“At this point this is all we have to go on. No one in the vicinity recalled seeing a vehicle parked on the other side of the woods or anyone out walking a Rottweiler.”
Sherri set the flowers on her lap and took the paper from him. “What are the Xs beside the names for?”
“Those are dogs that have been microchipped. The dog we captured hasn’t been. So we eliminated those owners as likely suspects, although we will pay each and every one a visit, as they may own more than one dog despite only paying to license one.”
As she scanned the list, her heart grew heavier. “I don’t recognize any of the names.”
“What about the addresses?”
Confused, she squinted up at him. “How does that help?”
Dan caught a corner of the paper and tilted it his way. “Could be someone we treated...only not to their satisfaction.”
“Reinhart?” Sherri gasped, scanning the list for his apartment address, except he never had a dog.
“He’s not on the list,” Cole said, clearly having formulated the same theory as Dan. “I also cross-referenced his son’s address. No match.”
Dan studied the list with an intensity that surprised her.
“Do you recognize any of the names or addresses? We could compare them to our call records.”
“No, I don’t.” Dan shook his head, but continued to study the list.
Sherri curled and uncurled the edge of her blanket, feeling antsier by the second. “Maybe this nut job just has it in for paramedics in general. He had no way of knowing whether we or the other team would respond to the call. Or that the dog would target me rather than Dan, for that matter.” That realization minutely eased the knot in her stomach.
“It’s possible,” Cole said, not sounding as if he thought so. He reclaimed the list and pulled out a notepad and pen. “I need you to tell me anything that might offer us a clue to this guy’s identity or motive.” Cole’s gaze took in both her and Dan. “No matter how unlikely it seems.”
She edged toward the head of the bed. There was no way she’d add insult to injury by speculating that Luke’s father might be out for revenge. She’d hurt the man enough. If, once she got out of here, she found evidence he might be the culprit, then she’d tell Cole. Or better yet, her sheriff-deputy-cousin Sam, if he ever got back from his honeymoon.
Dan’s lips pressed flat. “I didn’t like how the situation looked the second we pulled up. The lawn hadn’t been mowed in weeks. Flyers were bleeding out of the mailbox.”
“It was supposed to be a heart attack victim. Guys with heart trouble don’t prioritize lawn care,” Sherri argued. “But there wasn’t supposed to be a dog. Dispatch always asks. The caller said no dog.”
“The call was bogus!” Dan bounced his fingers off his forehead as if she were dense. “I’m telling you that somebody’s targeting you. And he needs to be stopped before it’s too late. That dog almost killed you today.”
“You don’t think I know that?” she roared back, not sure why she was arguing. “But the 9-1-1 caller couldn’t know I’d respond to the call.”
“He does if he’s monitoring the radio and knows one ambulance is already out,” Dan said, low and ominous, as if he wanted her more freaked than she already was.
“The question is why?” Cole cut in.
“How in blazes are we supposed to know that?” Dan wound his arms over his chest. “Maybe you should be asking that brother of yours.”
Feeling Cole’s wince, Sherri said, “Cut him some slack.” Dan knew Eddie had been with Cole when the call came in, but he was apparently still bent on goading him. Or...was he goading Cole to shift suspicions from him and his buddies?
After all, he’d been the one who’d told her to look the dog in the eye and to hold out her hands to it, and...and...the dog had totally ignored him, even with all his “yahs” and wild gesticulating.
Listen to me. I really am paranoid.
“Cut him slack?” Dan’s voice pitched so high the ER momentarily went quiet. Fisting his hands, he repeated in a hiss, “That. Dog. Almost. Killed. You.” He turned back to Cole. “There’s no good reason why anyone would hurt her. She’s a nice person and a fine paramedic.”
Sherri practically choked over the surprising claim. If only it were true, Luke’s father wouldn’t have had to bury his only son.
Cole nodded as if he couldn’t agree more. “Do you know Ted?”
“Ted?” she and Dan asked at the same time.
“The guy who climbed the wall.”
“Oh.” Dan’s posture relaxed, his arms dropping to his sides. “He told me he was driving by and heard her scream and stopped to help. I’ve never seen him before. The guy had guts, that’s for sure.” Dan snorted. “Or no brains. I’ve never seen anyone climb a wall like that. If he hadn’t come along, I don’t know what...” Dan’s voice petered out as if the thought of her being critically hurt had swiped his breath.
Cole’s fingers brushed over her blanket-covered leg, the intensity in his gaze suggesting he felt the same as Dan.
Her heart hiccupped.
“Is there someplace you can stay for a few days?” Cole held her gaze. “Until we catch this guy, I’d rest easier if you weren’t staying on your own.”
“She’ll stay with us, of course.” Mom swept aside the curtain tugged around the bed and she, Dad and her favorite cousin, Jake, still wearing his firefighter’s uniform, poured into the tiny space. “How’s our girl?”
“Who told you I was here?”
“Jake,” Mom said with a hint of censure as she fussed with the blankets. “Why didn’t you call us?”
Cole edged toward a break in the curtain panels, looking at her parents and Jake as if they were a firing squad.
The smidgen of relief she felt that he seemed as eager to avoid being recognized, as she was for Mom not to remember the huge crush her little girl had had on him, evaporated the instant Jake slapped Cole’s shoulder and held on in a friendly grip. “Cole? Hey, good to see you. I didn’t know you were back in town.”
“He’s our newest deputy sheriff,” Sherri rushed to explain before Jake got the wrong idea about what Cole was doing at her bedside.
A big mistake. Mom and Dad had been peppering her with questions about what happened and why she never called. But the moment their attention swiveled to Cole, she could tell by Mom’s elated smile that she thought she was looking at the answer. As for Dad...
Well, he didn’t look too happy.
* * *
Seven-thirty Monday morning Cole drove to Sherri’s parents’ home to update her on the investigation. He wished he had better news. The streets were already humming with dog walkers, residents collecting their morning papers and young parents loading up kids to drop at daycare before their morning commute. He hoped the Steele household would be up, too, with a pot of coffee brewing.
He rubbed the dull throb at his temples. Forgoing a pain pill for his head this morning might’ve been a mistake. His doctor had warned him the concussion could get worse before it got better and had advised him to take off a couple more days, but with the investigation into the attacks on Sherri rapidly growing cold, that wasn’t a prescription he was willing to stomach. He needed to convince Sherri to open up more. To trust him.
She was holding something back. He’d sensed it when he first interviewed her at the ambulance base. It had been obvious at the hospital. Not that he blamed her for clamming up about Luke. But he had an uneasy feeling that there’d been more to her silence than just grief.
Like something that could point him to who was really targeting her.
Somehow he needed to convince her to trust him with every suspicion, no matter how remote.
Last night Zeke reported he’d visited all the Rottweiler owners on the list—a mixed group ranging from geeky businessmen, who, according to Zeke, were probably hoping a Rottweiler would butch up their image, to brawny construction workers who could double as motorcycle gang members. Their wives, t
oo, from their tattooed-to-the-hilt descriptions. Cole got the impression Zeke could’ve found a few things to arrest more than one of the owners for, but they’d all had a Rottweiler at home to alibi out of the attack on Sherri.
Which had left Sherri’s dead partner’s dog as the only suspect.
Cole winced, recalling her shattered look when he’d asked her if the dog had been Luke’s. But oh, man, that look had been easier to take than her cringe when her mother had eagerly greeted him with a matchmaker’s glint in her eye.
He’d been pleasantly stunned by how pleased her mom had been to see him, but by the sour note of her father’s, “You’re Al’s boy?” he clearly didn’t share his wife’s enthusiasm for an alliance between him and Sherri.
Not that Cole blamed him. What father would want his only daughter attached to the son of a guy who’d pretend to be an upstanding believer on Sunday mornings and cheat on his wife the rest of the week? Let alone to the brother of a druggie.
Shaking off the thought, he turned into their subdivision. It wasn’t as if he was vying for a relationship anyway. Except, given how quickly her family had changed the subject, he clearly hadn’t put on a stellar performance of appearing unaffected by their reactions. He guessed he’d missed having a whole family more than he’d realized.
At least Sherri had a family who’d look out for her now that they knew how serious the situation was.
Cole took the long way to their house to take another pass by Luke’s father’s place three blocks east of it. A quick internet search had caught Cole up on the particulars of Luke’s tragic death. And after Zeke’s investigation had turned up nil, Cole had paid the old man a visit. But the Rottweiler lying in the backyard had squashed his theory that the grieving father was taking out his anger on his son’s surviving partner.
Slowing his truck as he passed the shabby house, Cole slanted a glance down the side yard toward what was visible of the backyard’s fence.
The sway of honey-blonde hair caught his attention.
He slammed his truck into Reverse and glanced down the shadowy narrow strip between the house and a six-foot hedge. Sherri? What on earth was she doing here?
His heart dropped. She must’ve suspected Luke’s father, too. And hadn’t trusted him enough to confide in him.
Cole pulled to the curb as barking erupted from the backyard. He jumped from his truck and charged in the direction he’d last seen her, pounding out his irritation that she’d come here alone.
Suddenly registering that the barking was a high-pitched yap, not the deep bass of the Rottweiler that had occupied the yard the day before, Cole skidded to a stop. Had the old man duped him? Anticipated they’d check on licensed owners and rustled up an imposter?
The hedge swished, and he spotted Sherri at the corner of the five-foot chain-link fence, shrouded by overgrown boughs. She threw a piece of meat into the yard and the yappy white terrier finally shut up. But from the angle of Sherri’s head tilt, she was only interested in the mammoth doghouse by the back door. The doghouse where Luke’s Rottweiler—at least the canine Cole had assumed was Luke’s—had been contentedly sleeping the evening before.
Cole stole up behind her, trying not to notice how beautiful she looked in her billowy white blouse. “What’s so interesting?” he whispered in her ear. The delicate fragrance of her hair caught him off guard, almost as off guard as he’d caught her.
She yelped and spun around on her heel, palm to her chest. “Cole, what are you doing here?”
Head pounding from his dash up the side yard, he lost his cool. “If you suspected Luke’s father of siccing his dog on you, why didn’t you tell me?”
“What? No, I didn’t!”
“No? Then why are you sneaking up to his backyard to spy on—?”
The back screen door slammed open, and her panicked gasp sliced off the last of his question.
“He can’t see me here.” She bolted through the hedge and skirted along it on the neighbor’s side.
“Sherri, wait,” he hissed.
Her former partner’s sour-faced father stalked across the backyard with a pronounced limp, his cane in one hand. The notion that he’d housed a Rottweiler impersonator to fool investigators last night had been ludicrous. There was no way he’d have been able to outrun Eddie and him in the woods yesterday.
The man glared at him through the fence. “What are you doing on my property—” his gaze traveled down Cole’s uniform and back to his face “—deputy?”
“Yes, I’m Deputy Cole Donovan. We spoke last night. Remember?”
“Of course I remember. I’m not addled. What are you doing skulking around my property?”
“I apologize. I heard the dog barking and—”
“What do you want?” His arthritic hand fisted on the top of his cane.
“I was wondering where your son’s Rottweiler is this morning.” Cole paused, watching for a nervous twitch that might give away this man’s involvement after all. Yesterday, he’d said the dog never went in the house. Yet, the doghouse was empty and the yappy terrier was the only canine in the yard. “Does someone walk him for you?”
Atkins flexed the fingers bunched over his cane. “What are you really asking?”
Cole stiffened at his defensiveness. “I’m asking where your dog is, sir.”
Atkins scrutinized his yard’s perimeter and then jutted his chin toward a freshly dug trench in the back corner. “He dug his way out again.” His scowl darkened. “Check the cemetery. My son’s grave is five rows from the back under the oak tree. That’s where the dog goes when he gets out.”
Cole nodded, his empathy for the man’s pain warring with his fear the man would do anything to make Sherri pay for it. “Thank you. Sorry to have bothered you.” Cole strode back alongside the stucco house toward the street and almost bowled Sherri over as she stepped around the hedge. She was clearly shaken from what she’d overheard.
“I’m so ashamed of myself for ever suspecting him. See, that’s why I couldn’t tell you. I’ve already hurt him enough.”
Cole gripped her shoulders and tilted his head until she finally met his gaze. “Luke’s death wasn’t your fault,” he said firmly. Except Atkins blamed her even though the man who’d squeezed the trigger—their patient’s husband—was behind bars. Atkins had made that abundantly clear last night.
And Rottweiler accounted for or not, Atkins’s attitude worried him.
Cole guided her toward his truck. “C’mon, I’ll give you a ride back to your folks’ place and fill you in on the investigation. You shouldn’t be out walking alone these days.”
She rammed her fisted hands into her hips. “I’m not going to let this creep beat me by cowering inside day and night. There are lots of people about this time of day. I don’t think—”
“A dog could run out of anywhere and attack you?” Cole bit out. At her flinch and panicked glances to neighboring yards, he immediately closed his eyes and murmured an apology. Scaring her was not the way to win her trust. “I’m sorry. I don’t want to see you hurt again.”
Her expression softened as he opened the truck door for her. “I do appreciate your help.”
His heart twisted at the vulnerability in her eyes, seriously messing with the professional distance he needed to keep. He strode around the hood, focusing instead on how to use her vulnerability to help him help her. Maybe he needed to do more than update her on the investigation. Maybe he needed to let her accompany him, since she was clearly going to investigate anyway. She’d be safer with him than out on her own. He could even take that extra day or two off work the doctor had suggested and investigate with her on his own time. He started the truck and turned toward the cemetery.
“I thought you were taking me home.”
“Let’s stop by the cemetery first and verify Atkins’s story.”
She nodded, averting her gaze back to the road, her throat working a visibly nervous rhythm.
He gritted his teeth against the ache buildin
g in his chest. Until a few days ago he’d managed to banish Sherri—the girl who’d bandaged his bruised heart along with his hand—from his thoughts most of the time. Now he couldn’t get Sherri—the amazing woman she’d grown into—out of his head.
Or the uncoplike urge to mete out his own justice on her stalker.
SEVEN
Sherri couldn’t stop the sob that burbled up her throat at the sight of Luke’s beloved dog lying on his grave. Terrified of becoming completely unglued in front of Cole, she stumbled out of the truck and blindly hurried toward the grave. The dog shifted sad eyes toward her without raising his head, and let out a soulful whimper. She dropped to her knees at his side and buried her face in the fur at the back of his neck. “I miss him, too, boy. I’m so sorry. So very, very sorry.”
The dog twisted his head and licked the tears streaming down her face. She forced a smile. “He loved you. He didn’t want to leave you. You know that, don’t you?” Lifting her gaze, she reached out and traced the letters of Luke’s name etched in cold stone as the dog whimpered once more.
Cole coaxed her up from the damp ground and, unable to stop herself, she turned into his arms.
“He was a good man,” she blubbered into his shirt. “Always helping people.”
Cole rubbed her back. “Tell me about him.”
She palmed tears from her face. “I’m sorry. I don’t usually cry.”
“There’s nothing wrong with crying for someone you cared about.”
“I wouldn’t be a paramedic anymore if it weren’t for Luke.”
“How’s that?”
She ducked her head, not really wanting to remember.
Cole recaptured her gaze, silently urging her.
Letting out a heavy sigh, she said, “We had a call to a little girl trapped in the back of a car. As firefighters worked to free her legs, I crawled in beside her under a blanket and sang songs to her and told her it was going to be all right. But she was in really rough shape, so when she asked about her mommy, I couldn’t stop myself from telling her that her mommy was waiting for her, even though she’d died on impact.”
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