Chapter One #4
“I’ll cover the rear exits.” Jude didn’t wait for permission. She lifted Emmy’s Glock from the case and jogged toward the house. She had taken off her high heels, too. Her bare feet left impressions in the grass when she disappeared around the side.
“Mom!” Cole rapped his knuckles on the back window. He couldn’t open the door from inside.
She let him out, ordering, “Tell dispatch to send every deputy we’ve got. Check on the neighbors. Make sure they lock all their windows and doors. Go.”
“Yes, chief.”
Emmy pumped the shotgun. She jammed the butt of the stock into the soft part of her shoulder.
Headed toward the front porch. All of her senses were on alert.
Her eyes scanned the windows as she climbed the wooden stairs.
Her ears strained for sounds. Nostrils flared at the acrid, sulfurous stench of recent gunfire.
Finger tensed along the cold metal of the trigger guard in case she had to react.
Broken glass littered the porch. Emmy stepped around the pieces, narrowed herself against the doorframe in case someone was waiting on the other side with a weapon of their own. The bones inside of her fingers felt like they were vibrating as she tried the latch.
Locked.
Four gunshots. Four squeezes on the trigger. Her brain zeroed in on a likely scenario. Wife trying to leave her husband. Suitcase packed. He comes home early. A nasty fight ensues. A gun is nearby because guns were always too close at hand.
Pop.
Their child dumps her bike on the lawn and runs inside.
Pop. Pop.
Double tap, but the kid could still be alive.
Pop.
Gun to his head? To finish off a victim? A parting shot?
There was no way to access the lock on the door through the broken window. Emmy made herself breathe. Tried to calm her racing heartbeat. She’d given Jude enough time to secure the back exits in case the shooter tried to run. It was time to breech.
“Police!” Emmy banged her fist on the door. “Open up!”
She waited, counting off the slowest five seconds of her life. Her brain carouseled through what could be waiting for her inside: a bullet, a blast of buckshot, a hammer, a knife, a base-ball bat.
“Police!” She took a deep breath, steeled herself. “I’m coming in!”
Emmy’s dress was too tight to lift her leg and kick open the door, but she took a running start and threw her body against the solid wood.
The deadbolt splintered apart the doorjamb.
She stumbled into the foyer. Braced the shotgun against her shoulder and turreted around.
Dining room on the left. Formal living room on the right.
Curved stairs up to the second level. Skinny hallway leading to the back where she would find the kitchen and a small den with a rear staircase, because the bones to these old houses never changed.
Emmy carefully stepped into the dining room.
The swinging door to the kitchen was closed.
Someone had used the table for work. Papers were scattered everywhere.
A broken laptop was on the floor. A chair was overturned.
A girl’s backpack had been dumped out. Math textbook, history, English.
Emmy moved quickly, keeping her head on swivel, the shotgun out in front of her.
She reached for the swinging door. A bloody handprint stopped her.
Just below where Emmy would’ve placed her own hand.
Small, the size of a teenager’s.
Emmy held her breath, listened for sounds. The child. The victim. The shooter.
Nothing.
She felt resistance when she tested the door.
She picked at the edge, pried it back a sliver.
Saw a woman’s unmoving hand resting on the tiled kitchen floor.
The diamond in her wedding ring was streaked crimson.
A gold watch band was hanging from her broken wrist. Index finger and thumb blown off.
Steak knife lying in a pool of blood on the floor.
Emmy pulled back the door another few inches.
No one else in the kitchen. No one in the den.
She looked down. The victim’s gray-blond hair went past her shoulders.
Her face was slashed with blood, lips a deathly shade of blue.
Still, Emmy pressed her fingers to the woman’s carotid.
Skin still warm. No pulse. Emmy was about to continue her sweep of the house when she noticed the watch.
The face showed a gold detective’s shield overlaid with three words: Courage. Integrity. Trust.
The layout of the colonial revival wasn’t familiar because they were all familiar. Emmy had been inside this house before. She knew the victim.
Detective Allison Vickery was a twenty-year veteran of the Clayville police force. She had a sixteen-year-old daughter and a husband who sold high-end appliances at his family store.
Emmy kept to a low crouch as she entered the kitchen.
The side door to the garage was closed. The door that led to the backyard gaped open.
Bloody bare footprints tracked from the kitchen into the den and disappeared up the back staircase.
Emmy suppressed a curse as she scanned the empty backyard.
Jude had already checked on the victim. She wasn’t securing the rear exits. She was clearing the upstairs rooms.
Pop.
The sound of gunfire shook the air. Emmy ducked behind the kitchen island. Her vision stuttered. Sounds overlapped from upstairs. Footsteps. Glass breaking. A guttural moan.
Then there was a thud that gave her the same sickening feeling as when her mother’s coffin had hit the ground.
Jude.
Emmy was already running up the back stairs before her brain told her body to move.
The treads were worn and narrow. The walls closed in on either side.
She threw herself around the landing. The door at the top was ajar.
Emmy launched herself through the opening with the shotgun out in front of her.
She slid on her side, furiously searching for a gun pointing in her direction.
The hallway was empty.
She scrambled to stand, kept to a low crouch as she walked to the front of the house and glanced down the large, curving front stairs to make sure the shooter wasn’t on his way out the door.
She swung back around. The long, wide hallway traversed the length of the house.
Four bedrooms spoked off the sides. Two on the left.
Two on the right. One hall bath. One laundry room. One linen closet.
Emmy methodically checked the two front bedrooms, cleared the closets, then the hall bath. The back left bedroom had to belong to Allison’s daughter. K-pop posters. Laptop on a white Ikea desk. Pillows and stuffed animals overflowing the bed. Clothes everywhere.
She was about to check the closet when a floorboard creaked behind her.
Emmy didn’t have time to swing around. A hand clamped over her mouth. Her heart filled with needles, then her eyes found the mirror over the desk.
The hand belonged to Jude.
Blood streamed down the side of her sister’s face. She’d been shot. The bullet had grazed her temple. The difference of a few millimeters was the only reason she was still standing.
Jude locked eyes with Emmy’s reflection in the mirror, shored her up the same way she had done with Cole at the funeral. She slowly removed her hand. Nodded at the open doorway across the hall.
The shooter was in the last bedroom on the right. Larger than the others. En suite bathroom. Walk-in closet.
Before Emmy could react, Jude took point. She two-handed the Glock, kept herself low as she crossed the hallway. Emmy took a deep breath, then trailed after with the shotgun.
The lights were off. The afternoon sun sent shadows dancing across the tan walls and brown carpet.
Clothes had been tossed into an open suitcase on the bed.
Two sets of windows. One closed. The other broken.
Curtains rippled from the breeze. Bloody handprints pushed up against the bottom of the sash.
Emmy felt a wet sucking around the sole of her bare foot.
A warm, red liquid squirted between her toes.
The carpet was soaked through. She was standing in a pool of blood.
Jude came out of the bathroom, then pivoted into the walk-in closet.
Seconds later, she said, “Clear.”
Emmy let herself breathe. She rested the barrel of the shotgun against her shoulder.
She looked out the windows. A covered porch was directly below.
A single, black nitrile glove had been dropped on the flat roof.
The neatly mowed backyard was bordered by a dense forest. It would’ve been easy to climb out the window, jump onto the roof, drop down to the deck, run down the three steps, and disappear into the trees.
Especially since the person who’d said she would cover the back exits had not stayed outside to cover the back exits.
Emmy turned to Jude. “Did the FBI forget to teach you how to secure a perimeter?”
“I know Dad taught you to never go in without backup.” Jude paused to let the words land. “Where’s Cole?”
Cole was safe outside knocking on neighboring doors. “Priority number one is locating the victim’s teenage daughter. Allison Vickery is—”
Tick.
Emmy looked at Jude. She’d heard it, too—like the second hand on a stopwatch resetting to zero.
Tick.
The sound had come from the patch of soaked carpet under the window.
They both looked up. Both took a step back, weapons raised. The ceiling was bulging in the middle, saturated with blood. There were holes where the Sheetrock had pulled away from the screws. Cracks ran along the seams. Particles of insulation floated through the air.
Tick.
Another drop hit the wet carpet.
Then the ceiling split open, and a body collapsed onto the floor.