Capitol K-9 Unit Christmas: Protecting Virginia

“Yes.” She moved toward him, her legs just a little shaky. She needed to get herself under control. The last thing she wanted was a full-blown panic attack. “He was in the house when I arrived.”

“Is he still there?”

“I don’t think so.”

He nodded, called something in on his radio and turned toward the house, eyeing the closed front door and the empty porch. “I’ll check things out.”

“There was another officer here. He—”

“Yeah. We’ve got someone meeting him over at the bus depot. Wait here.” He hurried into the house, and she was left standing in the yard.

She thought about calling Cassie and asking her to come. She didn’t want to face things alone, but Cassie had enough on her plate. She didn’t need to come running to the rescue every time Virginia had a little trouble.

Or a lot of it.

A second police cruiser pulled up behind the first. The passenger door opened, and Officer Forrester got out. He offered a quick wave before opening the back door and letting his dog out.

They made a striking team—both of them muscular and fit and a little ferocious looking. She’d met Officer Forrester at Cassie and Gavin’s wedding. She hadn’t paid all that much attention to him. She’d been trying to corral the kids, keep them from eating the cake or destroying flower arrangements. She’d heard a few of Cassie’s other bridesmaids oohing and ahhing over the K-9 team members, but Virginia had no desire to ooh and ahh. She was way past the point of noticing men, and there was no way she planned to ever be involved in a relationship again.

“You doing okay?” Officer Forrester asked as he approached.

She nodded, because her throat still felt tight with fear, and she was afraid her voice would be shaky.

“I followed your guy to the bus depot. Samson lost the trail there. I think the perp might have gotten in a car, but it’s possible he made it onto a bus. We’ll check the security cameras in the area. See if we can figure out who he is and where he went.”

“Good,” she managed to say, her voice stronger than she expected it to be.

“You want to sit in your car while you wait?” he suggested, his gaze focused and intent, his eyes a bright crisp blue that reminded her of the summer sky.

“I’m fine.”

“I’m sure you are, but you look pale, and Gavin asked me to keep an eye on you until he and Cassie get here.”

“You called Gavin?”

“He’s my supervisor,” he responded as if that explained everything.

“Well, call him again,” she said, because she didn’t want her boss to come all the way from All Our Kids to help her. Not when there were two—she glanced at a tall blonde female officer getting out of the second cruiser—three police officers nearby. “Tell him that I’m fine and I don’t need Cassie to come.”

“How about you do that, Virginia?” he suggested. “I’m going in the house.”

He was gone before she could respond, striding across the yard, Samson beside him.

She would have followed, but the female officer approached and began asking dozens of questions. Virginia answered the best she could, but her mind was on the house, the man she’d seen, the name he’d called her—Ginny. As if he’d said it a thousand times before.

No one called her Ginny. Not since Kevin had died.

No one in her new life, none of the new friends she’d made, the people she worked with, the kids she took care of knew that she’d ever gone by Ginny. For eight years, she’d been Virginia.

Whoever the guy in the house had been, he’d known her before. Or he’d known Kevin. She didn’t like either thought. She didn’t want to revisit the past. She didn’t want to relive the weeks and months and years before she’d nearly died.

What she wanted to do was go back to her safe life working at All Our Kids. She wanted to forget about her inheritance, her past, all the nightmares that plagued her.

The front door of the house opened, and Officer Forrester appeared, the responding officer right behind him. They looked grim and unhappy, and she braced herself for bad news as she followed the female officer across the yard and up the porch stairs.

* * *

Virginia looked terrified.

John couldn’t say he blamed her. Finding someone in a supposedly empty house would scare the bravest person. From what Gavin had told him, Virginia wasn’t exactly that. As a matter of fact, Gavin had said Virginia tended to panic very quickly. Which was why he and Cassie were on their way to the house.

He wasn’t going to call and tell them not to come, but Virginia seemed to be holding it together pretty well. No tears, no screams, no sobs. Just wide blue eyes, pale skin and soft hair falling across her cheeks.

“Did you find anything?” she asked, directing her question to the other officer.

Leonard Morris was a DC police officer. Well liked and respected, he knew just about every law enforcement officer in the district. “Nothing to write home about, ma’am,” Officer Morris responded. “I’m going to dust for prints, but I thought you could come in, see if there’s anything missing.”

She hesitated for a heartbeat too long, her gaze jumping to the still-open front door, her skin going a shade paler. “I... Is that really necessary?”

Morris frowned. “If there’s something missing, only you’ll know it. So, yeah, I guess it is.”

“I... Don’t you want to dust for prints and look for evidence before I go in and contaminate the scene?”

“I think,” John said, cutting in, taking her arm and urging her to the door, “it’s been contaminated. You were already in there, remember?”

“I’m scared,” she responded. “Not senile.”

“Anyone would be scared in these circumstances.”

“Maybe I didn’t state my position strongly enough,” she muttered as they stepped into the house. “I’m terrified, completely frozen with fear and unable to deal with this. Plus, up until today, I hadn’t stepped foot in the house in eight years. I have no idea what Laurel had.”

“You know what she had before. Maybe that will help. And you seem to be dealing just fine,” he said, because she was. He’d seen people panic. He’d seen them so frozen with fear they couldn’t act. Virginia didn’t seem as if she was any of those things.

“For now. Let’s see what happens if Kevin jumps out of a closet,” she responded with a shaky laugh.

“Kevin?” Officer Morris asked.

Virginia frowned. “My husband. He died eight years ago.”

“I guess he’s not going to be jumping out of any closets, then,” the female officer said, her gaze focused on the opulent staircase, the oil paintings that lined the wall leading upstairs. They screamed money. The whole place did.

“No. I guess he wouldn’t, Officer...?”

“Glenda Winters. You want to tell me why you’re worried about your dead husband jumping out of closets?” she asked.

John had worked with her before. She was a good police officer with a knack for getting the perp, but she was straightforward and matter-of-fact to a fault, her sharp interview tactics often getting her in trouble with her supervisor.

“I’m not,” Virginia replied, walking into a huge living room, her gaze drifting across furniture, paintings and a grand piano that sat in an alcove jutting off from the main room. “It’s just that the man who was in the house looked a lot like Kevin.”