Safeguarding the Surrogate

by Delores Fossen

  “I just have to focus on keeping you safe,” Daniel said as if talking to himself.

  She nodded. “I have to focus on keeping you safe, too.”

  Now he did smile, and Kara wanted to hold on to that moment. She needed it as much as she needed him. But it didn’t last because the sound of Daniel’s phone shot through the room, and she saw Barrett’s name on the screen.

  Daniel answered it on speaker, but he put the phone in his shirt pocket. Probably so he could keep his shooting hand free.

  “How’s Sean?” Barrett immediately asked.

  “Alive. But he’s injured,” Daniel added. “A gunshot wound to the shoulder. I’m waiting on a report from the doctor.”

  “Good.” But Barrett’s tone didn’t indicate anything good. It was said almost absently as if it was something to check off an important to-do list. “I’m going to have to let Rizzo go.”

  Daniel groaned. “No. Take a look at the financials. I think he’s laundering money for the militia group.”

  “I did glance over that, and I’ll study it more, but lawyers pressed for his release. There’s an emergency at his ranch. Someone set several of his barns and outbuildings on fire. The fire department is on the way there now, but the early reports aren’t good. There’s damage, and the fire’s spreading. It could reach some of his livestock, even his house.”

  “Damage that Rizzo could have caused so that he wouldn’t be arrested,” Daniel quickly pointed out.

  “Maybe.” But Barrett didn’t sound at all convinced of that. “Sean’s been shot, and now this happens on Rizzo’s ranch. The only one who hasn’t taken any hits is Eldon.”

  True, but that didn’t make the man guilty. Or innocent.

  “Anyway, I’ve let Rizzo go,” Barrett went on. “And no, I don’t like it any more than you do, but if he tries to run, then it’ll only add more weight to his involvement in the militia. That weight, though, doesn’t link him to the murders or the attacks, and you know it.”

  Yes, Daniel did know it, and that’s why his next round of profanity was from pure frustration. They probably had enough to get an arrest warrant for Rizzo, but if they wanted to prove he was a killer, they had a long way to go.

  Kara didn’t especially want to put a positive spin on this, but she had to latch onto some hope. Hope that Rizzo would say or do something to incriminate himself. If not Rizzo, then perhaps Eldon or Sean would do that.

  “I just let Eldon go, too,” Barrett continued a moment later. “Since both Rizzo and he will be out on the street, I want Kara and you to go back to the inn ASAP. I can send Esther to the hospital to get the report about Sean from the doctor.”

  Again, Daniel stayed quiet a moment as if deciding if that was what he should do. He probably wanted to stay put and see if he could get any proof that Sean had orchestrated his own attack. However, her safety must have trumped that option.

  “Okay,” Daniel finally said. “I’ll text you when we get back to the inn.”

  He ended the call and laid his hand back over his weapon. Kara did the same when he gave her the nod to get them moving. Daniel stepped out into the hall first, glancing around as if he expected someone to jump out and attack them. Kara did the same, but the only person she saw was a nurse.

  The hospital wasn’t huge by anyone’s standards, and this section didn’t have actual hospital rooms. It was mainly offices for the doctors, examining rooms for ER patients and the waiting area. That’s where they headed, passing by the room where they’d last seen Sean and Dr. Tipton. Kara had hoped the door would be open just so she could get a peek at what was going on, but it was closed.

  There was a woman holding a crying baby in the waiting room and another woman at the reception desk. Kara knew both of them. The woman with the baby was Shelby Monroe, and the receptionist was Heidi Coltrane, and she gave them nods of greeting as Daniel and she made their way to the cruiser. However, when they were still about ten feet from the ER doors, she saw something she didn’t like.

  Smoke.

  It was billowing right at the door, seeping in, and it only took her a moment to realize that it was some kind of tear gas or pepper spray. Kara’s eyes immediately started to sting, and she began coughing. So did Daniel and the others in the waiting area.

  Oh, mercy.

  Were they under attack?

  Had someone done this so they could try to kill them?

  “Run,” Daniel snapped to the other women.

  Shelby was already doing that. Coughing, she clutched the infant to her chest and began running away from the smoke and into the hall where Daniel and Kara had just been. The receptionist did the same, and Daniel and Kara were right on their heels.

  Daniel drew his gun on the run, and he glanced behind them. Just as Kara heard another sound. A hissing sound as if someone had struck a very large match. She looked, but it was impossible to see through the thick smoke. Or at least it was until the flames shot up.

  Her heart went to her knees.

  Someone had started a fire.

  Because she could hardly see and couldn’t smell anything other than the tear gas, she couldn’t tell if there was some kind of accelerant. It was possible the fire would spread fast, and if that happened, people could be hurt.

  Dr. Tipton must have heard the running because he opened the examining room door. His eyes widened when he saw what was going on, but like Kara and the others, he began coughing.

  “Get Sean and your nurse out of here,” Daniel ordered.

  The nurse already had Sean in a wheelchair, and both she and the doctor took hold of it to start hurrying down the hall. But the smoke and the tear gas just kept coming at them. It kept choking them. Making it hard to escape.

  Which was no doubt what the killer had planned.

  He could be making his way through that smoke and gas right now while he wore a mask. He could be coming to kill them.

  “Who the hell did this?” Sean snarled.

  No one answered him. Probably because no one knew. Well, unless Sean was the person responsible. He could have hired someone to do this, but if so, he’d put himself right in the mix. If a gunman started shooting now, he could hit Sean or any of the rest of them. Including that baby.

  That sent a spike of raw anger through Kara. How dare this snake do something to put an innocent child in danger.

  Ahead of them, Shelby, who still had her arms wrapped around her baby, stumbled, and Kara didn’t know how Daniel managed it, but he sprang toward her, catching them before they could fall.

  “Kara, keep watch behind us,” Daniel told her, and she tried, but it was impossible to see anything.

  Overhead, the sprinklers made a hissing sound a split second before the cold water began spewing down on them. That would help put out the fire. At least Kara prayed it would. But at the moment it was making it even harder for her to see.

  “Don’t go in there,” Daniel said when Dr. Tipton reached for one of the office doors.

  Kara knew why Daniel had said that. He didn’t want the doctor to go into a room where he could be trapped by the fire. The fire department was almost certainly on the way, but it only took seconds to be overcome by the smoke and flames.

  They all kept running, with others joining them, but Daniel stopped when they reached the back exit. He opened the door but motioned for them to stay back.

  Because a killer could be out there.

  Waiting.

  Ready to strike.

  And suddenly the stakes were so much higher now that there were so many people who could be gunned down. Kara remembered the wild, almost random shots that’d been fired at Daisy when she’d been running in the pasture. If that happened now, the baby could be hurt.

  Even though the water from the sprinkler was getting into Kara’s eyes, it helped some with washing away the burning that the gas and smoke had c
aused. It must have done the same thing for Daniel because he seemed to focus when he looked outside. Then he turned his gaze to her.

  “You’ll have to cover me while I get them out,” he said.

  She didn’t have to ask who he meant by them—Shelby and her child. Kara nodded and stepped into the doorway to watch for a gunman while Daniel hooked his left arm around the woman. He whisked them out of the hospital and hurried them to a car several yards away. He had them get down on the ground and then under the vehicle before he motioned for the doctor to bring out Sean. However, before Dr. Tipton could do that, there was the sound of a blast.

  Someone had fired a shot.

  Kara couldn’t tell what the bullet had hit. She prayed it wasn’t Daniel, Shelby or the baby. But she caught onto the doctor to hold him back. It wasn’t easy. Because they were all still fighting for their breaths, the instinct was to run. To get out in the fresh air, but that could be a fatal mistake.

  She moved ahead of the doctor and Sean, and despite the clogged air, Sean still managed to growl out some profanity. Kara pushed the sound of his voice aside and kept watch. She listened. She heard the howl of sirens, probably both the fire department and Barrett.

  There were other voices coming from other parts of the hospital. Shouts for people to evacuate. Which they would almost certainly do. And they might run straight into gunfire.

  Kara lifted her head, listening for any sign of the shooter. From the front end of the car, she spotted Daniel doing the same thing. Their eyes met, and it seemed for a second that time froze.

  Then a second shot came.

  This one smacked into the door just inches from where Kara was standing. She automatically ducked back in, shoving the doctor and Sean farther into the hall and against the wall. She waited, holding her breath and listening for the next shot.

  She didn’t have to wait long.

  This one tore through the front of the car, close to where Daniel had crouched, and Kara risked looking out to see if she could spot the gunman. Thanks to the smoke, she couldn’t, and she didn’t think this particular smoke was coming from the fire at the front of the building. She thought that maybe their attacker had set off some kind of device to give him cover.

  And it was working.

  Kara couldn’t see him, and she couldn’t just fire in his general direction because she might hit an innocent bystander. But she had to do something. As long as there was gunfire, the fire department wouldn’t be able to come onto the scene. The hospital could be severely damaged, and there were likely plenty of people still inside.

  Instead of aiming at the gunman, Kara lifted her weapon and fired into the sky. It was still a risk since she could hit a power line, but at the moment anything they did carried huge risks. She fired a second shot. Then waited.

  It didn’t take her long to pick through the other sounds and hear something. Footsteps.

  Someone was running. And she didn’t have to guess who.

  The shooter was getting away.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Using the binoculars that he’d taken from the cruiser, Daniel stood at the second-floor window of the inn and watched the chaos still going on around the hospital.

  Since the sun had already set, it was dark, but the lights on the tall poles in the parking lot still gave him enough illumination to see the scene well enough. The fire department had managed to put out the flames, and everyone had been evacuated from the building itself.

  That was the good news.

  But the parking lot was a sea of emergency vehicles, first responders and even some patients who were being treated for smoke inhalation and other injuries. They’d gotten damn lucky with the assortment of injuries. None of them had been serious, and that was nothing less than a miracle. It could have been so much worse.

  Daniel hated that he couldn’t be there to help, but there was no way he could keep Kara on the scene once other law enforcement had come in. Especially since Kara and he were almost certainly the targets of the attack. If they’d stuck around, it would have continued to put others in danger.

  That definitely wasn’t a comforting thought.

  Neither was the fact that despite the latest incident, they still weren’t close to making an arrest and putting an end to this exile. Not just for Kara and him but also for Sadie.

  He heard the shower turn off and knew that Kara would soon be coming out of the bathroom. Daniel tried to steel himself up and get some of the worry off his face. No need for her to see that on him since she was no doubt feeling plenty of it herself.

  This attack had shaken her even more than the other ones. He had felt that when he was finally able to lead her away from the scene. They’d walked out, literally having to step around those getting medical treatment, and Kara was almost certainly blaming herself for what’d happened. It wasn’t her fault. Hell, it wasn’t his, either.

  But it sure felt like it was.

  Wearing the bathrobe that she had tightly cinched around her, Kara stepped from the bathroom, her gaze immediately going to his. “Anything new on the gunman?” she asked.

  Though she probably already knew the answer to that, Daniel shook his head. “But I did get a call from Barrett just a couple of minutes ago. He said it looks as if both the tear gas and the incendiary device that caused the fire were on timers. They were tucked behind concrete plant holders just inside the ER doors.”

  She stayed quiet a moment, her forehead bunched up while she obviously gave that some thought. “I’m guessing the security camera didn’t catch who put the device and tear gas there?”

  Daniel had to shake his head again. “The only cameras are in the areas where meds are stored.”

  That wasn’t out of the ordinary for a small town hospital in an area with a very low crime rate. Still, he wished there’d been just one camera to catch whoever had done this. Of course, if there had been, their attacker might have been able to disarm any security.

  “A timer means we can’t rule out any of our suspects,” she added a moment later. She sighed, pushed her damp hair from her face and walked toward him to join him at the window.

  Bingo. That’s exactly what it meant. Added to that, there might not have even been a hired gun if the attacker was Eldon or Rizzo. Both men had time to get to the hospital after leaving the sheriff’s office.

  But Sean was a different matter.

  He’d been right there with them, and he certainly hadn’t fired any shots. So, maybe he had a henchman helping him. That would explain why the shooter hadn’t aimed any bullets in Sean’s direction. Then again, if Sean had set the timer, he might not have minded being in the thick of an “escape.” Especially if he knew there was no real threat to him. It could have given him some kind of sick thrill to watch them run for their lives.

  “We don’t have proof yet,” he went on, “but it appears that the fires set at Rizzo’s ranch were also on timers. He lost two barns, and his back porch was damaged. No injuries, though.”

  “That’s good,” she muttered, taking the binoculars from him so that she could look at the hospital. It wasn’t a long look, though. Kara only eyed the carnage for a couple of seconds before she sighed again and handed him back the binoculars. “What about Shelby and her baby?”

  Here was where he could give her some peace of mind. “Both are okay. Not a scratch on them. They were treated at the scene for smoke inhalation and then released.”

  “Good,” she repeated, sounding a lot more relieved than she had been about the lack of injuries in the fires at Rizzo’s place.

  Daniel could add to that peace of mind with something else he had to tell her. “Sadie’s all right. I called the safe house while you were in the shower. She was already asleep so I didn’t get a chance to talk to her, but Leo said she had a fun day.”

  He welcomed the ghost of a smile that put on Kara’s face. He’d had the
same reaction, and he wished they could both hang on to it awhile longer. Especially since all the updates he had to give her weren’t good news.

  “The Rangers are digging through Rizzo’s financials,” he went on. “But it’s possible those deposits and withdrawals are for cattle purchases and sales. The Rangers might not be able to use them to link him to the militia.”

  That meant they also couldn’t use it to arrest Rizzo, which made him a free man. For the time being, anyway. Barrett was still interviewing people who’d been in or around the hospital at the time of the attack. It was possible one of them had seen the person responsible, and maybe that person was Rizzo.

  “What about the pictures that Eldon had?” Kara asked. “Are those already at the lab?”

  “They are and they’ll be processed ASAP since they’re connected to a multiple-murder investigation.” Now he had to pause and take a deep breath before he gave Kara another dose of bad news. “The San Antonio police found Marissa Rucker’s body.”

  No need to explain who Marissa Rucker was. Kara knew that she’d been a surrogate. The very one who’d also used the Willingham Fertility Clinic. And she’d been missing for several days now.

  “How’d she die?” Kara’s voice hardly had any sound now, and she went way too pale. She suddenly looked ready to face-plant on the floor, so Daniel took hold of her arm to help steady her.

  “She’d been shot,” he told her.

  He didn’t intend to mention that she’d also been bashed in the head. There’d been plenty of anger in her attack, but unfortunately not much evidence since the body had been exposed to the elements for at least four days.

  Kara nodded as if trying to accept that, but he knew there was no way she could accept something as senseless as another murder.