High School Reunion

She rang the doorbell one last time. The chime echoed hollowly throughout the house.

She drew her weapon and carefully turned the doorknob, expecting resistance. It turned!

Instinctively, she flattened her back against the door facing as her boss’s voice echoed in her ears. Every suspicious circumstance is a crime scene until you prove it’s not.

And right now, too many things weren’t adding up. Misty never left a door unlocked.

Carefully, she nudged the door open, cringing when the hinges creaked. She angled inside, leading with her weapon, her senses on full alert. The sight that greeted her in the foyer sent alarm thrumming through her.

Scraps of paper littered the floor, lit by the blue glow that flickered from the living room to her left.

TV with no sound. Another habit of Misty’s from high school. She’d always studied in front of the TV with the sound turned off.

But not with the lights off.

Laurel pressed her back against the wall, prepared to lead with her gun. A muffled thud sent her heart rate soaring.

“FBI,” she called. “I’m coming in. Identify yourself.”

A plaintive yowl echoed through the doorway. A cat. Of course. Misty had always had a cat.

Taking a deep breath to steady her pulse, Laurel stepped around the door facing, her Glock at the ready. The cat bumped her leg.

On the floor in front of the couch, silhouetted in the TV’s eerie glow, she saw a crumpled form. Her fingers tightened on her weapon and her heart rate doubled. “Misty? Is that you?”

No response.

She fought to keep her breathing even. Training had taught her that danger sent the pulse sky high—three-hundred beats per minute or more. But training also taught her how to control it. She had to keep her cool.

She felt for the light switch but couldn’t find it. Swinging her weapon around one more time, she squinted in the dim blue light. The living room looked like the day after a ticker-tape parade. Photos and scraps of paper were scattered everywhere. No sound reached her ears except the discordant hum of an ancient window air conditioner.

She eyed the body on the floor with growing apprehension. “Misty?”

Nothing. She crossed the room, careful to keep her back to the wall and her finger on the trigger. One glance at the woman’s pale face and hair told her it was her friend. Blood blackened the left side of her head.

She held her breath and watched Misty’s chest. There—a faint flutter.

Thank heavens. Misty was alive. Laurel hated to leave her friend lying in her own blood, but neglecting the basics could get them both killed.

So, gripping her weapon more tightly, Laurel edged her way through the dining room and into the kitchen. She quickly and efficiently cleared the house.

Whoever had attacked Misty was gone.

Back in the den, she knelt beside her friend. “Misty? Honey? Can you hear me?”

She didn’t answer. Laurel reached for her cell phone to call 9-1-1.

“Damn it.” She’d left it in the car, plugged into the charger. She glanced around. An old-fashioned dial phone sat on a side table, but from her position Laurel could see the naked wires. Whoever had attacked Misty had jerked the phone out of the wall.

She moved to stand, and the toe of her pump touched something. It was a baseball bat that had rolled partway under the couch. Laurel nudged it with her foot. There was wet, shiny blood on the end of it.

She hated to leave Misty alone, but she had to get to her phone. She had to report an assault with a deadly weapon.

Someone had attacked her friend and left her for dead.

POLICE CHIEF CADE DUPREE turned onto Misty Waller’s street and parked near the corner. He’d been investigating a report of a break-in at the Visitor Center of Dusty Springs’ brand new convention complex when the call came in.

Mrs. Gardner, Misty’s neighbor, was frantic, because someone was lurking around their street. That was the word she’d used. Lurking. To hear her tell it, people had been lurking all afternoon.

A break-in and a lurking in one evening—that was more crime than he’d seen since he’d left the FBI to take over his dad’s job as chief of police of Dusty Springs. His mouth curved into a wry smile as he walked down the sidewalk toward the Wallers’ house.

Not quite what he’d pictured himself doing after completing his training at Quantico. Still, at least this job wasn’t dangerous.

Or interesting.

A curtain fluttered in Mrs. Gardner’s window. Cade resisted the urge to wave at her as he spotted a rental car parked in front of Misty’s house.

That was what he’d figured. The lurker was a friend of Misty’s in town for the high-school reunion.

He pushed up the brim of his cap and squinted in the bright sunlight. The driver’s side door was open, and a well-rounded backside above long shapely legs faced him. Not Misty. This bottom was skinnier, sexier. And those legs…

“Evening, ma’am,” he said, as he approached the front of the car.

The woman tensed, then straightened. The car’s interior light glinted off blue steel.

Gun. Cade rocked to the balls of his feet and moved his hand to his belt holster. “Hold it right there.”

She froze.

“Now set that gun down on the car seat and straighten up slowly.”

She obeyed. As she straightened, the car’s light caught coppery highlights in her collar-length hair. She held out her hands in a nonthreatening gesture.

Her brows lowered and her mouth dropped open for a split-second, but before he could wonder what she found surprising, she composed her face and looked him straight in the eye.

“It’s all right,” she said. “I’m FBI.” She slowly pulled her jacket aside to reveal the distinctive badge pinned to her waistband.

“FBI?” Unwelcome memories assaulted his brain. The excitement of making it to Quantico. The sense of purpose that the FBI had chosen him. But then his older brother had died, his father had suffered a stroke and he’d had to give up his dream and return to Dusty Springs.

Cade forced his attention back to the woman. “What’s going on?”

“Misty’s hurt. I need to call 9-1-1. I left my cell phone in the car.”

“I’m 9-1-1. Do we need the EMTs?”

“Yes. She’s got a blow to the head.”

Cade didn’t stop to ask any more questions. He sprinted up the steps and through the front door.