moved toward the back door, just a step, praying the route was clear. The man swung at her, something hard colliding with her back. The impact sent her to her knees. Elise scrabbled around on the floor, praying her cell was close by. Nathan didn’t need to come here and get hurt, but he could get help. Another hit sent her to the floor so she lay prone, stunned. Pain held her lungs frozen so she couldn’t get air.
All she could do was watch as the man went to the same file cabinet he’d been looking in only minutes ago and pulled out a handful of papers. His dirty loafer nearly stomped her hand as he ran past where she lay, out the door.
Elise lay there helpless, waiting for someone to find her. She glanced around, trying to spot her phone. Her eyes caught on something taped to the underside of the desk. Wires. Blocks of gray stuff that looked like molding clay.
A bomb?
* * *
Jonah Rivers keyed the mic on his collar as he ran. “The fugitive is headed into the zoo. I’m in pursuit.”
The man he chased had lived on chips and cigarettes for years, while Jonah ate as healthy as any other single deputy US marshal. He also worked out every day but Monday—because Mondays were bad enough without adding having to work out. Jonah headed up the Northwest fugitive apprehension task force, US marshals who hunted the lowest of the low—those who had escaped custody, or hadn’t shown up for their court appearances. Fugitives. The most wanted.
Eventually Fix Tanner would slow, and Jonah was going to catch him.
It was what he did.
Too bad Fix Tanner and his little sister had been a steady part of Jonah’s youth. Although Fix had always held himself separate from Jonah and his brother—the rich kids. Fix and his sister had grown up in a double-wide with their alcoholic mom.
Now it was just another day, just another fugitive.
A car with out-of-state plates and a sticker in the back window—a rental—was parked outside the entrance. Jonah ran, legs pumping, hands gripping his Glock in front of him. Sweat chilled on his forehead as he jumped over strewn two-by-fours, branches and other debris. The floodwaters had reached roof height, and this place was a mess.
He’d been chasing this guy for two miles already. Had Fix found a place to hunker down?
Jonah didn’t know of any connection the man had to the zoo, now or back when it’d been open. The previous manager had been killed in the flood, his body never found. Jonah had heard they were bringing in someone new to reopen it, some kind of wild-animal expert. But he had bigger things to worry about than an attraction he was never going to visit.
“We’re coming in the east entrance but there’s a lot of debris.” Hanning’s voice was breathy.
Deputy Marshal Eric Hanning was a member of Jonah’s team. He was also engaged to another teammate, Deputy Marshal Hailey Shelder. The two had fallen in love after they were forced to rely on each other during the recent flood, when the team had been hunting an escaped convict.
Jonah had been shot in the stomach, and promoted, all during that same manhunt. Now he was in charge of not just the team but the whole office.
Of course Jonah had wanted the job one day, but not like that—not because their former boss had turned bad. The team hadn’t seemed to mind, even though it took a few weeks recovering from his wounds for Jonah to settle in. Boss or not, Jonah would always be a boots-on-the-ground kind of marshal.
The man he was chasing now was low-level. Fix Tanner hadn’t shown up for his court appearance, but Jonah wanted him for more than just the fact that he should be in jail. Fix had a boss. Fix’s boss had a boss. That made for a lot of fingers in a lot of pies, all of which were here in his town. Jonah wanted charges brought against all of them.
The door was open on the first building, so Jonah stepped silently up the stairs, slowing his pace. Blood rushed in his head, and the beat of his heart pounded in his ears in the silence. If one of his team radioed in now, the sound would be deafening.
While Hanning and Shelder took the east entrance, his other two team members, Jackson Parker and Wyatt Ames—a former SEAL and a former police detective, respectively—were on the west side. The zoo wasn’t all that big. Fifty acres. It should take minutes for them to meet in the center where the lake was.
Jonah flipped on his flashlight and scanned the room.
The beam moved over a body—a woman. Jonah crouched and touched her shoulder. She shifted, moaning as though the soft touch hurt, but it was her warmth that sent a rush of relief through him. He couldn’t help her if she was dead, and murder investigations weren’t his jurisdiction.
Jonah pulled out his cell phone and called emergency dispatch, then informed his teammates of what he’d found. “Anyone got a location on Tanner?”
“Negative.”
“Not yet.” Parker’s determination was only in part due to his having been a SEAL. The man was also incredibly stubborn.
“Keep searching,” Jonah said. “I’ll wait with her.”
“Her?” The interest in Ames’s voice was unmistakable.
“She’s hurt, Ames. But it’s not Tanner, it’s a woman.”
Jonah turned his attention to her. Had Fix Tanner done this? He wouldn’t put it past the man, but Jonah had been chasing him only minutes ago. Now Fix was who knew where, and this woman had been hurt because Jonah wasn’t fast enough.
Was his wound slowing him down? It was down to a dull ache most days, and he didn’t want to keep to his desk, but he didn’t want to put the team—or anyone else—in jeopardy, either.
He shouldn’t turn the woman if she was injured, but he brushed the hair back from her face enough to see who it was.
His voice was a whisper. “Elise.”
Flashes of the past ran through his brain like a movie reel. Cookouts, the lake and little Elise Tanner. They’d been friends all the time he was in high school, right up until he joined the marines. And then come home from deployment to find she’d married his brother.
Crumpled in a heap on the floor wasn’t just any woman. This happened to be the one woman in the world he’d never imagined he would ever see again, and now she was here. Jonah sank to his knees beside her and checked his watch. Emergency services wouldn’t be long.
“Elise?” He patted her cheek. It couldn’t be a coincidence she was here on the exact day Jonah was chasing her brother.
The years had changed both of them—that much was obvious. Still, in his heart she was the same smiling, teenage girl. Years lay between today and the day Jonah had returned from yet another deployment to discover she’d left town, consumed with her grief over his brother being killed in action.
For months his heart had warred between acknowledging she was simply grieving and the fact she hadn’t wanted him to help her through it. They’d had a close relationship once, but that apparently didn’t matter. She hadn’t trusted Jonah enough to be there for her when she needed it. She’d just banked the death benefits and left his mom’s pool house without so much as a note.
