I shook my head. “How do you think you’re going to get away with this? Case will be here any minute. There is no way someone didn’t see you out on the street. This is a small town. Everyone is in everybody else’s business. You can’t just shoot me and walk away.” Not to mention she would be killing her only child. How could she live with herself? What kind of monster did I come from? She was a thousand times worse than Conrad Lawton.
“Oh, I plan on people knowing I’m here. I came to check on my daughter, knowing her life has been in danger. What a tragic turn of events when I found her deceased.” She exhaled a long, low breath, and I swore the temperature in the room dropped several degrees.
“This is insane.” My voice cracked, and I felt bile rise in the back of my throat. I kept shifting my gaze between the stoic, unemotional woman in front of me and the weapon in her hand.
“You did make my plan slightly more difficult when you got involved with the sheriff. I wasn’t expecting that. He never liked you much.” She hummed a sound of annoyance and moved a step closer to me. “I was planning on paying Coleman to make it look like a suicide after David signed the divorce papers. Single, no prospects, defective. There was going to be an epic suicide note, but then you went and cozied up to a Lawton.” She shook her head. “You’ve never made things easy, Aspen. Such a difficult, obnoxious child.”
“Case is coming.” He had to be. I refused to believe any differently.
“No. He’s not. Jethro isn’t very bright, but he is a good soldier. He follows orders. He understands strategy and the endgame. He’s been watching and waiting. It doesn’t hurt that he hates Case Lawton with a passion. Once you had the office cleaned he knew it would only be a matter of time before you came back to work. He also knew there was only one way—one other person more imporant than you—to make sure the sheriff has his entire attention and resources on someone else.”
She waved the gun in the air. “Do you really think I just happened upon you at the right time and the right place? Naive girl. You’ve always had such a bleeding heart. You didn’t get that from me.”
My heart lodged in my throat at her words. “You wouldn’t.”
She arched her perfectly groomed eyebrows at me. “Do you know how much your insurance policy is for? There isn’t anything I wouldn’t do to get that money.”
I gulped and fisted my hand on my chest. “If Coleman went after Hayes, Case is going to burn this town to the ground going after him. There won’t be anywhere he can hide, so whatever money you promised him is worthless. Case will end him, even if nothing happens to his son.”
The gun waved again, and the smile that crossed my mother’s face was so calculating and evil it made my skin crawl.
“That’s what I’m counting on. I never intended to give that redneck a dime.”
There was no holding the bile back after that. I gaged and made a mess all over my nice clean office.
Chapter 18
Case
Dad, something’s wrong.”
The call made my heart drop and had my blood running ice-cold. It was the middle of a school day, and there was no reason Hayes should be calling me. He was supposed to be safe and sound in his AP English class.
“What’s going on, kiddo?” I tried to keep my voice calm, but I was already moving out of my office and headed toward my SUV. A couple of deputies called out greetings, and a young cop who operated the front desk during the day shift asked where I was going. I waved them all off, steps quickening as I hit the front door.
“I’m not really sure. Mom’s been blowing up my phone. She’s called twenty-three times and sent me around fifty text messages. She’s been annoying lately, but not like this.” Hayes sounded confused and worried. His voice was also hollow and echoing, making me think he had snuck away to the bathroom to call me, since phones were forbidden during classes.
“What do the messages say?” Becca could be erratic, and she was unquestionably manipulative. No one was off-limits when it came to her brand of emotional warfare. But she’d never interfered with our son’s education. She was dying to say her kid played football for one of the top colleges in the nation, and she was looking forward to the possibility of Hayes going pro so she could bask in the secondhand celebrity. I instantly agreed something was very, very wrong.
“She didn’t leave a voice mail, but the texts are weird. They start out asking me to come over to her house right away. When I didn’t respond, she switched to saying she was coming to the school and that I needed to meet her out front. She says it’s an emergency. You don’t think that jerk boyfriend of hers did something to her do you?” He sounded antsy. I knew my kid. Even though his mother drove him up a wall, he would throw all caution to the wind if he thought she needed his help. “I tried to call her back, but now she won’t pick up.”
I slammed the door to the SUV and cranked the engine to life. “Don’t leave the school, Hayes. Go to the principal’s office and stay there until I call you back. I’m on my way there right now.”
He huffed an irritated breath that let me know he didn’t appreciate me treating him like he was still a little boy. “What about Mom? I checked the find-my-phone app, and it shows her phone at my school. I don’t understand what’s going on.”
“Do not step outside of that school, Hayes. I’m serious. I’m going to send someone to your mom’s place right now to see what’s going on. Just because her phone is at your school doesn’t mean she is, you got me?” The warning was clear in my voice. If he disobeyed me, we were going to have a huge problem.
“Fine. But you better call me back and tell me what’s going on.” He disconnected the call, and I knew if I didn’t get answers soon he was going to blindly walk into danger to find them on his own.
I called Hill, because I needed help and he was the one person with a badge I trusted implicitly. I started barking orders before he even said hello.
“I need you to go to my ex-wife’s house. Something is going on with my son, and I have a bad feeling about it. I’m on my way to his high school right now.” Thank God Hayes was smart enough to call me when things seemed hinky. “Jethro Coleman is still unaccounted for, and if he somehow gets his hands on my kid…” I trailed off. I would hand over just about anything in the entire world to ensure Hayes’s safety.
Hill grunted, and I could hear the sound of traffic and wind rushing, indicating Hill was driving. “What about Aspen? This could just be a big distraction.” Our minds worked the same way, which meant I didn’t have to explain every little fear I had about the current situation in detail.
“I have a patrol unit on Main Street. She’s at her office today, and I haven’t received any reports of anything suspicious. My next call out is checking in on her.”
Hill made a sound of agreement. “Just pulled up at your ex’s place. Nothing looks out of the ordinary from the outside.”
I breathed a little easier at that news. I pulled into the front of the high school with a screech of tires. The campus was mostly empty aside from a stray teenager scurrying between classes. “So far the school looks clear as well. I’m going to run in and check on Hayes and let the principal know there may be a situation.”
“Well…shit.” Hill’s voice went low in my ear. “There is definitely a situation. No one is answering the door, but I can see in the front window. I don’t see Becca, but there’s an unconscious male on the living room floor. And there’s blood. Lots of blood. I’m going in based on probable cause.”
I swore under my breath and slammed the heel of my hand against the steering wheel. “He went after Becca for her phone.”
“Coleman?” I heard a heavy thud and assumed Hill was trying to shoulder the door to Becca’s house open. I sent up a silent prayer the woman was unharmed. I couldn’t imagine how Hayes would react to learning Becca got hurt in order to lure him out of the school and into the middle of a game of cat and mouse.
“Who else could it be? He’s been at the center of all of this. Ke
ep me updated. I need to check on Aspen and make sure Hayes doesn’t leave the building.” Hill muttered an absent agreement, and the phone went dead. I reached for the radio attached to the dash, jolting just as it crackled to life.
Bending over to respond to the call very well may have saved my life. The deputy I had on patrol watching Aspen radioed in to inform me everything appeared normal. He did mention a well-dressed woman stopping by the office and assumed she was one of Aspen’s clients. He went on to say Aspen let the woman into the building without hesitation, which was weird. I knew she wasn’t ready to open her doors for regular business hours yet. I was getting ready to send the deputy into the building to double-check that everything was okay when the passenger window on my SUV shattered into a million pieces.
I swore long and loud as another bullet blasted the back window. My ears were ringing as I clutched the radio in my hand, scrambling across the front seat, keeping my head low as the stuffing from the driver’s seat suddenly exploded outward as yet another bullet lodged in the leather. My ears were ringing from the noise, and I couldn’t decide if I should be looking out over the parking lot for the shooter, or toward the school to make sure no one came out the front doors.
Breathing hard, I gasped the code for active shooter into the radio. I got the passenger door open and tumbled out, landing hard on my hands and knees. The impact was jarring, sending my teeth clicking together. I saw my phone light up where it fell on the floorboard. It was covered in glass, but I could see my son’s name on the screen. It was my worse nightmare come to life, an active shooter in the one place where he was supposed to be safe, and it was my fault. I’d let these dominos fall. I couldn’t begin to imagine how terrified my kid must be. Hopefully he’d gone to the principal’s office like I told him to. I was sending up a silent prayer the school official would do whatever it took to keep Hayes from doing something stupid.
I heard a bullet ping off the frame of the SUV too close to the top of my head for comfort. I reached up reflexively, realizing I had lost my hat somewhere in the dive out the door. I pulled my service weapon out of the holster, hand sweaty and finger itchy. I wasn’t looking for a shootout or a firefight. This wasn’t a war zone. This wasn’t the desert. This was a sleepy small town where people, and especially children, should be safe. It was my job to prevent something like this from happening. I couldn’t believe how spectacularly I had failed. Taking a deep breath, I practically crawled my way toward the front tire of the SUV, crouching down behind the engine block because it was the safest place to take cover from the incoming rounds. I had no clue how far away backup was, or how much ammunition Jethro Coleman had. I did know my SUV was getting shot all to hell.
I saw the mic from my radio dangling out the passenger door and was tempted to reach for it, but as soon as I shifted, a bullet dug into the asphalt right where the top of my boot had been. Coleman was a good shot. If I gave him a target, he was going to hit it. I wiped the back of my hand across my sweaty forehead and looked up at the school. Luckily the administration seemed to have put everyone on lockdown. No one was coming or going from the building, meaning I only had to worry about myself. There would be no staying hidden and trying to survive by keeping my head down if an innocent victim ended up in the crossfire.
Finally, I heard sirens competing with gunshots. They still sounded really far away, and I wasn’t sure if the shooter was moving closer, or how much longer I could hunker down and do nothing while a madman terrorized the high school. Tightening my hand on my weapon I slowly, painstakingly, leaned around the front end of the car to see if I could get a bead on where Coleman was positioned.
I gasped when the headlight exploded right next to my face. Glass and plastic embedded in my cheek and the coppery scent of blood filled my nose. My eyes burned, and my head screamed in pain as my skull collided with the fender of the car as I jerked back behind the vehicle. Putting a shaking hand to my face, I wasn’t surprised when it came back stained scarlet and sticky with blood. I could feel the sear of pain all through my jaw and down the side of my neck. I had to blink both sweat and blood out of my eyes as my vision swam. For the first time in a long time, I was scared down to my bones. I wasn’t used to being in a situation I couldn’t control. I wasn’t sure how to operate when there were literally no viable options for success.
Panting, I turned blurry eyes toward the front of the school when I noticed motion at the front doors.
“No!” I wasn’t sure if I said the word out loud or if I silently screamed it, but I was moving before I could think the action all the way through.
I heard the gun go off again, but it was nearly drowned out by something louder, almost meaner. There was no time to turn my head and evaluate the situation, all I cared about was getting to the teenaged girl with wild-colored hair before a bullet did. Even with the distance separating us, I could see her eyes were huge and blind with fear. Her skin was nearly white, and tears were running down her face as she blasted through the heavy metal doorway. A blond woman who was slightly younger than me appeared in the doorway behind the teenager. She was screaming and frantically motioning for the girl to get back inside, but the teenager was operating on a level of fear and adrenaline that didn’t understand logic.
When she caught sight of me running in her direction, she took one look at the gun in my hand and started to backpedal. I heard her scream, another gunshot, and then suddenly everything went deadly silent.
For a second I wondered if I’d taken a bullet somewhere fatal. But I could still feel the way my cheek was burning, and I could feel sweat trickling down my spine. The teenager fell to her knees in front of me and wrapped her arms over her head. I stopped running when I was directly in front of her but still a few feet away. The teacher in the doorway was watching with wide eyes, and I motioned her to get back inside.
I was still waiting to feel the burn of a bullet, but the sirens were closer now, and the gunshots had gone silent. Looking over my shoulder and squinting into the sun I tried to locate where the shooter had been positioned. I caught the reflection of the light off what I could only assume was a gun scope on the rooftop of the gymnasium. I also noticed that every available officer in the county was now surrounding the school and exiting their vehicles with weapons drawn. The entire event felt like it’d lasted for hours, but in reality, it had only been minutes.
I looked back at the crying, hysterical girl in front of me. Clumsily I put my gun back in the holster and took a step back. “Hey. It’s all right. You need to go back in the school so all the students can be accounted for. We’ll need to contact all your parents. I’m Sheriff Lawton. I’m not going to hurt you.”
The teenager started crying harder and was shaking so badly I wondered if she’d gone into shock. Taking note of the bright burst of color in her hair, I wondered if she was the new student Hayes had told me about. Breathing out a long breath I nodded as several of my deputies surrounded me. Everyone was asking questions and demanding answers, but I held up my hand and continued to focus on the girl.
“I’m Hayes’s dad. I promise I’m not going to hurt you.” I tried to keep my own voice from shaking.
Finally, wide eyes looked up in my direction. She looked like a ghost with her too white skin and too dark eyes. She reminded me so much of Aspen when she was younger, I felt it like a punch in the chest.
“Hayes is nice.” Her words were slurred and choppy. She sounded almost drunk, possibly delirious, and again I worried about her going into shock. I crouched down and held out a hand, which she looked at in horror.
I grimaced when I realized my fingers were covered in blood from my face. I retracted it and tried for a reassuring smile instead. “He’s a good kid. I need to go check on him. Why don’t you come inside with one of these nice deputies or me?” One of the female officers I had on staff took a hesitant step forward and nodded when the girl didn’t flinch away.
It took a minute for her to get to her feet, and when she took her first ste
p back toward the school, she stumbled. The female officer caught her before she went down and gave her a sympathetic pat on the back. They were talking in quiet tones, and the teenager looked less like she was going to pass out, now that she had someone to lean on.
“Case, you there?” I looked around at the sound of my name, frowning when I realized it was coming from one of the radios on a nearby officer’s shoulder. I motioned for him to come closer so I could respond to Hill.
“I’m here. Where are you?” He was supposed to be making sure my ex-wife wasn’t dead.
“I’m on the roof with your shooter.” Hill’s tone was dry, as if his location should’ve been obvious. “Becca was fine. Found her locked in the basement of the house. Coleman pistol-whipped the boyfriend, so he’s in a world of hurt, but they’ll both live to tell the tale. Becca was already playing the sympathy card when the paramedics showed.”
I pulled my shirt out of my jeans so I could wipe at my face. “The shooter Coleman?”
The radio crackled again. “The shooter was Coleman.”
I frowned. “Was?”
“Yep. Looks like someone took a shot at your shooter. Nailed him right between the eyes too.” Hill sounded slightly impressed.
“Wasn’t me. He had me pinned down like a sitting duck.” I was still furious over the fact.
“Naw. This wasn’t one of us. This is a kill shot. Professional, done with a high-powered rifle from a long distance.” Again there was a note of awe in the Texas Ranger’s voice. “He’s got a go bag up here with him. It looks like he was planning to take his shot at you and run.” With our small police force and limited resources, he might have gotten a good jump on getting away if someone hadn’t gotten to him first.
“Fuck me.” I remember the roar drowning out the sound of gunshots right before I’d started to run toward the girl. It could’ve been the rumble of motorcycle tailpipes. Groaning I ordered, “Hill, call Aspen for me. My phone’s in the car, which is now a crime scene. I need to make sure Hayes knows both Becca and I are all right, then I need to check on Aspen. My patrol officer said she had a client show up, but she didn’t mention anything to me about having an appointment.” It was still a strong possibility this was all a distraction. Every single cop in Loveless was now posted up somewhere around the high school. If someone wanted to get at my girl, now was the time to do it. I would deal with the possibility of the Sons of Sorrow taking out Coleman later.
Justified Page 23
