Dead End

by Susan Sleeman

  “Why is this even happening?” she cried out. “Why is someone shooting at me?”

  Reed hadn’t given that any thought, and he wouldn’t until the deputies rolled up and cleared the area.

  She started crying.

  “Shh, honey. It’s okay.” He gave her a bear hug with his free arm. “I’m here, and we’ll be fine.”

  “But you told 911 that he could get to us.”

  “It’s possible, but I’ll bet the sirens spooked him and he took off.” Reed could only hope that was true.

  “You really think so?” she asked between tears.

  “Sure,” he said, but kept a tight hold on her. Not only to protect her, but hopefully to offer comfort. He only hoped she found his arm around her comforting. He honestly didn’t know.

  He heard fast-moving footsteps in the house, and he glanced at the patio door where a deputy paused. “Agent Rice? Deputy Schooner here.”

  “We’re on the other side of the hot tub. Shooter’s on the hill. May have taken off when he heard your sirens.”

  “Stay put. I’ll skirt the property to get up there and take a look.”

  “Copy that,” Reed responded and squeezed Sierra. “See, honey. We’ll be fine.”

  Reed heard the tall grasses rustle nearby. He assumed it was Schooner, but Reed still moved to fix his handgun on the area and make sure his body remained covering Sierra. More sirens came their way and soon deputies spilled out of the house and were swarming the hillside.

  “You’re clear, Agent Rice,” Schooner yelled from the hill.

  Reed pushed off Sierra, holstered his weapon, and helped her sit up. She had yard debris in her hair, and he scooted closer to gently extract it.

  “Thank you for saving my life.” She gave him a tremulous smile. “And for grooming me.”

  He liked that she could find humor in the situation. “Any time.”

  She clutched his arm. “I know I made light of it, but you shouldn’t sound so nonchalant about it. You would have taken a bullet for me. I’m so…” She shook her head. “So in awe of your bravery.”

  He didn’t want credit for doing the only thing he could do in the situation. “It’s my job.”

  She frowned. “So that’s it? You did your job to protect me?”

  “No, it’s so much more than that, but I figured you wouldn’t want to hear about anything else.”

  “I don’t care about anything right now except that I’m alive and you’re alive.” She scooted close to him, slid her hands into his hair, and pulled his head down for a kiss. An all-encompassing one that made his toes curl.

  He swept his arms around her and pulled her against him. Deepened the kiss, letting every emotion about being alive fill his kiss. She matched him measure for measure, and kissing her was everything he thought it would be. More than he thought. He never felt so alive. So enthralled. Captivated.

  “Um, Agent?” Schooner’s voice was far too close.

  Reed gently pulled back and worked hard to get his breathing under control.

  Sierra blinked a few times but then her gaze drifted over Reed’s shoulder and her face turned a crimson red. “Oh…I…I’m sorry, Deputy. You didn’t need to see that PDA.”

  He smiled, but it was tight. “Does that mean the two of you didn’t sustain any injuries?”

  Reed looked at Sierra and saw blood on her face. “Your face is bleeding.”

  She touched it. “A bullet grazed the tub and plastic splinters flew.”

  “I’ll get medics out here,” Schooner offered.

  Sierra shook her head. “I’m fine, and we need to get up on that hill to collect evidence before dark.”

  “We?” Schooner asked.

  “I’m Sierra Byrd, trace evidence expert at the Veritas Center. Your sheriff hired me to process the murder scene here Sunday night. I’m sure he’ll want me to handle this, too.”

  “Let me give my sarge a call to confirm that.” Schooner stepped away.

  Reed searched Sierra’s face again, still seeing hints of terror in her eyes, and a sharp bolt of anger cut through him over what had just happened to her. He wanted to cocoon her in his arms, take her far from here, and never let trouble come near her again.

  But he’d have to settle for just letting her recover, then getting her away from this scene. “Maybe you should leave the forensics to someone else. Climbing a hill and scouting around after being shot at might be too much.”

  “Are you kidding?” She pulled back her shoulders. “That’s precisely why I’m going to do it. No one is going to shoot at me and get away with it.”

  Sierra told Reed she was fine, but her insides and knees were quivering as she carried her kit up the hill beside him—quivering from fear and also from her reckless behavior back there.

  What was she thinking by kissing Reed? She wouldn’t have to imagine it anymore, she’d experienced it and would never forget the way she felt. Never forget his insistent yet gentle touch. Never forget his strong arms around her or the beat of his heart in his solid chest.

  “I first spotted him just ahead,” Reed said, shouldering the assault rifle he borrowed.

  He grabbed onto a small tree trunk and hoisted his body above the retaining wall. He said there was no way he’d take her up on the hill without a firearm in hand. He couldn’t use his duty weapon after firing at the suspect. When a law enforcement officer discharged a weapon—either accidentally, intentionally, missing or hitting or killing a suspect—their agency confiscated the gun and conducted a full investigation. Firing his gun again would confuse the evidence, so he borrowed the rifle from Deputy Schooner.

  Reed held out his hand and gave her a tight smile. She let out a long breath of unease over scouting out this area in the approaching dark and took his hand. He held it for longer than necessary, looking into her eyes, a question in his.

  “Yes, we have to do this tonight,” she said.

  “You can read my mind now, huh?” He chuckled.

  “It’s what you were thinking, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “We can’t risk losing any evidence and that means processing the scene now.”

  “Yeah, I get that,” he said. “I just don’t like exposing you to danger like this.”

  “The shooter’s gone. We both know that.”

  “Gone, yes, but how far?” Frowning, he turned on his flashlight and picked his way through the wild greenery in slippery dress shoes, keeping his balance. He held back branches for her and even helped her scale a few large boulders, holding her hand tightly and confidently.

  He glanced back at her. “If we run across any of the bullets I fired, I’d appreciate it if we could mark them for our team to retrieve.”

  “Of course,” she said as she knew it would make his agency’s investigation go faster and he would be out of commission for a shorter time.

  “There.” He pointed ahead with his flashlight. “The grass is flattened. Has to be the stand the shooter took while waiting for you.”

  She slipped ahead of him and knelt down by the circular area in the grass to search with her magnifying glass. “Looks like he policed his brass.”

  “Not that a special forces guy would collect casings on a mission, but if our shooter is the Ranger you ran into yesterday, makes sense that he’s smart enough to do it.”

  She looked over her shoulder at Reed. “Sounds like you really think it’s him.”

  “I figure he’d be the only one shooting at you. If he’s watched TV or listened to a radio, he knows you can identify him.”

  “But how does he know my identity? That wasn’t in the news stories.”

  “No, but you were the only person who interacted with him.”

  Her heart fell. “And I told him I was on the forensic staff and our van was sitting right there. He could’ve connected the two and staked this place out, hoping I would show up again.”

  Reed frowned. “Or worse, he staked out the Veritas Center and followed us. I hate to think that h
appened, but I had no reason to watch for a tail.”

  A sudden chill enveloped her, and she shivered.

  “Either way, we’ve got to find him.”

  “Seems to me the only way we’re going to do that is to figure out the woman’s ID. Assuming, of course, that he’s her husband.”

  Reed surveyed the area then dropped to the ground in a prone shooting stance, placing the rifle at an angle facing the hot tub. He sighted it in. “I put the distance to the hot tub around a hundred yards. Direct and easy shot. One any sharp shooter could make in his sleep. So the Ranger shouldn’t have missed.”

  She shuddered at the thought. “Then why did he?”

  “Maybe he was just trying to scare you.” Reed didn’t sound like he believed his own statement.

  And she didn’t believe it either. Not with all the information Grady had shared over the years about sharp shooters. “If he is a sniper, he would follow the ‘one shot, one kill’ motto, right?”

  Reed took in a sharp breath and nodded.

  She thought back to the first shot. To that icy panic that burst through her body. Two, maybe three, more shots followed, a hot bolt of fear cutting through her. She swallowed to let the feelings pass before she hyperventilated. She had to analyze this without any emotions at all.

  The gun had fired, and she bent down. “On his initial shot, I think I bent over to take a better look at the deck just before he fired. And then the hot tub protected me until you did.”

  “Which tells me he wasn’t using a .50 caliber round.”

  She nodded as she knew a .50 would go through cement blocks from a mile or more away, and at this distance, the hot tub wouldn’t even have slowed it down.

  “Looks like a thirty-degree trajectory.” She had calculated bullet trajectory at crime scenes so many times that she felt confident in her estimate even without the tools to confirm it.

  And surprisingly, Reed didn’t question her assessment as he came to his feet and stared down on the house in the waning light. She was suddenly aware of his wide shoulders and his powerful build. And of his mood. Tense restraint. To put it simply, he was worried about her. Her heart soared at the thought but then tightened. If he was this worried, what would he do? Treat her like a helpless female like her brothers did, or would he respect her need to do her job?

  Only time would tell.

  He turned to her. “We should look around to see if there’s any evidence of how long he’d been here. I doubt he’d be careless enough to leave anything behind, but…”

  She knew he meant something like remnants from snacks or drinks consumed while lying in wait. Flashlight aimed at the ground, he made his way around the shooter’s nest, and then shook his head. “Nothing.” He pointed to the west. “I tracked him this way. Let’s follow his exit path.”

  He waited for her to start off first this time, and she thought it might be because if shooting started again, he could more easily take her down and protect her.

  As they set off, she had just a moment to realize how incongruous his dress shoes and expensive suit were in this scrub. She looked at him. “Do you always wear a suit at work?”

  “Except when we’re on a surveillance or a takedown op.” He eyed her. “Looks kind of crazy out here, doesn’t it?”

  She nodded, and seeing that he knew she’d been studying him, she felt a warm blush rise over her face. She shone her light ahead and focused on the ground to follow the shooter’s trail. She went about fifty feet and came to a stop. “Wait, what’s that?”

  Reed knelt down to stare at it. “It’s a Leatherman.”

  Sierra squatted next to him. “You think the shooter dropped it?”

  Reed looked around. “Grass’s been flattened in a wider path here. Looks like he took a spill. If it is our Ranger, he could’ve been wearing a duty belt and it fell out of a pouch.”

  She handed a marker to Reed. “Put this next to it, and I’ll take a few pictures.”

  He set the white tented marker holding the number one next to the multi-purpose tool and moved out of the way. She snapped a few pictures then pulled an evidence bag from her kit and dropped the tool inside.

  “If I can lift prints from that, and he is military or even former military, his prints will be in their database.” Excited about the lead, she came to her feet and smiled. “I never thought I’d say this, but I’m glad the guy shot at me.”

  Reed frowned. “I’m not glad for that at all, but the evidence he left behind could be a godsend.”

  She moved on, staying low and shining her light at the ground. “There. Blood.”

  He stepped closer and squatted. She knelt beside him.

  Reed stared at the blood. “I must’ve hit him. Or he hurt himself in the fall.”

  “Either way, we have his blood.” She placed a second marker and took pictures, then got out a plastic vial and small spoon and scooped the blood into the vial.

  Now that they had evidence of Reed likely hitting the suspect, would Reed be put on leave? And if so, would he have to step away from the investigation? Worse—if that happened, he would have to step away from her.

  The thought left her cold inside. She wanted to find Eddie, but she didn’t want to do it without Reed at her side. Especially not after this shooting. Feeling out of sorts, she put the vial into her kit.

  Reed pointed at it. “You collected plenty of blood for DNA, right?”

  “Today’s DNA processing requires very little blood and this is more than enough.”

  He stood. “Let’s follow the trail.”

  She got up and when she bent to grab her kit, he took it from her hands.

  Even though she could carry it, she appreciated his kindness, and she wouldn’t argue. They followed the blood trail to where it curled down in the neighbor’s yard around the side of their house to the sidewalk, and continued down the street for a good quarter mile before abruptly ending.

  “He parked here,” she said.

  Reed nodded and looked around, his gaze stopping on one of the houses. “Looks like that house has a security camera pointed this direction.”

  He spun and marched up to the door. On the way he brushed off his suit, straightened his tie, and ran a hand through his hair. Sierra had to be a mess from diving away from the bullets and traipsing through scrub, but she didn’t bother to try to fix her appearance. Reed would do the talking and she could stay in the background.

  He pounded loudly on the door, his shoe tapping on the concrete stoop as he waited. A redheaded teenager opened the rich wood door and eyed Reed.

  “Special Agent Reed Rice. FBI.” He displayed his credentials.

  The kid looked less than impressed. “This about the guy down the street who got whacked the other night?”

  Sierra cringed at the teen’s language, but Reed simply nodded. “We’re in pursuit of a suspect that we think was parked out front of your house. I’d like to take a look at your security camera footage.”

  “Yeah, sure man. I can pull it up on my phone.” He got his cell out of his jeans pocket and started tapping on the screen, then turned it to face Reed. “Hit rewind to back up to what you want to see.”

  Reed pressed the back arrow and the footage rewound. He suddenly punched play. Sierra stepped up closer to get a better look. The shooter came limping down the street. He wore a duty belt and carried a rifle. He was dressed in camo pants and shirt, and a green stocking cap. One of his legs had a dark stain, likely the blood they trailed.

  “Dude, he’s like some army dude,” the teen said in awe.

  Reed held the phone closer to Sierra and looked her in the eye. “But is he our army dude?”

  She enlarged the picture, and the answer was clear. She just didn’t know how she felt about it. Not at all.

  23

  Before stepping away from the kid’s house, Reed checked his email to be sure the teen had actually sent the complete video that showed the shooter arriving early in the morning. He started playing it and fast-forward
ed to the end where the shooter returned to his car.

  “Thanks for the video.” Reed pocketed his phone and gave the teen his card. “If you see this guy around here again, don’t approach him, but give me a call.”

  “Sure, dude, I can do that.” He shoved the card into his pocket.

  Reed motioned for Sierra to precede him down the sidewalk. “Thank goodness for kids not thinking about sharing their video and knowing how to do it.”

  Sierra nodded, but she’d gone quiet the minute she ID’d the guy as the man she’d met out front of Caulfield’s house. The fact that a special forces guy had shot at her had to be freaking her out. Shoot, it was freaking him out, too. Not in the same way. But he knew how close he’d come to losing her when he was just getting to know her and wanted to start a relationship with her.

  He met her gaze. “Want to talk about it?”

  She shrugged. “If I hadn’t bent down when I did, I would dead right now. Dead.”

  He didn’t care if a pair of deputies were standing out front of Caulfield’s house with Detective Miller who’d arrived at some point. Reed took her hand and pulled her closer to him. “You don’t have to worry. Now that I know he’s gunning for you, I won’t let him get to you again. You’ll stay at the Veritas Center until we have him in custody.”

  She pulled her hand free and looked up at him. “I might be terrified, but I’m not running scared and hiding out. I’m going to find Eddie.”

  Reed stopped and met her gaze. “The shooter’s a spec ops guy, for crying out loud. If he wants to take you out, letting you stay at Veritas isn’t even safe enough. I should put you in a safe house with a couple of agents for protection.”

  “I knew this was going to happen.”

  “What was going to happen?” He was honestly baffled.

  “I appreciate your concern, but you’re not going to put me anywhere.” She crossed her arms. “It’s my decision on what I do.”

  “Then decide to follow my instructions because I’m right,” he snapped and at the tightening of her eyes, he regretted it. But come on. A trained shooter was after her, and she wasn’t being reasonable.