out. She couldn’t care, having no claim on where his eyes or interest wandered. The cool fresh air and velvet darkness of the South Dakota night refreshed her immensely.
“Where’s your car?”
“I walked to work today.”
“Can you walk down to the police station?” Shane asked. “If not, it looks like the ambulance is still here.”
A trick question, she decided, following his gaze. The paramedics were leaning against the rig, chatting with another RRPD officer who had responded to Shane’s call. One of them waved to Shane. “If I walk it, will you drive me home rather than take me to the hospital?”
“No,” he replied.
She’d rather not continue the conversation, and being outside was helping. For a time there was only the muted sound of the corgi’s toenails on the sidewalk as he trotted beside Shane. Neither her shoes nor his made any noise.
“You were drugged,” Shane pointed out. “We shouldn’t take any chances.”
His insistence on helping confused her. “Why do you even care?” She was a Gage. He was a Colton. On top of that, her grandfather, a decorated officer in the RRPD, had railroaded an investigation and sent Shane to prison for a crime he didn’t commit.
His hand tensed on her arm. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “When I looked over that fence and saw you, I wanted to keep right on going.”
She appreciated the honesty, though it was hardly comforting. In Red Ridge, Shane was as well-known for his stark candor as he was for surviving the wrongful conviction and carving out a new career with his spunky K9 partner.
At last they reached his dove-gray SUV parked at the curb in front of the police station. The parking lights flashed as he pressed a button on the key fob and opened the passenger door for her.
“What were you doing out here anyway?” she asked when he had Stumps settled in the back seat.
“We were walking off a long drive from the other side of the county,” he said. He took advantage of the complete lack of traffic and pulled a U-turn to go to the hospital. “Stumps likes to walk out this way every chance he gets.”
“He probably still thinks of the training center as his territory,” she said, thinking out loud. “He wouldn’t be the first.” She couldn’t help wondering about Nico. How had a stranger gotten him out of the training center without incident?
“Could be,” Shane allowed.
The street seemed to do a slow spin around her head. She used the headrest as an anchor, distantly thinking a medical evaluation might not be a bad idea. “Whoever took Nico drugged him, too,” she said under her breath, her eyelids growing heavy. “No way he’d let a stranger lead him away.”
She was thinking about what that might mean for recovering him swiftly as a blanket of blissful black enveloped her once more.
Her voice was so faint Shane leaned as far across the center console as he dared to hear her, hoping Danica was recalling something helpful. “What would they use to drug him?”
When she didn’t reply, he took his eyes off the road and discovered she was unconscious again. He reached over and gave her shoulder a shake. All that did was cause her head to loll forward, that heavy curtain of red-gold silk falling over her face.
He swore and, thankful for the complete lack of traffic at this hour, stomped on the gas pedal. Better a speeding ticket than another Gage falling into trouble at the hands of a Colton.
He didn’t for a moment believe Demi killed Bo, but the Red Ridge rumor mill loved to toss gasoline on the fire of the Colton-Gage feud. As if they couldn’t manage the mutual hatred without outside interference. Until the RRPD identified a better suspect, the going theory of the Groom Killer case was the only theory.
For the first time in his career, he understood the sense of pervasive helplessness that came with an inability to bring justice to a victim. It wasn’t a comfortable sensation and he refused to dwell on anything that gave him common ground with the decorated Sergeant Gage, the officer who’d inexplicably framed him.
He pulled up at the emergency room entrance and told Stumps to stay while he went around and lifted Danica from the passenger seat. He carried her inside and gave her name to the nurse at the information desk.
The nurse’s eyes went wide as she recognized Danica’s name and his face. Shane nearly snapped that he was the rescuer, not the perp. Similar claims had never helped him before so he didn’t bother now. He could feel the speculation from people in the waiting area close enough to overhear them, but he resisted the urge to glare at them.
“What happened?” the nurse asked, escorting him through the doors to an available treatment bay, and he situated Danica on the bed. A male nurse hurried in, asking for information.
“She was drugged earlier and found unconscious.” He pushed a hand through his short hair as he explained what he knew. “She came around on her own just before 11:00 p.m. and was doing fine. She refused to let the paramedics transport her. On the way over, we were talking and then she just blacked out.”
“All right. We’ll take it from here,” the nurse said, nudging him clear so he could do a blood draw.
“I’ll notify her brother that she’s here,” Shane said as he ducked out.
He’d done his part getting her here and he could leave with a clear conscience. So he had no logical explanation for why he parked the car and walked back into the hospital with Stumps at his side. In the waiting room, he sent Carson a text message that Danica was being evaluated.
Telling himself it was a simple courtesy and he’d leave as soon as someone from her family arrived, he found an out-of-the-way corner to wait. Stumps stretched out at his feet, resting his chin on his paws. Soon soft snores were coming from the tired corgi. Shane thought he had the right idea. He leaned back against the wall and tried to rest his eyes.
Instead, his mind tortured him with the images of Danica sprawled awkwardly on the grass and her disorientation when she’d come to. Contrary to public opinion, he didn’t actively wish her or any of her siblings harm. He was thankful the attacker had used a drug to clear a path to steal the prized Malinois rather than overpower her with brute force that might have been deadly. For all her skill as an expert dog trainer, she couldn’t change the fact that she was petite.
He sat forward and scrubbed at the stubble on his jaw. It was impossible to shut down his investigator’s mind-set. The attacker’s decision not to simply kill her had Shane thinking maybe the thief knew her. Probably even liked her. How did that shift the suspect pool? Although he avoided the Gages on principle whenever possible, he was in the minority. Danica had plenty of friends as well as plenty of sympathy for her recent loss.
Unlike him.
His connections were irrelevant. He didn’t want friends or sympathy anyway. Being selective about whom he spent time with was a survival tactic. When he’d been young and stupid, his casual acquaintances had landed him in a world of trouble. In prison, it had taken him less than a week to
