Suspicious Activities

by Tyler Anne Snell

  She looked at the decorated Christmas tree next to the gym doors, currently pulling the attention of Oliver and Darling’s twin toddler boys while their mother laughed at something funny that Oliver had apparently said. The fact that they made time to come visit every Christmas always made Nikki’s heart feel warm. Behind their group, Kelli joined Mark before pointing toward the kitchen. He shook his head and laughed, most likely knowing Nikki had caved in once again. The five-year-old Elizabeth ran away from them and toward the hallway. Soon, Jonathan and his wife, Kate, walked into view. Their four adopted children, all under the age of six, followed, two already running around with Elizabeth. The other two went to the Christmas tree and fell into whatever trance the Quinn twins had fallen under.

  Orion had grown over the last five years just as its families had. The stress that came with that had been exponentially lessened when she made the realization that Orion was just as much Oliver’s, Mark’s and Jonathan’s as hers. She’d made them partners and had never regretted the decision.

  Nikki let out an exhale of contentment and went back to her desk, ready to shut everything down. However, once her hands were on the keyboard the door opened a crack.

  “Remember when I took three bullets for you?” Jackson Fields asked, barely popping his head in.

  Nikki laughed and looked over at her husband. “I do remember that, actually.”

  “Good.” He opened the door and pointed at his chest. “Changing this one’s diaper before we left the house was a thousand times worse than that.”

  Nikki couldn’t help laughing as she took in the redheaded baby strapped across Jackson’s chest. Mina’s little hands and feet flailed around in the open air as she giggled.

  Jackson walked in a little and turned so Nikki could see that their oldest redhead, Carter, was asleep against his back. “And this one passed out hard in the car.”

  Nikki left her computer, already forgetting to shut it down, and walked over to her little family.

  “It’s almost as if he stayed up too late last night watching TV with Daddy,” she teased. Jackson feigned innocence.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said with a grin. He bent over enough to place his lips on hers, careful to avoid pinning Mina between them. The girl squealed as they parted and Carter stirred. Jackson angled down so the boy could climb off his back. He yawned wide and looked around. Then, after hearing the laughter of the children in the other room, he jetted off toward them, his shaggy hair bouncing along with him.

  “By the way, Calvin said he’ll be here in an hour in the Santa suit,” Jackson said as they walked out of her office. “He promised not to promise Carter another puppy this year.”

  Nikki laughed, remembering the year before when the detective had made that mistake. Now they had a year-old golden retriever named Sir Barks-A-Lot, Barks for short.

  They joined the others and began their annual attempt to take a group picture in front of the tree. Like normal, they lined up and, like normal, madness ensued as kids squirmed and talked and moved about while their parents tried to still them for just one second. Jackson clicked the camera remote several times before he believed he got the right one. Nikki disengaged herself from under his arm and broke through the line of kids before running to the camera on its tripod.

  “Please tell me it’s okay,” Grace said with a whine. It made everyone laugh.

  “Please tell me you got my good side,” Mark jumped in, teasing.

  “Mark, you have no good side,” Jonathan said around his youngest on his shoulders.

  “I wasn’t going to say anything, but he’s right, Mark,” Oliver said, barely able to keep his laughter in.

  Jackson turned and patted Mark on the shoulder. “Don’t worry, Mark, you aren’t that bad.”

  Kelli jumped in with her own remark and then Kate and Darling died laughing at that. The children, who no longer cared what their parents were talking about, started to have their own little conversations. Nikki brought up the camera’s display but didn’t look at the last picture they’d taken. Instead she looked at the group as a whole.

  “How does it look?” Jackson asked from the middle of the madness.

  Nikki smiled. “Perfect.”

  * * * * *

  Keep reading for an excerpt from LAYING DOWN THE LAW by Delores Fossen.

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  Laying Down The Law

  by Delores Fossen

  Chapter One

  Blood.

  Special Agent Cord Granger’s stomach tightened into a knot.

  Since he’d worked for the Drug Enforcement Administration for the past nine years now, he’d seen plenty of blood before at various crime scenes. And a lot more of it than the drops that were here on the floor of the barn.

  But this wasn’t any ordinary crime scene.

  There shouldn’t be blood here because there shouldn’t be a victim.

  Cord cursed under his breath and caught the eye of Sheriff Jericho Crockett, no doubt one of the first responders to the small ranch in Appaloosa Pass. This was the sheriff’s jurisdiction. Jericho normally doled out glares and hard looks to Cord, but tonight he just lifted an eyebrow.

  Cord lifted one of his own and felt that knot tighten even more.

  “Miss Southerland insisted on seeing you,” Jericho told Cord. “Said she wouldn’t get in the ambulance until you got here.”

  Yeah, Jericho had relayed something similar about Karina Southerland when he’d phoned Cord about twenty minutes earlier. Jericho had asked him to come to the rental house on a local ranch and had rattled off the address. As an agent, Cord got plenty of bad calls in the middle of the night, some even from local sheriffs, but this one wasn’t DEA-related.

  This one was, well, personal.

  “Karina said it was the Moonlight Strangler who attacked her?” Cord asked the sheriff.

  Jericho nodded. “The guy had on a ski mask, came at her from behind. It fits the MO, too.” He glanced up at the night sky, where there was a full moon.

  The glancing hadn’t been necessary, though. A full moon was always a reminder of murder. That could happen when a person had a personal connection to a vicious serial killer known as the Moonlight Strangl
er.

  And when the killer was Cord’s biological father.

  It didn’t matter that Cord didn’t personally know the man. Though they had met. In a way. When Cord had been on the receiving end of the Moonlight Strangler’s knife only a month ago. But because the Moonlight Strangler had pumped him full of drugs, Cord didn’t have many memories of the incident at all.

  Only the scars.

  And while Cord would never—never—think of that snake as his father, they would always share the same blood.

  “How bad is Karina hurt?” Cord added.

  Jericho hitched his thumb to the rear of the barn. “See for yourself. It’s not nearly as bad as it could have been.”

  True. She could be dead. “Did she say how she got away from...her attacker?”

  “Oh, she’s got plenty to say. Thought you’d want to hear it for yourself so you can try to make sense of it.” Jericho paused. “Is there any sense to be made from this?”

  Cord hoped there was. But he wasn’t seeing it so far.

  “The sooner you talk to her,” Jericho continued, “the sooner she’ll be in that ambulance so I can get the CSIs in here to examine the place.”

  Cord wanted that, as well. Because the CSIs had to find something, anything.

  Making sure he didn’t step on the blood or any other item that could possibly be evidence, Cord made his way toward the two paramedics who weren’t looking any happier about this situation than Jericho or him. The ambulance was parked at the front of the barn, the red lights still on and slashing through the night. That alone spiked his adrenaline and so did the fear of what he might see when he spotted the woman on the floor by some stacked hay bales.

  Karina Southerland.

  Over the past month he’d met with her at least a dozen times. In those confrontations—and they were confrontations, all right—she’d been intense but composed.

  There wasn’t much left of that composure now.

  Her dark brown hair was a tangled mess, strands of it sticking to the perspiration on her face. No jeans and working cowboy boots as she’d worn during their previous meetings. Tonight, she had on just an oversize plain white T-shirt that she was obviously using as a nightgown. It was cut low enough at the neck that he could see the bruises there. She had bruises on her knees, too, and scrapes and nicks on her hands that looked like defensive wounds.

  And there was the blood, of course.

  A smear of it was still on her left cheek, which one of the paramedics was tending. Another cut on her left arm. She had yet another small one near her shoulder.

  Along with the two paramedics, there was a third guy with graying brown hair. Lanky to the point of being scrawny, he was pacing just outside the rear entrance of the barn. The guy was chewing on his left thumbnail, had a cell phone gripped in his right hand and was tossing some very concerned glances at Karina. He was in his fifties, and it looked as if he’d dressed in a hurry. No boots, just his socks. But there was a gun tucked at an angle in the waist of his baggy jeans.

  “Who are you?” Cord asked the guy right off.

  He stopped chewing on his thumbnail long enough to answer. “Rocky Finney. I’m a ranch hand here. You need to help Karina.”

  “He works for me,” Karina volunteered. “And he saved my life.”

  Cord stared at Rocky to let him know he wanted a lot more details than the ranch hand had just doled out to him.

  “I was sleeping in the bunkhouse.” Rocky glanced at the small barn-shaped building about twenty yards from the main house. Such that it was. The main house was small, too. “I heard Karina scream, and when I came out, this man wearing a mask was choking her. I shot at him. I think I hit him in the shoulder. And he ran off.”

  Maybe some of the blood belonged to the attacker. If Rocky was telling the truth, that is.

  “Where did the man run?” Cord continued.

  Rocky pointed in the direction of a heavily wooded area. Which was also the direction of the road since it was just on the other side of all those trees.

  “There’s no blood trail immediately around the barn,” Jericho quickly informed Cord. “But the CSIs will look. I don’t want anyone in that area until they’ve searched it.”

  Neither did Cord. Because blood could give them the DNA of the person responsible for this.

  “She needs stitches,” the paramedic said when he snared Cord’s gaze.

  The bulky, bald paramedic looked at Cord as if he could magically make Karina get in that ambulance and head to the hospital. But Cord had less influence on her than anyone else in this barn.

  “I told you Willie Lee was innocent,” Karina said, her mouth tight, “that he wasn’t the Moonlight Strangler.” Her voice was raspy but clear enough for Cord to hear the accusation in there.

  The Moonlight Strangler had been a source of contention between Karina and him after Willie Lee Samuels was identified as the serial killer. And then captured. That had happened a month ago, after he’d attacked Cord.

  Of course, Willie Lee didn’t know about the multiple murder charges against him yet because he’d sustained a gunshot wound and been in a coma ever since being taken into custody.

  And Cord had been the one to shoot him.

  Willie Lee hadn’t been able to confess. Hadn’t been able to confirm anything related to the dozens of murders he’d committed as the Moonlight Strangler. Or any of the other crimes for that matter. Still, Cord had been sure Willie Lee was the right man.

  Until tonight.

  If the Moonlight Strangler was in a coma, then who the heck had attacked Karina?

  “He’s your father,” Karina added. “Don’t you feel in your bones that he’s innocent?”

  “No. I don’t feel anything about him one way or another.”

  It was a lie. Cord felt plenty. Plenty that he didn’t intend to share with her or anyone else for that matter.

  Cord knelt down to make better eye contact with Karina. “Why don’t you go ahead and get in the ambulance? We can talk this out on the way to the hospital.”

  She didn’t budge, probably because she didn’t trust him. She’d wanted him here only so she could say that she had told him so, that the cops had the wrong man in custody. But he glanced around at the signs of the struggle to remind her what’d gone on here. The toppled bales of hay and feed. The scattered tools and tack.

  And the blood.

  “You don’t want to stay here,” Cord reminded her.

  He motioned for the paramedics to come closer and do their job, and Cord breathed a little easier when Karina didn’t resist. Once she was on the stretcher, they started toward the ambulance. Cord followed right along beside them.

  Rocky didn’t attempt to go with them, probably because Jericho ordered him to stay put. No doubt so he could question the ranch hand and begin this investigation. Well, unless...

  Cord stopped that thought. He didn’t want to go there yet.

  Because the real Moonlight Strangler hadn’t done this.

  “Make sure the horses are okay,” Karina called out to Rocky.

  Rocky assured her that he would.

  “I’ll meet you at the hospital as soon as the CSIs get here and I take Rocky to the station,” Jericho said to Cord. “Anything Karina says to you will need to go in the report.”

  That last part wasn’t exactly a request, but Cord had already known it would need to happen. Whether he wanted this or not, he was officially involved. Partly because Karina had insisted on calling him. Also in part because anything that had to do with the Moonlight Strangler automatically had to do with Cord.

  “You’ll need to drop the charges against Willie Lee,” Karina insisted.

  Cord had been stunned with the news of this attack on Karina, but he was a lawman above all else. And a born skeptic. Being a
bandoned at a gas station when he was just a toddler could do that. Hard to grow up trusting people when most people he met weren’t trustworthy.

  Karina just might fall into that category.

  And that was just one of the many, many reasons he wouldn’t even consider trying to get those charges dropped against Willie Lee.

  “Did you set all of this up to make Willie Lee look innocent?” Cord came right out and asked her.

  She didn’t exactly look outraged by the question. Just disgusted. “You think I had this done to myself?” Her breath shattered, and the tears came while her gaze skirted across the two cuts she could see.

  There was another one, on her cheek, that she couldn’t see.

  The bald paramedic scowled at Cord, probably because he thought Cord was being too hard on her. If he was, he’d apologize later. For now, he needed to get to the truth, and the fastest way to do that was by not pulling any punches.

  “Did you set this all up?” Cord persisted.

  The glare she gave him could have frozen a pot of boiling water. “No.”

  Cord didn’t want to believe her—it would be easier if he didn’t. Easier because it would mean there wasn’t a killer out there. But even if she hadn’t done this to herself and there was another killer, it didn’t mean Willie Lee was innocent.

  One of the paramedics got in the driver’s seat. The other got into the back with Cord and Karina, and they finally started the drive to the hospital.

  “This attack could have been done by a copycat,” Cord suggested to her. “Maybe someone who wanted to get back at you?”

  If this had been a regular interrogation, this was the point where Cord would have asked Karina if she had any enemies. But he already knew the answer.

  She did.

  And Cord was one of them.

  It was hard not to be enemies with a woman who was defending and praising a serial killer. But that’s exactly what Karina had done.

  “You don’t know Willie Lee,” she said. “And if you did, you’d know he wasn’t capable of murder.”