Shirlee McCoy - Deadly Christmas Secrets

It didn’t look as if it had been used. No tire tracks in the weeds and grass that tangled around chunks of blacktop. Logan wasn’t taking any chances, though. He stayed low, stayed hidden, sliding through the darkness the way he’d done dozens of times on dozens of other cases. Set back from the interstate, the property seemed cut off from the world, the hushed tones of the winter storm and the whisper of distant traffic the only sounds.

If he looked, he could find the lights of cars traveling the highway, but he was focused on the mission. The cold, the snow, the wind, all of it ceased to exist as he moved toward the outbuildings.

At first, it was just a hint of something in the air, a chemical scent that brought Logan to a complete stop. He’d nearly been taken out by improvised explosive devices on several occasions, and he recognized the acrid smell of burning electrical wires. He inhaled cold, crisp air and caught a whiff of it again.

He scanned the property and saw a black column of smoke billowing up from the barn. No flames that he could see, but the place was burning.

A distraction of some sort?

Didn’t matter. Logan had to check it out, make sure that no one was trapped inside the wooden structure. It would go up in minutes, the entire thing devoured by the fire. Someone inside would have limited time to escape.

He pulled out his firearm as he crossed the clearing that separated the field from the barn. At one point, there’d been fencing. Now the old posts lay in piles on the ground.

He moved around to the back of the barn, searching for a window he could climb through. The wide front door would have opened easily, but he didn’t plan to be ambushed as he stepped into the structure.

Flames lapped the back corner of the building, the falling snow adding just enough moisture to the old wood to keep the entire wall from being consumed. It would happen eventually. If he was going to enter the building, he needed to move quickly.

He rounded the corner, found a broken window and climbed through. Mice scurried through the rotten hay beneath his feet. A cat yowled from somewhere deeper in the barn. He’d rescue it if he could. After he made sure the perp wasn’t hiding in one of the stalls.

His light illuminated bridles and harnesses, old tools, all of it hanging from hooks on the walls. Smoke drifted listlessly through the empty stalls, the open and broken windows sucking it out as quickly as it entered. Whoever had set fire to the barn hadn’t poured accelerant inside. A mistake. On a dryer day, the place would already be consumed. Tonight, though, the fire was taking its time. But once it entered the building, it would have plenty of fuel—dry hay, dry walls, dry boards that lay abandoned on the floor.

He stepped over a few, moving toward the front of the barn and the double doors that he could use to escape. His light flashed on piles of hay, bags of food, glowing eyes...

He moved toward whatever was crouched in the corner and saw the kitten that had been yowling. Ugly as sin, its black fur long and matted, one of its ears missing a chunk. He’d seen plenty of barn cats when he was growing up. This one wasn’t more than three months old. He expected it to run, but it approached instead, mewing pitifully as it wove through his legs.

He scooped it up and tucked it into the pocket of his coat. His light glanced off more feed bags, a water barrel, a foot. Leg. Body. Nearly hidden by the water barrel and the feed bags. Not a hint of movement. Not a breath.

Dead.

He knew it before he approached, was certain of it before his light flashed across the prone body, the vacant eyes. Shot in the head. Point-blank from the look of things.

Blood stained the guy’s jacket, and Logan pulled back the fabric, revealing another bullet wound. This one to the left of the collarbone. A nice, neat little hole, a gunshot wound the guy would have survived. Had survived. The guy’s boots were covered in dirt, his pant cuffs wet from snow. Pine needles were stuck in his hair and jutting out of his coat hood.

The perp.

No doubt about it.

He’d made it to what he thought was safety.

And then he’d been killed.

* * *

“This does not make me happy,” Stella said for what seemed like the hundredth time since they’d left the cabin.

Harper ignored her, her gaze focused on the slushy road, the headlights of her pickup truck splashing across gravel, dirt and snow.

“I know you heard me,” Stella pressed, her voice tight with frustration. She wasn’t happy with Harper’s plan, but short of tying her up and locking her in a closet, there hadn’t been a whole lot she could do about it.

Except come along for the ride.

Which she had.

A shame, because Harper would have preferred solitude to Stella’s griping complaints.

“It would be difficult not to hear you, seeing as how you’ve said it a hundred times,” she muttered, and Stella laughed.

“I do have a tendency to repeat myself when I feel as if I’m not being heard. It comes from working with an entire team of men.”

“You’re the only female HEART member?” she asked as she finally reached the main road, pulled onto asphalt and headed toward the old Dillon place. That was where Logan was. Just waiting for Sheriff Hunter to give him a ride back. He’d called Stella to let her know, and Harper had overheard.

She hadn’t seen any reason to make him wait. She had a vehicle, and she knew where the Dillon place was. She also knew that the guy Logan had been tracking was dead. She’d gotten that information from one of the deputy sheriffs who had been collecting evidence at the cabin.

“For now,” Stella said. “My boss has a sister who wants to join the team. If she can convince her brothers to let her do it, she’ll make a good team member.”

“That’ll be nice for you,” Harper said, her gaze fixed on the snowy road and the flakes that drifted lazily in the headlights. The storm had lost most of its strength. If the meteorologist was correct, there’d be rain by morning and just enough warmth to melt whatever remained of the snow.

“We’ll see.”

“You don’t like her?”

“I like Emma fine. I’m just not sure she’s cut out for the work. It’s a tough job, a dangerous one. She’s still a kid.”

“A teenager?”

“Twenty-four.”

“And you’re what? Twenty-five?”

“I’ll be thirty in the spring, but I’ve had a lot of jobs, done a lot of things. Seen a lot. Emma has been...protected. A lot.”

“So maybe it’s time for her not to be. A person can’t grow up if she’s never given the opportunity.”

“A great philosophy in theory, Harper, but letting her grow up in the kind of work HEART does is a quick way to get her killed. Kind of like you, wandering around when a killer is on the loose.”

“The guy is dead, Stella.”

“And someone killed him.”

“Someone? Logan shot him,” she responded, not quite sure what Stella was getting at.

“Not every gunshot wound is fatal. Logan fired a shot that struck the guy, but it wasn’t the shot that killed him. Logan said there were two bullet wounds. The second one was point-blank to the perpetrator’s head.”

Harper hadn’t known that, hadn’t really taken the time to ask much after she’d heard the guy was dead. She’d assumed that Logan’s shot had killed him, and she’d thought the danger was past, that the threat had ended with the man’s death.

“You’re quiet,” Stella said.

“I didn’t realize the gunman was murdered.”

“He was,” Stella said simply. “If you’d asked, maybe you wouldn’t have decided you needed to drive out into a storm to rescue someone who doesn’t need it.”