Within Range

by Janice Kay Johnson

  “Sghetti,” her son said happily.

  Jacob was less enthusiastic about the broccoli until Seth held up a clump and said, “Look, a tree,” and gobbled it like a monster. Jacob gleefully followed suit.

  Robin shook her head. “Why didn’t I ever think of that?”

  They all laughed.

  His dad said, “So what’s this I heard about a shooting today?”

  Robin’s alarmed gaze swung to him.

  “A stupid teenager, what else? He was mad because the baseball coach suspended him after he was arrested at a kegger. He just wanted to scare him a little in payback. Apparently the kid hunts, and insists he made sure he didn’t hurt anybody.”

  “I hope he wasn’t eighteen,” Michael said.

  “Had his birthday in January. Boy’s in trouble. I don’t think he gets it.”

  Seth saw Robin eyeing Jacob with some wariness, clearly concerned for him.

  His father declared that he’d take KP duty tonight, and Seth sat Robin down to talk. They went outside onto the deck so Jacob could run around on the lawn and she could keep an eye on him.

  “Do you know whether Richard kept an investigator on retainer?” Seth asked.

  “Like a firm, you mean? Why would he?” She made a face. “Before he set out to find me, I mean.”

  “He may have other ongoing problems. You can’t be the only person who has seen behind his facade.”

  She seemed to be thinking about that, but shook her head in the end. “I don’t know about that. Anyway, wouldn’t his law firm employ investigators?”

  Not ones Winstead would dare use for sleazy work. “Did he ever receive threats?” Seth asked.

  “Not that I know of, although he did—”

  She covered the alarm quickly enough to make Seth doubt what he’d seen. “Did what?” he prodded.

  “Well, I was going to say that the house is well-staffed. That would provide protection when he was home.”

  “It might. Did he drive himself, or have a driver?”

  “Sometimes he’d have someone drive him,” she said slowly. “Mostly not.”

  Seth made a mental note to have Hammond look into Winstead’s employees.

  “Did he have any employees you’d classify as bodyguards?”

  Robin jumped to her feet. “Jacob?”

  Seth had been keeping an eye on the kid, too, and had seen him go behind the big cedar tree. Before he could tell her, the boy peeked around the trunk. “I hid,” he told her proudly.

  “No more hiding,” she said firmly. “Stay where I can see you.”

  Seth said, “Hey, I saw a soccer ball in the garage. Let me go get it.”

  Once he brought it out, he spent a few minutes showing Jacob how to kick the ball and move with it. It was a kid-size one, another leftover from his nieces’ visits.

  Shaking his head as he returned to the deck, Seth said, “I think it’ll be a few years before he’s ready to join a team.”

  “His coordination isn’t quite there, is it?”

  “Nope.” Where had they left off? “Bodyguard,” he said, remembering.

  “Yes, he did,” she said, sounding composed. “The man was his occasional driver. I wondered, though, because he looked like a bodybuilder, you know?”

  “What was his name?”

  “Oh, boy. I didn’t see much of him. McCoy? McCormack? Mc-something. He was there only about the last year of our marriage. He probably got axed after I made my getaway.”

  There was something a little too casual about her speech. Seth studied her. “You think his real role was prison guard?”

  “Probably. It seemed like every time I went outside, he was there. Stepping out of the garage or whatever, eyes on me. You know Richard wouldn’t have tolerated incompetence.”

  “No, I don’t suppose he would have,” Seth said thoughtfully. He couldn’t guess what she wasn’t telling him, but he’d lay money there was something. Had she had a relationship with the man? Had he helped her, or at least turned a blind eye, when she escaped? No, if that were the case, why wouldn’t Robin say?

  This was only one reason why he should have kept his hands off her.

  “Could this guy have been the one who grabbed Jacob?”

  “No.” Not so coincidentally, she chose then to turn her head and focus on Jacob, who had given up on the soccer ball and was rolling down a slight incline.

  “You sound sure.”

  “The guy in the mask wasn’t bulky enough.”

  “But he was too big to be Richard.”

  “There’s...a lot of ground in between, you know.”

  “Like me, say.”

  She stole a look at him, her gaze sliding from his shoulders down his torso and along his outstretched legs. Flushing, she said, “You’re at least as tall as the bodyguard. You’re just not...not muscle-bound.”

  He had to shift his weight to accommodate his body’s response to her lingering inspection, and the betraying warmth in her cheeks. The temptation was there to tease, but Seth hadn’t forgotten his earlier thought. Stick to business.

  “Does your mother know you found a body in your house?”

  “No!” She stared at him in outrage. “I told you!”

  “You said you didn’t want to call now. You might have let her know when it first happened. Say, when you were staying at the inn.”

  “Well, I didn’t.”

  * * *

  HE STILL THOUGHT she was lying to him, and he was right. Robin knew she’d never been a very good liar, which was an irony for someone who’d spent two and a half years lying about something as basic as her name.

  Even when she wasn’t looking at him, his sharp, assessing gaze made her want to squirm...and tell him everything. She had to get away.

  Acid burning her stomach, she asked, “Are we done?”

  “We can be.” Seth raised his eyebrows. “Doesn’t mean we have to rush inside.”

  “I’m lucky Jacob has entertained himself this long.”

  “You’re right. I’m on the job.”

  With easy athleticism, he bounced to his feet. In no time he had a giggling Jacob chasing him around the yard. When he let himself be caught, Seth turned the tables and lumbered after her son. He scooped up Jacob, powerful biceps flexing, tucked him under one arm like a football and raced around the yard.

  Breath catching, Robin started to rise to her feet. Jacob would be scared... But he wasn’t, she saw in astonishment. They both ended up sprawled on the grass, laughing.

  She’d swear Seth was enjoying himself as much as Jacob was. In that moment, she felt something entirely unfamiliar. Yearning was the word she came up with. Why couldn’t Jacob have a father like this, instead of the one she prayed he never meet? What couldn’t she have a man like this?

  Seth embodied such contradictions: ruthlessness and a capacity for protection, with kindness and a powerful defensive instinct. The guardedness that she guessed was typical of cops with an ability to live in the moment with a little boy.

  He did want her, but Robin couldn’t imagine he wouldn’t despise her once he knew she’d been tested three years ago and been found a match to give her sister a kidney, but hadn’t done it. Endless rounds of dialysis kept Allie from having any kind of a life. She couldn’t hold a job or even live alone. If she had a boyfriend, she’d never said so during any of her brief conversations with Robin. Allie must hate her, Robin thought with familiar self-loathing. When she screwed up her life, she’d damaged Mom’s and Allie’s lives plenty, too.

  Maybe she should give up and tell Seth everything. Get it over with. Why put off the inevitable?

  Because he was a cop. He couldn’t let her confession that she’d killed a man slide. She could claim self-defense, but since she’d been trespassing at the time, Robin suspected law enforcement wouldn’t se
e it that way.

  She discovered suddenly that he’d gone completely still, and she was the object of his unnervingly intent gaze. For charged seconds, Robin couldn’t look away. If he could see right through her...well, let him.

  In the end, she took the coward’s way out and fled into the house.

  * * *

  SETH MADE SOME calls to neighboring jurisdictions on Friday, and determined that Hood River County Sheriff’s Department employed a female deputy who might pass as Robin to a distant watcher who saw her moving past a lighted window in the house. She wouldn’t fool anyone who got a good look at her, though.

  There was a lot Seth didn’t like about the idea of setting a trap, however. Starting with the possibility that if Winstead was as good a shot as Robin thought, he could fire from across the street, put a bullet through Deputy Jennifer Hadleigh’s head and vanish in seconds. Of course, he’d discover in no time that he’d killed the wrong woman—again—and they’d be back where they started.

  Since Seth hadn’t worked with the deputy, he had no idea how competent she was, either. Or whether she’d agree to this scheme.

  What he did know was that Robin would balk if he suggested putting another woman at risk in her place. That needn’t stop them, of course, but while he wouldn’t describe himself as sensitive, he knew what Robin desperately needed was to feel in control of her life, not in even less control.

  Sometimes, how you made something happen was as important as the result.

  The wistful, maybe sad expression on her face when she watched him play with Jacob out on the lawn kept coming back to him. Ignoring his father’s curiosity, Seth had followed her last night after she announced her intention of going to bed at a ridiculously early hour. With a hand on her arm, he’d stopped her at the foot of the stairs.

  “You don’t have to run away from me,” he’d said in a low voice.

  She’d huffed out a breath. “I have no idea what you’re talking about. I’m tired. Jacob’s an early riser.”

  “You have no idea how much I want to barrel right through the walls you’ve built to keep everyone out.”

  Her breath hitched. “Please don’t,” she’d said so softly he’d had to lean forward to hear her. “I need them.”

  And then she’d jerked away and dashed upstairs, never glancing back.

  He’d had to go back to the living room and face his father, who knew him well enough to have a good idea how mixed up he was where Robin was concerned. Fortunately, Dad was also smart enough not to push too hard.

  Forcing himself to concentrate on work, Seth sent an email request to Sergeant Hammond inquiring about Winstead’s current and former employees. After that, he turned his attention to other investigations that had gone on the back burner. The most significant was a recent series of burglaries, car prowls and mail theft. He’d begun to wonder if they were all being committed by the same person or persons.

  He’d started his career with Portland Police Bureau until his mother got sick and he took the job here in town so he could count on being free to help both his parents. Once Mom was gone and his father was past the worst of his grief, Seth could have gone back to the much larger law-enforcement agency, but had discovered by then that he liked the pace of small-town policing and the independence of being the only detective on the Lookout police force. Four years later, he didn’t have any regrets.

  The kind of crime spree occurring here now was far more common in a city. While patrolling as a rookie, he’d broken up a ring of thieves by sheer luck. Turning a corner in a residential neighborhood, he saw a man leave a panel truck in a driveway, scan for anyone watching and stroll around the side of the house. Seth had parked where his marked unit would be hidden behind the larger panel truck and waited. He hadn’t been surprised when the guy reappeared with his arms full. When he saw Seth, he leaped into the truck and tried to take off. Seth had taken the precaution of blocking the tires.

  Turned out the electronics and jewelry he’d just stolen was nothing compared to what was already in the back of the truck. Once a responding detective identified the guy, they found his garage full of stolen household goods. Fingerprints nailed two of his friends, who were holding more stolen goods. A lot of people were really happy to come into the police station to identify their stolen items.

  Seth had already talked to the patrol officers here in Lookout as well as the county patrol sergeant, and urged everyone to keep an eye out for something as simple as a car moving from one mailbox to another—particularly if the driver was removing mail from the boxes rather than tossing fliers in newspaper boxes, say.

  Sooner or later, a sharp-eyed cop would be in the right place at the right time.

  Listening with half an ear to the police radio, he checked email. Oh, good—a response from Hammond already.

  * * *

  HEARING THE TV, Robin stepped into the living room. There was a lot of laughter from a talk show that didn’t look like anything she could imagine interesting Michael. But gosh, who knew? He was in his recliner with his feet up, apparently watching. Maybe he usually spent all day glued to the television. Maybe he loved soap operas and out of self-consciousness had been depriving himself. It was none of her business.

  But seemingly still unaware of her scrutiny, he grabbed the remote and irritably flicked through several stations.

  “Hi,” she said. “Sorry to interrupt. I’m making soup and sandwiches for Jacob and me, and I thought I’d see if you’re ready for lunch.”

  “You don’t have to wait on me.” The TV went dark, and he dropped the remote onto the end table. After a minute he said, “I’m fighting some heartburn, but maybe eating something mild will help.”

  “Are you sure it’s heartburn? It might be worth getting checked out at a walk-in clinic.”

  He smiled at her and lowered the footrest. “I’ve seen my doctor, and I’m on prescription meds for this. It comes and goes.”

  “Is my cooking too spicy? I could—”

  Michael looked and sounded a lot like his son when he laughed. “It’s probably that damn beef jerky I decided to gnaw on earlier.”

  She laughed. “That does sound like a good possibility. Well, lunch will be ready in ten minutes.”

  In the kitchen, she heated soup and grilled cheese sandwiches. Which might be a little fatty for someone suffering from heartburn, but Michael could decide that for himself.

  Jacob, who’d been playing with his blocks, decided he needed to use the bathroom. She was leading him down the hall when she heard a rattling sound from behind her. The back door handle turning? Had Seth come home early again for some reason?

  She glanced back to see the reappearance of a nightmare.

  A masked man just outside lifted a gun to slam the butt into the glass pane in the door. Glass shattered, and he reached inside for the lock.

  Robin screamed.

  Chapter Eleven

  Scream still ringing in her ears, she backed out of sight. Michael was at her side instantly. To her shock, he held a big handgun that he must have been carrying all along without her noticing.

  “Get Jacob upstairs,” he ordered her in a low voice. “Find something to defend yourself with if you can. Don’t argue. Now run.”

  She lifted Jacob into her arms, bent over to make a smaller target and ran.

  The intruder had started across the kitchen. “Stop!” he yelled.

  But she was out of sight, leaping up the stairs. Terrified for Michael down below, but Jacob had to come first.

  A bullet smacked into the wallboard just behind her. Three more steps, two. Panting, she debated. Which room? Which room?

  Another bark of a gun firing, then a second shot. Please, God, don’t let Michael be killed.

  She lunged into the bathroom, shoved the door shut with her hip and set Jacob down in the cast-iron tub. “Lie down, honey. Don’t get up
until I tell you to.” After whirling back to lock the door, she saw Jacob struggling to stand. “Down! Do you hear me?” She’d never spoken to him so sharply before. She couldn’t let herself care that tears ran down his cheeks.

  Shouts. More gunshots.

  “Mommy?” he whispered but curled up in a ball in the tub.

  “Don’t move,” she snapped. Weapon. Had to find a weapon.

  She yanked open the medicine cabinet, but it was nearly empty. She’d brought shampoo and gel in here, but no hairspray. Roll-on deodorant wouldn’t hurt a flea.

  Her eye fell on the toilet, and she snatched up the porcelain lid. Then she positioned herself by the door, listening hard. A couple of the stairs squeaked, this being an old house. She’d hear anyone coming.

  Unless he’d already gunned down Michael and taken the stairs while she was talking to Jacob.

  More scared than she’d been even during the earlier abduction attempt, Robin held her breath and waited.

  * * *

  SETH WAS WADDING up the wrappings from the sandwich he’d just finished when his radio crackled.

  The dispatcher sounded typically calm as she gave the code for shots fired. “The caller can’t see the gunman but thinks he or she must be on the neighbor’s property. Any available units respond.”

  The address was Dad’s.

  Feeling as if he’d just been gut-punched, Seth accelerated from the curb, lights already flashing. He reported his current location and intention of responding with ETA. Two other officers chimed in, as did one county deputy who seemed to be the nearest of all of them. Then Seth hit the siren, too, and wove his way through the streets toward his father’s house.

  He decided not to call either his father or Robin, in case they were hiding. Seth reminded himself that Dad wouldn’t be easy to take by surprise. He was carrying, and hadn’t lost any of his reflexes or skills.

  Dad would do anything to protect Robin and Jacob.

  Five minutes.

  If any of them died, if that bastard took Jacob... Seth’s jaw ached and fear swelled in his chest.