Page 34 of Run to Ground
“Orry-say!” Dee whispered, making a zipping motion over her lips.
“Done?” The deep voice made her jump, and Jules barely held back a startled shriek. When she turned to Theo, Jules couldn’t help but marvel at how he got better-looking every time she saw him. Despite his scowl—or maybe, a contrary part of her brain whispered,because of it—he really was the poster child of masculine beauty.
When his eyebrows unsnarled enough to lift in question, Jules realized he was waiting for an answer. “Um…yes. Sure. Right. We’re all done getting them registered. The boys, at least. I mean, for this place, so everyone except for D. The elementary school starts later, so we decided to come here first. It helps that the junior and senior highs are both in one building, this…um, building, I mean. Because, if they were separate, we’d need to go to a third school.” She was painfully aware that she was rambling, and that Theo and Dee and even the dog were staring at her like she’d lost her mind, but Jules couldn’t manage to stop the flow of words. “Yeah. So, anyway…did you need to talk to me?”
“I’ll walk you out.”
“Don’t you need to do”—Jules waved a hand in the general direction of the lockers, recycling bin, and janitor’s closet she’d eyed so suspiciously before—“bomb stuff?”
There was the tiniest movement at the corner of his mouth, just the barest twitch of his lips, but it was enough to startle her. Was he actually almost smiling?
“Bomb…stuffis done. Hugh and I are the last ones here, finishing up the paperwork.” Any sign of amusement was gone now, and Jules decided she’d imagined that hint of a smile. “No sign of any explosives. It was just a prank call.”
“Did Viggy figure that out?” Dee asked, looking at the dog with equal parts fascination and awe.
The frown was back, heavier than before. “No.”
Jules flinched slightly at the snap in his voice, startled by the abrupt change in his manner. In their last few encounters, Theo had been different with her…gentler.
“No,” he repeated in a softer tone, as if he’d noticed her reaction. Jules suspected there wasn’t much hedidn’tnotice, which could be a problem. After all, she had a lot she wanted to hide. “Cliff County leant us one of their explosive-detection dogs. Viggy’s…” He looked down at the dog. Viggy was sitting slightly crouched, as if he was trying to appear smaller than he was. His jaw tight, Theo brought his gaze back to Jules. “Never mind. Don’t you need to get over to Cottonwood Elementary?”
“Right!” Jules glanced at Dee, who was still focused on the dog. The hot cop had a knack for getting her to forget where she was and what she was supposed to be doing. That also could be a problem. “C’mon, Dee. Let’s get you educated.”
When Theo fell into step next to her, Jules gave him a surprised glance. From his fierce scowl, she’d assumed he’d no longer be accompanying them outside.
Although he kept his body low to the ground, Viggy walked on the other side of Theo willingly enough. Jules wondered what the story was. Had the dog had a bad experience? Had Theo, as well? Was that the reason for his perma-scowl? Jules felt her stomach twist as she thought of what possible tragedies could’ve left such a mark on the two.
“Someone look at your stove?”
Once again, the question startled her. Jules didn’t know if it was his gruff manner of barking out conversation, or if she was still jumpy about the whole bomb-threat thing, and the being-away-from-her-brothers thing. “Yes.”
“A professional?”
“He knew what he was doing.” It wasn’t an outright lie. After finding a manual for the stove online at the library, Tio had managed to get it working without any additional explosions. By the time he’d finished fiddling with it, he was confident in his stove-fixing abilities. It was Jules who was a nervous wreck the whole time he was working.
Theo gave her a hard look, as if waiting to see if she was going to confess to her half-truth, but Jules put on her most innocent expression. After a long moment, Theo gave an accepting—or possibly skeptical—grunt. Taking a few long strides, he reached the door first and held it open for her and Dee.
Jules blinked against the morning sun until her eyes adjusted. Florida had been sunny, but Colorado was even brighter than the sunshine state. She figured it was something to do with the altitude or the clean mountain air or something.
The first thing she saw when she was no longer blinded was that Theo had slid on his sunglasses, which made him improbablyhotter. Jules bit the inside of her lip hard. She needed to nip this crush in the bud immediately. Even if she hadn’t accepted that any relationship was not in the cards for years, just being friends with this man was a bad, bad idea.
Her eyes lingered on the way his upper arms stretched his uniform shirt. It took all her willpower to rip her gaze away and refocus on Dee, who was humming to herself, skipping a few feet ahead of them, happily oblivious to the fact that her older sister was being an idiot.
“What do—”
There was a strange sound, something between a crack and a thump, and then she was on the ground, a very large, very heavy cop on top of her. The sidewalk was hard beneath her, and Theo was just as hard above her, and Jules couldn’t figure out why he’d tackled her. She turned her head, meaning to ask him, but the intense, grim look on his face stopped her. Something was happening. Somethingbad.
“Stay down!” he ordered before rolling to his feet and running the few steps to Dee. She turned to look at him, her eyes and mouth rounding with surprise as he snatched her off her feet. Spinning around, Theo hunched over the little girl, as if protecting her. Jules’s brain still refused to work, refused to make sense of what was happening.
The sound came again, louder this time. A sharp pain bit into her calf, and she twisted to stare at the spot. A drop of dark-red blood welled before trickling across her leg. Her gaze darted from her injured calf to a hole in the asphalt walkway just inches away. There was a hole in the sidewalk. Abullethole.
The sight finally knocked her brain back in gear, and she knew what was happening.
Someone was shooting at them.
Chapter 11
“Dee!” she cried, the word scraping against her throat. Before she could do anything other than lie there, stunned, Theo was running back toward her, carrying Dee with an arm around her middle. His other hand clutched Viggy’s leash, holding the dog tight to his side. He used his body as a shield between Dee and the shooter. “Inside! Go!”
