Page 6 of Her Baby, Her Badge

That was what Dutton figured. “So this is meant to scare us,” he concluded. “To make us keep watch over our shoulders and lose sleep.”

Which it would do. But Dutton had no intention of running scared. No. He had every intention of finding this snake and making him pay for the hell this was causing the families of the victims, Grace and everyone else involved.

“Sheriff Finney suggested you and I were the reason his deputy was murdered,” Grace said, standing upright again, and he could tell from her tone that the suggestion had hit her hard.

Because there could possibly be some truth to it.

Neither Grace nor he had done anything intentional to provoke these deaths, and they certainly weren’t to blame. But the guilt was there, rolling right through them. Someone might be killing female cops to get back at them for something. Then again, maybe it was to get back at someone else and the two of them were simply targets on a killer’s list.

“How much didSheriffWilson Finney hassle you tonight?” Dutton asked, and he added some venom to the man’s title. Venom that Wilson aimed at them every chance he got.

Grace dragged in a long breath. “He thinks I should be fired.” She slid her hand over her baby bump. “Then again, so do a lot of people.”

Dutton sighed and did some silent cursing. What he didn’t do was touch her even though that’s what he wanted to do. He wanted to try to ease some of that tension he saw on her face, but touching her would do the opposite of that.

He couldn’t argue with Grace about a lot of people wanting her fired. Plenty of people in town hated him and his family, which meant they hated Grace being pregnant with his child.

Thankfully, though, there were enough members of the town council who were staving off a recall election that would oust Grace. Maybe because those members thought the pregnancy had nothing to do with the excellent job Grace had done. Maybe, too, Grace’s mother, Aileen, still had enough influence to keep her daughter where she was. That despite Aileen not approving of Dutton, his family or the pregnancy.

Since there was no way either of them wanted to dwell on the opinions of the town or the county sheriff, Dutton moved on to something she needed to know. “After the first murder, I had more security cameras installed.”

Grace’s head whipped up. “I didn’t see any cameras.”

“Long-range ones with night vision that are motion-activated. They’re mounted on trees along the fence line. Butbefore you get your hopes up, the angles of the cameras in that area might not be right to capture who did this. Or the person might not have gotten in range to trigger the motion activation. The security company is downloading any feed now and will send it to both of us as soon as they have it.”

Though he’d said that part about not getting her hopes up, the news seemed to do just that. Some of the tension in her face eased just a little. Capturing the killer on camera was a long shot, but it was better than what they had now—which was pretty much nothing.

Dutton’s phone dinged with a text. “From my PI,” he muttered, reading through the latest bit of info. “According to what he told his boss, Elaine’s fiancé has been in El Paso on business for the past three days. He’s a real-estate agent, and he went there to meet with some bigwig client. FYI, he works for Elaine’s parents. They own the real-estate agency.”

Grace didn’t ask if that alibi was confirmed. She’d want to do that herself, but she went to the board and wrote “Brian Waterman, fiancé, person of interest.” Since Dutton hadn’t told her the man’s name, she had obviously already run her own background check.

“I spoke to Brian Waterman on the phone on the drive back here,” she volunteered. “If he killed Elaine, then he did a top-notch job of covering up his guilt. He sounded just as broken as her parents.Sounded. But he stays on the list until we can confirm his alibi.” She paused a heartbeat. “Tell me who you believe killed her and who’s coming after us.”

“I don’t know,” he admitted, and that brought on more silent cursing. “I’m having my PI look for broader connections. Those with possible grudges against female cops. Those with grudges against us.” Dutton handed her his phone, and he felt the trickle of heat when his fingers brushed against hers.

Yeah, this was why touching her was a bad idea.

“So far, this is what the PI has come up with,” Dutton explained.

It was a list, a very long one, of known criminals in the state who’d made public threats against cops—specifically female ones. Threats either posted on social media or actually made during arrests and court proceedings.

“Dozens,” she said on a sigh.

There were indeed dozens, and Dutton suspected other names would be added to the list as the PI continued to dig. Grace and her deputies would no doubt tack on even more potentials. Which meant there had to be a way to narrow it down.

“You’ll be stretching your resources thin if you try to investigate every single one of them,” Dutton pointed out. “My PI can help, though, if you’re willing to let a civilian in on this.”

If Grace heard his offer, she didn’t respond. Something had obviously grabbed her attention.

“Avery Kenney,” she said, and she hurried behind her desk to boot up her laptop. “His name came up in the first investigation…”

Her voice trailed off while her gaze flew over the screen. Dutton had figured that many of the names on his PI’s list had also been on Grace’s, and he went to stand next to her so he could see the info she was accessing.

“Yes, Avery Kenney, a bartender from San Antonio.” She highlighted the name. “He was shot by a female officer who mistook him for a burglar. Lots of angry posts on social media about how the officer should have never been given a badge since she was overly emotional and clearly ‘not ready for duty.’” She put that last part in quotes.

“You interviewed him?” Dutton asked.

She scrolled farther down the screen. “Yes. But it was a phone interview since Kenney was out of state at the time. His bossvouched for his alibi, but I got a bad feeling about him. Enough so that I drove to San Antonio to see him. He said in a not-so-friendly way that he’d already answered my questions and that if I wanted to talk to him again, I’d have to go through his lawyer.”

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