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“I was at the copier, with Stanley Gibson. The shooter shot Stanley, and when I turned around, he looked directly at me and...smiled. That’s when I ran. I hid and kept going from aisle to aisle as he went through the room. I tried to stay a step ahead, but he caught up to me. He was on my aisle, but he was crouching down. I climbed over the wall to the next aisle before he reached my cubicle.” She shivered and tugged her hand out of his grasp. The wind was colder now, making her shiver. She wrapped her arms around her middle.
Detective Gray motioned to one of the uniformed policemen nearby. “Get Miss Parrish a jacket, please.”
“That’s not necessary,” she said. “If someone could please...get my purse...out of my cubicle inside, so I can get my car keys, I’ll just go home. If you’re finished with your questions?”
“By the time the officer retrieves your purse, I will be.”
Ashley told the policeman where her purse was. He headed back toward the building.
“Does the name Todd Dunlop mean anything to you?” he asked.
“No. Was that the shooter’s name?”
“I can’t officially confirm that at this time.”
“I understand. No, I’ve never heard that name before.”
He asked her several more questions about her routine and whether she’d seen anything out of the ordinary when she got to work this morning. He asked her about any recent firings, but she wasn’t aware of any.
“I’m sorry, Detective. But other than the officers of the company, I haven’t even spoken to most of the people who work here. I’ve been stuck in a conference room most of the time, poring over years of financial reports. I wish I had better answers for you.”
“You’re doing fine, Miss Parrish.” His white teeth flashed in a reassuring smile.
The policeman returned with her purse. She thanked him and he hurried away.
“May I go home now?” she asked the detective.
“Of course. I’ve got your address and your phone number. If I think of more questions, I’ll stop by or give you a call. When are you leaving town?”
“The end of the week.”
He walked her to her car.
She tried to unlock the car three times, but her hands were shaking so hard she couldn’t get the key in the lock.
He gently took the keys from her and unlocked the door. “The clicker’s broken, I assume?” He held up the electronic key fob attached to her key chain before handing back her keys.
“I think it’s the battery. I keep forgetting to replace it.” She slid into the driver’s seat.
“You should get that fixed as soon as possible, as a security precaution,” he said.
She nodded, in full agreement. After today, she was suddenly hyperaware of how dangerous the world could be. Fumbling for her keys when a simple click of a button could unlock her door didn’t strike her as smart.
“Detective Gray?”
He crouched down beside her door, giving her that same kind smile he’d given her earlier. “Yes?”
“I’m sorry that I interfered, back inside. I thought I was helping, but I realize now that I could have gotten you hurt—” she swallowed hard “—or killed.”
“You were very brave. You have nothing to apologize for. Everything worked out.”
She offered him a shaky smile. “You saved my life. I don’t know how to pay someone back for something like that.”
“Fix that clicker. That’s payback enough. Then I won’t have to worry about you fumbling with your keys.” He fished a business card out of his pocket and handed it to her. “If you think of anything else you want to tell me about what happened, anything that can help us sort through this mess and figure out why this guy picked Gibson and Gibson, give me a call.”
* * *
DILLONWATCHEDTHEsurprisingly brave, pretty little auditor drive away in her aging dark blue Chevy Lumina. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen one of those cars on the road. Obviously Ashley Parrish wasn’t making a fortune in her chosen occupation, which made any obvious financial motive for the shooter to target her seem unlikely.
“Did she tell you anything useful about the shooter?”
Dillon turned at the sound of Chris Downing’s voice behind him.
“No. But she’s pretty shaken. She might think of something later.” He glanced past his friend. His boss was standing with the rest of the SWAT team, his face animated—not in a good way—as he spoke to them. “Let me guess. Thornton sent you to get me.”
“Yep. He’s riled up like a preacher on Easter Sunday, all fire and brimstone raining down on our heads for going in against orders.”
Dillon let out a deep sigh and started toward his boss, with Chris at his side. He wasn’t in the mood to take a tongue-lashing right now, but he’d have to endure it to try to keep his job, and to keep his men from being blamed for what had essentially been a mutiny.
Regardless of the consequences, he had no regrets. The three wounded survivors they’d pulled out had lost a lot of blood and wouldn’t have lasted much longer if they’d waited. And he didn’t know what would have happened to Ashley Parrish. She wasn’t the only survivor they’d rescued, but she was the only one the shooter had essentially stalked through the building.
Maybe he’d stop by her house on the way home tonight, to make sure she was okay and see if she’d thought of anything else that might help with the investigation. Their initial inquiries hadn’t yielded any connections between the shooter and Gibson and Gibson. If the shooter had never worked there, and had never conducted any business with the company, why would he choose this particular office complex?
It was isolated, a few miles out of town, which might have made the shooter think he could shoot the place up and escape before the cops got there. But if he’d wanted to kill a lot of random people, there was a mall five minutes away that would have yielded plenty more potential victims. So why had he chosen Gibson and Gibson?
Dillon would lay odds it was something personal, and he’d bet his ten years as a detective that the personal part was somehow related to the woman who’d just driven off in a beat-up old Chevy with a key fob that didn’t work.
* * *
ASHLEYCLUTCHEDHERcell phone to her ear and peered out the front window. Lightning flashed, illuminating the acres of green grass and long gravel driveway that formed the front yard of her rental house. In the distance, the Smoky Mountains loomed dark and menacing.
She’d never wanted to live this far from the conveniences in town, but her options were limited, since most people insisted on a long lease. Still, she hadn’t minded living here temporarily. But with this morning’s shooting fresh in her memory, the isolation was making her feel uneasy, and vulnerable.
Thunder boomed overhead.
“What was that?” Lauren asked over the phone.
“Thunder. The weathermen have been predicting a big storm all week. Looks like it’s finally here. It’s pitch-black outside even though it’s only six o’clock. And the rain’s been coming down like a monsoon for the past couple of hours. After all the rain we had last week, we sure don’t need this. The river’s already near flood stage.”
“Should you get out of there?”
“I’ll be fine. The house is on high ground and the river’s several miles from here. Plus, I’ve stocked up on essentials in case the road gets washed out again.”
Lauren droned on about poor road maintenance and the crumbling infrastructure in the country while Ashley looked through the curtains again. She would have loved to leave Destiny far behind after the horrific shooting this morning, but she’d promised Detective Gray she’d stay through the end of the week. Even if she hadn’t made that promise, it would be a real pain to try to change her schedule at the last minute. She’d already planned the walk-through with her landlord so she could get her deposit back and turn in her keys.
When Lauren had called, Ashley confessed some of the general information about the shooting, but she’d kept most of the details to herself. Lauren was on a week-long cruise she’d planned for well over a year. Ashley didn’t want to upset her friend and ruin her fun. She also didn’t want Lauren to call Ashley’s family about the shooting and get them upset. There’d be plenty of time to tell them what happened after she got back home to Nashville.
“Are you sure you’re okay?” Lauren asked. “You’re even quieter than usual. Maybe I should cut my vacation short and go there to be with you.”
“Don’t you dare. You’ve had this trip planned forever and I doubt they’d refund your money. Besides, by the time you got off the ship, hopped a plane, then drove forever through the boonies to get way out here, I’ll be back home.” She forced a note of cheerfulness she didn’t feel into her voice. “Now tell me, which tropical island are you touring right now?”
Lauren hesitated, as if she was going to argue, but she finally let out a long breath. “All right, you win. I’ll quit bugging you, for now. Today the cruise ship took us to a little place right outside Jamaica.”
“Nice.”
Lightning flashed again, much closer this time. Ashley jumped and let out a little squeak.
“Oh, yeah, you sound fine to me,” Lauren accused. “Don’t you want to talk about what happened?”
“Sure. Let’s talk about the SWAT detective guy who rescued me. He was really hot.”
“Not-so-subtle way of avoiding the topic, but I’ll bite. How hot was he? Scale of one to ten.”
Ashley plopped down on the couch and tucked her legs beneath her. Lauren would probably drool over Detective Dillon Gray’s broad shoulders and trim waist. She’d love his dark, wavy hair that seemed a bit too long and untamed for a cop. And she’d probably squeal over what Ashley thought of as sexy stubble that formed a barely there goatee, mustache and dark shadow that ran up his jawline. He looked the way she imagined a man might look after lounging in bed with his lover for days without taking time to shave.
As enticing as all that was, Ashley knew her friend wouldn’t appreciate what Ashley thought of as Dillon’s best feature—his kind smile—and the gentle way he’d held her hand when she’d desperately needed the warmth and contact of another human being who wasn’t trying to kill her.
He’d given her the strength to hold herself together. Without the kindness and patience he’d showed to a stranger, she probably would have lost it and imploded into a mass of nerves. Somehow, with him there, focusing those thickly lashed blue-gray eyes on her, she’d managed to keep her composure.
“Ash, come on. Scale of one to ten. Rank him.”
She idly traced little circles on the arm of the couch with her fingertips as she debated her answer. If she ranked Dillon too high, Lauren would probably pester her to call him and try to wheedle a date out of him. So instead of saying “ten,” which was spot-on, she lowered the number.
“A six, I suppose. It was kind of hard to tell with all that body armor on.” She didn’t bother to mention she’d seen him later without the armor. “Maybe a seven. Yeah, I could stretch it to a seven.”
“Seven? That’s not hot. That’s lukewarm,” Lauren scoffed. “What’s his name?”
“Dillon Gray.”
“Hmm. Dillon’s good. Not too keen on Gray, though. Sounds kind of morose, depressing. Maybe I’ll change his name when I embellish the story to my cruise ship friends at dinner.”
Ashley laughed. “You do that. Oh, darn it.” She jumped up from the couch and headed into the kitchen.
“What’s wrong?”
She dug into the cabinet under the sink until she found a large metal mixing bowl. “Looks like that roof repair last week didn’t hold. There’s a healthy drip coming through the living room ceiling again.”
“Dang, girl. I told you to argue with the landlord about using cheap roofers.”
“I know, but I’m leaving in a few days, so what does it matter?”
“It doesn’t, as long as the roof doesn’t come down on you.”
“Maybe it’s not the roofer’s fault.” She placed the bowl under the leak and peered up at the plaster ceiling. “As hard as it’s been raining, even a good roof might leak right now.”
“You are way too nice, as always. If it were up to me, I’d call the landlord and...”
“And what?” Ashley repositioned the bowl. The drips were coming faster now. Getting some sleep tonight wasn’t looking like a good prospect, not if she had to keep emptying out the water and listening to the pinging sound of the constant drips. She crossed back to the couch but paused when she realized her friend still hadn’t answered.
“Lauren, are you still there?”
Silence.
She pulled the phone away and looked at the screen. Great. The call had been dropped. She plopped down on the couch and dialed Lauren’s number. No ringing. Nothing. Maybe Lauren’s phone wasn’t the problem. She tried to get a dial tone, but it was like the phone was...dead.
Weird, that had never happened here before. The storm must have shorted something out, or maybe knocked down the nearest cell tower.
She tossed the phone down and grabbed the TV remote off the coffee table. Casting a disparaging glance at the drips rapidly filling the bowl across the room, she yanked the blanket from the back of the couch and wrapped it around her.
Thunder boomed again, this time sounding more as if it was from the back of the house than from overhead.
She paused with her finger on the remote’s power button. Wait. There hadn’t been any lightning that time. She slowly lowered her hand. Another sound came from behind her, down the hall.
Someone was inside the house.
Chapter Three
Dillon wrestled the steering wheel to keep his Jeep on the road. The last time he’d seen a storm this bad, the bridge over Little River washed out, stranding an entire Cub Scout troop on Cooper’s Bluff, the mile-long, uninhabited island smack-dab in the middle of the river. Thankfully the mayor had learned his lesson from that fiasco. This time he’d paid attention to the weather reports and Cooper’s Bluff had been evacuated earlier this afternoon, the bridge closed until the weather broke. Since the storm wasn’t expected to ease until tomorrow morning, the entire police department was on standby for storm-related emergencies.
Which was why Dillon was out in the middle of the blasted thing.
This was a hell of a way to spend his evening after facing off with a crazed shooter earlier today and spending the next hour listening to his boss’s tirade about chain of command and following orders. Dillon had been on the verge of telling his boss to take a hike and walking out when Thornton received his first call from the weather station, warning him the storm was going to be worse than originally thought. Thornton had immediately called for all hands on deck. Everyone had to be ready to go if and when a call for help came in.
Dillon would have rather stayed at the station and worked on the workplace-shooting investigation. But he had a four-wheel drive with a winch, which meant he was in high demand to help stranded motorists escape rapidly rising water on some of the more isolated, two-lane roads. He’d spent the past six hours pulling half a dozen vehicles out of swollen ditches. Now his shoulders and back ached and all he wanted to do was pop the top on an ice-cold beer, lie down in his recliner and sleep.
The squawk of his cell phone had him clenching the steering wheel even harder. He ignored the first ring, irrationally hoping whoever was calling would call someone else instead, preferably someone who hadn’t been working solid since sunup and was bone weary.
But when the phone rang again, his shoulders slumped and he answered, “Gray.”
“Detective Gray, this is Nancy, nine-one-one operator. I have Lauren Wilkes on the line. She specifically asked to speak to you. Something about her friend possibly being in trouble. Should I patch her through?”
Dillon let out a long sigh. That cold beer would have to wait a little bit longer. “Go ahead, Nancy. Thanks.”
“Pleasure.”
The line clicked twice.
“Miss Wilkes, Detective Gray is on the line,” the operator said. “Go ahead with your emergency.”
“Emergency? Well, ah, yes. Thank you.” The young woman’s voice sounded nervous. “Detective Gray? Are you there?”
“I’m here. How can I help you?”
“I feel a little silly. I’m not sure anything is really wrong, but after what happened this morning I’m kind of nervous. I mean, there’s the storm and all and maybe phones do that sometimes but I remember she told me your name and so when—”
“Miss Wilkes,” Dillon interrupted. “Take a breath.”
“What? Oh, yes. Okay.”
