Page 50 of Her Baby, Her Badge

No, not that, but Dutton instantly got a bad feeling when he saw Rory’s name on the screen. Grace must have as well because she answered it on speaker and blurted, “Did something happen?”

Dutton knew she was steeling herself to hear there’d been another murder, but that wasn’t what his brother said.

“Yes, something happened,” Rory confirmed, and there was a helluva lot of gloom and doom in his voice. “It’s your mother. She’s missing.”

* * *

Missing.

That wasn’t a word any cop wanted to hear. Especially with everything else going on. Grace had to fight hard to tamp down the horrible thoughts that immediately flew through her head.

“Explain that,” she choked out to Rory, though her throat had seemingly clamped shut.

She heard Rory take a deep breath. “About thirty minutes ago, your mother called Dispatch to ask for a deputy to come out to her place for backup. She said someone had just broken in.”

Grace had to calm her own breathing, and beside her, Dutton cursed. And she knew why. It wasn’t solely because of her mother’s call and being missing. He no doubt knew the question Grace was about to ask.

“Why didn’t she call me?” Grace demanded.

“You mother told Dispatch that you weren’t to be contacted, that she wanted a deputy only.” There was an apology in Rory’s tone even though he’d had nothing to do with her mother’s insistence. “I suspect that’s because Aileen didn’t want you to respond to her place this late at night, and she persuaded the dispatcher to do as she said.”

Grace knew Rory was right, but her mother had been wrong to put Grace’s safety over an active murder investigation. “Who did Dispatch send out to her house?”

“Bennie, but Ellie went with him,” Rory explained, referring to Ellie Trainor, one of the night deputies who’d been on the job for nearly two decades. “I had already gone home, but after Bennie and Ellie arrived at your mother’s house and found the door wide open, Bennie called me.”

“And not me,” Grace muttered. She was going to have a chat with her deputies and the dispatcher about following protocol for such things. Her mother, too.

If her mother was alive, that is.

Grace had to shut down any other possibility. Otherwise, she wouldn’t be able to do her job. And right now, she had to focus on finding her mother.

She got up from the floor, and with Dutton right behind her, she went into the bedroom to change back into her work clothes. She didn’t even care that she was undressing in front of him. Grace just wanted to be ready to get out the door as soon as she had all the details from Rory.

“Bennie and Ellie went into Aileen’s house to search it,” Rory went on. “When I arrived, they’d already figured out that someone had bashed through the back door and a window on the side of the house.”

So possibly a two-pronged attack, maybe done at the same time to gain access and close in on her mother. It made her wonder which of their suspects and a henchman had done this. Or maybe they were both hired thugs.

“The security alarm didn’t go off?” Grace asked as she yanked on her pants and then her boots.

“Not that we could tell,” Rory answered. “There was a gun on the floor. A white-handled Smith and Wesson. And there were signs of a struggle.”

The gun was likely her mother’s since Grace knew she had one like that. What she couldn’t understand was how the two attackers had gotten to Aileen without her being able to take at least one of them out. Her mother didn’t have the physical strength to fight them off, but she had solid aim.

“Any blood?” Grace asked.

“None that I could see,” Rory answered.

That was something to be thankful for. If the killer used the same MO, her mother could have been stabbed. Of course, it was possible the killer still had plans to do that.

“I called your mom’s neighbors to ask if they saw anything,” Rory went on, and that’s when Grace realized he was driving. But where? Did that mean he had a lead, or was he coming to get her? “Mr. Henry said he saw headlights and that the car was moving fast. He didn’t get the plates or a description of the vehicle, but he said it was heading south.”

South would take them in the direction of the ranch. Specifically to the pasture where the other two bodies had been dumped.

“Yeah,” Rory said as if he’d read her mind. “Maybe returning to the scene of the crime, so to speak. I’m heading to the ranch now, and Bennie and Ellie are in their cruiser right behind me.”

“We’ll meet you,” Grace said, and she knew that Dutton was about to protest and remind her that this could be a trap to lure her out. It most likely was. “She’s my mother,” Grace muttered, and that cooled the argument she saw in his eyes.

“Will you wear Kevlar and stay in the cruiser?” he asked as they hurried down the stairs.

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