Trace Evidence in Tarrant County

“The charges were dismissed only because there were some inconsistencies with the evidence. Your father’s name wasn’t cleared, and you know it.”

He leaned forward, propping his hands on Carley’s cluttered desk. He violated her personal space and then some. In fact, Sloan was so close that she got a whiff of his manly aftershave. It reminded her of the woods, summer afternoons, picnics and sex.

Whoa.

What?

Sex?

Carley was sure she looked stunned over that last thought. Since it was a truly disturbing notion, she shoved it aside and tried to repair the fractures in her own composure.

“What’s wrong?” Sloan asked.

“Nothing,” she snapped. She forced herself to continue. No more picnic, sex or aftershave thoughts. “I was just thinking how pathetic and dangerous it is that no one was ever convicted of Lou Ann’s murder.”

“Right.” He eyed her with obvious skepticism. “Why don’t we fast-forward this briefing to what happened a little less than a week ago.”

“Gladly,” she mumbled. After a deep breath, Carley went on with the report. “Lou Ann’s older daughter, Sarah, came back to town. She called her kid sister, Anna, who’s an investigative reporter in Dallas, and Sarah asked Anna to meet her at the Matheson Inn. Sarah said she had information about their mother’s killer.”

“Who knew that Sarah had come back to Justice?” Sloan asked immediately.

“Everybody.”

Carley was unable to contain her frustration about that. Sarah hadn’t kept her presence a secret, especially from the killer who obviously wanted to silence her. Not very smart. And because of it, Sarah had ended up dead like her mother. Carley hadn’t been able to protect her, and it was because of her that Sarah was dead.

She’d have to learn to live with that.

Somehow.

“Now you can finish the update,” Carley insisted. “Zane wasn’t exactly doing daily situation reports to let me know what was going on.”

“Because you were recovering from a gunshot wound.”

“And because he thought I was out of the picture. I’m not. So, boss, why don’t you tell me how you plan to catch a killer who’s evaded justice for sixteen years?”

He shrugged. “Simple—I’ll continue the investigation that Zane started. If the grand jury says there’s enough evidence to arrest anyone, that’s what I’ll do. If not, then I’ll reinterview the witnesses—”

“There weren’t any witnesses to Sarah’s murder.”

“Potential witnesses then,” he calmly amended. “And, of course, I’ll talk to Donna and Leland Hendricks since, according to the papers Sarah had, they’re the primary suspects for both murders.”

They were. The information that Sarah had brought with her to Justice pointed the proverbial finger right at Leland Hendricks, the wealthiest man in town, and his equally wealthy ex-wife, Donna.

It was a tangled web that reached all the way back to the first murder.

According to Sarah’s collection of papers and notes, sixteen years ago Donna Hendricks was planning to pay Lou Ann big bucks to go to the police with the information and evidence that Leland was plotting to fake his own toddler son’s kidnapping and murder so he could collect on the massive insurance policy. Donna hated her ex, Leland, because she’d lost custody of their son to him. So if Lou Ann had threatened to tell all about Donna’s bribe, it would no doubt have ended what little visitation rights Donna had left with her little boy. To keep Lou Ann silent, Donna could have killed her and then done the same to Sarah.

Of course, Sarah’s allegations implicated Leland Hendricks, as well, because he could have killed Lou Ann when and if she wouldn’t go along with his fake kidnapping/murder plan. It didn’t help, either, when Zane was able to shatter Leland’s alibi for the night of Lou Ann’s murder. The wealthy oil baron doctored the surveillance video of his estate that night so that it would appear he was home.

And that brought Carley back to her own surveillance disk.

To the best of her knowledge, hers hadn’t been altered or faked, and it was entirely possible she could see who had vandalized city property. She might even discover if it was related to the murders. And the two attempted murders: Anna Wallace’s and hers.

She hit the Play button and got up so she could retrieve the rest of her breakfast that she’d left on top of a filing cabinet.

Sloan stood, too, and looked at the honey-filled donut on the paper plate and her cup of still-warm cinnamon cappuccino. “Hey, where’d you get that?”

Sloan’s apparent envy made Carley smile. “Main Street Diner.”

He moved closer, staring at it. “They make donuts that look that good?”

“They do now that Donna Hendricks bought the place. She brought in a real honest-to-goodness chef.”

He flexed his eyebrows. “Donna is one of the prime suspects in these murders.”

“Yessss,” Carley enunciated in a way that made him seem mentally deficient. “And your point would be?”

This time he lifted his eyebrow. “Doesn’t it seem a little reckless buying donuts from a person who might have murdered two women and then taken a shot at you? How do you know she didn’t poison it?”

“I don’t,” Carley said smugly. “But since I’ve already had one this morning and I haven’t keeled over, I think it’s safe for me to eat that one. Besides, the killer has no reason to come after me again because I didn’t see his or her face, and everyone in town knows that.”

She went back to her seat. Or, rather, that’s what she tried to do. Unfortunately Sloan was in her way. Carley didn’t let that deter her. She moved past him.

His hip brushed against hers.

She noticed.

Judging from the slight unevenness of his breath, so did he.

Both of them ignored it.

“You’re going to eat all of that donut?” he asked.

Was it her imagination or did Carley hear his stomach rumble?

She fought a smile. “What can I say—I’m a cliché. A cop with a donut addiction.”

She glanced at the monitor when there was some movement so she could see what the camera had recorded. There was some light coming from her office window, and it gave enough illumination for her to see that it was merely two cats that seemed to have amorous intentions. A moment later they disappeared into the thick woods and out of camera range.

Sloan sat down again, volleying glances between her breakfast and the monitor. “You’re not going to offer me any of that donut?”

“Didn’t plan on it.”

He grinned. Sheez, it was that all-star, billon-dollar grin. “That smile won’t work on me,” she grumbled.

“What smile?” Oh, butter would not melt in his mouth.

“That one you’re flashing right now. I suspect it’s coaxed many women into lots of things, including clothing removal. But I’m immune to it. And it won’t work on parting me from my donut.”

The grin morphed. Just a tad. But instead of evoking sultry thoughts, it had a sad puppy-dog look to it.

“Besides,” he drawled. “You should be eating something more nutritious since you’re recovering from your injuries. When we’re done looking at this disk, we can head to the diner and get you some real breakfast. While we’re there, I’ll have a donut.”

Carley didn’t like the sound of that. Her goal was to finish this situation report, review the surveillance disk and then get him the heck out of her office so she could continue her own investigation.

Maybe sharing the donut would speed things up.

Figuring this would cause them to skip the trip to the diner, she ripped the donut in half, plopped his half back on the paper plate and shoved it across the desk toward him.

“Thanks,” he mumbled, diving right into it. “See? We do have some common ground. Our shared love of sugary, high fat pastries that have no nutritional value.”

“You call that common ground?”

Sloan used that smile again. “Hey, I’ll take what I can get.”

She could have added something snarky—like, he had already gotten everything he could possibly get—but the sugary donut was making her fingers sticky, so she began to eat it.

“I’ve arranged to meet with both Donna and Leland this afternoon.” Sloan tossed that out there in between bites.

Carley didn’t know if that was an invitation for her to join him or if he was merely continuing with his briefing. She decided to go with the option that suited her. “Let me know when and where, and I’ll be there.”

“At two this afternoon. Here at the police station.” He tipped his head to the filing cabinet. “Just how strong are those pain pills?”

Mercy. She’d forgotten all about those. They’d blended in amid the stacks of files and other clutter. “Not strong enough to keep me off this case,” she insisted. “Besides, I haven’t even taken any of them.” She would have added more, would have probably even started a fresh argument, if there hadn’t been more movement on the screen.

“It’s motion-activated,” Sloan commented, his attention now fully on the monitor. He set the rest of the donut aside.

Carley followed suit. Because what she saw captured her complete attention, as well.

No amorous cats this time. It was a shadowy figure. She turned the monitor, hoping for a better angle. Sloan walked around the desk and stood behind her.

“I can’t tell if it’s a man or a woman,” he mumbled.

“I can’t tell if it’s even human. It looks a little like a scarecrow in a Halloween costume.”

“Definitely human. The person’s wearing a mask and a cloak.”

She studied the image and had to agree. But the person didn’t have just a cloak and mask. There was something in his or her hand. The light from her office danced off that something. It was a glint of metal.

And on the screen Carley saw the gun rigged with a silencer.

That barely had time to register in her mind when there was the first shot.

And it wasn’t aimed at the camera.

The gunman saved the second bullet for that.

Sloan reached over and pressed a button to rewind the disk. He stopped it just as the first shot was in progress. Carley saw then what she hadn’t wanted to see.

Mercy.

A chill went through her.

“This person wasn’t just gunning for your surveillance camera, Carley,” Sloan confirmed. “He or she was gunning for you.”

Chapter Three

“Are you okay?” Sloan asked when he saw the expression on Carley’s face.

What little color she’d had drained from her cheeks. Not without reason. She’d just witnessed a recording of someone attempting to kill her.

“The shots were fired at 1:13 this morning,” Carley mumbled, obviously noting the time displayed on the bottom of the monitor.

“You weren’t here when it happened?”

“No. I finished up work about a half hour before that, but I’d left on the light. I didn’t notice it until after I’d locked up and made my way back to the inn.” She looked up at him. “I can see my office window from my attic apartment. I figured it wouldn’t hurt to leave the light on all night and I knew I’d be back in the office early.”

Sloan played around with that a moment and took it to its logical conclusion. “So, because of the light, someone might have thought you were inside here working at 1:13 this morning.”

Carley nodded. “It’s not unusual for me to be here at that hour.”

He didn’t doubt it.

From all accounts, Carley was driven to be the best sheriff ever. That included plenty of seventy-hour work weeks, even though technically the sheriff’s office was only supposed to open from eight to five, with all calls before and after hours going through dispatch. He figured with Carley around, dispatch wasn’t taking many of the calls, because she made sure she was readily available for the citizens of Justice.

Sloan glanced around the room. “The window’s intact, no broken glass. I don’t see any point of entry for that first bullet.”

He watched the steel and resolution return to Carley’s eyes, and she got up at the exact second that he headed for the door.

The race was afoot.

She rushed around her desk and then came to a complete stop. That stopped Sloan, especially when Carley caught onto her side.

“It’s nothing,” she said, no doubt as a preemptive strike against what he was about to say.

Sloan gave her a flat look. “If it’s nothing, then why are you holding your side?”

She immediately lowered her hands.

That was the last straw. Sloan stormed toward her, and before she could stop him—or slap him into the middle of next week—he went after her shirt buttons.

“What in Sam Hill do you think you’re doing?” Carley snarled.

Sloan ignored her, and probably because she was in too much pain, she didn’t even attempt to fight him off. He undid the lower buttons at her midsection and had a look at the bandage. No blood. No raw, red areas on the skin. That was a good sign. But the edge of the adhesive tape was caught on one of the tender areas where her stitches had recently been removed. So that might be the cause.

“Hold still,” he instructed.

And, much to his surprise, she did.

Sloan slathered his hands with some liquid sanitizer that she had on top of the filing cabinet next to her pain meds. Taking a deep breath, he pulled over the chair and sat down so that he’d be at eye level with the bandage. It also put him at eye level with her stomach. And the bottom edge of her bra.

Purple lace.

Sloan couldn’t help it. He looked up at her, and when she followed his gaze, Carley narrowed her eyes to little bitty slits. “I haven’t had time to do laundry. It was one of the few wearable things that I had left in my lingerie drawer—and why I’m telling you this, I don’t have a clue. Because it certainly isn’t any of your business.”

To punctuate that, she snapped the upper sides of her top together so there was no visible purple lace.

But Sloan didn’t need to see it to remember that it was there. Nope. It was branded in his memory.

“I never took you for the purple-lace type,” he commented. Partly because it was true and partly because he wanted her mind on something else when he lifted that tape.

She’d already opened her mouth, probably to return verbal fire, but that tape pull had her sucking in her breath and wincing.

“Sorry,” Sloan apologized. “It’ll only hurt for a second.” He worked quickly, before she changed her mind, and he gave the bandage a slight adjustment. “There. Now it won’t pull at the skin that’s healing.”

She eyed him with skepticism and then tested it by rotating her arm. No wincing. No sucking in her breath. Just a relieved expression. “Thanks.”

“You’re welcome. But you know, if you were at your apartment resting, that bandage wouldn’t have shifted.”

“And you wouldn’t have gotten a cheap thrill of learning that I own a purple bra.” She buttoned her shirt as if she’d declared war on it. “By the way, you tell anyone about my choice of underwear and you’re a dead man.”

Puzzled, he stared up at her. “Why wouldn’t you want anyone to know that?”

She dodged his gaze and stepped back. “I don’t want to draw any attention to the fact that I’m female. I already have enough strikes against me without letting people know that I occasionally wear girlie stuff.”

Still puzzled, Sloan shook his head. “Why?”

“Because I’m not male. Because I’m the first woman in Justice to wear this badge. Because I don’t have the full support of this town.” She aimed her index finger at him. “Because I’m not you. And despite the fact you’ve been gone for years, most people still and always will think of you as the sheriff.”

Sloan wanted to deny it, but he knew it was true. Despite the advances in Justice, Carley was probably battling a gender bias. He’d been one of the guys. A good ole boy. Many people in town had no doubt thought that badge was made for him. His for a lifetime.

That acceptance hadn’t been extended to Carley.

“Just for the record,” he let her know, “you don’t have to prove anything to me.”

She frowned and then mumbled some profanity. After some posturing and a huff or two, the aimed index finger returned. “Let’s get something straight, Sloan McKinney. I want no camaraderie with you. None. And you don’t want that with me. Remember, you accused me of lying about your father. I accused you of being blind to the truth. I also accused you of being a jerk and an—”

“I get the point,” Sloan interrupted. Man, she made it easy to remember the anger. “So here’s the deal. I’ll work my butt off to solve this case as quickly as possible so we won’t have time to develop any camaraderie. Agreed?”

She agreed with a grunt and headed toward the back exit, where they’d entered earlier. Sloan was right behind her. Neither wasted any time once they were outside. They both started scouring the building for that first bullet.

Thanks to the blazing sunlight striking the brown brick exterior, it didn’t take Sloan long to spot it. He went to the window and there it was. A bullet lodged in one of the bricks that framed the window directly outside Carley’s office. This was obviously the first shot that the gunman had fired in the wee hours of the morning. The shot meant for Carley.

“I checked the exterior this morning, when I was looking at the surveillance camera,” she mumbled. “How could I have missed that?”

He could have stated the obvious—maybe she didn’t see it because she was exhausted and wasn’t medically ready for duty. But reminding her of that would have only started another argument.

Without touching it, Sloan examined the embedded bullet. A .38 slug. Another inch to the right, and it would have gone through the glass and hit anyone who might be sitting at Carley’s desk.

Sloan peered through the window and realized something else. Her high-back chair would have made it impossible for a gunman to see if she was there or not.

Carley obviously realized that, as well, because he heard the sudden change in her breathing. Sloan didn’t address her reaction. No sense touching on uncomfortable issues again. So he scanned the area to figure out what’d happened there.

“Sarah’s killer escaped into those woods,” he surmised, talking more to himself than her. “It’s the same path your shooter took.”

Carley made a sound of agreement. “And there’s evidence out there—footprints, possibly trace fibers, maybe even the bullet that injured me that night. It was never recovered. So maybe the killer planned to scour the woods to retrieve any incriminating evidence, and the camera got in the way.”

“Then why fire that first shot into your office?” Sloan asked.

She shrugged, hesitated, but Sloan already had a theory. Unfortunately he didn’t get a chance to voice it, because he heard footsteps.

He instinctively drew his weapon and stepped in front of Carley. To shield her. To protect her. It didn’t earn him any brownie points. She pulled out her own gun, huffed, mumbled something and then stepped out from behind him so that they were side by side.

It didn’t take long for their visitor to appear around the corner of the building. It was Leland Hendricks, and since he was a murder suspect, neither Carley nor Sloan lowered their guns.

“There you are, Sheriff Matheson,” Leland barked. He said her name as if she were some annoying insect that he was about to squash. “What the hell do you mean calling me in again for questioning? I don’t have time for this. I have a business to run. And until that grand jury says differently, I’m a free man.”

Carley slipped her gun back into her holster and tipped her head to Sloan. “He’s in charge. Yell at him.”

Sloan gave her an aw-jeez-thanks look before he turned his attention back to a possible killer.

The years had been kind to Leland Hendricks. Of course, money and massive ego probably helped. The graying hair and the wrinkles only added to his air of authority.

“You’re in charge?” Leland stared at him.

Sloan nodded. “You have a problem with that?”

“You bet I do.” He shook his head. “I won’t let you McKinney boys railroad me into taking the blame for these murders. I won’t become the scapegoat for your drunk of a father who can’t keep his pants zipped.”

It took some doing, but Sloan forced himself not to react to that. “You’re saying you’re innocent?”

“Damn right I am.”

“And what about the fake kidnapping of your own son? You’re innocent of that, too? Because Sarah, your dead stepdaughter, said differently.”

Leland probably didn’t want to react, either. But he did. Every muscle in his body seemed to tense. “It doesn’t matter what that witch Sarah said. Even if I admitted I’d planned a fake kidnapping, you can’t arrest me for that. The statute of limitations is on my side. Besides, I’ve paid in the worst way a father can. My son disappeared that night. I don’t know if he’s alive or dead.”

“You’re certain you don’t know that?” Sloan asked.

That did not please Leland. The veins on his neck began to bulge. “I have no idea where he is. If he’s alive, I don’t know who has him or where he’s been for the past sixteen years. That’s punishment enough.”

Sloan shrugged. “It won’t be if I can prove you murdered those women. There is no statute of limitations on murder, and right now I’m making you for these killings.”

Leland glared at Carley before he turned that glare on Sloan. “You’ll never prove it.”

“Never say never, Leland,” Sloan countered. “Oh, and if you’re not there for that interview this afternoon, I’ll have you cuffed and brought in just like anyone who disobeys the law.”

There was a staredown, and Sloan wasn’t the first to blink. Leland was. He mumbled, “I’ll be there,” along with some choice profanity, then stormed away, disappearing around the building.

“Well, wasn’t that a special way to start the morning,” Carley grumbled.

“That started the morning,” Sloan said, pointing at the bullet lodged near the window. “I’ll dig it out and send it to the crime lab.”

“Nearly everybody in town owns at least one .38,” she reminded him. “And I’m willing to bet there are a dozen or more that aren’t registered, so we don’t even know about them. Matching that bullet to a specific firearm will be a needle in a haystack.”

A slim chance was still a chance, and the truth was, they had little physical evidence to connect anyone to Sarah’s murder. The bullet was a start. But he had other avenues to explore.

One of those avenues was standing beside him.

“Maybe this latest attempt to shoot you isn’t about something you saw less than a week ago right after Sarah’s murder. Maybe this is about the first murder—Lou Ann’s? If so, maybe you saw or heard something sixteen years ago that the killer doesn’t want you to recall.”

“Then why wait all these years to come after me?” she asked.

“Because, other than the killer, you might be the only person in the entire town who was close enough to witness both murders. Either the killer thinks you saw something or you did see something and you just don’t remember it.”

Her posture became defensive again. “I remember everything about that night, and the only person that I saw anywhere near Lou Ann’s room was your father.”

“You could have missed something. A few hours before the body was found, you were sitting in that big, comfortable chair in the lobby at the inn, reading a teen magazine with Johnny Depp on the cover.”

Her defensive posture went up a notch. “How did you know that?”

“I looked through the window and saw you.”

Carley’s eyes widened considerably. “What—you’re a Peeping Tom?”

“I’m not. I was looking for my father,” Sloan calmly answered.

And he’d looked at Carley, too. In fact, she’d distracted him that night. Why? Because for the first time he’d noticed that she was no longer the gangly girl two grades behind him in school. Among other things, he’d noticed that she had breasts. But it was her mouth that had really caught his attention. The heart shape. The full bottom lip. Her mouth was sultry then. And it was sultry now.