Page 2 of Deputies Under Fire
Seventy or so years ago, when the barn had first been built, the owner had stalled prize palominos here. After the owner had passed away, the land—and therefore, the barn and the nearby house—had gone to a distant relative, who apparently had no desire to sell or maintain the property. The house had had been struck by lightning and caught on fire when Eden had been thirteen, twenty years ago, and because of the sinister look to the place, some of the local teenagers had dubbed it the Devil’s Hideout.
After Mellie’s body had been discovered, Eden had requested that the barn be destroyed since it could be a hazard, but the owner’s lawyers had come back with the argument that it was on private land with clearly posted No Trespassing signs. Added to that, it was nearly a mile from a main road, and the only way for someone to reach it was via a rugged ranch trail.
All of that was true, and she had firsthand knowledge of the trail’s ruggedness since that’s how she and Rory had gotten here. But Eden wished there wasn’t such a hellish visual reminder of her foster mother’s murder.
Trying to shove aside that thought, Eden walked several feet into the barn, and with Rory right by her side, they paused to listen for anyone or any sounds that shouldn’t be there.
Nothing.
So they shifted, Rory aiming his flashlight to the left while she fanned hers to the right. The flashlights were solid, but they weren’t creating nearly enough illumination for her to see what was in the shadows.
And there were plenty of shadows.
“I don’t see any blood or dog tracks on the floor,” Rory whispered.
Neither did she, but the wind wasn’t cooperating with their search. Along with creating those eerie whistling sounds, it was blowing around the dead leaves, dirt and other debris on the floor. There were fast-food bags, empty beer cans and even the remnants of what appeared to be a campfire in a banged-up metal bucket.
Judging from the talk she’d heard, the barn had become a ghoulish thrill for some teens. It was yet another reason to have it torn down.
Rory tipped his head toward the stalls. “We’ll have to check them all.”
Yes, they would, and there suddenly seemed like more than a dozen of them. Some still had stall doors. Others were just collapsed heaps of old wood. But each space needed to be searched, especially since there were enough large holes in the exterior walls, and the retriever could have gone in and out through one of those.
The two of them moved together, in a rhythm that came surprisingly easy considering they had only been working together for five months. Before that, she’d been a detective in SVU at San Antonio PD, where the pace was a whole lot different than here in her hometown. Still, after Mellie’s death, Eden had felt the need to come home. The need to be part of the police force that was investigating her murder.
Of course, Rory had played into that decision, too.
They weren’t a couple, not any longer, but he was Tyler’s father, and despite her turbulent past with Rory and his powerful, corrupt father, Eden hadn’t wanted to deny her son a chance to be with his dad.
Something that she hadn’t had growing up.
That, and her birth mother’s untimely death, had been the reason Eden had ended up in foster care on the Horseshoe Ranch in Renegade Canyon.
They kept moving. Kept looking. Kept listening. Still no sign of blood or a body. Eden froze, though, when she saw a heap in the corner of one of the stalls.
She didn’t say anything, but Rory must have sensed something was wrong because he shifted in that direction, automatically aiming his flashlight at the pile…of something. Whatever it was, it’d been covered with what appeared to be a ratty sleeping bag.
Glancing around, they went closer, and using the toe of his boot, Rory moved the sleeping bag aside. The tightness in her chest eased up when she saw it was a couple of pillows. Apparently, someone had been camping out. Maybe a teen—
Eden gasped when her phone vibrated in her pocket. That reaction was proof of just how on edge her nerves were. She yanked out her cell and breathed a whole lot easier when she saw it was a picture from the live-in nanny, Leslie Darrington.
She turned her phone so that Rory could see the sweet photo of Tyler asleep in his crib.
Night, night, Mommy and Daddy, Leslie had texted.
Despite her surroundings, Eden smiled and touched her fingers to the image of that precious little face. She and Rory might be at odds with each other, but there was no doubt they both loved their little boy.
Rory smiled, too, and for just a second, their gazes met. And for that second, the old heat was there.
No. No. No.
When was that blasted attraction finally going to cool down? Eden had to consider the answer to that was never. After all, Rory and she had been on and off since high school, and while theirontime had been amazing, his father, Ike, had always found a way to tear them apart, along with making Mellie’s life a living hell. It was hard to try being happy with Rory when Mellie had been suffering.
Eden took one last look at the photo and put her phone away. Just then, Rory’s phone dinged with a text. He looked at the screen and definitely didn’t have the same smiling reaction that he’d had seeing Tyler’s photo.
“It’s from the county lab,” he explained. “The blood on the dog is human.”
Eden groaned and squeezed her eyes shut for a moment. That was not what she’d wanted to hear, even though the presence of blood didn’t mean someone had been killed. She wanted to cling to the hope that someone, maybe the person who’d been camping out in that sleeping bag, had injured himself and left a blood trail for the dog to trample through.
