Police Protector. Elizabeth Heiter

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СКАЧАТЬ minutes, checking the area, and then Luke asked, “Have we officially released her car yet?”

      Shaye’s car was still at Roy’s Grocery, where the parking lot had been roped off so he and Luke, along with a handful of cops working with them on the case, could pull evidence. They’d finished an hour ago, but Cole figured he’d tell Shaye in the morning.

      “Technically, yeah. I thought I’d take her to pick it up tomorrow.”

      “Or just have it towed,” Luke suggested. “She’ll need that bullet hole repaired.”

      The gunman had fired three shots. One had hit the driver’s door of Shaye’s car, another had hit the back tire of the grocery store owner’s car and the third had gone into Shaye. He’d asked the forensics lab to put a rush on reviewing the bullets, but they’d looked insulted he’d even asked. Shaye was one of them. They were already rushing it.

      “We hear anything yet about those security cameras?” Cole asked. Although the camera at the grocery store wasn’t real, there were others nearby they were checking. He’d probably have heard if there was news, because he’d made sure everyone working the case knew they should call him at any hour with updates. But he’d also spent several hours this evening at the hospital while Luke headed up the investigation. It was possible he’d missed something.

      “Not yet,” Luke replied, but he dutifully pulled out his phone and tapped in a text, then shook his head a minute later. “They haven’t found the guy on any cameras yet.”

      Cole wasn’t surprised. The grocery store wasn’t in a highly commercial area, and it didn’t get much criminal activity, either. There weren’t as many security cameras as there would have been if the shooting had happened in another area of town. He wondered if that had been the shooter’s intent.

      “Shaye’s got bad luck.”

      “What?” Cole shifted in his seat to face Luke, who always looked serious, with his buzz cut leftover from the military and his intense greenish-blue eyes.

      “That’s all this was. We went over her timeline. She was at work until eight, and then she drove straight to the grocery store, which she said she hadn’t originally planned to do. If someone was after her specifically, that means they would have had to watch the forensics lab from at least five and then followed her. And in three hours, sitting outside a police station, don’t you think someone would have spotted him?”

      Cole nodded. He knew it was true. All the evidence said this had nothing to do with Shaye. Still, ever since he’d shown up at that shooting, his instincts had been buzzing the way they always did on a case when he knew something was off. And it was telling him there was more going on here.

      “If it was random, meant to be a spree shooting, then why did he wait until the place was almost empty?”

      Luke frowned. “Yeah, that bothers me, too. But he ran into the parking lot. Maybe he’d been coming from committing a crime and Shaye was in his way.”

      “We didn’t have any reports that would match up,” Cole reminded him.

      “Not yet. Or maybe he planned to keep going—run though the grocery store lot, taking out anyone there, then move on to the rest of the businesses on the street. There are a couple of restaurants that were pretty full.”

      It was one of the reasons they didn’t have any witnesses yet. It seemed counterintuitive—the shooter had run toward businesses full of people—but on a Friday night, it meant the music was loud, the patrons were drinking and no one heard a thing. Except for Roy still inside the grocery store, who’d sheltered in place and called the police.

      “That’s possible,” Cole agreed, but he still couldn’t shake the dread gripping him, saying Shaye had a direct connection. Because Luke was right about one thing: how unlucky could one woman be? Two attempts on her life in a year?

      “Today is almost a year to the day of the shooting at the station,” Cole said, even though he knew Luke didn’t need the reminder. Luke had been there, too; he’d run out right behind Cole, firing back at the gang members, completely outgunned with their service pistols against semiautomatics.

      “Yeah, and that’s why I’m sitting in this car with you instead of in bed at home,” Luke replied. “Because I think we got everyone in that gang. But they’ve all got families, too.”

      Cole nodded. It hadn’t occurred to him that a gang member’s family member might be trying to get revenge on Shaye for speaking up as a witness in the trial earlier in the year. His thoughts had always been on the families of the three officers who’d died that day. But his and Luke’s bullets had killed two gang members at the scene, and four more had died in subsequent raids, because they’d pulled weapons instead of throwing up their hands when police came to arrest them. Any one of those men—or the ones who’d landed in prison—could have family or friends desperate for revenge.

      “That theory has the same problem, though,” Luke said. “If Shaye was a specific target, someone followed her to that grocery store. And if we’re talking about someone affiliated with a gang, yes, they wouldn’t be afraid to stake out a police station, but I doubt they’d be subtle enough to get away with it.”

      “True. And if we’re looking at that kind of revenge, wouldn’t someone want us to know it was them?” Cole added. “Or go after the station too? Both of us instead of just Shaye? I don’t like the timing, and it seems way too coincidental that she’s targeted by gunmen twice—”

      “She wasn’t targeted before,” Luke cut him off. “They had no idea she was involved in the digital analysis that got us the lead we needed on the gang leadership in the first place. They were there because we’d been investigating. She just happened to be on our side of the parking lot.”

      A fresh wave of guilt washed over Cole. He knew why she’d been by the station doors, when she should have been on the other side near the forensics lab, out of the line of fire. Most days they’d ended around the same time and stood outside chatting for ten or twenty minutes before going their separate ways. That day, he’d been late, caught up in paperwork. And she’d almost paid with her life.

      “Well, still,” Cole said, hoping Luke didn’t notice the new tension in his voice, “she’s been shot at twice in just over a year. I don’t like it.”

      “Me, either,” Luke said, then swore.

      “What?”

      “Here she comes.”

      “What?” Cole said, spinning back toward the direction of Shaye’s house.

      His partner was right. Shaye was storming their way, her injured leg dragging a little behind, her hands crossed over her chest and a furious look on her face. None of that stopped him from noticing she was heading toward them in a nightgown that was way too short and way too thin for this kind of weather.

      His mouth dried up as he got out of his truck, rushing over to her side and slipping his arm behind her shoulders in case she was still off balance from her injury. Behind him he heard Luke step out of the vehicle a little more slowly.

      Shaye shrugged his arm off. “What are you doing?”

      “Keeping an eye on things,” Cole said. “Just until we catch the shooter.”

      She scowled СКАЧАТЬ