Page 52 of Deputies Under Fire
He was no doubt wondering if they could make it there. Maybe. But if they stood, it would make them an easier target for those random shots.
In the distance, she heard the sound of a fire engine and hoped none of the responders would get hurt when they approached. Rory must have been concerned about the same thing because he took out his phone and called Dispatch to have their situation relayed to the fire chief.
Another fire shot up on the side of the road just ahead, and it didn’t take long before bullets started going off there, too. It seemed to go on for an eternity, but she knew it was probably less than two minutes before the fire engine roared to a stop not far from the other vehicles.
The crew didn’t immediately get out, and when they did, they were wearing helmets and vests that she was pretty sure were bullet-resistant. More minutes crawled by, the hail of bullets continuing, while the firefighters hooked up the hose. The moment they’d done that, they started dousing the flames.
Since the fires weren’t huge, they weren’t that difficult to put out, but there were four of them, so it took a while. Second by second, though, the sound of the gunfire began to trail off.
Rory and she stayed put, waiting. Hoping. Praying.
“Is anyone hurt?” Rory shouted.
“Okay, here,” the ME said. And one by one, the others reported in. All except Garrison.
“I took a bullet to the leg,” the deputy finally said, prompting Rory and her to start scrambling in his direction. Depending on the location of the injury, he could bleed out.
“Ambulance is on the way,” Judson told them, and he hurried over.
One look at the young deputy, and Eden knew it was bad.
Chapter Fourteen
Rory paced across the guestroom while he listened to the latest update on Garrison. The deputy was alive, barely, but, according to Bennie, Garrison had been medevacked to a medical center in San Antonio, where he was in critical condition.
At least he was alive. And Rory was clinging to the hope he’d recover.
What he didn’t have a lot of hope about at the moment was that they’d be able to stop the killer from launching another attack. But he was working on it. Eden, too, but they’d opted to do that at Dutton’s rather than return to the police station. This way, they could be near Tyler.
Right now, they needed that.
After they’d dealt with the mop-up of yet another crime scene, they’d come back to the ranch and set up a makeshift office in one of the guestrooms. Tyler was just across the hall in the nursery with Leslie, and Eden and he had been popping over there all afternoon. They’d continue to do that even though Tyler was down for the night in his crib. But for now, they had the monitor on, and it was on the end table of a sitting area where they both could see it.
He finished his call with Bennie, knowing if there was a change in Garrison’s condition, that Bennie or someone else would let them know. Rory put away his phone and looked at Eden. She was sitting on the floor, her back against the small sofa, and she was volleying glances between him, her laptop screen and the baby monitor.
“Garrison’s in ICU,” he disclosed. Rory had already shut the guestroom door so their calls and conversations wouldn’t disturb anyone, meaning there was no reason for him to whisper. “And he’s still critical.”
She sighed and closed her eyes a moment. “He’s barely twenty-two years old,” she muttered.
Yeah, by far the youngest currently on the police force. That ate away at Rory. But then, a lot of things were eating away at him right now.
He tipped his head to her phone, which was on the floor next to her. “Any luck getting in touch with Aileen?” They needed to ask her about that shooting incident at the barn. They’d opted out of bringing it up to Frank until they had Aileen’s take on it.
Eden shook her head. “I left her a voice mail. Grace said her mom was in San Antonio visiting friends, and she often turns off her phone while she’s there.”
That eased some of his tension. When Aileen hadn’t answered their initial call, he’d been concerned that something might have happened to her, but if this was her norm, then maybe she was all right. He wouldn’t breathe easier about that, though, until he heard from her.
“A report came in a couple of minutes ago from the bomb squad,” Eden informed him.
Rory went to her, and since she was on the floor, that’s where he sat, too, and he soon saw that the report was three pages, and she was on the last one. Eden had obviously been reading it while he was getting the update on Garrison.
She moved the laptop closer to him and started the recap. “Each of the fires were ignited with small incendiary devices triggered by a remote. Maybe even a cell phone. The devices had been placed in holes in the ground from when there used to be underground mineral springs in that area.”
Rory knew about those holes. Knew, too, that some of them could be quite wide and deep. On the surface, most of them looked like gopher holes or just shallow depressions in the ground, but sometimes when people stepped in them, they’d end up with a broken foot or leg. Obviously, the killer had known about the holes, too.
And had made use of them.
“The IEDs were positioned over a mix of plastic bottles filled with gasoline and boxes of bullets,” Eden went on. “Dried leaves and grass had likely been used to cover the holes so they wouldn’t be easily visible.”
