s after Kelly. We’ll have to watch the hospital. He might be trying to distract us while he moves in on her.”
“We do have her surrounded,” Nina said. “Agents twenty-four/seven, guarding her room.”
“I hope that will keep Russo away.”
Thomas didn’t sound so confident, but they were dealing with a trained assassin. Nina couldn’t blame the marshal for being concerned. “Remember, for all he knows she’s dead. We only broadcasted that we were looking for him. Not that he’d tried to kill someone.”
“But that kind of news tends to leak,” Thomas replied. “We might need to move her, and quickly.”
They made it to the hospital without incident and were inside safe and sound in under an hour.
After getting permission from the hospital staff to interrogate Kelly Denton, they went into her room. The guard at the door was a massive sheriff deputy. No one would get past that man.
Nina approached the pale young girl, remembering her there in the moonlight last night. The bullet had just missed her heart and had become lodged in her left shoulder, but the surgery had gone as well as could be expected. Her prognosis was good, barring the killer didn’t come back. Now if they could match that bullet the surgeon had dug out to the gun that shot her, they’d have an idea what kind of weapon the killer was carrying. A stretch, but something to hope for.
“Kelly, do you remember me?” Nina asked, hoping the girl would recognize her.
She moved her head and stared with bleary eyes. “I... I don’t know.”
“I saw you last night with that man...”
The girl’s face turned deadly pale and all the numbers and graphs on the monitor jittered and changed. “He tried to kill me.”
“I know,” Nina said, glancing to where Thomas stood by the closed drapery over the window. “I was jogging and I came upon you.”
“You saved my life.”
“I tried to stop him,” Nina said. “But he shot at me and he did shoot you.” Touching Kelly’s hand, she said, “Can you tell us how you wound up with him, so far from Helena?”
“He...he took me when I was walking to my car,” the girl said, her whispers full of fear. “I’d just left a restaurant. He was waiting with an open van and he had a gun.”
Nina wrote down the name of the place. “And he drove you here to Billings?”
“Yes, he tied me up and put a blindfold on me. I was in the back—a small van.”
“Do you know the color or model?”
“No. He shoved me inside and put the blindfold on me and then tied me up. I couldn’t get to my purse or phone.” She tried to sit up, her eyes wild now. “Where is my phone? I need my phone.”
“We didn’t find your purse or phone,” Nina said, gently lowering her back down. “He probably tossed them.”
Thomas shot Nina a knowing glance. “Can you tell us anything else, Kelly?”
The girl lay still, her fingers clutching the light blanket spread over her. Nina glanced at Thomas. She’d worked with enough traumatized women to know when someone was truly terrified.
“He kept asking about a key,” Kelly said in a weak voice, her gaze darting down and to the left. “I don’t know what he was talking about. I don’t know anything. I shouldn’t have gone back there.”
“Back where?” Thomas asked.
“To Helena. I—I should have stayed away. When can I go home?”
Thomas stepped away from the window. The girl’s vitals were going crazy. “Are you sure you don’t remember something? A detail we could use?” he asked, keeping his gaze on the beeping machines. “Were you in danger before you left Helena?”
Kelly gripped the blankets, clutching them like a lifeline. “No. I can’t talk about this. I just want to go home. When are my parents coming?”
A nurse came in, her expression stern. “Time’s up.”
“Your parents are on their way,” Nina said, wishing she could comfort the girl more and find out what she seemed so afraid of. “You’re safe here. We have a guard on your room.”
“Is he coming back?” Kelly asked, fear in her eyes. “That man? If he does, he’ll kill me! He told me he’d kill me.”
“Not if we can help it,” Thomas said, honesty in each word. “If you remember anything—or decide to tell us the truth—please tell the deputy and he’ll alert us. The more we know, the sooner we can end this and then you’ll be safe.”
The girl didn’t seem so sure. She was frightened, and for good reason. Nina talked to the deputy and felt reassured when he told her one of her team members would be here later with his K-9 partner.
Nina tugged at Thomas’s jacket sleeve when they reached the elevator. “Let’s stay here a while. We can see her door from the waiting room. And...we can talk to her parents after they arrive and they’ve seen her. Maybe they can shed some light on whatever she’s not telling us.”
He nodded. “Okay, but I’m hungry. Let’s go down to the cafeteria.”
“Didn’t you eat one of those pastries from Petrov Bakery? Or maybe even two?”
He gave her a mock frown. “That was breakfast.”
“Yes, only two hours ago.”
“I have to be fed every two hours.”
Nina snorted and shook her head. “Right.” Then she said, “Okay, we’ll get you fed, but then I’m hanging out here. I’m worried about that girl.”
“She’s hiding something, no doubt,” Thomas said, turning serious in that lightning quick way she’d noticed. “She said she should never have gone back to Helena. She knows about the key and she panicked when she realized she didn’t have her phone.”
“And you can read minds?” Nina asked in surprise. But she had to agree with him.
“I can read people,” Thomas replied. “That girl is scared, of course. But it’s more. I think she purposely dropped that bit about the key to give us a hint. She’s terrified and that’s understandable, but she said she didn’t know anything. Which to me means she knows a lot.”
“You have a point,” Nina said, as they hurried through the buffet line. She got a salad and Thomas ordered meat loaf, mashed potatoes with gravy and a giant biscuit. The man knew how to down some serious food. How did he stay in such good shape? “She did seem pretty emphatic about not knowing anything.”
“My gut is burning,” he retorted.
“Maybe that’s just the pastries and the meat loaf,” she said with a grin.
“Ha, ha.” He chewed on a chunk of meat loaf before he answered. “No, this is my gut telling me I’m right.”
“Are you always right?”
“Not always. But about 99 percent of the time.”
She had to laugh. He made her do that. “Tell me about you, Deputy Marshal. So I get from the accent and the way you can go all cowboy that you grew up in Texas.”
He leaned close, his gray eyes twinkling. “Why, yes ma’am, I sure did. Texas through and through. Went to college in Austin, got my degree in criminal justice, worked in law enforcement in several capacities, applied to become a US Marshal and I’ve been one for five years now. Based out of Florida for a while, but I had a hankering to come back West.”
His smile was pro but his eyes went beyond professional. They turned all smoky and flirtatious in a quicksilver way that made her insides shake like the Jell-O the man at the next table was trying to eat.
“You like your job, don’t you?” she asked, to keep the conversation moving. To make his eyes change back to a safe level of gray.
“I do. I mean, chasing bad guys, yeah, what’s not to like?”
Nodding, she laughed at that. “Same here. I love being a K-9 officer for the FBI.”
“It’s dangerous work.”
“You mean for a woman.”
“I mean for anyone.”
Then he did the stern, serious thing again. “What put that chip on your shoulder?”
“Oh, you mean the chip about how hard it is to be a woman in what most consider a man’s profession?”
“Yeah, that one.”
“I told you I come from a big family, right?”
“Yes.”
“Well, I have four brothers. All in law enforcement.”
“Ouch. So you joined up because you had to prove yourself to them.”
“And to my father, who is a retired sheriff.”
“Whoa. Can’t they see how good you are at your job?”
“No, what they see is their little sister trying to do a job they think is not suitable for her. And...they’re all kind of jealous that I’m in this elite FBI unit when they’re locals who work hard.”
“They should be proud of you,” Thomas said, the passion in his words shaking her. “I never had much of a family. My parents divorced when I was little and I kind of got shoved from my grandparents to my aunts and uncles. My dad worked construction and traveled a little too much, and my mom skipped out on me once they got divorced.”
Nina’s heart did a little flip. No wonder the man moved around like a nomad. “Do you ever go back to Texas?”
“Yeah. My granddad left me a small ranch there. I head straight to it when I need some downtime. He was a good man, a churchgoer, just not an affectionate man.”
Nina wanted to keep talking, but they needed to get back. She stood up and said, “Well, remember, if we get through this, you are definitely coming to my family’s house for Christmas.”
Then she realized she’d overstepped and wished she could take it back. Maybe they’d be done before Christmas.
He grinned, which only made him even more handsome. “Oh, so you want to make those ornery brothers even more jealous. I mean, who wouldn’t be impressed with a US Marshal, right?”
She shook her head at his antics. “Right.”
They’d just turned the corner back to the waiting area when a male nurse hurried up to the guard at Kelly Denton’s door. When the nurse saw them, he took off running in the other direction.
FOUR
Thomas went into action, tackling the man dressed in hospital scrubs in time to stop him from getting away. Another nurse immediately called security. The hospital would go on lockdown until they cleared this up.
The deputy who’d been guarding Kelly’s room didn’t miss a beat. He helped Thomas by putting a heavy, booted foot on the man’s backbone while Thomas grabbed his hands and cuffed him. Together, they lifted him up and slammed him down in a nearby chair. Thomas searched his scrubs and found a small knife.
Nina held her gun on the man until she knew he was secure. “I’ll check on the girl.”
By now, nurses and doctors were merging inside the room where Kelly Denton lay sleeping. She woke with a start, her eyes wide. “What’s going on?”
“Everything’s okay,” Nina said, thinking they should have stayed close by. But at least they had a suspect now. Only the man they’d tackled wasn’t Russo. “Just a ruckus outside. You’re safe.” Better not to upset her again so soon.
But she had to wonder if the girl needed to be moved again.
When the medical team had checked and rechecked Kelly, her parents came in. After they’d seen her and were reassured she was on the mend, Nina took them outside and explained what had happened.
“Do you know of any reason someone would want to harm your daughter?” she asked.
“No,” they both replied.
“But she’s been away for almost a year,” her mom added. “Maybe someone followed her to Helena?”
“It’s your job to find that out,” Mr. Denton said. “I thought she was being protected.”
“She is. We’ve taken the man into custody, but he’s not talking. He won’t tell us who hired him, but he’s not going anywhere, I promise.”
