the main thoroughfare. No side streets. No trips into local business. The person they were trailing had known exactly where he was heading, and he hadn’t veered from the course he’d been set on.
Henry jerked forward, running into an alley and barking frantically. Someone scrambled through the darkness in front of them.
“Police! Freeze!” Lucas called, pulling his flashlight and catching the suspect in its beam.
A kid. Skinny. Dirty. Long hair hanging limp to his shoulders.
“I said freeze!” Lucas repeated, and the kid froze, his hands shooting into the air.
“Don’t let the dog go, man! Don’t let him go.”
“Down on the ground. Hands where I can see them!”
“I ain’t done nothing,” the man protested, but he dropped onto the ground, his arms and legs spread out. He knew the drill and didn’t say another word as Lucas patted him down, snapped cuffs onto his wrists.
He called in for transport, eyeing the skinny, pockmarked young man. Hollow cheeks, bad skin, narrow shoulders that were all bone. He looked like a meth user and probably was one.
“What’s your name?” Lucas asked as he pulled the kid to his feet.
“Justin Forsythe, and I’m telling you, I ain’t guilty of nothin’.”
“Then why are you hiding in an alley?”
“I’m not hiding. I’m sleeping. Or I was trying to. Until people started running through here.”
His words made the hair on the back of Lucas’s neck stand up. “What people?”
“You and some other guy.” The kid’s expression changed from fear to calculation. “He’s probably the one you’re looking for. You should let me go so you can find him.”
Henry sniffed the guy’s shoes, then the ground. Hackles raised, eyes on the far end of the alley, he looked as if he was ready to go again.
“What did the guy look like?” Lucas pressed for more information.
“Can’t tell you. I just heard him running through my alley. Looked out of my bed. I think he threw something on his way past, though.”
“Yeah?” Lucas flashed the light around the alley. Too much junk to make heads or tails of what might have been thrown, but Henry would know if one of the items belonged to the perp.
A patrol car pulled up at the mouth of the alley, and an officer climbed out. Lucas let him deal with the kid. He had bigger fish to fry.
He tightened his hold on Henry’s lead, letting the dog crisscross the narrow alley. Henry froze about a foot from a Dumpster that blocked the alley’s exit and whined excitedly.
“What is it, Hen...?” Lucas’s voice trailed off. A knit hat lay on the ground.
He used the end of a pen to lift it.
Not a hat. A ski mask. Black.
Henry whined again.
“Good job, boy,” Lucas murmured. This had to be the mask the perp had worn.
Lucas pulled an evidence bag from his pocket and dropped the mask into it. There’d be evidence on it. DNA. Clues as to who had attacked Emma.
Henry yanked against the lead. He still had the scent trail. God willing, the mask wouldn’t be the only thing they found.
“Seek!” Lucas commanded, and Henry scrambled to the top of the trash bin, jumped to the ground on the other side and took off running.
FOUR
Emma woke to darkness, her head pounding, her ribs aching. At first she didn’t know where she was. The pillow, the bed, the light seeping in through an open doorway—none of it was familiar. Somewhere in the distance, Christmas carols were playing, the faint music more creepy than comforting.
She tried to sit, but pain shot through her side, the stabbing agony stealing her breath. She touched her ribs. Cotton. Bandages. An IV in her hand.
The hospital.
Memories flooded in. The trip to the hospital. Bea arriving frazzled and worried. Doctors, nurses, X-rays.
A sputtering snore broke the room’s silence.
Emma glanced to the left, wincing as pain shot through her skull. Aunt Bea sat in a chair a few feet away, her head back, her mouth open. Her hands were folded neatly in her lap, her feet pressed firmly together. She wore her favorite blue suit and one of her Christmas brooches—a wreath made of green and ruby crystals. Emma had picked it up at an antiques store in Boston.
Bea’s purple-white hair was in rollers, and Emma wasn’t sure if she’d left the house in a hurry or if she’d simply forgotten that she’d put them in. Bea had been forgetting more and more lately. The doctor had warned Emma that the disease would progress that way.
Alzheimer’s.
She hated the name, hated what it was doing to the only woman who’d ever really cared about her.
Emma frowned. Her aunt should be tucked in her bed at home, not sitting in a chair in the hospital. She needed plenty of rest, plenty of good nutrition and plenty of patience. That was what the doctor had said, and Emma had vowed that she’d provide every one of those things. Bea had always been stubborn though, and after she’d arrived with a bag of clothes and toiletries for Emma, she’d insisted on staying until Emma fell asleep. Apparently Bea had fallen asleep, too.
“Bea?” she called out quietly.
Bea didn’t move.
“Bea? she said again.
Still nothing.
She shoved aside her blankets and stood, her legs wobbling. She tried to take a step forward, but the IV pole was on the other side of the bed.
Not one of her best moments, but she’d make it work. She scooted back across the bed, the pain in her ribs so sharp her breath caught. Sweat beaded her brow, her stomach rolled and Bea just kept snoring.
A shadow moved across the doorway, blocking the light as she finally managed to get to her feet again.
She froze, her blood running cold.
She’d been trying not to think about the attack, trying not to remember the dark shadow lunging toward her, the fear, the panic as she’d been dragged back into the diner.
“Who’s there?” she called, her voice wobbling.
“Lucas.” He stepped into the room, carrying the scent of balmy winter air with him. “What are you doing out of bed?”
“Trying to wake Bea. She needs to go home.”
“And you need to be careful.” He urged her back onto the bed, his
