A Secret In Conard County. Rachel Lee

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СКАЧАТЬ cover it up, and seen the results when we get called in. So you’ll excuse me if I don’t trust the uniform easily. But I wasn’t prepared for that, distrustful or not.”

      Those pills were sure making her chatty, not that he minded. He was actually enjoying it. “I’ve known some dirty cops. Cops who push the line. I don’t like it.”

      She nodded. “I hate it. Just a few bad apples make it harder for everyone. When you can’t trust the uniform...” She gave a little shrug. “How did I get off on this?”

      “The guy who shot you.”

      “Oh. Yeah. So we’ve got a really minimal profile. Useless profile, actually. How much of a profile is it that the guy likes to blow up women? But now we know he probably poses as a cop, which gets him places he couldn’t go otherwise, makes him fairly invisible and makes it easy for him to get women to cooperate.”

      This was creating wrinkles. Already he could see the potential for disaster here. “I’m going to introduce you to four guys tonight. Those four will be utterly trustworthy. Don’t trust anyone else. Fair enough?”

      “I didn’t really trust you at first when you pulled me over.”

      His answer was dry. “I gathered.”

      “Now you know why. Anybody could get a deputy’s uniform, and I don’t know your department.”

      “But my whole department knows everyone. That’s important, Erin. I’m going to call Gage.” In fact, it was the first real useful information they’d got.

      * * *

      Erin settled back on the rocker and enjoyed the relative freedom from agony. The pills didn’t kill it all, but they made it duller, less inhibiting, further away. Which meant her mind wasn’t working at top speed, but evidently she’d just offered some useful information. Good. Leaning her head back, she let her eyes close. Lance was making the call from his kitchen, but she heard bits and pieces of it. Apparently he was telling the sheriff about the uniform thing, and she gathered all the deputies would now be on the lookout for a guy in uniform that they didn’t recognize.

      That might be helpful, or it might not. Would the UNSUB even try that out here? Who knew. This wasn’t the kind of place where a uniform would provide sufficient protective coloration. But it was still good to know the deputies would be alert for someone trying to pass as one of them.

      The pill not only softened the pain, it made her drowsy. Right now she feared drowsiness. It felt odd to her to be placing so much trust in a man she’d just met, and she wasn’t yet prepared to trust him by sleeping. Not that she had any reason to be suspicious of him at this point.

      In fact, maybe she was being unreasonably suspicious. Maybe there was no reason to be fearful at all. If the bomber wanted her out of the picture, he’d already succeeded. She might still be breathing, but she was no longer involved with the task force.

      When Lance returned to the room carrying the coffeepot to freshen her mug, she floated the idea by him.

      He stopped, tilting his head, looking at her from slightly narrowed eyes. “They were worried enough they wanted to put you in a safe house. Instead you left town. Where did this idea come from?”

      “I’m no longer part of the task force. No threat to him. People like him tend to want to work in familiar geographical areas anyway.”

      He nodded slowly and poured more coffee into her cup. “I’ll get the milk. And I want you to think that through again. Carefully.”

      She guessed she wasn’t making sense—hardly surprising—but he wanted her to think about it again. Her thoughts had turned into wisps that floated away before she could grab them. She was no longer a threat to this guy. His type preferred to work in familiar geographical areas. So...

      All of a sudden she sat bolt upright, then wished she hadn’t as the pain broke through the fuzz and drew an unusual groan from her.

      “What?” Lance asked as he returned with the milk jug.

      “I had a thought...” She leaned back and closed her eyes.

      “What did you think?”

      “That there’s something I don’t know. Something my field office evidently does know, because now that I’m out of the area, I’d be taking this perp out of his comfort zone, and profiling says he wouldn’t do that. So what do they know? What did I miss? Why are they worried at all about me?”

      As the pain began to ease, she opened her eyes and saw that her coffee was again milky. Lance stood there screwing the top back on the gallon container.

      “Let me think about that,” he said. “Be right back.”

      She watched him return to the kitchen and felt her hand itch to pull out the phone and call Fran. Fran would know everything about the case, about whether there was new information. But something stayed her. God, she was getting paranoid. Now she didn’t even want to call her best friend?

      When Lance returned, he sat on the couch across from her. “Seems to me,” he said, “that this guy stopped fitting a profile when he came after you. First, you weren’t his victim type. Second, he shot you, so he’s not afraid to kill that way. Most bombers are cowards, aren’t they?”

      She nodded. “Well away from the death and destruction they cause. Murder at long distance.”

      “This guy tried one up close and personal. So maybe they’re thinking he’s a wild card and don’t want to inadvertently leave you hanging in the breeze.”

      “Maybe.”

      “And shooting a Fed? That’s far from risk-averse. Much as you all wanted this guy before, I bet your colleagues want him even more now.”

      She had no doubt of that. She’d lost count of the times her fellow agents had visited her in the hospital and made solemn promises to bring this guy down for her. Oh, they’d always wanted him, but now it was personal in a new way.

      “So okay,” Lance said. “Maybe this guy won’t come this far for you. Like you said, out of his comfort zone. But nobody wants to bet your life on it now.”

      It made sense, as much sense as anything could when her brain seemed foggy. She was nowhere near 100 percent, mentally or physically, and that irritated her beyond words. She should never have taken the pain medicine. But even as she scolded herself for it, she was glad of this respite. For a little while, pain was far away, at the distant edges of her awareness.

      “Lance?”

      “Yeah?”

      “Who are these guys who are coming by tonight?”

      “I can’t say exactly.”

      The fog instantly receded. “How can you not know? You’re going to let strangers in?”

      “Not strangers. I know all the guys Gage will contact. They’ve been around awhile.”

      “Men who’ve been sent on classified missions to undisclosed locations.”

      “Exactly.”

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