LITMIR.BIZ

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peered out from the garage. The woman was gone. What the heck? Did the guy come back? Send an accomplice? He started for the house.

      “Police! Freeze!” a female shouted from behind him.

      Luke raised his hands. “I’m a federal officer.”

      “Yeah and I’m Judge Judy. Get down on the ground.”

      “If you’d let me turn around—”

      “Do it!” The woman sounded too young and green to be holding a firearm.

      The guys in Luke’s division would have a field day if the pip-squeak cop shot him in the back due to lack of experience.

      “I’m going, I’m going.” Luke dropped to his knees, interlacing his hands behind his head.

      “All the way down!”

      He hesitated, bitter memories tearing through his chest. Being forced down…

      Held there while his partner, Karl, fought for his life.

      “I said get down!” she ordered.

      “Deanna, what are you doing?” the Yates woman said, coming out of the house.

      “Stay in the house, Krista,” the cop ordered.

      “No, he’s a good guy.”

      Good? Hardly.

      Krista walked up to Luke, removed his shield and flashed it at the cop.

      He doubted the rookie could see past her adrenaline rush.

      Luke heard another car pull up.

      “How do you know that’s real?” the female cop said.

      “It’s real,” a man offered.

      Luke recognized Chief Cunningham’s voice. Luke had spent a good hour with him earlier tonight going over the case.

      “Lower your weapon, Officer West,” the chief said.

      From the concerned look on Krista’s face, Luke sensed the female cop didn’t follow the order. This was probably the most action she’d seen in her entire year on the force. If she’d even been on the force a year.

      “West!” the chief threatened.

      Krista sighed with relief and touched Luke’s shoulder. “You need help getting up?”

      Right, he still hadn’t moved, paralyzed by the dark memories that he couldn’t bury deep enough. Guilt had a way of rising to the surface to mess with your head at the worst possible moments.

      Krista gripped his arm to help him stand. As if he needed help from this fragile thing.

      Fragile. Innocent. Dangerous.

      “I’m fine.” Luke stood and turned to the cop. She looked barely twenty.

      “Sorry about that,” the chief offered.

      “No problem,” Luke said.

      “Yes problem,” Krista countered.

      They all looked at her.

      “Anastasia is missing.” With a shake of her head, she went into the house.

      Luke glanced at the chief. “Who’s Anastasia?”

      “Her cat,” Officer West said.

      Luke glanced at the house. Krista had nearly been taken out by a member of Garcia’s gang and all she could think about was a silly cat?

      “Officer West, continue your patrol and don’t tell anyone about Agent McIntyre’s presence in town,” Chief Cunningham said. “I’ll handle things here.”

      “The guy who jumped Miss Yates was driving a dark green minivan,” Luke said.

      “Okay, thanks.” Officer West walked to her cruiser.

      “These are not teenage pranksters, West. Radio in if you spot the van. That’s an order,” the chief said. “Yes, sir.”

      The chief turned to Luke. “Ready?”

      “For what?”

      The chief started for the house. “I have a feeling Krista isn’t going to be in a talking mood until we find her cat.”

      “You’re kidding.”

      “Welcome to Wentworth, son.” Chief Cunningham climbed the steps and disappeared into the house.

      “Fantastic,” Luke muttered.

      He was allergic to cats, and even more allergic to small towns. He grew up in one and hightailed it out of there before he hit his seventeenth birthday. There was too much gossip in a small town, too much imagined drama.

      He climbed the steps and glanced across the yard. Imagined? Most of the time. In Krista Yates’s case he was pretty sure she’d brought it home with her from Mexico, probably in her luggage, or in something she saw or said.

      He shook his head. She was a talker, for sure, but he couldn’t imagine the sweet-faced blonde saying anything offensive or rude. This wasn’t about manners, it was about one of Mexico’s biggest drug cartels moving product into the country via innocents.

      The Yates woman defined innocent.

      Luke stepped into the house and found the chief and Krista in the living room. “So the house was like this when you got home?” the chief said, eyeing the mess.

      “I thought it was the cat.”

      “You thought the cat tipped over your end table?” Luke asked.

      “She’s a really big cat and she’s rather upset with me right now.”

      “The sooner we can get a description of the man you saw in the garage, the more accurate it will be,” the chief said.

      “You don’t think he killed her, do you?” Krista asked, her eyes rounding with fear. Wide, green, helpless eyes.

      “Now, why would he kill your cat, Krista?” the chief said.

      Krista narrowed her eyes. “You, of all people, should not be asking me that. Gladys still has scars from the quilting open house.”

      “Point taken.”

      “Anastasia? Here, kitty, kitty.” She glanced at Luke. “Get the Whiskas. On top of the microwave.” She disappeared upstairs.

      Luke glanced at the chief.

      “The sooner we find the cat…” the chief said with a shrug.

      Luke found the bag of cat treats in the kitchen. As he grabbed them, his gaze caught on a photograph on the windowsill of a teenage Krista, and he guessed her mom, and perhaps grandmother. They looked like a team, arms around each other, ready to take on the world.

      They were a loving family. He’d always wondered what that looked like.

      It’s not like he hung out with the guys at work and their families. He’d had a few invitations, but he knew he didn’t belong and would make everyone feel awkward.

      He never seemed to belong.

      And that was fine by him.

      “I got the cat treats!” he called out, more than a bit irritated with this diversion from their course of finding her attacker.

      The chief was on the phone, and Luke started up the stairs. Krista met him halfway.

      “No shouting,” she whispered.

      “I was shouting?”

      “You shake and I’ll grab.”

      “Excuse me?”

      “The cat. You go ahead of me and shake the bag and I’ll grab her when she comes out.”

      “Ma’am,

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