At Close Range

by Jessica Andersen

  Which was just as well. It had been her idea for them to keep their personal and professional interactions separate. Professionally, he had to go after the gunman, had to catch the guy before someone else got hurt.

  Personally, she wanted him to stay the hell safe.

  She cursed under her breath and glared at Fitz. “If anything happens to him…”

  Then she trailed off, because the older man was close to unconscious.

  Anxiety kicked in. She was no doctor. What if the bullet had gone in high and ricocheted around? He could die on her.

  She pinched him on the leg. “Fitz! Hey, O’Malley, wake up. Do you hear me? Stay awake. The ambulance will be here any minute.” The sirens still sounded far away, but they were growing louder by the moment. She hoped to hell Seth had called in his position on his cell phone so he could rendezvous with backup.

  The thought of him taking on the gunman solo sent a shiver down her spine, but she told herself he was trained and capable. He’d be fine.

  Please, let him be fine.

  She shouted in Fitz’s ear again, and this time the older man’s eyes eased open and he focused on her face. “They said you like to yell. Guess they were right.”

  His voice wasn’t strong, but at least he was lucid. She was aware of the sirens growing louder, of the time ticking away and the blood leaking from beneath their layered hands.

  “Look, Fitz,” she said urgently, “I know we don’t know each other and we probably wouldn’t like each other if we did, but I need you to tell me the truth, okay?”

  His breathing was shallow and pained, but he managed to say, “Newfangled cops like you don’t know the truth unless your computer tells it to you.”

  She ignored that and asked, “Who told you we were on our way here?”

  His eyes narrowed. “Nobody.”

  “Baloney. You were expecting us. Who told you?” The evidence still pointed toward someone with police department connections. If they could get a name—

  “Some new rookie,” Fitz wheezed. “Didn’t know him. Said he was calling on behalf of one of the older detectives.”

  “His name,” Cassie pressed. “What was his name?”

  “Don’t remember. Something odd, like a girl’s name. I think I wrote it down.” He smiled weakly, strength fading. “I still take notes when I talk on the phone. Can’t seem to break the habit.”

  When his eyelids fluttered, Cassie raised her voice. “Fitz, stay with me. Do you know Denver Lyttle?” She briefly sketched what Alissa had told her of the suspect’s history. “Do you know why he would want to frame you for the murder?”

  But even as Fitz shook his head in the negative, she realized that there was a new question to answer. If Lyttle was in custody, how could they account for the gunman?

  Either he’d hired a hit to track them all the way to Florida.

  Or their prime suspect was innocent.

  She cursed as she heard the rescue vehicles pull into the dead-end street, heard the shouts of cops being deployed. She raised her voice and shouted, “The shooter’s gone. Special Agent Varitek is in pursuit. The house is clear.”

  Still, it took the cops several minutes to secure the scene before the paramedics could push through. Once they were working to stabilize Fitz, Cassie stood aside, acutely aware that Seth hadn’t returned and none of the cops knew where he was.

  He hadn’t called for backup.

  She clenched her fists at her sides, told herself not to panic, told herself he was fine, but the worry beat in her chest alongside her heart, relentless and unceasing.

  The paramedics were preparing to lift Fitz into the ambulance when she suddenly broke from her paralysis. “Wait!” She rushed outside and pushed the medical personnel aside. “Wait. Can he talk?”

  “He shouldn’t,” said one paramedic, a sturdy woman in her late thirties. But Fitz pushed the oxygen mask aside and gestured for her to talk.

  “Does the name Marcia Pennington ring a bell?” she asked, naming the young woman whose remains they’d discovered in the canyon. “Missing person eight years ago, disappeared from the Tyngsboro area.”

  Fitz shook his head in the negative, but she thought she caught a flicker of recognition in his expression.

  Knowing her time was running out, she said, “Last one. Who would want you framed for murder?”

  At that, his lips twitched. His breathing remained shallow, but he forced the words.

  “Sweet cheeks, you spend as long on the job as I did and there’ll be a line of people wanting to kill you or frame you or both.”

  With that, he pulled the oxygen mask into place and gestured for the paramedics to take him.

  “Get anything useful out of old Fitz?” a deep voice said behind her.

  Cassie squeaked and spun, heart suddenly pounding in her ears, in her chest. “Seth!”

  His weapon was holstered and a faint sheen of sweat dampened his short hair, though his face and neck looked rubbed-dry.

  Cassie didn’t think it through, didn’t stop to worry about the other cops, didn’t stop to think about the line between personal and professional.

  She simply closed the distance between them, wrapped her arms around his waist and laid her cheek against his chest. “I’m glad you’re okay.”

  He stood frozen for a moment before his hands lifted. She felt them hover above her shoulders for a heartbeat, as though he wanted to ease her away. Then he inhaled a deep breath, exhaled on a sigh, and wrapped his arms around her. “Me, too.”

  They clung together for a minute, then he squeezed her tight and they parted.

  Ignoring the stares and smirks of the assembled cops, he said, “The bastard got away and I didn’t even get a good look at him. You get anything from Fitz?”

  “Not really,” she said, frustrated with the questioning, and the sense that he had remembered something about Marcia Pennington and hadn’t told her. He hadn’t wanted to talk about his enemies, either. All she’d needed was something to use as a starting point. A name, a—

  Wait. A name.

  “Hang on.” She turned and headed back into the house. The Key Lobo cops didn’t follow, but Seth did, and she gave him credit for only wincing slightly when she ripped the top sheet off the message pad beside Fitz’s phone, messing with the locals’ crime scene. She folded the note, hid it in her palm and gestured him out of the house.

  They quickly traded the necessary information, put the Key Lobo cops in contact with Chief Parry, and hit the road in a cab, since the rented, bullet-dinged SUV had been impounded as evidence. Once they were moving, she unfolded the sheet of paper and read the name aloud.

  Anna Susie.

  Who the hell was that?

  THE PLANNER’S CALL came too soon, before the hunter was fully braced for it, before he was ready to admit that he had failed to bag his prey.

  “It’s all a matter of territory,” he said into the cell phone, skipping the pleasantries.

  “I don’t like it here. It’s too crowded. There are too many people, too many witnesses. Everything is so close together. There aren’t any good hiding spaces, and I had to work during the daylight. You know I hate the daylight.”

  True hunters stalk at night, his father had told him, and they had donned army surplus night-vision goggles and tracked their targets in the dark.

  Remembering it, the hunter stroked the stock of the gun he had purchased from a legitimate—but bribable—pawnbroker. It wasn’t the best long-gun in the world, as its crooked sights had proven, but still, he loved the feel of a hunting rifle.

  So many memories.

  “In other words, you failed,” the planner said, voice stiff with disapproval.

  “I got the old man.” The hunter looked around at the place he’d gone to ground, an unlocked boathouse he’d scouted out prior to his ambush. “The information was good. They showed up like you said they would. But the situation wasn’t optimal.”

  The fact was he’d missed. That galled him. Crooked
sights or no, he shouldn’t have missed. Sluggish anger stirred in his gut, but still, he stroked the rifle butt, loving the feel of the soft, slick wood.

  He wouldn’t miss again.

  “They could be at the hospital,” he said. “I can find out which one and—”

  “No,” the planner interrupted. “Too public. You missed your chance. Come home.”

  Though moments earlier he’d been lamenting the discomfort of being outside his territory, the hunter frowned. “Let me do it here. Give me another chance. I know I can do it.”

  “I said come home, son.” The voice took on an edge of steel, of irritation. “I have something else planned for you.”

  The other man cut the connection without waiting for assent, leaving the hunter to sit in silence for a moment, while restless waves lapped at the edges of the boathouse and his gut churned with resentment. “You can’t tell me what to do,” he hissed. “You’re not my father.” In the hunter’s mind, the planner’s voice said son, as it had a thousand times, only this time the word grated on his nerves and made him shout, “You’re not my father!”

  The words bounced off the boathouse walls and reflected off the water like little waves. Tiny echoes. You’re not my father. Not my father. My father. Father.

  His father was dead.

  Gunshots echoed in the hunter’s brain, alongside the howl of a hound dog and a boy’s startled scream as he fell into the memory.

  He hadn’t meant to do it. The gun had taken on a life of its own, or maybe his hands had made the choice. He’d been nearly a grown man, all awkward arms and legs and too-big feet. One minute they had been tracking a magnificent buck in silence, the tension of their latest argument humming in the air between them, and in the next, he had stepped outside his sire’s footprints.

  A twig snapped, gunshot loud, and their prey bolted deeper into the forest. The stag gave them a last, mocking glimpse of its bobbing white tail and wide, lofty rack.

  And was gone.

  His father spun, big and angry in night-vision goggles and winter layers. “Christ, boy, can’t you do anything right?” He advanced on the hunter, who had been called Nevada back then. The hunting dog slunk at the big man’s heels, hackles raised, sensing a fight. “I told you to get your mind off that slut and focus on your footing.”

  “I wasn’t thinking about her, Dad, honest!” Nevada fell back a few paces and held up his hands in the surrender his father usually demanded. But then a flare of defiance guttered in his chest, the sort of rebellion that had gotten him in trouble before. He took a step forward. “And she’s not a slut!”

  “Of course she is. They all are, even your mother. Hell, she’s probably banging some poor guy right now.” The big man’s fingers touched his belt. “We’ll see about that.”

  “She’s not my mother,” Nevada shouted back, knowing his real mother had left them years ago. The woman his father lived with now, Marie, was no blood of his. “She’s just some skank you picked up in a bar.”

  And though the old man had called Marie much worse, his features twisted with rage and he grabbed for his belt buckle. “Don’t you dare say such things about your mother! She was a good woman, smarter than both of us put together.”

  Yeah, Nevada thought. My real mother got away from you.

  And it was in that moment that he finally knew he was as smart as his mother, smart enough to get free.

  His hands took over, acting without conscious thought. His father tossed his hunting rifle aside and advanced, yanking the heavy belt out of its loops with a too-familiar whistling crack.

  “Time to teach you a lesson,” Nevada said, moments before his father’s voice said the words. The boy raised the rifle.

  And fired point-blank.

  The shot echoed in his mind, in his ears, reverberating in his head until he jolted and realized it wasn’t the memory anymore. The tide had come up within the boathouse, floating a tethered metal hook, which banged against the covered dock.

  Bang. Bang. Bang.

  That was how many shots he’d fired into his father. Three. Then one into the hunting dog that used to sit and watch, panting and grinning, while the old man took his strap to Nevada. Or maybe his fists. A wooden bat once or twice.

  Damn dog.

  The hunter flexed his fingers, which creaked stiffly. How long had he been sitting in the boathouse? No matter, it was time to move on. Time to return home as he had been commanded. And though the planner wasn’t his father, wasn’t any blood kin at all, the older man had kept the hunter safe and let him do his work.

  He thought about the women, about their chiding fingertips and that flashy belly button ring that had reminded him of—what? He didn’t even remember anymore.

  The individual deaths seemed less important than the whole.

  That long-ago afternoon he’d walked out of the forest, alone and spattered with blood. He’d expected Marie to scream, to call the cops, to turn him in. And maybe part of him had wanted that.

  Instead, she had cleaned him up and spread her legs for him. If he was man enough to take care of that bastard father of his, she’d said, he was man enough for her.

  They had fled the state together, and he’d become a man overnight, thanks to his height and a fake ID. They had kept moving, while he grew up and learned how to survive. But of all the lessons she’d taught him before he killed her, that first lesson was the most important.

  His father was right. Women were sluts.

  All of them.

  The hook banged on the boathouse wall in counterpoint to the words. All of them.

  All of them. All of them.

  It was nearly noon before he kissed the crooked-sighted rifle and dropped it in the water. Then he emerged from the boathouse, shook off the strange lethargy that weighted his limbs and hiked out to a nearby strip mall.

  The planner was right. It was time to go home.

  His prey was waiting for him.

  Chapter Twelve

  The flight home sat on the tarmac for almost an hour, delayed by thunderstorms.

  Seth and Cassie pondered the name on Fitz’s telephone pad. Anna Susie.

  “I’m pretty sure Fitz said the caller was a man.” Cassie frowned, a faint wrinkle gathering between her eyebrows. “A male rookie cop named Anna? I don’t think so.”

  “Maybe Fitz got the name wrong,” Seth said, shifting in his seat when their arms pressed together and he found it entirely too comfortable.

  They hadn’t yet discussed their relationship. Maybe he was being a coward by not forcing the issue right then, but they had work to do.

  A murderer to catch before he killed again.

  There were too many questions and not enough answers. Why send them to Florida?

  If the killer was trying to implicate Fitz, why call and warn him that they were coming to question him about the murders?

  Seth cursed. “We need more data.”

  “Unfortunately, it seems like we know less by the minute.” Cassie frowned. “Alissa said the Denver Lyttle lead petered out. Never mind the fact that he clearly wasn’t in Florida yesterday, he had solid alibis for two of the important time periods.

  We’re talking security tapes from the store where he works—pretty solid evidence.”

  “That’s the problem with eyewitnesses,” Seth grumbled, feeling the first tendrils of a headache build. He was tired and churned up, jumbled between the need to work the case and the need to set things straight with Cassie.

  He was hyperaware of her motions as she settled back in her first-class seat and gave a jaw-cracking yawn. Her arm brushed against his and their knees touched.

  The innocent contact sent a sizzle of warmth into his chest, reminding him of what they’d done the night before. What they’d become.

  Lovers.

  The word carried too much responsibility, too many expectations that he wouldn’t be able to meet. She’d be better off with someone other than him, someone who could make the promises she deserved.
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  He shifted in his seat and turned to her. “Look, Cassie. I really think we should,”

  talk, he’d meant to say, but didn’t bother because she was fast asleep.

  He muttered a curse but didn’t wake her, because neither of them had slept much the night before, and because he wasn’t sure what he wanted to say. Or rather, he knew what he ought to say, but was having problems saying it aloud.

  He stared at her for a long moment, at the way her long lashes—a shade darker than her hair—lay on her cheeks, making her look softer. More vulnerable.

  Hollowness ached in his chest at the thought of her being hurt. By the killer.

  By him.

  The pilot announced that they’d begin takeoff preparation in twenty minutes. That gave Seth plenty of time to make a call.

  Before he could question the urge, he dialed a familiar number, one he hadn’t called nearly enough lately.

  “Hello?”

  “CeeCee, it’s me.” He kept his voice pitched low, not wanting to wake Cassie. Then, realizing the privacy was an illusion, he said, “Hang on a minute.”

  He unbuckled his seat belt, stood and crab-walked through the front of the first class section, where there was a small alcove near the lavatories. He pulled out one of the folding jump-seats the flight attendants used during takeoff and landing, and sat. “Okay. I’m back. How are you?”

  “We’re fine. What’s wrong? Where are you?”

  Seth chuckled at the edge in his sister’s voice, the maternal protectiveness she’d worn like a badge ever since that first day their mother had said, CeeCee, you’re in charge of your little brother. Keep him out of trouble.

  “I’m on my way home from Florida and I’m fine.” He leaned his head back against the airplane bulkhead. “I just…hell, I don’t know.”

  Ever-practical, solid CeeCee said, “The last time I heard that tone of voice, you’d bought the Denver house and were afraid to tell Robyn about it.”

  “This is nothing like—” He paused. “Okay, maybe it is. I’ve gotten myself into something and I’m not sure how to get out without hurting someone.”