Buch lesen: «Texas K-9 Unit Christmas: Holiday Hero»

TWO

Police Lieutenant Lucas Harwood rounded the corner of Arianna’s Diner, his K-9 partner, Henry, padding along beside him. The place had been closed down for eight months, and it had the lonely, empty feel of an abandoned building.

It had been an abandoned building.

That had changed, though. Emma Fairchild had bought the property. According to her aunt Bea, she should be there now, working to get the place ready for its grand opening. So far Lucas hadn’t seen any sign of her. The lights in the diner were off. No hint of activity inside the building.

It was possible Bea was mistaken. Emma was a grown woman. She might have gone out with friends or gone on a date. He had to be sure, though. He’d taken the report, and it was his job to follow up on it.

He walked through a small alley that separated the diner from the store beside it. Nothing unusual there. No sign of a struggle or trouble. No sign of Emma, either. The musty scent of dirt and garbage hung in the air, the shadowy alley the perfect place for transients to camp out for a night or two.

The alley spilled out into the diner’s back parking lot. One car was parked near a burned-out streetlight. No one in sight, but the back door yawned open, something lying on the ground in front of it. He approached cautiously, Henry whining beside him. Trained in apprehension and protection, the three-year-old German shepherd mix could sense trouble a mile away.

“What is it, boy?” Lucas murmured as he bent over a large purse, its contents spilled onto the ground. He lifted a wallet in gloved hands. Three dollars and a debit card. Massachusetts driver’s license issued to Emma Grace Fairchild. Brown hair. Blue eyes. Five foot two. One hundred and two pounds. Tiny, just as she’d been all through junior high and high school. They’d been friends then. Close friends. It had been years since he’d seen her, though.

Henry whined again, his nose raised to the air, his ears alert. He smelled something.

“Seek,” Lucas said, giving Henry the lead.

The dog ran through the open doorway, and Lucas followed.

“Police!” he called. “Anyone here?”

Silence, darkness. Still no sign that Emma was there.

Henry barked quietly.

“Seek!” Lucas commanded, and the dog nosed the ground, found a scent and followed it through the large room. Lucas had been in the diner quite a few times when he was a kid. The place had always been hopping with activity. Now it was dead quiet.

Someone was there, though. Lucas could feel it.

He pulled his service revolver and eased into the dining room behind Henry. Even in a city the size Sagebrush, there were plenty of criminals. The diner’s original owner had been one, working for a crime syndicate responsible for several bank robberies and murders. In the end she’d become a victim of the organization she worked for.

The inky blackness made it nearly impossible to see into every corner of the room, but the furniture had been removed. Not a lot of hiding places. He ran his hand along the wall, trying to find a light switch.

Henry barked twice. Anxious. Ready to go. Whatever he was trailing, it was close, but Lucas wasn’t going to walk into it blind.

He finally found the light switch, flipped on the lights. Saw Emma just a few feet away, facedown, blood on the floor near her head. It looked as though she’d been trying to get to the front door. She hadn’t made it. He knelt beside her, pushing back the heavy fall of her hair and probing her neck. Her pulse beat steadily beneath his questing fingers. Alive.

He called for an ambulance, then covered Emma with his jacket. Blood seeped from somewhere on the back of her head, pooling on the floor near her ear. He gently parted her hair, trying to find the wound, praying that it was superficial. He found a lump and a large gash, his fingers trailing over the swollen broken flesh.

“No!” She jumped up, screaming so loudly that Lucas thought she’d come pretty close to rupturing his eardrums.

“Em—” he started, but she was sprinting from the dining room as if a serial killer was after her. He just managed to snag the back of her bright pink coat before she reached the back door and ran out into the night.

She swung around, her fist aimed at his chin, her eyes wild with fear.

“Calm down!” he commanded, grabbing her hand before she could connect.

She blinked, her smooth brow furrowing. “Lucas?”

She knew him. That was good. Maybe she hadn’t taken as big a hit on the head as he’d thought.

“Yes.”

“What are you doing here?”

He would have answered, but she swayed, nearly collapsed. He helped her onto the floor, tucking his jacket around her shaking shoulders. She was in shock, her skin leached of color, dark bruises standing out on her cheek and jaw.

“It’s going to be okay,” he said, but he didn’t think she heard. Her eyes were closed, black lashes fanning across her cheeks. His heart jerked, his muscles tight with the need to take Henry and hunt down whoever had done this to her.

He’d seen women and men in worse shape. He’d tended victims of domestic violence, gang violence and accidents. In his years working on the Houston Police Force, he’d faced plenty of tragedy and dealt with plenty of drama, but he’d never tended a victim who’d been a childhood friend. Now he was back in Sagebrush. It stood to reason that he’d know some of the victims he helped.

He scrounged through a box of supplies that sat next to an industrial-sized refrigerator, found a set of plastic-wrapped cloth napkins and ripped it open. He didn’t have time to deal with personal feelings. Emma was still bleeding, a new pool of blood forming under her head. He snagged a napkin from the package and pressed it to her head, sirens screaming in the background as he tried to staunch the flow of blood.

Pain ripped through Emma’s head, and she moaned, trying to pull herself out of the darkness she’d fallen into.

Something pressed against the back of her head and white-hot pain seared through her. She jerked away, swinging her fist before she had time to think about what she was doing.

“Calm down,” someone said.

Not someone. Lucas.

She knew the voice as well as she’d known the face.

She forced her eyes open. Somehow she’d ended up on the floor again, a leather jacket thrown over her as Lucas pressed something against the lump behind her ear.

“I am calm,” she muttered, pushing his hand away and feeling as if she were back in grade school, fighting with the cutest boy in class. Not surprising. She and Lucas had spent most of fifth grade at each other’s throats. Up until middle school, they’d been as bitter as two enemies could be.

“I’m trying to stop the bleeding,” Lucas responded reasonably, pressing on the painful lump again.

Obviously, he’d matured in the decade since they’d last seen each other. He’d also become a police officer, if the dark blue uniform and shiny badge peeking out from beneath his coat were any indication.

“Thanks, but I’d rather bleed to death than have your hand pushing through the back of my head,” she managed to say past gritted teeth.

“I’m not pushing that hard.”

“You’re pushing hard enough to hurt.”

“I wouldn’t be if you weren’t bleeding like a stuck pig.” Despite the words, his tone was gentle.

Her head hurt, but she’d had worse in the years before Bea had taken her in. She sat up, swiping at his hand again. “I’ll be fine. Just give me whatever you were using to sop up the blood, and I’ll try to stop the bleeding myself.”

He handed her what had once been a white linen napkin. Now it looked more like a blood-soaked washcloth.

“This was one of my good napkins,” she muttered, pressing it against her head anyway.

“It was all I could find.”

“Do you know how much a linen napkin costs?”

“Do you know how much a unit of blood costs?” he responded.

She didn’t, so she pressed her lips together and held the napkin to the bleeding lump. It hurt. A lot, but Lucas was right. She needed to get the bleeding stopped.

“You have a bruise.” Lucas touched her cheek, his fingers grazing tender swollen flesh above the bone. “What happened?”

“I was on my way to my car when someone attacked me.” She shuddered as images of the man who’d grabbed her flashed through her mind.

“Who?”

“I don’t know. He was wearing a ski mask. He asked for money.”

“Do you remember how tall he was? How big?”

She thought back, trying to picture the moment that the man had lunged from the shadows. “I...think he was tall. About your height. Broader, though. I wish I’d noticed more.”

“It’s okay. We’ll get it all figured out after the doctor takes a look at you.”

“Doctor?”

“I called for an ambulance. It should be here any minute.”

“I can’t go to the hospital. I have to get back home. Bea needs me.” She struggled to her feet, the jacket falling to the ground.

“Bea will be fine. I’ll have a patrol car head over to her place so she’ll have a ride to the hospital.”

“She’s going to be worried sick,” Emma mumbled, stars dancing in front of her eyes. She felt woozy and off balance, her ears buzzing and her heart beating an odd uneven rhythm.

She swayed, grabbed the closest thing to her. Found herself clutching Lucas’s arm. It was warm and firm and just a little too comforting. She wanted to step closer, let him wrap his arms around her the way he had so many times when they were kids.

Surprised, she released her hold, stepping back and nearly tripping over a large dog. Brown and black with thick fur and big dark eyes, it looked like an overgrown long-haired German Shepherd. She blinked, sure that she must be imagining things. The dog didn’t disappear.

“There’s a dog in my diner.”

“That’s Henry. He’s my partner,” Lucas explained.

“Partner in what?” She eyed the massive canine.

“Work, Emma. I’m part of the Sagebrush Police Department’s K-9 Unit.”

“I didn’t know they had one.”

“They do.” He took her arm, led her to the kitchen. Sirens were blaring outside, and lights flashed on the pavement beyond the open door. “Looks like the ambulance is here.”

“I really don’t want to go to the hospital,” she tried to protest as a crew of EMTs rushed in.

Too late.

They had her on a gurney so fast she barely realized what was happening.

She blamed it on her injuries. Any other day, she’d have adamantly refused to be transported to the hospital, but she didn’t have the energy to fight. She barely had the energy to keep her eyes open as she was wheeled outside. She managed, though, because she was terrified to close them. She was afraid if she did, she’d open them again and discover herself right back in the middle of the nightmare.

“Do you want me to ride in the ambulance with you?” Lucas asked.

She looked into his face. He’d changed, but he was still the same Lucas, his dark green eyes the color of the pine forests that dotted the mountains, his hair deep chestnut-brown.

“Em?” he pressed, and she shook her head, regretting the movement immediately. Her stomach roiled, and her vision blurred.

“I’ll be fine,” she managed to say, the words sounding thick and far away.

“You sure?”

Not really, but she’d been living on her own for years, doing everything for herself for so long she couldn’t remember what it was like to have someone along for the ride. “Yes.”

“All right. I need to process the crime scene. Then I’ll come to the hospital to finish our interview.” He hurried away, and Emma gave in and closed her eyes.

She didn’t need anyone, but it sure would have been nice to have someone traveling to the hospital with her. Someone who would take care of all the things that needed taking care of while she was there. A person or two or three who could finish painting the diner, put the furniture back inside it, do all the little things that had to be done before the place opened.

It would be nice, but God hadn’t seen fit to fill her life with the kind of people who stuck around when good times went bad. Camden was proof of that.

At least she had Aunt Bea.

For now. Eventually, the disease that was stealing her memories would steal her away.

Emma pushed the thought away, letting herself drift into the darkness and float on the waves of nauseating pain.