Janice Johnson - Cop by Her Side

A burst of gunfire from the small room brought Clay’s head around and an expletive escaped him. That was where she’d seen the kid.

Don’t be stupid. Make sure it’s secured in here first.

They all had assignments. Raynor had gone after the boy.

Like Jane, Clay was turning carefully, looking for targets. All four were being cuffed or lay still on the floor. Clay checked to be sure the guy he’d shot no longer held a weapon, then crouched by him. His eyes were open and sightless. Dead. And no wonder—his body was riddled with bullet holes.

Clay was the closest to the open door that led into the tack room. He spun in, weapon extended, and found two more bad guys down, one dead, the other bleeding and cuffed. The kid was alive but bloody. Chief Raynor was trying to yank the boy’s T-shirt off, hampered by the duct tape binding his hands and ankles. Clay had forgotten the poor kid wore a cast on one arm already.

“Where are you hurt?” Raynor was saying in a voice Clay hadn’t heard from him before.

“I’m okay.” The boy’s voice was thin and high. “I’m okay.” And, damn, the skin where the duct tape had been ripped off his face was painfully red.

Clay saw the moment relief hit Raynor. “I need a knife,” he said hoarsely.

“I’ve got one,” Clay said. He’d worn a backup .38 on one ankle and a knife sheathed on the other. He pushed up his pant leg, took out the knife and sliced the duct tape, freeing the boy’s ankles and then his hands.

Matt Raynor leaped into his uncle’s arms, clutching on with his one good arm while the chief grabbed tight and bowed his head over the boy’s.

Clay backed away, feeling an unfamiliar sting behind his eyelids.

It was all over but the mop-up.

* * *

WITH THE TAILGATE of her Yukon open again, Jane peeled off the vest. She felt...weird.

She was in the here and now, but every blink brought a miniflashback. The effect was like a strobe light.

Dark, slow shapes moving in the pasture—horses.

Diving in the window, shards of glass ripping at her vest and clothing. Fear.

Blue, white and red lights swirling atop aide cars.

Knowing she couldn’t totally evade the chair swung at her. Dodging, feeling it connect.

She gingerly fingered her shoulder and upper arm and knew there’d be a bruise. A whopper.

The weapon jumping in her hand. Blood. Astonishment on the man’s face as he stumbled and began to fall.

Men’s voices on the other side of her SUV, a rumble that might be comprehensible if she could bring herself out of this fugue state.

The slackness of death. Death she had caused.

Jane heard herself make a sound. Either she had killed a man tonight—or Clay Renner had. Or both of them.

“You okay?”

Of course it was his voice. Of course she hadn’t heard him coming.

“Why wouldn’t I be?” she said sharply.

“You ever shot anybody before?”

The angle at which she thrust her jaw forward made her neck hurt. Pride was a powerful force. Even so, she hesitated. “No,” she admitted, grudgingly.

He swung the back door of the Yukon wider open and half sat on the back, one booted foot braced on the ground. “I have,” he said, tone flat, reminding her of his military service. “This is the first time as a cop I’ve killed a man.”

“You sure you did? I thought I killed a man.” The words were no sooner out than she cringed at the hostility in her voice. What? Was she turning this into a competition?

And what did that make her?

Clay didn’t say anything for a minute, only watched her. Uneasily, she wondered how much he could see.

Finally he stirred. “The M.E. will let us know eventually. My guess is, we killed him a couple of times over.”

She squeezed her eyes shut and saw it all over again.

Astonishment on the man’s face as he stumbled and began to fall. She swallowed and opened her eyes.

“We all hope we’ll never have to do that,” Clay said, in a tone so gentle she didn’t recognize it coming from him.

Jane was suddenly horrified at how terribly she was behaving. If he could be decent, she could, too.

“No,” she said. “Or yes. I never wanted—” At the taste of bile, she had to swallow again. She turned her back on Clay.

The faint sound of the Yukon sighing made her realize he’d risen to his feet and stood behind her.

“Jane.”

“Don’t say anything,” she whispered.

A pause. “Why?” His voice, too, was so soft he wouldn’t have been heard by anyone more than a foot or two away.

“Because—I can’t talk to you.”

“You don’t trust me.” Now he sounded harsh.

“No.” She steadied. “I can’t.”

“You can, but you’ll never believe it, will you?”

She held herself together by pure force of will. “No.”

It was as if they were in a bubble of silence. Everything around them seemed far away. Jane didn’t move, wasn’t sure she breathed.

Then the bubble popped and she heard him walking away. One of the aide cars was pulling out, accelerating. She realized she should have been out there while the wounded were loaded, not hiding here in the darkness.

Following Clay, she reached a second aide car and saw that Ryan Dunlap had been hoisted aboard on a gurney. He was swearing, an impressive litany that made her smile despite everything. Thank God he’d regained consciousness. Apparently the bullet had only grazed his skull.

She leaned into the back of the ambulance. “Headache?”

“Like I got slammed with a two-by-four.” He swore a little more. “Sorry, Lieutenant.” Then, “Is it true? The kid’s okay?”

“It’s true. He’s safe. We did our job.”

One of the EMTs hopped to the ground. “Lieutenant, we have to go.”

“See you at the hospital,” she told Ryan, and stepped back as the doors were slammed and, a moment later, the aide car pulled away.

She watched it drive away for a minute, then trudged toward the barn, wishing Sergeant Clay Renner wasn’t sure to be there.

CHAPTER TWO

CLAY WAS SITTING behind the desk in the captain’s office frowning over a weekly report he’d been too busy yesterday to study, the reason he’d come in on a Saturday he’d intended to take off, when he heard raised voices and a scuffle in the squad room. Nothing unusual in that, but he glanced out the open doorway of the office anyway in case someone needed a hand.

“What are you doing? Why are you grabbing me?” A man was trying to explode upward as one of the detectives pressed him into a chair.

He wasn’t the usual lowlife being hauled in. The guy was in his thirties, good-looking, thin and maybe earnest when he wasn’t distraught. More like a computer geek than anything. He wore wire-rimmed glasses and had dark, curly hair poking out every which way.

There wasn’t a lot of help to be had out there right now in case this guy went off the deep end, so Clay headed toward the disturbance, cutting his way between desks. “What’s going on?” he asked, when he got close.

“I just want to report my wife and kid missing, and nobody will listen!” the computer nerd said frantically. “We need an Amber Alert or—I don’t know. Something.”

“We’ll listen,” Clay said, “but you’ve got to calm down so we can understand what happened.”

Wild eyes pinned Clay for a couple of heartbeats, and then the guy sagged. Bent forward with a moan until his elbows were braced on his knees and his head hung.

The detective, Steve Atwood, cautiously removed his hands and, when the guy didn’t erupt into motion, stepped back. After a moment, he took his own seat behind the desk. He was nearing retirement, solid but not imaginative and not real big on empathy, in Clay’s opinion.