Читать книгу The Sheriff's Secret - Julie Lindsey Anne - Страница 9

Chapter One

Tina Ellet checked her watch for the tenth time in half as many minutes. Two of her seven patients had missed the entire group session, without so much as a text to let her know they weren’t coming. Dedication and accountability to personal recovery was a must in her program, and the group had always taken the requirements seriously. Until now. So what were those two up to?

She rubbed goose bumps off her arms. Trouble was coming, she was sure of it. She just wasn’t sure what form it would take. She approached her wide office windows and gave the empty sidewalk outside another long look. The forest of brightly colored trees across the lot swayed with a wicked wind. It wasn’t autumn in Kentucky until a storm tried to knock you down. “Please take it slow on your way home or to work.” She turned to face the group with a forced smile. “It doesn’t look good out there.”

The men and women nodded in easy agreement.

“If any of you hear from Carl or Tucker, please let them know they were missed.” Tina was certain many of them were worried, too, but there was nothing to be done about it for now. Instead, they flattened folding chairs and dropped disposable cups into the trash, making fast work of the cleanup and sending faint scents of cigarette smoke and coffee into the air. The scents of her childhood, minus the distinct sting of alcohol.

When the room was righted, she shouldered her handbag and collected the empty tray from her homemade blueberry muffins. Early morning sessions were popular with her group, and Tina tried to send a little hope and encouragement with each member when they left. At least enough to help them face whatever the day might bring. So far, this day had brought plenty of rain. The forecasted showers had come right on schedule, successfully soaking everything in sight. “I suppose we might as well make a run for it. The rain doesn’t appear to be giving up anytime soon.” In fact, the rain hadn’t slowed since it began more than an hour before. “Does everyone have a ride?”

Steven, the newest member of her group, looked away as the others raised their car keys.

“Steven?” She tipped her head toward the sheeting rain. “Would you like a ride home? I’m sure someone would be glad to drive you. No one should walk in this.”

Several members chimed in with offers, and Steven dipped his chin in agreement to the one made by Carol, an older woman standing near the door. Carol winked at Tina. She’d see Steven home safely.

Sometimes heading a recovery group for PTSD and trauma survivors was tricky. What one member saw as comfort, another saw as a threat, and so far, Steven saw most things as a threat. He’d joined the group after receiving an other-than-honorable discharge from the army last month. His severe emotional trauma had led to unbecoming behavior that garnered him a quick boot from the service, complete with truncated benefits and nowhere to turn for the support he needed. Luckily, Tina had found him, and she was certain she could help, if she didn’t scare him away first.

“All right. Here we go.” She swung the door open and held it for the group to pass. Together, they moved onto the sidewalk and waited beneath the large metal awning while Tina locked up. Hopefully, wherever Carl and Tucker were, they were safe, not caught in a flash flood or car accident or worse. She blamed her “mother’s mind” for the number of scary scenarios scooting through her head. Since the birth of her precious daughter four months ago, she’d begun to see potential danger everywhere and longed more than ever to wrap her arms around the entire world in protection.

Slowly, a few brave souls ventured into the storm, plodding through puddles toward their vehicles and prompting the others to follow. The lot was nearly empty this time of day, making Mountain Medical Plaza the perfect location for her private morning sessions.

Tina followed Carol and Steven toward a massive pickup truck whose lights flashed and locks popped up upon approach. Tina’s car was the small sedan two spots away. Steven slowed his pace as he neared Carol’s truck, suddenly unconcerned by the rain and wholly focused on a distant point in the morning sky.

“Steven?” Tina lifted her handbag overhead, a makeshift umbrella, and squinted through the rain. “Everything okay?”

He raised an arm, finger pointed at the building’s rooftop. “Do you see that?”

The fine hairs on the back of Tina’s neck raised to attention. She forced her eyes to focus through the downpour. “What do you see?”

A small shadow rocked into view. What appeared to be the long barrel of a rifle stretched out before it.

Ice coiled in Tina’s gut. It couldn’t be...

“Gun!” Steven yelled. “Get down!” He turned for Tina, arms thrown wide as one loud blast of gunfire cracked the air. Steven’s head whipped back and his gait fell short. His legs crumbled beneath him and his body collapsed onto the rain-battered asphalt in a silent thud. Group members screamed and hollered around her, scattering between vehicles and running for the building. Shattered glass rained over Steven, falling from the truck window at his side.

Tina’s lungs burned as she struggled to breathe. She fell to the ground, barely perceiving what had happened. Wind whipped through her hair and mingled with the ringing in her ears. Voices warbled around her, distorted by the storm and panic beating through her head. “Stay down!” she screamed. “Get down and stay down!” She forced her eyes to search for the shadow once more, but it was gone.

Where did it go? She craned her neck in every direction, as if the shooter could be anywhere, beside her, behind her. Her chest ached and her mouth dried. How could she know who the next bullet would hit? Would there be another? Was the man finished shooting, or was he reloading? She dug her phone from her purse and dialed 911.

“911. What’s your emergency?” a tinny voice echoed in her ringing ear.

Tina scrambled under the truck, counting pairs of feet moving through the lot toward the building. Four. Good. The rest were safe and together now.

“Ma’am? What’s your emergency?” the voice repeated.

The world snapped back into focus then, the tragedy becoming unbearably clear. “There’s a gunman at Mountain Medical Plaza.” The words fell clumsily off her tongue, a line memorized for a play. Impossible to be real. “One man is down. I don’t know.” She stared at Steven’s motionless form. “He’s not moving. I don’t know where he was hit. There’s so much blood.”

“Where’s the shooter now?”

“I’m not sure. He stopped, I think.” Tina willed her mind into focus. Her group needed her. Steven needed her.

“Are you somewhere safe now, ma’am? Is there somewhere you can find shelter until emergency responders arrive?”

Her office door seemed miles away, but two group members were already there, crouched against the wall, and two others were steps away. She could help them. Get them inside.

Screaming tires drew her attention across the lot. A faded red pickup truck roared recklessly in the distance and fishtailed onto the county road beyond, barreling away like the devil was chasing it.

Tina pulled in a long gulp of oxygen to clear her brain. “I think the shooter is gone now. There was only one shot. Maybe two minutes ago. And someone’s racing away in a pickup.” She forced herself from beneath the truck and onto her knees, crawling over the broken glass to Steven’s side. “A man’s been shot. He’s not moving.” She stared at his motionless chest. “Not breathing.” Tina pressed shaky fingers to his neck in search of a pulse that didn’t beat, then tried again. “No, no, no, no.” She set the phone on the ground at Steven’s side, pressed the speaker option, then laced her fingers against his chest and said a silent prayer. Tina filled his lungs and pumped his heart for him until her arms shook uncontrollably from terror, grief and effort. “He’s not breathing,” she cried. “His heart isn’t beating. CPR isn’t working.”

Behind her, the group bellowed for her to come to them. Above her, the thunder rolled.

Tina grabbed her phone and pushed onto her feet. In a torrent of desperation, she forced herself away from Steven. A round of ugly sobs pressed through her tightened lips as she hurried back to the group collecting outside her office once more. She wiped her hands on her shirt, smearing it with blood, then jammed her key into the lock and ushered the others inside. “One man is dead,” she reported to the woman on the phone. “The rest of us are...” Are what? Fine? None of them were fine. A man had just been murdered in front of their eyes. “No one else was physically injured.”

She wiped her eyes and nose, fighting the wave of panic determined to lay her in a useless ball. How many times had she called 911 as a kid? How many times had her drunken father taken his frustrations out on a mother too depressed to get out of bed? Broken limbs and noses. Cuts and bruises. Nothing like this. Never like this, and yet she’d felt exactly this way. Desperate. Afraid. And guilty. Always guilty. “I’m so sorry,” she wept. “So very sorry.”

The soft cry of an approaching ambulance registered in the distance, refueling her hope and drive. “I hear them now,” she told the dispatch operator. “Help is almost here.” She made the second announcement more loudly, aiming her words at the terrified group before her.

Tina slid her suit jacket from her shoulders. “You will survive this,” she told them, falling back on her training. “Understand?” They stared in variations of shock, anguish and despair. “You are survivors.” She forced the words from between clenched teeth, as much for her own benefit as theirs. “Help is almost here now. You’re going to be okay.”

Except Steven. Steven would never again be okay.

When she could find no more words, she carried her jacket through the raging storm and placed it over Steven. Fresh out of faux strength, Tina fell onto her bottom beside him, cell phone in hand, and bawled. What was wrong with this world?

* * *

CADE COUNTY SHERIFF West Garrett pressed a wide-brimmed hat over his head and levered himself out of the cruiser. A carousel of red-and-white lights illuminated the gruesome scene at a local counseling practice. Blood and glass covered the lot beside a newer model pickup truck. EMTs spoke with a cluster of people near one building.

A man lay motionless and partially covered by a tiny, bloodstained woman’s coat. This must have been the fatality Dispatch had announced. Presumably, the coat belonged to the woman curled up at the man’s side. Her arms were wrapped around her knees and her face was buried in the material of her ruined suit pants. Only the top of her blond head was visible, and it was shaking with each new sob she released.

West made his way, slowly, toward the woman.

The coroner dropped a black bag on the ground opposite the deceased.

“Ma’am?” West tugged the material of his pants and crouched beside her. “I’m Sheriff West Garrett. I’m afraid I need to ask you a few questions.”

The woman stilled. Her sobs ceased.

West rested his forearms on his thighs, allowing his hands to dangle between his knees. Rain dripped from the brim of his sheriff’s hat and the sleeves of his slicker. “Are you hurt, ma’am?”

She slowly raised her tearstained face, catching his gaze in hers. “No.”

“Tina.” His heart clenched and his gut fisted at the sight of her after all these years, her clothes smeared in blood.

“Hi, West,” she croaked. Her rain-soaked hair hung in clumps over her shaking shoulders.

The sound of his name on her tongue was a painful slap of nostalgia. “Hi.” West struggled to make her presence at the crime scene something other than ludicrous. “What are you doing here?”

“It’s my practice.”

West rubbed a rough hand over his mouth. He’d heard she worked at the medical center but had refused the details. This wasn’t the same girl who’d stolen his teenage heart and eventually destroyed it. That girl had left Cade County long ago. This was someone else. Someone he no longer knew. He pulled in a long breath and refocused on the job. He gave her a more critical exam. “Is any of this blood yours?”

“No.” Tina pushed onto her feet with a whimper and wrapped trembling arms around her middle. “I’m not hurt. I want to help.”

He stood, as well. “All right. You can start by telling me what happened.” He motioned to a section of the sidewalk covered with an awning. “Let’s step out of the storm.”

She complied, shuffling toward the building, peeling clumps of sopping hair off her cheeks and forehead. “We were leaving the building. It was just after eight, and there was a shadow on the roof.” She stopped short and swallowed several times.

“We?”

“I have a weekly support group for PTSD and emotional trauma survivors.” She rolled her shoulders forward and squelched a sob. “Steven saw the figure on the roof. He told us to get down. He tried to get to me.” She pressed the heels of both hands against her eyes. “The gunman shot him before he reached me.”

West nodded toward the man on the pavement. “That is Steven?”

She removed her hands from her face with a sigh. “Steven Masters. He was discharged from the army about a month ago. He has a wife and little girl.” Her voice broke on the last word. “Oh, Lord. His poor family,” she whispered. Tina spun away from West, walking aimlessly into the lot, obviously in shock despite her efforts to look otherwise.

“Hey.” West jogged to her side and wrapped an arm around her shoulders. “Why don’t you have a seat while we talk?” He led her to a bench beneath the awning and released her at once. The instinct to comfort her was unprofessional and wildly outdated. “Better?”

She didn’t answer.

“Tina?” West knew firsthand that she wasn’t a sharer, but this time he needed her to open up. “I know this is tough,” he began.

Tina rolled glossy blue eyes up at him. “Someone shot Steven from that rooftop. I don’t know who. I don’t know why.” She shook her head roughly. “It’s just nonsense.”

“West?” His baby brother and current deputy, Cole Garrett, strode to his side. Cole was four years younger than West and twice as smart, but he’d been bitten by the law enforcement bug like the rest of the Garrett men and refused to go out and change the world like West and their older brothers had suggested. “I’m going to head out and see if I can get a bead on this guy.”

“What do you have so far?” West asked.

Cole gave Tina a wayward look. “Not much. Witnesses heard a car hightailing out of here. I’m going to head up the road and see if anyone saw a vehicle taking the state route in a hurry.”

“It was a pickup truck,” Tina said.

Cole’s sharp gaze locked on hers before drifting back to West. “Isn’t she—”

“Don’t,” West warned.

Cole whistled the sound of a falling missile and walked away.

Tina rolled her head against the wall behind their bench. “I suppose I’m not exactly the Garrett family’s favorite local.”

West grunted. That was a conversation he never wanted to have. The past was the past. He’d like to leave it there. “I need to know which member of your group could’ve made someone mad enough to do this?”

Tina’s soft expression hardened. She glanced at the coroner’s van. “The only person to blame is the maniac who did it.”

West raised an eyebrow. “I’m not blaming. I’m looking for bread crumbs. Which one’s the loose cannon?”

“All my patients are serious about their recovery. They’re employed. Paying bills. Contributing to society. They wouldn’t be here every week, carving out time before work, if they weren’t dedicated to the process.”

“Uh-huh.” West nodded. “I understand why you’d say they’re doing well, seeing as how you’re their therapist.” He gave a little smile, knowing he walked a fine line. “You look for the best in people, and that’s admirable, but can you tell me honestly that if one of your patients had gotten into trouble, you’d know? How can you be sure? Because I’m sitting outside an office where people suffering from emotional distress come for treatment, and one of them is dead. You want me to believe the location is a coincidence?”

She scowled. “Of course it can’t be a coincidence because you don’t believe in those.”

West regrouped and tried again before she shut him out completely. “You’re right. You know these guys. I don’t. I’ll admit that, but I’m thinking distraught individuals tend to make poor decisions, and maybe one of them got tangled up with someone capable of doing this.”

“No.”

“No?”

She shook her head. “You’re wrong about my group.”

“How do you know?” West asked. “What do you talk about in your sessions? Has anyone shared anything out of the ordinary lately? Did they meet someone new? Make a friend? Take a trip?”

Tina rubbed her forehead. “That’s all covered under counselor-patient confidentiality.”

“Are you kidding me?” West bristled.

“You know I can’t tell you any of those things.”

West ground his teeth. “Even in the aftermath of all this, you still want to keep secrets?”

Tina looked away. “You can ask them anything you want to know. I’m sure they’ll tell you. And I’ll tell you anything I can about my day. About the moments before and after the shooting. About the figure. Anything that won’t break my patients’ trust, but I owe them that. I took an oath.”

West braced himself for a long day. Prying secrets from Tina was a task he’d never had any success with, and frankly she was right. What he wanted to know was covered under confidentiality laws, unless she’d suspected criminal activity. In that case, she had an obligation to report it, but she’d already declared the group’s united innocence and probably wouldn’t change her story. “Okay,” he conceded. “Fair enough. I’ll ask my men to question the group members. What do you say about coming with me to the station while they do that? It sounds like you spoke to the victim just before the incident, and it seems you were also the closest to him by proximity.” His gaze slid over the bloodstains on her rain-soaked blouse and pants. “I need to get an official report from you, and I’d like to continue the interview while the details are fresh. I imagine you’d like to get away from here for that.”

“Yeah.”

“Well, then, Miss Ellet, let me walk you to my car.”