LITMIR.BIZ

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      “But you don’t know. Not for sure. He could be in the building somewhere, or heading around the side of the school,” she responded, just a hint of a tremor in her voice. Despite her advanced pregnancy, she was fit and muscular, her legs long and slim, her arms toned. He’d noticed that the first time he’d seen her. She’d walked into church with her head high, her shoulders squared, her belly pressing against a flowy dress, and there wasn’t an unattached guy in the congregation who hadn’t sat up a little straighter. A few months later and her belly was bigger, but she still looked confident and determined. Being shot at could shake the toughest person, though, and it had obviously shaken her.

      He opened the passenger door, helped her into the seat.

      “I do know for sure,” he assured her. “Or at least, Jesse does.” He pointed to his K-9 partner. The dog was relaxed, his tail wagging, his scruff down. He’d be growling or barking if he sensed danger. Instead, he’d loped back to their vehicle, not even a hint of tension in his muscular body.

      Good, but not good enough for Tristan. He wanted to search the school, make sure the guy hadn’t left anything behind—firearms, bombs, some kind of accelerant that he could use at a later date to cause mass casualties. Not likely, but it was always better to be safe than sorry.

      Same for Ariel. Aside from her paleness and the cut on her hand, she seemed to be doing okay. It was better to get her checked out at the hospital, though, and make certain there wouldn’t be any complications with her pregnancy. He called dispatch with the request for an ambulance as he opened the back of the SUV and pulled out a first-aid kit.

      “I don’t need an ambulance,” Ariel protested.

      He ignored her, pulling on disposable gloves and lifting her wounded hand. “This is deep. You’ll need stitches.”

      He pressed gauze to the wound, and she winced.

      “Sorry.” He didn’t ease up on the pressure, though. She’d bled a lot. Probably more than she realized.

      “It’s fine.” Her free hand lay against her belly. No ring on that one or the one he was holding. He knew she was a widow. He’d heard rumors that her husband had died shortly after she’d found out she was pregnant. He hadn’t asked for details, but he’d wondered. Mia really liked Ariel, and Tristan figured it took a special kind of person to win his sister’s affection. He’d imagined that Ariel must be gentle, quiet, maybe a little sentimental, but taking off her wedding ring so soon after her husband’s death didn’t seem sentimental at all.

      Then again, maybe it was. He didn’t know much about those kinds of things, and he didn’t know Ariel well enough to ask. What he did know was that she deserved better than this.

      He met her eyes, saw fear in the depth of her dark gray gaze.

      “It’s going to be okay,” he said.

      “I hope so.”

      “It will be. The ambulance should be here soon. They’ll triage this before they transport you,” he said, and she frowned.

      “Like I said, I don’t need an ambulance.”

      “You’re nine months pregnant—”

      “Eight, and—”

      Whatever she planned to say was cut off by a police cruiser’s siren. The vehicle screamed into the parking lot, lights flashing, tires shrieking as Eddie Harmon’s car squealed to a stop beside Tristan.

      Eddie jumped out of the car, his uniform shirt pulled tight across his stomach, his shoes scuffed and pants wrinkled.

      “What’s going on here? Got a call about a gunman?” He eyed Ariel, taking in her bleeding hand and her very pregnant belly. “I’m assuming it was a false alarm, maybe a misunderstanding?”

      Of course he’d assume that. Eddie liked to take the easy route to police work. His focus was on his family and his upcoming retirement rather than his job. He wasn’t a bad cop, but he wasn’t a good one, either.

      Tristan would have preferred to have one of the K-9 officers there. He trusted Eddie to do his job, but he hated to leave Ariel with a guy who probably wasn’t going to take her seriously. She looked too pale, too vulnerable, and he was tempted to stay right where he was until the rest of the K-9 team arrived. But, every minute he waited was another minute the perp had to escape.

      “There was a shooter,” Tristan assured him. “I’m going to take Jesse into the building and secure the scene. There’s an ambulance on the way. Can you stay with the victim until it arrives? Until we know what the perp is after, we can’t assume he’s not going to try to strike again.”

      “In other words, you want me to take guard duty,” Eddie said, crossing his arms over his belly and eyeing Tristan dispassionately.

      “Right.”

      “I guess I can do that.” Eddie shrugged. “Easier than walking around the building looking for the perp.”

      That’s exactly what Tristan figured he’d say.

      He met Ariel’s eyes. She still looked scared. She also looked exhausted, her face pale, her cheekbones gaunt. He hadn’t noticed that before, but then he’d been telling himself for months that he shouldn’t be noticing anything about Mia’s teacher. His life was filled up with work and with his sister. He didn’t have time for relationships. Especially not complicated ones. A pregnant widow? That was way more than he had room for in his life.

      “This might take a while. When I finish, I’ll check back in with you.”

      She nodded, and he called Jesse to heel and jogged to the building. The perp hadn’t gone out the front. Jesse would have scented him when they’d walked back to the SUV.

      “Where is he?” Tristan asked, and Jesse’s ears perked, his nose going to the air and then the ground. Tristan would have preferred to have Shane Weston and his apprehension dog, Bella, there tracking the perp, but waiting was out of the question.

      “Find him!” he urged, and Jesse ran to the back of the school, nosing the cement path that led to double-wide doors. They yawned open, the corridor beyond silent and empty. This had to have been the entrance point. The exit point, too, if the guy was gone.

      Tristan followed the dog across the threshold, calling out as he entered the building, warning that police were present. No response. He hadn’t expected one. He really didn’t expect the perp to have hung around.

      Jesse tugged him through the hall, passing classroom after classroom. The lab stopped at room 119, sniffing the floor before walking inside. There, he nosed around near a teacher’s desk, sniffing a dark blue sweater that hung over the back of a chair. He huffed quietly and left it, continuing across the room to a storage closet that stood open.

      Had the guy been in the closet? Maybe waiting for Ariel to return to the classroom? The thought turned Tristan’s stomach. Master police dog trainer Veronica Earnshaw had been murdered in her place of employment, shot to death while microchipping a new litter of puppies for the Canyon County K-9 Training Center. Since then, Desert Valley had been on edge. That wasn’t the first murder in the area. Five years ago, K-9 officer Ryder Hayes had lost his wife on the night of the annual Desert Valley Police Department dance and fund-raiser. She’d been shot and killed while carrying her dress home just hours before the party.

      The perp had shot at Ariel. Was this newest incident somehow related to the other two?

      Jesse left the closet, tracing a path from there back to the desk and then out into the hallway. They moved through the dimly lit corridor, the dusky sunlight barely penetrating this far into the building. They reached the corner where the east and west wings jutted to either side of the main building, and Jesse barked, prancing around what looked like bits of concrete and wallboard.

      “Front!” Tristan commanded, and the dog returned, dropping down on his haunches.

      “Stay!” he said,

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