K-9 Recovery

by Danica Winters

  He had let her down.

  He pulled her information up on his computer and found her phone number. Hopefully she wouldn’t be too freaked out that he was taking the lead and calling her first. If she was, he would play it off like he was doing his job and nothing more. Hell, he was just doing his job by making sure that she was home and well cared for. He could even pull the Daisy card and ask about how the pup was doing; a hike like that could be hard on a dog.

  He punched in her number, and after the third ring he was just about to hang up when he heard the distinct click of her picking up the call. “Hello?” she asked. Her voice sounded tired.

  Hopefully she had been taking care of herself.

  “Hey, Ms. Spade? This is Sergeant Anders from the Missoula County Sheriff’s Office. How are you doing today?” What was wrong with him? Why did he go into full professional mode even though all he wanted to do was be himself and ask her all about herself?

  It was no wonder she hadn’t reached out to him.

  “Hello, Sergeant,” she said, but she sounded slightly confused. “I’m doing...okay.”

  He read into the silence of her answer—no doubt she was worried about Lily. How could he have been so stupid as to ask her how she was doing—she wouldn’t be all right.

  “Did you find her?” she asked, fear flecking her voice.

  Of course that would be why she would think he was calling. The pit in his stomach deepened. For once, he wished he could be the hero. “Unfortunately, no. I was calling to check in on you.”

  There was a prolonged silence, so long that for a moment he wondered if the call had been dropped. He was going to say her name, but then he heard her breath.

  “Like I said, I’m okay.” She cleared her throat. “But what has happened...it shouldn’t matter how I’m feeling. The only thing that matters to me is Lily. If you want me to be okay, I need her to be found and be safe.”

  He felt like he was on the stand in the courtroom, every action he took or would take being called into question. If he was in her shoes, though, he would be just as adamant about what needed to be done...and if anything, if things weren’t being handled as he wanted them to be, he’d be taking matters into his own hands.

  Given who her family was, he had to wonder if she was doing the same. Yet he wasn’t sure how he could bring it up. She and her crew weren’t the normal armchair quarterbacks; they knew what they were doing and had resources that even he and the department didn’t have—on top of it all, they didn’t have to adhere to the same set of rules and standards that he and his teams did. STEALTH group had lateral freedoms that he envied. It was really no wonder that when it came to international matters, one of the best weapons the government had was military contractors.

  From what he knew about their group and others like it, they worked under the UN and had some immunity and leeway others didn’t.

  “Elle, about your team and your family...” he started.

  “What about us?”

  “Have you guys made any progress on the case, gotten anything my teams haven’t?” He didn’t even bother to ask her if they were working on this.

  She gave a thin chuckle. “I don’t know everything your team has pulled, but we have been running into roadblocks. You find the LLC, the one that owns the helo and airport?”

  “Is that why you haven’t called me? You didn’t need me to get answers?” And did she not miss him at all? He tried to make it sound cute, his insecurities, by giving a little laugh, but even to his own ears it sounded false.

  She mustn’t have been thinking about him like he had been thinking about her. If she had, there wasn’t a chance she had gone this long without reaching out. He had waited as long as he humanly could.

  “I was actually planning on calling you later today. I was hoping you had gotten farther ahead.” There was a tension in her voice that he wanted to assume was her own attraction and pull to him, one that matched his own. “Do you want to meet up today? There are a few things that I wanted to look into, and I was hoping you could give me some of the findings, if there are any, about Catherine’s autopsy.”

  Though he was more than aware he shouldn’t have been excited about seeing her and discussing the dead and missing, he couldn’t help himself. He would take every second he could get with Elle, even if it wasn’t in date form.

  “Sure, they are supposed to be wrapping things up and getting the last toxicology findings today. I’ll give the medical examiner a call and see if I can pull the full reports. In the meantime, I’m heading to my office. Meet me there.”

  * * *

  WHEN HE ARRIVED at the courthouse and headed up the stairs to headquarters, she was already standing outside the nondescript door that led to the back offices. It made him wonder if she had been inside his world before. Most people didn’t know anything about his department or their sanctum aside from it being on the third floor. It constantly surprised him how well his world of law enforcement was masked from the public eye just by being hidden in plain sight.

  When she saw him walking up the steps, she smiled, and it was so real that it hit her eyes. He loved that smile, the way it lit her up even though their lives were dark and heavy. Did he have the same lightness? With all the things he had witnessed and been a part of—the lives that had ended in his hands and the worlds he had watched collapse—it wouldn’t have surprised him if that part of him had died.

  “Hi,” she said, giving him a small wave.

  He swallowed, trying to keep control of the emotions that were working through him. “Hey. No Daisy today?”

  She shook her head as he walked by her and keyed in the code to open the office door.

  “She is back at the ranch, hanging with the pack.”

  “The ranch?” he asked.

  Elle nodded as he opened the door and motioned for her to walk ahead.

  “Yeah, my team stays at the group’s headquarters at the Widow Maker. They have quite a spread, and each year it is getting bigger.” She slipped by him as she spoke, and he couldn’t help but look at how her black, firehouse-cloth pants hugged her curves.

  She did have some great curves. From the lines on her ass, she liked bikini-style underwear. Probably red. No. Blue. She seemed like the kind of woman who wanted relaxed, easygoing lovemaking. In his limited experience, it was the women who wore red panties who were the wild things and those who leaned more toward blue who were more of his speed.

  He couldn’t look away from the way her hips swayed as they made their way down the hall toward his office until she turned around and looked at him. He jerked, hoping she didn’t notice him looking at her like he had been. She didn’t need to think he was some kind of pervert. He wasn’t like many of the other cops, guys who were all about their dicks. Sure, he could pull any number of women, but he didn’t want just anyone. He was looking for a whole lot more than just sex.

  She said something about the case, bringing his thoughts back to work and he turned away and pretended to read a flyer someone had tacked to the corkboard until he could regain his composure.

  “Did you hear me?” she asked, walking back to stand beside him.

  “No, what?” He shook his foot ever so slightly.

  “Were you able to get the toxicology reports you told me about?” she asked.

  Sure his body was not going to give his thoughts away, he turned back to her. “I haven’t gotten a chance to look yet. We just got done with our report.” He motioned down the hall. “My office is this way. If you’re going to ride with me today, I need you to fill out some forms. And to be honest, it’s been so long since I’ve had a rider with me—I assume you’d want to tag along on the case—that I don’t even know where the forms are. It may take me a minute to get everything together for you.”

  He actually couldn’t remember the last time he’d had someone outside law enforcement ride with
him. It had to have been when he was working patrol, but that had been almost three years ago.

  She blushed. “I’m glad you thought enough of me to want to let me join you, then. I thought that what we were doing...it was something you did. You know, joint task force–style.”

  He gave her a half grin. She wasn’t wrong—he did work with a variety of people, but normally they didn’t hang out while doing their jobs. “I do work with others, but working with private contracting groups is a new one for me. Trained with you guys before at the Special Operations Association for the state, but that’s about it. We don’t often cross paths.” He walked into his office and she followed behind. “Feel free to take a seat.”

  She cleared her throat, like she was trying to dispel some of her nervous energy, or that could have just been his wishful thinking.

  Landing on his email, he found the latest from the medical examiner. Clicking on the file, he opened up the complete autopsy reports. “Yep. Looks like we got everything back on Catherine,” he said, looking over at Elle. “And, by the way, just to cover our bases...whatever I tell you, it needs to stay between us.”

  She frowned. “That shouldn’t be a problem, just so long as I can let my team in as well—at least, if need requires. Will that be okay?”

  “As this is an open investigation, I’m afraid there may be things that I can’t tell you. But what I do tell you, you can give to your team...if need requires.”

  She nodded, but from the tight expression on her face, he could tell that she was slightly annoyed that he couldn’t just give her all the answers. He wished he could, if it would make things easier on her. Yet, in his world, there were too many prying eyes and ears and few people he could trust. If something got leaked about this case, something that he had told her, and the kidnapper got off on a murder charge because of Grant’s misstep, he wouldn’t be able to forgive himself.

  Though he was certain that Elle wouldn’t do anything or say anything to intentionally cause problems, it was the littlest cracks in a case that could cause them to crumble or implode. And there were few things worse than watching a person he knew was guilty walk for a crime they had committed.

  And that was if they got their hands on the person or people responsible for Catherine’s death and Lily’s disappearance. Right now, it was one hell of an if, and it just kept getting more precariously unattainable with every passing hour.

  He clicked open the file and stared at the pictures the ME had sent over. Catherine’s body was exposed. In the woods, he could tell she had been stabbed repeatedly. Yet, seeing her cleaned up and naked, the savagery took on a whole new level. There wasn’t any part of her that hadn’t been touched by a blade. Whoever had come after her had even sliced at the back of her ankle.

  Had they been trying to cut her so she couldn’t run away? Had she been trying to run?

  From the multitude of wounds, the killer had to have been full of rage—as he had first assumed. Yet who could have been this angry with the woman?

  He looked at the picture of Catherine on her side, her back exposed. She had at least fifteen stab wounds to her torso, one just where her kidney was located and another over her heart. Either of them would have been enough to end her life.

  One thing most people didn’t realize was how slowly a person died. There were only four things that could instantly end a person—a stabbing wasn’t one of them. Which meant that, for at least a few moments, Catherine had to have known what was happening to her and that she was likely experiencing her last moments.

  The thought made a chill run over his skin.

  Maybe she had been fighting, and that was what had caused the rage. It made sense. She had been off the trail when they found her. Maybe she had broken free and the attacker had tried to catch her, cut her Achilles tendon to slow her down. Maybe she had run and hidden under the tree, but the killer knew she wasn’t long for the world. That order of events, that made sense...finally. He had an answer as to how she had ended up where they had found her.

  He clicked on the picture of Catherine’s arms. On the back of the forearms were the bruises and slashes consistent with defensive wounds. She had been fighting.

  Good for her.

  It was a strange relief to know that this woman hadn’t gone down easily. She hadn’t won, but she hadn’t just given up, either. There was an incredible amount of bravery in her end, one that he appreciated. If only her fight could have been enough, at least enough for them to have found her before she passed.

  Unfortunately, he hadn’t made it to her in time.

  And that, that inability to save everyone who needed his help, was one of the hardest parts of his job.

  “Are you okay?” Elle asked, and he realized she was staring at him. He had no idea how long she had been watching.

  He pinched his lips. “Yeah. I’m fine. From the looks of things, Catherine fought hard.”

  Elle sent him a tired smile. “That doesn’t surprise me. I just hope that we can work fast enough that her daughter doesn’t have to.”

  He nodded, unable to look her in the eyes. Scanning the document, he paused as he spotted something in the section about Catherine’s clothing. There, it read:

  Blood located on upper arm of gray coat. Two-square-inch sample removed and analyzed. Using a precipitin test, it was found blood was human. Blood was type O pos. Deceased was found to be AB positive. As such, blood was not that of the deceased. Further DNA testing is required. Sample sent to state crime lab in Billings.

  He wasn’t sure whether or not he could give the information to Elle. On one hand, it was intriguing; clearly there were multiple people injured. But what if the injured party wasn’t the attacker, but was Lily?

  Such information could set Elle over the edge.

  “Do you happen to know Lily’s blood type?” he asked.

  Elle frowned. “No, why?”

  “Just curious.” He could probably get his hands on that information by the end of the day. At the very least, perhaps he could find out if the other blood was the same type. If it wasn’t, they could still hang on to the hopes that the little girl was still alive.

  Chapter Nine

  She couldn’t handle sitting there in his office and doing nothing. Elle had never been one for inaction, and ever since she had gotten off the mountain, she had been working on finding Lily. Her boss at STEALTH, Zoey Martin, had put all their tech gurus on task, running drones, LIDAR and every other thing they could to scour the mountain. Then she had them go over every flight record in hopes that they could track down the child.

  Unfortunately, even with all of the professionals on their team and their abundant resources, they had come up empty-handed and Elle had ended up sitting here, as hobbled by the sheriff’s department and the crime lab’s response time as she was by her team’s lack of information.

  Grant’s face was stoic, but she noticed him read something and then move in closer to the screen, making her wonder if he was having a hard time seeing something and needed readers or if he was just focusing hard on something she couldn’t see. He was too young for readers, so he had to be focusing. Was it to do with Lily’s blood type?

  After he had asked her about it, everything in him had seemed to shift. It was like watching Daisy. When she was looking for a scent, she would weave right and left, working the area. Yet when she picked it up, her whole body shifted; she went rigid and the weaving stopped.

  Just by watching him read, she could see his weaving had stopped. Grant had picked up a scent.

  Unfortunately, he had made it clear that he was only going to give her information on a need-to-know basis. She wished he would trust her and open up, but at the same time she could completely understand the nature of his job. His inability to give her information wasn’t really about her, or any of her failings. There were parts of her job that she wouldn’t have shared with him, either. Y
et it didn’t change the fact that it sucked. Lily’s life was on the line, and here they were having to play the game of politics and secrets.

  She sent a text to Zoey. If anyone could get their hands on Lily’s blood type, it was Zoey. She could probably either personally hack a hospital’s records system or have one of her team members do it before they even left the office. What that woman could do with a computer was impressive.

  In fact, she could probably get into Grant’s computer right now. Sure, law enforcement and the courthouse likely had several layers of cybersecurity, but that didn’t make them impenetrable. As quickly as the option came to mind, she brushed it away. Whatever was in that report, she would come to learn it on her own. Zoey didn’t need to get into more trouble than absolutely necessary.

  In fact, she had an idea, and better, she wouldn’t have to call in the big guns.

  “How do you feel about HIPAA guidelines?” she asked, giving Grant a mischievous grin.

  He scowled, but the action was sexy and only partially judgmental. “Why?”

  “How badly do we need to know Lily’s blood type? Is it critical or just a curiosity?” She silently begged for it to be the latter, just some potentially inconsequential detail that had only a minor bearing on their case.

  A pain filled his eyes and moved straight into her core. “It could be pretty important.”

  She nodded, looking away from him out of fear that if she continued to meet his gaze, what little control she had over her fluxing emotions would collapse. “Then I’m on it.”

  She picked up her phone and pulled up the email Catherine had first sent her when she had agreed to take on Lily’s security detail. There, she found the numbers and information she was looking for. She dialed the pediatrician’s office, and a secretary answered. The woman sounded cloying and chipper, at odds with every part of Elle’s current existence.