When she didn’t answer for several moments, Brady tilted his head and narrowed his eyes in query. “Kara, do you need him to repeat the question?”
With a sigh, she dropped her gaze to the table, to her hands, still red and chapped from the cold. “I was upset over seeing Brady again,” she said with a glance to the deputy. “It was painful to be at a wedding, to have him watching me from beside the groom with so much hurt and accusation and challenge in his eyes.”
“Accusation? I d—” Brady bit down on his words and visibly reined in his response, fisting his hands on the table and tightening his jaw.
After a tense second of silence, Deputy Anderson said, “Sheriff?”
Brady shook his head. “Sorry. Please, continue.”
Kara pinched the bridge of her nose and groaned. “Look, this is difficult for me to talk about, but there’s really no point dancing around the issue. We all know the situation between us.” She drew on the steel nerves that helped her climb in the rodeo arena with bucking bulls and broncs and turned on her seat to face Brady fully. “I still have feelings for you, and it hurt like hell to see you standing up there in your tux, hearing the liturgy read and knowing that we’d never have the wedding we planned.”
Brady’s expression changed. Not dramatically, but she knew him well enough to detect the slight lift of his brow, widening of his eyes and softening of his mouth. He sat straighter, and bittersweet emotion lit his eyes.
“So, yeah, I was upset,” she plowed on, ignoring the squeezing ache in her chest. “I was having a panic attack or something and needed space. Someplace quiet to regain my composure. The barn was the closest and easiest place to go. I saw the horses waiting just inside, and...well—” she flapped a hand toward Brady “—you know that animals help center me. How working with animals helped get me through losing my father.”
He bobbed his head in a quick nod of agreement.
People had teased her about her menagerie of animals, but rescuing dogs and cats—and turtles, chickens and goats—had been therapeutic. She’d found purpose, unconditional love and a career path as she took care of the strays she adopted. Because of her work schedule at the veterinarian clinic and frequent trips out of town for rodeo events, she’d winnowed her animal population down to one cat and a red-eared slider turtle.
Deputy Anderson shifted in his chair, clearly uneasy with the maudlin emotion and personal nature of what passed between her and Brady. Had the situation not been so serious, she’d have laughed at the lawman’s deer-in-the-headlights look. Men! Why did sentimentality put them off?
A knock broke the tense silence, and Brady called, “Yeah?”
A female deputy poked her head in. “I have Ms. Pearson’s clothes. And Deputy Wilhite asked me to tell you Lillian Scruggs, the forensic artist from Amarillo, has arrived.”
“Thank you, Smith. Send her in.” Brady stood and took the grocery sack the deputy held out to him.
“Oh, and I fed your cat some dry food while I was there,” Deputy Smith said, looking to Kara. “He was meowing a lot and seemed pretty hungry.”
She cracked a smile. “He’s Siamese. They’re a loud, talkative breed. But, thanks. I’m sure Jerry appreciated getting some supper.”
Brady passed the bag to Kara. “Why don’t you go change before you start with the artist?”
“Thank you! I think I will,” she said more sharply than she intended, but her nerves were frayed, and fatigue, hunger and stress were doing a number on her patience.
In the ladies’ room, she stripped out of her wet clothes and eagerly donned the dry ones. Thank goodness a female officer had been sent to her house. She hated to think of one of Brady’s men pawing through her underwear drawer and bras. By the time she’d changed into the clean jeans and thick fleece sweatshirt, her food had arrived as well, and she dived into the burger and fries as if she hadn’t eaten in a week.
Thus began a multitasking fest as she gobbled her dinner, worked with the artist between bites, and answered additional questions for Brady.
“Based on the trajectory and location of the bullets recovered at the scene, we have reason to believe April was the shooter’s target,” Brady said.
Kara paused with a sweet potato fry halfway to her mouth. The food in her stomach rebelled at the notion of someone hurting her sweet friend.
“Can you think of any reason someone would want April killed?” Brady asked, tapping his pen against his notepad.
She scowled. “Of course not! April’s a kind, generous, warm-hearted person. Why would anyone want to hurt her?”
Brady drew an impatient breath and, puffing his cheeks, blew it out with a groan. “Your personal opinion of her is not what I asked. Now think!”
She tensed at his scolding tone and swatted at his hand when he snitched one of her fries.
“Has she mentioned any harassing phone calls or trouble with a client? Maybe a disagreement from high school that has blown up again on Facebook?”
She wiped her greasy fingers on a napkin and dug through her memory for anything April could have mentioned. April was a paralegal for the Texas Justice Project, a nonprofit foundation that worked to get wrongly convicted inmates out of prison. She acknowledged with a wince that her friend’s job was fodder for any number of disgruntled people’s wrath.
“How’s this? Is the nose right, now?” the artist asked, turning the sketch toward her. Her head throbbed as her attention was pulled in a different direction. The artist had, in fact, done a remarkably good job rendering the shooter’s odd combination of sharply angled cheeks, chin and jaw with his flat nose. So good, in fact, that a tingle of recognition became a flash of memory.
She gasped and, without thinking about the action, she reached for Brady’s hand. Squeezing his fingers, she stared at the drawing and focused on bringing the memory to the fore.
“Yes,” she rasped.
Brady leaned toward her and covered her clutching hand with his. “That’s him? The man you saw today?”
She nodded. “Something about the eyes is still off, but...it’s close.” She cleared her throat and squeezed her eyes shut, trying to grasp on to the memory that taunted her. “But I...saw him before today, too.”
Brady stiffened. “What?”
“I...” Kara searched her memory, her heart thudding. “He...he was at the funeral!”
Brady frowned. “What funeral?”
She opened her eyes to blink at Brady. “For April’s boss, Martin Villareal.”
Brady sat straighter, and his eyebrows shot up. “The lead attorney for the Texas Justice Project?”
“The same. He was killed in a hit-and-run accident in Austin while jogging, and I went with her to the funeral because Nate was busy with something he couldn’t get out of.”
Brady tugged his hand loose from hers, so he could write. “When was this?”
“A couple weeks ago.”
“And you’re sure the guy you saw today is the same man you remember from the funeral?”
“Pretty sure. I remember he looked out of place. He didn’t fit in with the suits and other lawyer types that were there.” She leaned toward Brady and chewed her bottom lip. “Brady, April was really upset about her boss’s death. And not just for the obvious reasons—the suddenness, the lack of a suspect, the tragedy of it all. She said that last summer the office had received lots of threats. Back in June, they won a big case, getting this guy exonerated for murder.” She bit her lip as she thought. “What was his name? Champion? Campbell?”
“Chambers?” Brady suggested, a knowing look on his face.
She replayed the name in her head. “Yeah. Chambers.”
“Ross—”
“—Allen Chambers,” she finished with him. “You’ve heard of him.”
“His trial and exoneration have crossed my news feed more than a few times. Now that you mention it, I remember Nate saying April was involved with Chambers’s case.”
“Driving home from the funeral, she told
me the evidence for exoneration was clear-cut, but there were still plenty of people who were none too pleased with her team from the Texas Justice Project for leading the movement to have Chambers cleared. The office received hate mail, bomb threats...”
“Any specific to April?”
“Well...yeah. She did that TV interview about the case, and it called attention to her, where she’d normally be working in the background. She hated the attention. You know how private April is. I guess when she got hate mail directed to her, she dismissed it, along with the other crazies blasting the office.”
Brady pinched his nose. “So there are people out there with a beef against April, even if indirectly, because of her work with the Texas Justice Project.”
Kara bit back the impulse to defend herself and her naive, gut-reaction protests earlier. Yes, it was unfathomable that anyone would want to hurt the April she knew. But clearly April could have earned enemies through her legal work.
That was, after all, what April had suspected about her boss. “Yes. Someone could have a beef with her because of the Chambers exoneration or any other case she worked. In fact—” Kara’s gut soured as the full extent of her conversation with April came back to her “—she said she had reason to believe there was more to Villareal’s death than simple hit-and-run.”
Brady’s laser gaze shot back to her, his eyebrows lifting. “Go on.”
“When we were driving home from Austin, she told me she feared the hit-and-run was a planned attack. April suspected that her boss could have been murdered.”
Chapter 6
Kara’s face drained of color as she gaped at him, the ramifications of what she’d remembered clearly crystalizing for her. “If April’s boss was murdered, if she was the target of the sniper...and this guy is still out there...” Kara released a ragged breath. “Brady, April is still in danger! That guy could go after her again. He could—”
“I’m way ahead of you, babe.” Hitting the intercom button on the phone by the door, he said, “Earlene, get Nate Wheeler on the phone for me, and send Wilhite back in here.”
“Roger that, sheriff,” his dispatch operator/front desk officer answered.
When he faced Kara again, her brow was furrowed.
“What?”
“Don’t call me babe.”
He blinked and tightened his jaw. “You used to like it.”
“Past tense. We’re not a couple anymore, so... I’m not your ‘babe.’”
He huffed a sigh and squeezed his pen so tight he was surprised it didn’t snap. “Whatever.” With everything else coming down today, she was worried about him using his old endearment for her?
Wilhite opened the door. “You wanted to see me?”
“Yeah. What have you heard back on the fingerprints recovered from the abandoned car?” To cover his irritation with Kara’s bluntness, he scratched a note on his pad to look into the threats made to the Texas Justice Project last summer and any information the Austin police had on Villareal’s accident.
“Nothing yet. Lab’s backed up, as usual, but they thought they’d have something by morning.”
Brady clenched his teeth and shook his head. “Not good enough. We need to find this guy before he disappears in the wind...if he hasn’t already.” He pounded the arm of his chair with his fist. “Call the lab back and tell them this is high priority.”
Wilhite lifted a corner of his mouth. “Already did, but I’ll call again and give ’em another push. But it’s the weekend before Christmas, boss. Folks are on vacation, and the lab is working a skeleton crew.”
Brady muttered a pithy curse in response. “Call the Austin PD and ask them to send us mug shots of anyone even close to the description Miss Pearson has given us.” He spoke the formal address with emphasis. “Especially anyone who might be considered a gun for hire.”
Kara frowned at him, then lifted her cup, looked inside and set it back down without drinking.
“Austin? Why Austin?” Wilhite asked.
“Miss Pearson thinks she saw the shooter in Austin a couple weeks ago at a funeral. Bring the mug shots in here as soon as you get them for her to review.”
Deputy Wilhite nodded. “Will do.”
Anything else?”
“Yeah. Bring Miss Pearson more coffee and four creamers from my bottom left desk drawer.” He cut his glance to the forensic artist. “Ms. Scruggs, coffee?”
The artist smiled and shook her head. “No, thanks.”
“What abandoned car?” Kara asked after Wilhite left.
“The one my men found a short distance down the road from the Wheeler Ranch while we were swimming in icy floodwaters.” He heard the off-putting tone in his reply and immediately regretted it. He wanted to rebuild his relationship with Kara, not fight with her. But her comment about not being his “babe” had stung more than he cared to admit. To him, Kara would always be his. She would always be part of his soul.
She shifted in her chair and wet her chapped lips. “Why didn’t you tell me about the car before now?”
“Because you’re not one of my deputies. You’re here only because you’re a material witness to the shooting,” he replied, his tone matter-of-fact.
A flicker of hurt flashed in her eyes before she dropped her gaze to her plate of fries. She’d been eating with gusto moments ago, but since recognizing the man in the artist’s drawing and making the connection to April, Kara had only played with the food. Knowing her soft heart, her compassion and love for her friends, he knew how hard she must be taking the theory that April could be in danger.
“Sheriff, ringing Nate Wheeler on line two,” Earlene said via the intercom.
“Thanks.” He lifted the receiver in time to hear his friend answer the call. “Hey, man, it’s Brady.”
“Thank God it’s you,” Nate said. “We’ve been worried as hell you might have been ambushed out there or frozen or something in that storm—”
“I’m fine. Kara, too, but—”
“So Kara was the missing guest?”
Impatient to get to the point, Brady said, “Just listen to me, Nate. Do you still have April with you?”
“Yeah, why?” Nate’s voice was strung with tension. Understandable, since his wedding had been disrupted by gunfire, and his father was fighting for his life. Not to mention the whole issue of April’s apparent cold feet just before the shots rang out.
“I have reason to believe she was the target of the shooting. Kara has remembered seeing the shooter at Villareal’s funeral, and based on that and the trajectory of the bullets, I believe April’s still in very real danger. We haven’t found the shooter yet, so keep April close and your eyes open for anything suspicious.”
Nate heaved a weary-sounding sigh. “We’d drawn the same conclusion, but your confirmation only strengthens my arguments.”
“Arguments? Everything okay, man?”
He grunted. “Long story. Thanks for the warning. I won’t let her out of my sight.”
“Should I send one of my deputies up there for added protection?”
“I’ve got this, Brady. You’re shorthanded as it is, and I want every man available looking for the scum that shot my dad. God only knows where that guy is and what his next move might be. The sooner April and the baby are safe, the better.”
After assuring Nate that he and Kara were unhurt from their ordeal and receiving a “no change” status update on Nate’s father, Brady promised to keep Nate informed on the progress of the case and hung up. As he turned back toward Kara, Nate’s words replayed in his head. God only knows where that guy is and what his next move might be.
A chill raced down his spine. Kara had seen the sniper...and he’d seen her. He’d shot at her.
April’s life wasn’t the only one in danger. The shooter could easily come after Kara and try to silence the only witness to his crime.
Chapter 7
Kara worked for another hour with the artist, getting the sketch of the man’s eyes closer to what she
remembered and fine-tuning aspects of the drawing that were still off a bit.
Brady sat across from her, watching and listening...and making her nervous. Something in his countenance had changed after his call to Nate. He assured her Nate, April and the baby were fine, if stressed out by the day’s events, but she could sense something had changed.
“How close to right is the drawing now?” Brady interrupted after tapping his fingers restlessly for several minutes. “If we’re down to tweaking the length of his earlobes, I’d like to get copies made and sent out to local businesses and law enforcement around the state.”
The artist glanced from Brady to Kara with a question in her expression. “Ma’am?”
Kara sent him a disgruntled frown, then studied the picture one more time. “There’s still something nagging me about it that’s not right but...I can’t put my finger on it. I’m sorry. Maybe if we finished in the morning after I’ve gotten some sleep—”
“No.” Brady swiped a hand down his jaw and groaned. “We need to send the picture out tonight. Like hours ago. Is it close enough?”
Kara flopped back in the chair and plowed her fingers into her hair. Mud from the floodwater had dried in her hair, despite the mini-wash she’d done in the sheriff’s department bathroom. She wanted the picture to be exactly right, but she also longed for a hot shower and her own bed.
“It’s...ninety-five or ninety-eight percent right, but—”
Brady grunted and slapped a hand to his forehead. Shoving his chair back, he took the sketch pad from the artist. “Thank you, Ms. Scruggs. We’re done here. If you’ll stop by the front desk and sign out, Earlene will see to your payment.”
Brady headed to the door with the drawing.
“So I’m done?” Kara asked, pushing her chair back, as well.
“No.” He aimed a finger at her. “I’ll be right back. Stay put.”
Cowboy Christmas Rescue Page 7