“I’ll come to check up on her later,” Ryan said. “Hopefully she’ll be conscious and able to answer some questions for me.”
The ambulance started back down the long driveway, swaying as it moved along the uneven surface. Ryan watched it turn onto the road and disappear, then he went out to the cruiser and pulled up the information on the car sitting next to the garage. When the driver’s license of Diana Mosher, age forty-two, popped up, he knew he’d found the identity of the babysitter. With a sigh, he snatched up his cell phone and put a call into Chief Kennedy. It was picked up on the second ring.
“Chief Kennedy here,” said the voice on the other end, a hint of a drawl present.
“Parker, sir.” Ryan watched as Jackson moved outside to check the perimeter. “Jackson and I are at the house of Elise St. Clair, the dispatcher. We got a call a little before four this afternoon that there had been a possible break-in here. A Ms. Diana Mosher, her babysitter, was found dead at the scene. Elise herself was unconscious. She’s been roughed up and just left in the ambulance. She has a child, age approximately two or three—we still don’t have specifics. He’s missing, and there’s evidence that someone escaped out a first-floor window. Possibly an accomplice, although I suspect from Elise’s remarks before she passed out that there might have been someone here when the house was broken into who ran with the child to hide him. If that’s the case, then that woman would be in danger, as well.”
A soft sigh of regret came through the phone. “A shame about Diana. She was an art teacher at the elementary school last year. I’ll go talk to the medical examiner and notify her next of kin. What’s Elise St. Clair’s condition?”
“Unsure, sir. She was out when the ambulance left. Jackson and I are finishing here at the scene. We have to finish checking the rest of the house and the garage. Then we’ll proceed to the hospital. We need to talk to her as soon as she wakes up.”
“Understood.”
Ryan hung up the phone and replaced it in his pocket. He couldn’t quite stem the feeling that Elise was not out of danger. He let his eyes follow the trail of destruction in the room where they’d found her. Not a thing had been touched except for the dozens of pictures that had lined the mantel and hung on the walls. Even the couple of pictures sitting on top of the bookcase in the corner had been shattered. No, this was not some random attack by a stranger. This was personal. A deliberate attack against the pretty young woman that no one seemed to know much about.
That needed to change. He needed to get to her and find out everything he could about the elusive dispatcher. Her life—and possibly the lives of two others, including a small child—depended on it.
Copyright © 2018 by Dana Roae
ISBN-13: 9781488088117
Texas Baby Pursuit
Copyright © 2018 by Margaret Daley
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