by Emery Hayes
“I never told you that,” Nicole said.
“Maybe the AG did.”
But she was shaking her head. “He wouldn’t.”
Nicole pulled her Glock, but Green was already moving, ducking into a crouch as he pulled a gun from the small of his back, where he’d tucked it into his waistband.
She threw herself into the shadows. The crack from Green’s handgun bounced off the walls of the office buildings and set off the car alarms down the street. The bullet missed, striking the blacktop at her feet. Nicole felt the shower of gravel spray her legs as she ran for cover. She scrambled behind a dumpster positioned at the back of the sheriff’s office, and when she peered around its metal side, Green was gone.
25
She’d had new gravel poured and graded on her driveway the week before, after what she’d hoped was the last serious snowfall before the winter season began in late September. The tires of the Yukon turned evenly and she crested the hill, planning to slide easily into the detached garage, but a car was blocking her way. And it wasn’t MacAulay’s, who she expected at any moment. He and Jordan had finished dinner in Pleasant Falls and were long into their drive home, their treasures tucked safely in the cargo area of MacAulay’s Highlander.
Nicole stopped the Yukon and hit the strobe light, illuminating the interior of the low-slung sports car. It was empty. She cut the light, all the better to see the surrounding area. The car was familiar, but she couldn’t place it. She doused the headlights and the yard settled into darkness, including, oddly, the security light, which was run off a solar panel.
Green passed through her mind. She saw him again, crouched and firing, but then banished the image. She had an all-points bulletin out on him with an order of arrest attached to it. She didn’t think he’d come to her home. He wouldn’t want to risk capture.
She’d pulled the paper he’d given her out of her pocket shortly after he’d taken a shot at her. It was a business card, his own, and the act had been a ruse. He had wanted her to release her gun. To step closer and reach for the paper, rendering her vulnerable. He had arrived planning to kill her. And all the talk before that was an attempt to get information from her. He’d wanted to know where he stood amid the investigation, and, it turned out, he wasn’t happy between a rock and a hard place.
She reached now for the radio mike clipped to her shoulder. “Dispatch, this is Sheriff Cobain.”
“Go ’head, Sheriff.”
“Checking in,” she reported. “I’ve arrived home. I have a vehicle parked in my driveway. No obvious occupants.” She gave the plate number and waited for dispatch to look it up.
“A 2018 Ford Mustang, license plate number”—Lodi repeated it—“belonging to Deputy Tyler Watts.”
An uneasiness shifted through Nicole. She couldn’t pin it down. She liked Ty. He was a good worker, sharp and on his toes, full effort always. So maybe it was the absolute stillness. Not even the dog was barking from within the house. That had only happened once before, four months ago, when Nicole had returned home to find that Benjamin had kidnapped their son and locked Mrs. Neal in the woodshed.
“Call his cell,” Nicole ordered. “If you connect, patch him through.” Better that way, as there would be a recording of the conversation over open air.
While she waited, she reversed the Yukon and turned it so that the nose pointed down the driveway. She thought about calling in backup, Lars in particular. She had plenty to tell him, revelations made during her conversation with Gates and then Green’s attempt to shoot her, but that could wait another hour, when they headed over to Luke Franks’s place. She chose instead to hit speed dial on her cell. MacAulay picked up on the second ring.
“Where are you?” she asked.
“On the Lake Road,” he said.
Ten minutes, no more than that, and he and Jordan would be spinning gravel on their way up the driveway.
“Stay there,” she said. “Until I call you back.”
“What’s wrong?”
“Maybe nothing,” she admitted.
It was something.
Nicole’s property wasn’t big—three and a half acres, most of it wooded. Nestled into a hill, the backyard was big enough for entertaining, with a concrete slab patio and a western view that framed the setting sun. In deference to Mrs. Neal’s sensibilities, after the old trestle woodshed had been processed as a crime scene, Nicole had torn it down and purchased a prefab shed to replace it. It was made from a sturdy, resin-coated plastic-rubber mix, and from where she sat in the idling Yukon, she heard the door to the shed bang against the jamb. It was a flat, jarring sound that repeated itself within the motion of the rustling wind.
The door shouldn’t be open. It had a perfectly good latch.
She felt her pulse pick up its beat, pinging against the walls of her heart with every slam of the shed door.
She talked herself down from adrenaline overload, knowing that when it was harnessed, it provided a keen edge.
Dispatch got back to her. Ty wasn’t answering his phone. And that decided it. She hoped Lars had gotten at least the chance of an uninterrupted dinner with his family. He picked up on the second ring.
“What’s up?”
“I wish I knew,” she said. “I’m at home. Haven’t gotten out of the car yet. The dog isn’t barking. Ty Watts’ Ford Mustang is parked in my driveway, but he’s nowhere to be seen and isn’t answering his cell. And the door to the shed is ajar and beating in the wind.”
“I’m on my way.”
“That’s probably a good idea,” she agreed. “And Lars, Green took a shot at me earlier.”
That was met with a moment’s silence. “No shit?”
“No, and I have a lot more to tell you—all from the AG—but we’ll do that later. Be careful,” she said, and hung up.
There was a thin line between foolishness and bravado. She worried, though, that she was being controlled more at the moment by events that had played too close to home. She was determined that Benjamin wouldn’t reach out from the grave and continue to torment her. And that Green wouldn’t put her in a mental choke hold.
She released the snap on her holster for the second time that night. She liked the feel of the textured grip against the palm of her hand. There was safety in that. A level of comfort few people outside law enforcement understood. She drew her weapon, slipped her index finger into the trigger notch, and then allowed the Glock to rest against her thigh as she scanned the front yard, the side of the house, craned her neck to glimpse the backyard and the peaked roof of the shed. The department Yukons were special order, as was standard among policing agencies. The siding was reinforced by steel that slowed the progress of bullets through the metal. The windows were shatterproof, half an inch thick, and centered with bullet-repelling mesh.
The first bullet hit at the same time she heard the discharge. The glass in her driver’s side window fractured, beaded, all but caved in and rained on her head. Instinctively, she had ducked, and it was from that crouched position behind the steering wheel that she released the emergency brake, shifted into drive, and pressed on the gas. She sat up as the Yukon shot forward, in time to see Ty step into the beam of her headlights. He wasn’t in uniform and had pulled his weapon. Nicole wavered. The shot had come from the northeast, directly opposite Ty’s position. He could not have fired it. And then the squirreling thought, What if Ty isn’t acting alone? She stepped on the brake, the back end shuddering and fishtailing to a stop.
She hit her radio mike. “Ten seventy-one. Shots fired,” she reported.
Dispatch responded immediately, “Location, please, Sheriff Cobain.”
She gave her address. “Deputy Watts is present. No injuries.” Yet.
Ty scrambled the fifteen yards to the side of her vehicle, and Nicole sought and captured his gaze. The eyes were the windows to the soul. She believed that. She also believed that the best of them could camouflage the most evil of intents. That it took a deliberate and close scrutiny to
see through the cracks in the plaster. She didn’t have that kind of time.
“Units on the way,” dispatch reported.
Ty pulled on the door handle. Another shot rang out. This one punctured the rear driver’s side tire. She knew she could get as much as fifty miles on the damage before the tire flattened, shredded, and the metal rim drew sparks off the asphalt. That wasn’t her immediate concern.
She held Ty’s gaze—he was alert, pumped, confused—and sought and released the automatic door lock with her left hand.
Ty lifted himself into the passenger’s seat and pulled the door shut. “Go,” he said. He dropped his gun in his lap as he wrestled with the seat belt.
“Leave your gun there,” Nicole said. She moved her foot to the accelerator and spun out of the driveway. Her Glock was in hand, and she had no intention of changing that.
“What?”
“Better yet, move it to the floor,” she ordered. She took her eyes from the road for a moment and connected again with Ty’s gaze. Surprise flared in his eyes. “I have no idea why you were at my home, who was shooting at me, or what’s going to happen next. We’ll play that by ear, beginning with you following my direct order in regards to your weapon and finishing with some answers I know are going to be incredible.”
Ty took a deep breath and let it out slowly. He probably did it for both of them, training 101. Stabilize the situation. But he followed through. He picked his gun up with finger and thumb, bent over, and laid it on the floor by his feet.
When he was sitting upright and back against his seat, Nicole began.
“You were at my house for what reason?”
“I figured it out,” he said. “It’s after nine, and I thought you’d be home by now.”
“Why didn’t you call me? Or meet me at the station?” she wanted to know.
“I did call the station. They said you were on your way home.” She cast a glance his way. Color was high on his cheeks, a by-product of adrenaline rush, but his breathing was level. “Monte isn’t dead,” he said. “He’s alive, and someone’s helping him stay that way. I think that someone is Luke Franks.”
“Explain,” she ordered. “Beginning to end, flushed out with details.”
“Monte never went into the woods. We’re supposed to believe he did. The medallion I found, the life pack rummaged—we were meant to believe he survived whatever happened on that boat and then made for the border, but I just don’t see that happening.”
“Why?”
“For the same reason you don’t—instinct, reputation, the stink of a frame.” His voice grew in intensity. “And the dogs. No way they didn’t pick up Monte’s scent if he made land.”
She didn’t like that either. Green’s reasoning, his play to sound as confused as the rest of them, was cunning. And she’d fallen for it. The heat of that error scalded her skin.
Nicole nodded.
“I’m not saying Monte is innocent. I don’t think any of us can say that yet. But I do think he’s alive and right under our noses.”
“How do you figure Luke Franks fits into this?”
“He called in sick that night, along with several other agents. But he stands out among them, and you know why? Luke Franks is a good agent with the track record to prove it.”
“You’ve been through the personnel files?”
“Only a handful. They didn’t come in until a few hours ago,” he said. “But Franks was on top. It was given priority because he didn’t always agree with Green and didn’t mind telling him so.”
And Green was their one sure thing—rotten at the core.
“So you went into Franks’ file looking for someone outside Green’s circle.”
“And that’s what I found. Both Franks and Monte. Two good agents. Never a hint of impropriety. Evaluation remarks filled with all the right buzz words—‘integrity,’ ‘moral fortitude,’ ‘exceeding standards,’ et cetera. It makes sense they would team up,” he concluded.
“So we’ll go to Franks’ house,” she said. “But first we have a crime scene to secure.”
That scene being her home. It disturbed her. She had installed a top-shelf security system, including floodlights around the house, and they had a dog that alerted them of company, and none of that had stopped another incident in what should be her safe place.
“I drove by Franks’s house earlier. There was a light on in the kitchen. I might have seen shadows moving around in there. I didn’t stay,” he explained. “I thought I should have a little backup.”
And so he’d come to Nicole’s home looking for her. That made sense. She felt the tension loosen its grip on her muscles.
“Definitely some backup.” She spared him a more thoughtful glance. “Where is your vest?”
“In the trunk of my car.”
“That’s a good place for it to be.”
“I’m off duty,” he pointed out.
“But you’re not acting like it.”
He was poised to argue but then thought better of it and closed his mouth, sat back in his seat, and accepted the criticism.
“It’s a requirement, not a preference,” she said.
“Understood,” he said.
“Who do you think was shooting at us?”
“I think they were shooting at you,” he said. “I’d been waiting close to fifteen minutes. A sitting duck inside the car, but then I got out when I heard noise behind the house.”
“The shed door?”
He nodded. “Wind had been blowing a while and the door was just fine. Then it started up. I think now it was meant to draw me out of the car.”
“But they didn’t fire?”
“Not until you showed up.”
“How long after you got out of the car was that?”
“Three or four minutes.”
“Did you get a look at the shed?”
“Yeah, someone had to open that latch. The door was flung wide open.”
“Did you touch anything?”
“Hell no.” He sounded offended. “I know better than that. Besides”—and he rolled his shoulders up over his ears—“I started getting that prickly feeling on the back of my neck. I trust that—always—and scooted into the tree line. Just about then, you came up the driveway.”
“You took your time showing yourself.”
He shook his head. “I didn’t know it was you, and with that all-points out on Green, I didn’t want to take any chances. I worked my way around to the front of the house, and then all hell broke loose.”
“You didn’t answer your cell phone.”
“It’s in the car.”
A lot of plausible reasons, but none of them felt good.
“I don’t like impromptu meetings under the cover of darkness,” she said.
“I’ll remember that.”
A burst of static came over the radio then, and dispatch provided an update on response. Lars and Jane were closest, just a few minutes out.
“Stop units on visual with me,” she said. “I have Deputy Watts with me. We are off the property, shouldered at Spruce and State. Pull two more units and have them routed here.”
“Already done. Those units are coming in from Sunburst and Emmerson. ETAs are looking in excess of fifteen and twenty minutes.” The wide-open spaces of the North Country, Nicole thought. Some responses, though immediate, were not fast.
But dispatch had done its job, was following protocol with an officer-involved shooting seamlessly. The trainings, both in-house and afield, were paying off.
At the bottom of Spruce, where it formed a T with the state road, Nicole slowed and performed a U-turn. She brought the Yukon onto the shoulder of the road and idled there. Her cell rang again. MacAulay. Nicole opened the call.
“Are you still on the Lake Road?”
“Yes, pulled over at the boat ramp east side. What’s going on?”
“Shots fired at the house,” she explained. “It’ll be hours before we clear it.” And even then she wouldn’t sleep easy
. “Can you take Jordan for the night?”
“Of course,” he said. “Are you all right?”
She nodded, but of course he couldn’t see that. “No injuries,” she reported. No return fire.
“Will you come by later?”
It would take at least an hour to secure the scene, employ a strategy, get forensics on the ground. And then there was Monte. They would run by Franks’s house and see what they could shake out of the eaves. “Yes, but it won’t be soon.”
She heard the bark of a dog. It was gruff and halfhearted, an attention-getter and nothing more, and every bit Cooper.
“You have the dog?” she said. Relief flooded her voice.
“Yes. He wanted to go. Climbed into the car before we could stop him.”
Cooper loved to take a ride, his blond head out the window, nose lifted into the air.
“Okay,” she said. “Good.”
“You were worried,” he said. “Sorry about that. I guess we forgot to mention it.”
“It’s all good.” And it was. “I’ll see you later, then,” she said, and would have disconnected, but MacAulay stopped her.
“I have the ice man,” he reminded her.
The autopsy. She checked her watch. MacAulay wanted to start that at ten.
“I’ll call Mrs. Neal.” The woman had never been to MacAulay’s home, but she’d had the opportunity to meet him on more than one occasion.
She heard the first approaching sirens. Not one, but two, slightly off beat.
“I’ll call when I get a chance,” she said, and signed off.
Nicole turned back to Ty.
“Can I pick up my gun?” he asked.
“Did you discharge it?” If he had, it would have to be cleared by forensics.
“No.”
“Holster it,” she said, and did the same herself. It was an act of trust that should have come easily, but reluctance made her movements slow and heavy.
26
An hour and forty minutes later, with shell casings collected and plaster castings made of fresh footprints found in and around the garden beds, shed, and garage and comparison castings made of Deputy Watts’s shoes, Nicole was ready to call it a night. She let herself back into the house. It hadn’t been breached by an intruder. Nicole had scrolled though the activity log on the alarm system, which reflected a calm evening inside the home. She pulled a uniform from the closet, collected a few additional essentials, including her toothbrush and Jordan’s, and stuffed them all into a small duffel she found in the hall closet. After their trip to Luke Franks’s house, Nicole planned to go directly to MacAulay’s. She hoped to get there before midnight.