brown eyes that at times looked hard and cold but were always alive and warm when he worked with the animals His strong jaw held a five-o’clock shadow. She used to kiss that jaw on a regular basis. She cleared her throat and tried to shake her memories, but they just wouldn’t leave her alone. Memories of being his girlfriend, the vicious conflict with her mother. And then Lee had walked away from it all.
Now she was back in town and he was out of prison and she was working in Desert Valley. For the time being. Thanks to her mother’s stipulation that she and the other rookies had to stay in Desert Valley until Veronica’s murder was solved or she would withdraw the funding she’d given the department. Funding the department couldn’t afford to lose. Ellen planned to have a few words about that with her mother when she woke from the coma she’d been in for the past three months. Someone had broken in to her home and attacked her, almost killing her. “I can understand your frustrations, Lee. I feel the same way about my mother’s attacker.” Ellen desperately wanted to find out who did it.
“I know, it’s just—”
The back windshield shattered and Ellen gave a low scream of surprise. Lee jerked the wheel to the right. “Get down!” Outside sounds rushed through the missing window. Someone was shooting at them!
Ellen ignored his order and turned in her seat to look out the back. “He’s coming up on your five o’clock. Coming in for another shot.” It was the perfect place for an ambush. On a back road that didn’t see much traffic just outside a small town.
Ellen’s tension mounted and she was extremely glad she’d left Carly, her golden retriever K-9 partner, at the training center for this trip. It was supposed to take no more than two hours all in. An hour to the prison and an hour back. And while Lee had been as tense as she’d ever seen him at returning to the prison, he hadn’t said a word. She released her weapon from its holster and gripped it in her right hand, readying herself for the next attack.
Four months, she thought.
Less than four months ago, she’d finished the twelve-week training session at the Canyon County K-9 Training Center. The state of Arizona had started the program years ago and found it quite successful. They trained new police academy recruits to be K-9 officers. She was a newbie, a rookie officer with the Desert Valley Police Department.
And now she might have to shoot someone.
The thought wanted to paralyze her, but her training kicked in and she knew she could do what she had to in order to protect herself and Lee.
The car roared up beside them and she got a brief glance at the driver and the gun he had pointed at her. Lee stomped the brakes, throwing her against the seat belt. She jerked forward then back, her head slamming into the headrest, her hand against the door. She lost her grip on the weapon and it clattered to the floor. The next shot took off the passenger-side mirror of the truck. Another hit a tire. Lee fought with the wheel and the truck listed to the side, but that didn’t stop him.
He spun the wheel to the right and they roared onto a side road. The other vehicle swept past. Lee hit the brakes again and backed up, the truck lurching, the rim of the flattened tire grinding. But he managed to complete his three-point turn so that the front of his truck now faced the road. She watched the disappearing taillights of the other car.
As soon as Lee put the truck in Park, Ellen rolled out of the passenger door, grabbed her weapon from the floor and aimed in the direction the other car had gone. “Lee, are you okay? Come out the passenger door.”
“I’m fine.” He landed on the ground beside her, kneeling behind the protection of the open door. He radiated tension. “I’m going to check on the dogs.”
Ellen registered the barking. “I’m calling for backup.” She grabbed the radio from her hip and put in the call. When Dispatch answered, she rattled off the information. She glanced at Lee who was also watching the road. “Anything?”
“No, not yet.”
“Help is on the way.”
She maintained her vigilance even as her mind searched for answers. Who would want to attack her and Lee? Probably the same people behind the other trouble the police department and her fellow K-9 officers had faced since being assigned to solve Veronica Earnshaw’s murder. Then again, Lee had just been released from prison. Could it be someone after him?
The drone of an engine caught her attention and all speculation fled. She heard it coming closer as Lee pulled the two crates from the backseat of the king cab one after the other and set them on the ground by the blown tire. He handled the heavy cargo as though it weighed nothing, but she knew the two six-month-old pups weighed about fifty pounds each. “I hear something. Are they coming back?”
“Sounds like it.” She raised her gun and aimed it. When the car crested the hill, she knew they were in for a second attack. “That’s them.” The dark gray Buick slowed; the barrel of a rifle appeared in the window. She figured it was now or never and tightened her finger, heard her weapon bark, felt the kick against her hand.
The sedan’s front windshield exploded. The driver hit the gas and the vehicle blew past in a drunken weave. Ellen spun from her position and moved to the back of the truck near the crated, yapping puppies. This time the car didn’t turn around—and she got a partial plate. “Oh-four,” she whispered. “I didn’t get the rest of it. But I got 04.”
She turned to find Lee hovering over the puppies, his features tense, face pale. “Are you all right?” he asked.
“Yeah. You?”
He nodded. “The puppies are fine, too.”
Ellen pulled her phone from the clip on her belt. “I’m going to find out where backup is. Keep an eye out for them to come back while I’m on the phone, will you?” Not only did they need a tow truck for Lee’s vehicle, they needed a ride back to town and a Be On the Lookout—a BOLO—put out for the gray sedan.
“Of course.” He looked distracted. Thoughtful. His brows pulled together over the bridge of his nose as if he knew something and was pondering it.
“What is it?” she asked.
His eyes flicked to hers then he shook his head. “Nothing.”
The dispatcher came on the line. “Where’s my backup?”
“On the way, Ellen. They should be there within minutes.”
“Tell them to be looking for a dark gray sedan—a Buick—with 04 in the license plate.”
“Copy that.”
Ellen hung up and paced behind the protection of Lee’s truck while she watched the road and thought about what had just happened. “Did you tell anyone about us going to pick up the puppies?” she asked.
Lee frowned. “No. But it’s not because I thought it was some top secret mission—it’s just that I don’t talk to too many people.”
Ellen heard the bitterness behind the words. Being imprisoned for two years for a crime one didn’t commit could do that to a person. She also knew that people in Desert Valley, Arizona, had long memories and weren’t very forgiving. Never mind that the man before her had been set up by a corrupt cop.
When she’d heard Lee had been arrested for robbery, she’d been stunned. Then disbelief
