Shadow Protector. Jenna Ryan
“You have a very low opinion of me, Chief.”
“Must be the city cop coming out. I mean it, Sera.”
“Yes, I know. Go on.” She tried the hat for size and was pleased to discover it fit. “I won’t ditch your dispatcher.”
“Dispatcher slash senior deputy,” the man called Fred corrected. He gave his boss two thumbs up. “Don’t you worry, Logan. Me and the pretty doc’ll get on just fine till your meeting’s done.”
Sera turned to examine the window of a small shoe store. Why couldn’t the chief be more like his deputy? Huge, bald and in his late fifties, with a bull neck, a big belly and a smile as wide as the Platte River.
“You wanna walk, talk or shop, Doc?”
Fred’s question brought a teasing smile. “You’re okay walking the streets of the county seat in the company of a marked woman? “
“No killer with half a brain’s gonna shoot up a busy street at midday, Doctor—sorry, Serafina. That’s a pretty name, by the way. Mean anything special?”
The sun glinted off the roof of a white delivery van. Sera popped her sunglasses on. “It means my mother had high hopes for my future. Didn’t happen. I like Sera now.”
He regarded her from under his own hat. “You and your ma at odds then? “
“Fifteen years worth and counting. There’s no middle ground for us,” she added before he could press. “We didn’t see eye to eye on my future, so now we don’t see each other at all.”
“That’s a shame, and I can say that because Flo and me have a girl, maybe six years up on you. We see her, but every time we do, it’s either behind glass or on our doorstep in the middle of the night. She’s an addict. Addiction’s made her a thief. Thieving’s sent her to jail four times. Guess we shouldn’t throw stones considering our past, but we straightened out. I’m starting to think she never will. She owes money now, so I’m hoping against hope she won’t show up at Logan’s place. We live there, you know.”
“With Logan? No, I didn’t know. Or maybe I just didn’t think. It’s a big house.”
“Came with …”
“The job, I heard.” Hooking his arm, she asked, “Where does your daughter live, Fred?”
He snorted out a laugh. “Wherever the wind blows her. Like her ma and me that way. But you got your own problems, Doc. You don’t need ours heaped on top of them. Word is you’ve got someone after you, someone who likes to kill. Any thoughts on why a person would do that over and over again?”
“A few, but nothing that really works. Whoa …” Raising her sunglasses, she ogled a purse dangling near a shop entrance. “That is one über cool bag. Bet it costs a fortune.” She slipped around him and inside to flip the price tag. “Oh, yeah, fortune. Fourteen-ninety-five.”
“That doesn’t sound …”
“Fourteen hundred, Fred.”
When he gaped, she caught his shirt and drew him back out. “Breathe deeply. The feeling will subside.”
“Fourteen—fifteen hundred dollars? For a purse?”
“Well, it’s leather.” She glanced past him. “Dolce and Gabbana.”
“But that’s …”
“I know.” Aware of the sun’s increasingly strong rays, she steered him toward an outdoor café. “Do you like iced latte?”
“What?”
She grinned, then tugged on his shirt. “Coffee, cold, yummy. We can sit. You can tell me how you wound up in Blue Ridge and what it’s like to work for Logan.”
Fred ran a hand over his face. “Logan, right. Well, it’s good. Best straight job I’ve ever had. You probably know that Flo and me have done some shady things.”
“We all have a past, Fred. The present matters more, don’t you … think?” The last word emerged on a frown as a picture suddenly streaked through her head. Swinging away from the street, she pressed her fingers to her temples, trying to recapture it. “No, don’t hide. Let me see you.”
Fred came up behind her. “Are you okay? You want me to get Logan? “
Ignoring him for the moment, Sera struggled with the hazy image.
“Music,” she said at last and, pivoting, searched for the source. “There was music playing in the background the night Andi died.” She closed her eyes. “There’s something behind it.”
Fred sidestepped. “I’ll get Logan.”
“I need to hear it again.” When he started off, she trapped his arm. “I’m good, Fred, really. I just need the music back. I saw something for a second. A hand, I think. And some kind of motion.” She zeroed in on a muddy four by four truck. “That might be where it came from.”
“You sure it was music, Doc, and not what you were saying?”
She started for the truck. “What were we talking about, do you remember?”
“Coffee, wasn’t it? Or purses.”
She cut across the street, skirted a group of people waiting to board a Greyhound bus and wound up back at the sheriff’s office, where the truck was parked.
The cab of the vehicle was empty, but she made a slow circle around the hood.
Fred caught up and mopped his face with a red bandanna. “It’s awfully hot, Doc. We could go inside, sit for a minute, see if we can find … Logan!” Relief colored his tone. “Am I happy to see you.”
“I forgot a file. What are you doing?”
“Recreating,” Sera said over her shoulder. She wanted to look at him, but that would destroy any chance she had of resurrecting the memory.
“Maybe we should …” Logan must have silenced Fred because he trailed off.
Sera continued to circle. “I saw a man’s hand and part of an arm. He was wearing a watch with a chrome band. It was scratched and corroded in spots.”
“Not a Rolex then,” Logan said from the front of the truck.
“Tell him about the music,” Fred suggested.
“I heard a song, or part of one, as this—I think this—truck drove past us.” She bit her inner lip, drummed the box. “Might’ve been Bob Marley.”
“‘One Love’?”
“Maybe.” But the title didn’t trigger anything more. She made a flitting motion. “Sorry, it’s gone. There was a watch, though, and it wasn’t high end.” She rubbed her wrist. “I saw a glove, too, but that’s a given.”
This time when Logan spoke, he did so from directly behind her. “What color was the glove?”
Her heart gave several hard thumps, which she controlled before turning. “Black. His fist was clenched, and it was striking something. A hard surface, possibly my desk.”
“So this striking happened in your office.”
Sera’s head began to throb, but she pushed through it. “My office door was open. Andrea was in Reception when the security guard found her. I hit my head on my own desk, so I must have run in there.” Leaning back against the side of the truck, she waved her hat in front of her face. “Sorry again, Logan, but that’s all there is.”
“It’s more than you had before.”
“Must be the mountain air.”
She was doing it, she realized suddenly. Looking at him. Getting sidetracked. A baby step away from fantasizing about what it would be like to have that incredibly sexy mouth of his on hers.