Guard Duty (Texas K-9 Unit)

by Sharon Dunn

  My baby. My sweet baby.

  Bethany took in a shaky breath and resumed her crying. Her little body was rigid from pain. The doctor wouldn’t be open at this hour, but if she could get the fever down, she could have a restful night. In the morning, if the fever came back, she’d have to see the pediatrician.

  Valerie walked a circle through the living room and kitchen with Lexi following her. When twenty minutes passed and the officer hadn’t returned, she peeked out the window. A car she didn’t recognize was parked across the street. An icy chill crept over her skin. Was her fear real or imagined? Someone in the neighborhood could just have a visitor.

  She picked her cell phone up off the kitchen counter where she had left it. Calling the department would get the officer in trouble. It wouldn’t look good to McNeal, either, for her being put back on duty. Maybe she hadn’t made the best choice in sending the officer to the pharmacy, but concern for Bethany took priority over everything else.

  She ran her fingers over the control panel of the phone. Maybe she could call Trevor. She dismissed the thought. He was working surveillance trying to track down Murke. It would be selfish to call him away from his job.

  Maybe he had even caught Murke by now. Sadness and frustration over not being able to be a part of such a coup was like a knife to her heart.

  Bethany screamed in her ear and then rubbed her face against Valerie’s shoulders.

  Valerie prayed for her fever to go away.

  Where was the police officer? Her mind grasped for an explanation. Maybe he hadn’t been able to find the fever reducer and had gone to look at a different store. Valerie moved one more time to the window where the strange car was still parked.

  She picked up the phone again. Maybe she should call Trevor now?

  * * *

  Trevor had watched the entrance of the Rainbow Motel all day and into the evening with no sign of Murke. Showing Murke’s picture to the desk clerk meant that the fugitive might be tipped off. He didn’t want to risk it.

  The motel was situated in a less than desirable part of town that featured a lot of bars and greasy-spoon restaurants and secondhand stores. Sitting here watching the door of the motel was starting to feel like a waste of time. Maybe the guy who had checked in only looked like Murke. However, he wasn’t ready to let go just yet. Maybe Murke had spent time in some of the businesses around here. Someone might recognize his picture.

  After alerting the other surveillance unit of what he was doing, Trevor pushed open his car door, turned up the collar of his coat against the rain and walked up the sidewalk. He peered into a window of one of the restaurants. Most of the customers ate alone at the counter. One table had a mother and father sitting with their two children. He watched for a moment as the mother scooped up applesauce and fed it to a baby who wasn’t much younger than Bethany. Funny how his thoughts went back to the little girl.

  He’d lingered at the window long enough for people to start to look at him. Best to go inside and see if he could spot Murke. As he opened the door to the restaurant, a cacophony of noises assaulted him, people talking, dishes clattering, waitresses yelling at cooks.

  Several people craned their necks in his direction as he stepped inside. The place was dimly lit, making it hard to see the faces of the people in the booths. He found a chair at the counter and ordered a soda. He walked the length of the room, studying each face without staring. He stepped into the men’s room where the walls muffled the noises, waited a moment and then stepped back outside. He performed the same discreet survey of faces on his way back.

  The waitress had left his soda by his place at the counter. He drank slowly, swung around on his stool and did one more survey of the restaurant.

  “Can I get you anything else, honey?” With her steel-gray hair and heavily lidded eyes, the waitress was probably someone’s grandmother.

  “No, thank you.” Trevor put his empty glass back on the counter. He pulled the photo of Murke out of his chest pocket. “Can you do one thing for me? Can you tell me if this man has ever come in here to eat?”

  The waitress put his bill on the counter, glanced at the photograph and shook her head. “He sure looks like a mean one, but I ain’t seen him around here.”

  Understatement of the century. He gathered up the photograph. Maybe the Rainbow Motel was a dead end, after all.

  Trevor put payment for the soda and a tip on the counter, then walked toward the door.

  When he stepped outside, light rain sprinkled down on him. Across the street, teenagers had set up a makeshift game of soccer in an empty lot. He watched them kick the ball through the mud, slapping each other on the back and offering verbal jabs as they raced across their small field.

  The rain distorted the lights from the streetlamps and the whole scene had a surreal quality to it. He couldn’t help but think that if Valerie were with him, she would strike up a conversation with the teens if she didn’t know them already. Yes, his thoughts always seemed to circle back to her, too.

  He turned and headed back toward the hotel. He’d give surveillance one more hour. He had just opened his car door when his phone rang.

  Valerie’s phone number came up on the screen. “Hello?”

  “Trevor.” The single word carried a note of desperation.

  “Valerie, what is it?” He could hear Bethany crying in the background. His heart lurched. “What’s going on?”

  “I sent the officer away to get some fever reducer for Bethany. It’s been forty minutes. He hasn’t come back. There’s this car outside that concerns me. I know you are working, but I didn’t know who else to call.”

  “I’ll be right over.” He hung up and ran the half block to his car. After informing the other surveillance team that he was leaving, he shifted into gear and sped toward Valerie’s house, praying that nothing bad happened to her before he got there.

  TEN

  Lexi’s scratching at the sliding glass door was insistent.

  “You have to go, don’t you?” Valerie had been so preoccupied with Bethany, she’d forgotten about Lexi. Bethany had settled into a fitful sleep in her playpen, waking and crying every ten minutes.

  Valerie slid open the door. The steady fall of rain greeted her ears. Lexi slipped past her. The dog’s dark fur disappeared against the blackness of the night as she ran to the edge of the yard. Only the tinkling of dog tags indicated where she was. “Come on, Lex. Hurry it up.”

  Valerie took in a breath of rain-freshened air. Though worry still plagued her over Bethany and over the officer’s delay in returning, she had breathed a sigh of relief when she heard Trevor’s voice over the phone. He was on his way.

  Inside the house, Bethany wailed. Valerie slid the glass door shut and ran to get her. Lexi let out two quick barks. She gathered Bethany in her arms, walking and swaying with her to quiet her. She worked her way back to the sliding glass door, opened it and called for Lexi. All she could hear was the pattering of the rain.

  “Lexi?” Panic coursed through her. “Lexi!” she shouted. Lexi had never run away before. Bethany wiggled in her arms. She couldn’t stand out in the rain with the baby, and she couldn’t leave Bethany alone to look for Lexi.

  She tried one more time calling for Lexi as a sense of foreboding overtook her. Aware suddenly of how vulnerable she was, she closed the door and latched it. The police officer was gone. Lexi was gone. Valerie could feel the walls closing in on her as Bethany’s cries echoed in her ears. She raced upstairs and placed Bethany in her crib.

  She opened the window that faced the backyard to see if she could see anything. The porch light illuminated only a small area close to the house. The rest of the yard was still dark. No sign of Lexi anywhere. Her breath caught as she shook her head in disbelief. This couldn’t be happening. Someone had taken her dog...or worse.

  This had gone too far. It was time to alert the police. She needed to go downstairs, get her cell phone and call the station.

  Bethany stood up in her crib, shak
ing the railing and crying.

  “I know, baby. I know you’re hurting.” She gathered Bethany into her arms.

  Bethany wailed, jerking her head back. Valerie patted and rubbed her back. Bethany pressed close to her shoulder, her cry reduced to a whimper.

  Silence enveloped them, as Valerie’s mind filled with anxiety over what had happened to Lexi.

  Downstairs, a window shattered.

  * * *

  Trevor struggled to stay under the speed limit as he got closer to Valerie’s house. He understood her desperation, but it was foolhardy to send the protective officer away. Why hadn’t she just called him in the first place?

  As he neared a stretch of road that led to her subdivision, flashing police lights caused a knot of tension to form at the base of his neck. He pulled his car over. A police car had been run off the road, and an ambulance had been called to the scene. He recognized one of the policemen talking to a woman, who had probably witnessed the accident. Trevor approached him.

  “What happened here?”

  “As you can see...someone ran one of our own off the road.” The officer pointed to the police car angled into the ditch with a crushed front end and bent back bumper. “Knocked him up pretty good, too. He lost consciousness.”

  Trevor didn’t know the name of the policeman assigned to watch Valerie, but he suspected it was the officer being loaded into the ambulance. Somebody didn’t want that cop to make it back to Valerie’s house. “Do they know what the cause of the accident was?”

  “It looked to me like a black car hit the patrol car on purpose,” said the witness. The woman fanned herself with her hand and shook her head. “And then he just drove off.”

  Trevor didn’t wait around for further explanation. He jumped in his car and sped up the street to Valerie’s house. He wrestled with his fear as he gripped the steering wheel. If anything happened to her, he didn’t know if he could forgive himself. He should have stayed with her and let someone else run the surveillance on Murke.

  He braked forcefully and jumped out of the car. When he knocked on the door, there was no answer. Anxiety coiled around his chest, making it hard to breathe. He knocked again, this time harder. When he tried the door, it was locked.

  He ran around to the side of the house, but paused when he noticed a main-floor window that had been shattered. Had the storm done that? He reached inside, undid the latch and crawled through the window. He thought to call out Valerie’s name, but caught himself. Something about the room felt off.

  The main-floor area was eerily quiet. Valerie’s phone rested on the countertop in the kitchen. A bottle was on the kitchen table. Lexi hadn’t come out to bark at him. Then he saw the rock on the carpet not far from the broken window.

  With his heart pounding against his rib cage, he drew his gun and moved slowly up the stairs. The bedroom was empty. One of Bethany’s blankets lay on the floor in a haphazard way in sharp contrast to the otherwise tidy room. His anxiety grew when he pushed open the closet door, but found nothing.

  When he stepped back into the hallway, Valerie was pointing her gun at him. She let out a breath as her hand went limp.

  “Why didn’t you call out for me? I thought you were the intruder.” Her voice was shaking from the adrenaline rush.

  Even though his heart was still racing from having had a gun pointed at him, a sense of joy spread through him. Valerie was okay. “I saw signs of a break-in. I wanted to have the element of surprise on my side if the intruder was still around.”

  Bethany’s cry came from what must be an upstairs bathroom.

  Valerie set her gun on the hallway table and went into the bathroom. She returned a moment later, holding Bethany. The little girl’s cheeks were red, and she sucked on her fingers. The distraught look on Valerie’s face intensified as she tried to comfort the fussing baby.

  Valerie talked at a rapid pace, growing more and more distraught. “I heard a window break when I was upstairs with Bethany.”

  “Someone did break a window, but it was still latched. Something scared them away.”

  Valerie didn’t seem to be able to process that the intruder had been foiled. The panic-stricken look on her face never wavered. “I couldn’t get to my phone. I left it downstairs. I grabbed my gun and hid in the bathroom.” Her voice faltered. “I didn’t know what else to do. Oh, Trevor, Lexi is gone.”

  Bethany stopped crying and rubbed her face against Valerie.

  Trevor wanted to alleviate Valerie’s distress—not add to it—but it looked like some careful planning had gone into the attack. It had probably involved several people if they had been able to take Lexi and run the police officer off the road. “How long ago did you hear the window break?”

  “Maybe five minutes before I heard you in the hall.”

  So it had been his arrival that had scared the would-be intruders away. “I’ll help you look for Lexi. We’ll get some more protection here for you.”

  Bethany took her fingers out of her mouth and cried.

  “Please, the first thing we need to do is get Bethany some fever reducer from the drugstore up the street.”

  Such a small thing in the gamut of everything that had happened in the last hour. “Sure, I can take you.”

  “I’ll call the station. Maybe they can bring a K-9 tracking unit out here to look for Lexi. I have a feeling someone has hurt her or taken her.” Valerie’s agitation showed in her wavering voice and the deep crevice between her eyebrows.

  He’d do anything to ease her worry, but he didn’t know what to say. “We’ll find her.” He tried to sound reassuring, but what if the Serpent had done something horrible to Lexi and tossed her out on the road somewhere? Just the thought of it chilled him to the bone.

  Valerie looked up at him, her eyes filled with pain. “I hope so.”

  Bethany quieted for a moment, resting her head against Valerie’s neck. Trevor reached up and touched the toddler’s tear-stained cheek. “We’ll do all we can to find her,” he said.

  Valerie’s lips parted slightly, and she managed a nod. He found himself leaning toward her, wanting to kiss her, to comfort her and hold her. Would his love be enough to calm her? In an instant, she blinked and looked away.

  “I can grab my coat and phone downstairs.” She swept past him. Her arm brushed over his. “I’ll call the station before we go.”

  He followed behind her. Bethany looked over Valerie’s shoulder, studying him.

  As they drove to the drugstore, Bethany continued to cry. Valerie turned toward him. “Can you just go inside and get it? Bethany is so fussy. I’ll wait out here with her.”

  Trevor glanced around at the parking lot. The syndicate was pulling out all the stops to get at Valerie tonight. He wasn’t about to leave her alone for even a few minutes. “You better come with me. I have no idea what I’m supposed to get. What if I get the wrong thing?”

  Valerie scanned the area around her as well and let out a heavy breath. “I suppose you’re right.”

  He didn’t need to mention the syndicate by name for her to know that was what he was thinking about.

  Valerie pushed open the door and got Bethany out of the backseat. The little girl quieted again when Valerie lifted her out of the car seat and placed a blanket over her.

  The neon sign of the all-night drugstore had a warm, welcoming glow as did the lights inside the store, which seemed to cast a golden hue over everything. There were only a few other patrons in the store at this hour. An elderly couple waited by the pharmacy counter and a teenaged girl dressed all in black browsed through cosmetics. Neither seemed like a threat. All the same, he watched the door and the parking lot.

  Valerie swayed and bounced with Bethany as they stood in front of the shelves of children’s medicine.

  “Which one do you want?” Trevor asked.

  “I need to read the labels.” She handed Bethany over to Trevor before he could protest.

  Still obviously in pain, Bethany slammed her head against Trev
or’s chest, but didn’t cry. Her little hand reached up and held on to his shirt collar. He could hear the sucking noises she made as she placed her fingers in her mouth. Her head was clammy from the fever, but her body was warm against his. Her chest moved in and out, pressing against his own.

  Valerie picked up several bottles and read them front and back. “I don’t remember which one Kathleen used to get...” When she looked at Trevor, her expression suddenly changed. The worry seemed to fall from her face and was replaced by a warmth that softened her features and made her even prettier. “You don’t need to look so scared. You’re doing just fine with her.”

  “I just...” He didn’t want Bethany to break into a million pieces, but he couldn’t tell Valerie that. It sounded ridiculous when he thought about it. “She seems so fragile.”

  “She’s stays pretty calm when you hold her.” Valerie stepped a little closer to him. “I think she likes you.”

  “She’s just sick, is all,” he said, dismissing the idea that anything he could do would comfort a child.

  Valerie reached up and soothed Bethany’s hair. “This is the quietest she’s been all night.”

  Valerie’s hand brushed the bottom of his chin. Heat rose up his face when he looked into the deep green of her eyes. Once again, he wondered what it would be like to kiss her. Right there in the aisle of the all-night drugstore, he was thinking about how soft and full her lips were. What would it be like to pull her close and hold her? To breathe in the sweet smell she exuded.

  The moment of reverie was broken by the sound of sirens on the street.

  “That must be the units coming to help look for Lexi,” Valerie said, her face contorted with worry.

  “We should probably get back to the house so you can brief them on what you know.” After picking out two different fever reducers, they raced out to the car and headed up the street.

  * * *

  Valerie took a deep breath to try to dispel some of the fear that was making her chest tight. Her house, with two police units parked outside, came into view. A new wave of tension caused her muscles to contract. What if Lexi was dead?