The Sheriff's Secret. Julie Lindsey Anne
determined to lay her in a useless ball. How many times had she called 911 as a kid? How many times had her drunken father taken his frustrations out on a mother too depressed to get out of bed? Broken limbs and noses. Cuts and bruises. Nothing like this. Never like this, and yet she’d felt exactly this way. Desperate. Afraid. And guilty. Always guilty. “I’m so sorry,” she wept. “So very sorry.”
The soft cry of an approaching ambulance registered in the distance, refueling her hope and drive. “I hear them now,” she told the dispatch operator. “Help is almost here.” She made the second announcement more loudly, aiming her words at the terrified group before her.
Tina slid her suit jacket from her shoulders. “You will survive this,” she told them, falling back on her training. “Understand?” They stared in variations of shock, anguish and despair. “You are survivors.” She forced the words from between clenched teeth, as much for her own benefit as theirs. “Help is almost here now. You’re going to be okay.”
Except Steven. Steven would never again be okay.
When she could find no more words, she carried her jacket through the raging storm and placed it over Steven. Fresh out of faux strength, Tina fell onto her bottom beside him, cell phone in hand, and bawled. What was wrong with this world?
* * *
CADE COUNTY SHERIFF West Garrett pressed a wide-brimmed hat over his head and levered himself out of the cruiser. A carousel of red-and-white lights illuminated the gruesome scene at a local counseling practice. Blood and glass covered the lot beside a newer model pickup truck. EMTs spoke with a cluster of people near one building.
A man lay motionless and partially covered by a tiny, bloodstained woman’s coat. This must have been the fatality Dispatch had announced. Presumably, the coat belonged to the woman curled up at the man’s side. Her arms were wrapped around her knees and her face was buried in the material of her ruined suit pants. Only the top of her blond head was visible, and it was shaking with each new sob she released.
West made his way, slowly, toward the woman.
The coroner dropped a black bag on the ground opposite the deceased.
“Ma’am?” West tugged the material of his pants and crouched beside her. “I’m Sheriff West Garrett. I’m afraid I need to ask you a few questions.”
The woman stilled. Her sobs ceased.
West rested his forearms on his thighs, allowing his hands to dangle between his knees. Rain dripped from the brim of his sheriff’s hat and the sleeves of his slicker. “Are you hurt, ma’am?”
She slowly raised her tearstained face, catching his gaze in hers. “No.”
“Tina.” His heart clenched and his gut fisted at the sight of her after all these years, her clothes smeared in blood.
“Hi, West,” she croaked. Her rain-soaked hair hung in clumps over her shaking shoulders.
The sound of his name on her tongue was a painful slap of nostalgia. “Hi.” West struggled to make her presence at the crime scene something other than ludicrous. “What are you doing here?”
“It’s my practice.”
West rubbed a rough hand over his mouth. He’d heard she worked at the medical center but had refused the details. This wasn’t the same girl who’d stolen his teenage heart and eventually destroyed it. That girl had left Cade County long ago. This was someone else. Someone he no longer knew. He pulled in a long breath and refocused on the job. He gave her a more critical exam. “Is any of this blood yours?”
“No.” Tina pushed onto her feet with a whimper and wrapped trembling arms around her middle. “I’m not hurt. I want to help.”
He stood, as well. “All right. You can start by telling me what happened.” He motioned to a section of the sidewalk covered with an awning. “Let’s step out of the storm.”
She complied, shuffling toward the building, peeling clumps of sopping hair off her cheeks and forehead. “We were leaving the building. It was just after eight, and there was a shadow on the roof.” She stopped short and swallowed several times.
“We?”
“I have a weekly support group for PTSD and emotional trauma survivors.” She rolled her shoulders forward and squelched a sob. “Steven saw the figure on the roof. He told us to get down. He tried to get to me.” She pressed the heels of both hands against her eyes. “The gunman shot him before he reached me.”
West nodded toward the man on the pavement. “That is Steven?”
She removed her hands from her face with a sigh. “Steven Masters. He was discharged from the army about a month ago. He has a wife and little girl.” Her voice broke on the last word. “Oh, Lord. His poor family,” she whispered. Tina spun away from West, walking aimlessly into the lot, obviously in shock despite her efforts to look otherwise.
“Hey.” West jogged to her side and wrapped an arm around her shoulders. “Why don’t you have a seat while we talk?” He led her to a bench beneath the awning and released her at once. The instinct to comfort her was unprofessional and wildly outdated. “Better?”
She didn’t answer.
“Tina?” West knew firsthand that she wasn’t a sharer, but this time he needed her to open up. “I know this is tough,” he began.
Tina rolled glossy blue eyes up at him. “Someone shot Steven from that rooftop. I don’t know who. I don’t know why.” She shook her head roughly. “It’s just nonsense.”
“West?” His baby brother and current deputy, Cole Garrett, strode to his side. Cole was four years younger than West and twice as smart, but he’d been bitten by the law enforcement bug like the rest of the Garrett men and refused to go out and change the world like West and their older brothers had suggested. “I’m going to head out and see if I can get a bead on this guy.”
“What do you have so far?” West asked.
Cole gave Tina a wayward look. “Not much. Witnesses heard a car hightailing out of here. I’m going to head up the road and see if anyone saw a vehicle taking the state route in a hurry.”
“It was a pickup truck,” Tina said.
Cole’s sharp gaze locked on hers before drifting back to West. “Isn’t she—”
“Don’t,” West warned.
Cole whistled the sound of a falling missile and walked away.
Tina rolled her head against the wall behind their bench. “I suppose I’m not exactly the Garrett family’s favorite local.”
West grunted. That was a conversation he never wanted to have. The past was the past. He’d like to leave it there. “I need to know which member of your group could’ve made someone mad enough to do this?”
Tina’s soft expression hardened. She glanced at the coroner’s van. “The only person to blame is the maniac who did it.”
West raised an eyebrow. “I’m not blaming. I’m looking for bread crumbs. Which one’s the loose cannon?”
“All my patients are serious about their recovery. They’re employed. Paying bills. Contributing to society. They wouldn’t be here every week, carving out time before work, if they weren’t dedicated to the process.”
“Uh-huh.” West nodded. “I understand why you’d say they’re doing well, seeing as how you’re their therapist.” He gave a little smile, knowing he walked a fine line. “You look for the best in people, and that’s admirable, but can you tell me honestly that if one of your patients had gotten into trouble, you’d know? How can you be sure? Because I’m sitting outside an office where people suffering from emotional distress come for treatment, and one of them is dead. You want me to believe the location is a coincidence?”
She