She needed to get to the woman, needed to get her help...but before she could reach for her cell to call for it, a car door slammed and an engine revved. That car headed over the grass, coming across the playground.
The shooter must have noticed Pandora watching him and figured she’d witnessed him shooting—maybe killing—someone.
Juliette’s heart pounded as fear overwhelmed her. She wrapped her arms around Pandora and propelled them both down the slide. Ordinarily her daughter would have squealed in glee, but now she trembled with the same fear that gripped Juliette.
The car’s engine revved again as it jumped the curb and careened toward them. Juliette drew her gun from her holster as she gently pushed Pandora into the tunnel beneath the slide. The side of the thick plastic tunnel faced the car, which had braked to an abrupt stop. A door creaked open.
Juliette raised her finger to her lips, gesturing at Pandora to stay quiet. The little girl stared up at her, her green eyes wide with fear. But she nodded.
Sasha was not quiet. She barked and growled, straining against her leash. Instinctively she knew Juliette and Pandora were in danger. But with the man between them now, Juliette could not release her partner to help. And maybe that was a good thing. She had no doubt that Sasha would put her life in danger for Juliette’s and especially for Pandora’s.
Juliette would put herself in danger for Pandora, too.
Crouched on the other side of the tunnel so he wouldn’t see her, Juliette studied the man who’d stepped out of the sedan. He’d pulled the hood of his light jacket up over his head, and despite the overcast sky, he wore sunglasses. He was trying hard to disguise himself. But was it already too late? Had Pandora seen him without the hood and the glasses?
Who was he?
A killer.
She had no doubt that the young woman he’d shot was bleeding out in the parking lot. Frustration and guilt churned inside her, but she couldn’t call for help now and alert him to where she’d hidden her daughter. If not for Pandora, the cop part of Juliette would have been trying to take him down—even without backup. But because Pandora was in danger, the mother part of her overruled the cop.
Especially since he was heading straight toward the slide. But Pandora was no longer perched atop it. So he looked around, and he tensed as he noticed the tunnel beneath it. He raised his gun, pointing the long barrel toward that tunnel.
Toward Juliette’s daughter...
Her heart pounding so hard it felt as if it might burst out of her chest, she raised her gun and shouted, “Police. Drop your weapon! You’re under arrest!”
Instead he swung the gun toward her, and his glasses slid down his nose, revealing eyes so dark and so cold that a shiver passed through Juliette.
He shook his head and yelled, “Give me the damn kid!”
And she knew—Pandora had seen him without the hat, without the glasses. Then the wind kicked up again and blew his hood back, and Juliette saw his dark curly hair. And something pinged in her mind. He looked familiar to her, but she wasn’t sure where she’d seen him before.
“Put down the gun!” she yelled back at him.
But he moved his finger toward his trigger, so she squeezed hers. When the bullet struck his shoulder, his face contorted into a grimace of pain. He cursed—loudly.
“Stop!” she yelled. “Drop the gun!”
Despite his wounded shoulder, he held tightly to his weapon. Before she could fire again, he turned and ran back toward his car. Over his shoulder, he called out, “That kid is dead and so are you, lady cop!”
Juliette started after him. But a scream drew her attention. And a little voice called out urgently, “Mommy!”
The car peeled out of the lot, tires squealing against the asphalt. Juliette stared after it, trying to read the license plate number, but it was smeared with mud. From where? The weather here had been so dry.
He’d planned to obscure that plate. He’d planned to kill that woman.
Now he planned to kill her and Pandora. She moved toward the end of the tunnel and leaned over to peer inside at her daughter. “Sweetheart, are you okay?”
The little girl’s head bobbed up and down in a jerky nod. “Are you dead, Mommy?”
A twinge struck Juliette’s heart. “No, I’m fine, honey.” But that woman was not. She pulled out her cell phone and punched 911. After identifying herself as a police officer, she ordered an ambulance for the shooting victim, an APB on the killer’s car and her K9 team to help.
But she knew they would arrive too late. She doubted that woman could be saved, and she was worried that the killer might not be caught. At least not until he killed again...
And he’d made it clear who his next targets would be. Her and her daughter...
Pandora began to cry, her soft voice rising and cracking with hysteria as her tiny body shook inside the tunnel. Juliette’s legs began to shake, too, then gave out so that she dropped to her knees. She crawled inside the small space with her daughter and pulled her tightly into her arms.
Pandora was Juliette’s life. She could not lose her. She had to do whatever necessary to protect her.
* * *
What the hell am I doing back here?
There was nothing in Red Ridge for Blake Colton. He’d built his life in London and Hong Kong and Singapore—because his life was his business. And those were the cities in which he’d built Blake Colton International into the multibillion-dollar operation that it was.
That was undoubtedly why Patience had called him—because of his money—since he and his sister had never been close. He wasn’t close to any of his other sisters, either, or to his father or mother. Maybe that was partially his fault, though, because he’d left home so young and had been gone so long now. But Patience hadn’t called to see how he was doing; she’d called to ask him to help.
He didn’t know how he could provide the kind of help his family needed, though. In addition to their father’s business problems, she’d told him about a murderer on the loose. A murderer everyone believed to be a Colton, too—one of Blake’s cousins.
Blake pulled his rental vehicle into an empty parking spot outside the long one-story brick building on Main Street—the Red Ridge Police Department. Maybe his cousin Finn, who was the police chief, could explain to him just what the hell was really going on in Red Ridge.
But only Blake could answer the question of what had compelled him to hop on his private plane and head back to Red Ridge. And he had no damn idea...
With a sigh, he pushed open the driver’s door and stepped out. The sky was dark with the threat of a storm that hadn’t come. Blake felt the weight of those clouds hanging over him like guilt.
He knew what Patience wanted—what she expected him to do. Bail out their father so that their sister Layla wasn’t forced to marry some old billionaire to save Colton Energy. How like their father to care more about his company than his kids...
That
