partner for the center. A nice big dog with sharp teeth. “Hey, Jim. I interrupted someone breaking into my office. They made a mess of things.”
His gray eyes clouded with concern. “You okay?”
“Just a bruised ego.” And a knock to the noggin. Nothing she couldn’t handle.
“Let me see.” He tried to push past her.
Her arm shot out and blocked him from entering. “I’m waiting for the CSU team.”
He scowled. “It was probably a kid looking for some loose change.”
Melody shook her head. “Guy was too big, too strong to be a teen.”
“You get a look at his face?”
“I didn’t.”
The center’s front door opened. A small dog with his black nose pressed to the ground entered. Melody recognized the beagle as Sherlock, part of the K-9 unit. He wore a vest with the Sagebrush Police Department emblem over his light brown and white coat. A harness attached to a leash led to the handsome man at the other end. Melody blinked.
What were Narcotics Detective Parker Adams and his K-9 partner doing here?
The dog was adorable with his floppy ears and big round eyes.
Much like his handler.
She didn’t know the narcotics detective well. She worked for the homicide division, mostly cold cases, while he was part of the Sagebrush’s elite K-9 unit. Their paths hadn’t crossed much, though she’d noticed him at the police station.
Hard not to take notice when he filled out his uniform nicely with broad shoulders and trim waist. She liked the way he wore his dark hair swept back from his forehead and his warm brown eyes appeared kind whenever he glanced her way.
He wasn’t much taller than she, but he had a commanding presence that she found disconcerting. Though why, she wasn’t sure. Growing up the daughter of a cop, there were few people who intimidated her. But something about the handsome officer made her pay attention.
Two crime-scene-unit techs filed in behind Parker carrying in their equipment. Considering the police station was at the other end of the block, Melody wasn’t surprised how quickly they’d arrived. She just didn’t understand why Parker had responded to her call.
The CSU team approached, each member wearing a dark blue Sagebrush Police Department windbreaker. Parker hung back, letting his dog sniff the floor, the thresholds of the closed classroom doors, the lockers.
“Hey, Melody,” said Rose Bigsby, a stocky woman with short blond curls and wire-rimmed glasses perched on her short nose. “Report came in that you had a break-in.”
Melody gestured to the open door of her office. “In there.”
Clay Gregson nodded to Jim and then smiled shyly at Melody as he moved past her to enter her office. The tall and lean CSU technician wasn’t much on small talk, something the officers of SPD were used to. Rose, on the other hand, made up for her partner’s lack of conversation just fine. Rose followed him in and started the process of looking for anything that would lead them to ID the intruder.
“Any idea who broke in?” Parker asked as he and his dog approached. “What was he looking for?”
Melody frowned. “I have no idea who the guy was or what he was after.”
“What are you doing here, Adams?” Jim asked.
“Captain McNeal thought it’d be a good idea for Sherlock here to check out the center,” Parker replied evenly. “Considering.”
Her defenses stirred. “Considering what?”
He met her gaze. His dark eyes intense, probing. “The rumors of drugs being dealt out of here.”
Her hackles rose like the feathers of a peacock on high alert. She’d been battling that particular thread of gossip since the center opened. She routinely searched the building and kept a close eye on the kids. She was certain there were no drugs on the premises. “We have a strict no-drugs policy. Any offenders will be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.”
Parker shrugged. “Then there’s nothing to worry about. Sherlock shouldn’t find anything. He’s got the best nose in the state, and it’s never wrong.”
“I’ve got to go to the station,” Jim said abruptly and headed for the exit.
Watching him hustle out the door, Melody frowned. He’d just arrived. She shrugged off her coworker’s strange behavior. Even though she was fond of Jim, she’d long ago decided she would never figure out the male species.
Or teenagers. Starting the youth center had been her attempt to help the kids of Sagebrush so they wouldn’t end up like her nephew. At sixteen, Daniel had gotten mixed up with drugs, dealing and using, by all accounts. He’d ended up dead because of it. During a standoff with the police, he’d been wounded in the leg by Captain Slade McNeal and then shot in the heart by an unknown sniper. The assassin was never caught.
Saving other teens from Daniel’s fate had become her mission in life.
However, that didn’t mean she understood the teens or their thought processes. Thankfully, there were tons of books on the subject. If she could prevent even one teen from ending up addicted to drugs like Daniel, she’d feel she succeeded.
Her gaze strayed back to the mess in her office. Rose knelt beside the lamp and dusted black powder over the surface. The flash of a camera momentarily brightened the room as Clay photographed the crime scene.
What had the intruder been looking for?
“Did you get a look at the perp?” Parker asked, drawing her attention.
“No, he wore a ski mask.”
“With blacked-out eyes?”
Surprise washed through her. “Yes. Very freaky. How did you know?”
“We’ve had a run-in with a guy wearing a ski mask and some kind of eyewear that blacks out the whites of his eyes. Did he take anything?”
Absorbing that information, she turned her gaze once again to the box labeled with her nephew’s name. Would she find something missing? Did the vandalism to her office have anything to do with last month’s desecration of Daniel’s grave? A lump of anxiety lodged in her chest.
It had been five years since Daniel’s death. Five years of searching for answers and coming up empty. What had recently changed to make someone dig into the past? And Daniel’s grave?
The questions intensified the headache pounding at her temples. She didn’t believe in coincidence. Daniel’s grave, now her office. Were the two events connected? Maybe it was time to re-question some of Daniel’s old buddies. Someone had to know something useful.
Her heart squeezed. Five years wasn’t nearly long enough to have healed some wounds, though.
Realizing Parker was waiting for her to respond, she said, “I only did a cursory look, but I didn’t see
