Was that Puck? It sounded a little like the old cat, and then again it didn’t. It was incredibly loud, the kind of long, complaining yowl that made your blood run cold, and Puck never so much as meowed during the night. The only time she’d ever heard her make a sound like that was the time Mark had accidentally slammed her tail in the door…
She was out of bed before another second passed, racing down the stairs, flipping on lights as she went, her thoughts faster than her feet or heart, wondering what horrible thing had happened to the old cat, if she had the vet’s emergency number written down, if she could start the damn truck to get the beast to the vet’s office before she died of whatever injury she’d managed to sustain… and then Iris hit the kitchen and stopped dead.
The back door was wide open, a frigid wind was blowing through the screen door, filling the house with winter, and Puck was outside on the porch, yowling like a banshee.
It turned out that Iris was more cat owner than cop, because she jerked open the screen door to let Puck in before she ever thought of leaving prints on the handle. It was only after the streak of black, angry fur barreled into the kitchen and off to God knew where to warm up that she realized she shouldn’t have touched the handle. What that realization implied hit a second later.
Someone had been here. Inside the house. And maybe they still were.
Iris thought she had already felt fear this day – of the dark, the barn, and then the footprints – but how pathetic those silly little fears seemed now, in the face of genuine terror. There were biological reactions she’d never experienced, happening so fast she could barely catalog them. Muscles tensing to run or fight, adrenaline shooting through her veins, flooding her with heat while the shrapnel of a million shattered thoughts started ricocheting through her brain: Where is it safe, outside, inside, I have to get my weapon, should I search the house, was this in the handbook, how many electricians does it take to screw in a lightbulb, and isn’t adrenaline supposed to make you focus, goddamnit?
She took a deep breath and willed her heart to slow down and her knees to lock, willed all that pesky, mind-scrambling adrenaline to break down into its original, benign components and leave her alone, because she obviously didn’t have the kind of thrill-seeking personality that thrived on endorphins.
Nice career choice, Rikker.
For endless seconds she just stood there, frozen like a wild rabbit, hoping she’d blend into the landscape and the big bad wolf wouldn’t see her, but it was pretty likely that if the big bad wolf was in the house, or outside, for that matter, he’d be able to see her just fine with all the lights she’d turned on.
Now, Iris. This is when you call for backup. Right now.
Five minutes later a squad came roaring into the driveway, siren wailing, light bar flashing, the side spots busy on her yard. It slammed to a halt behind her SUV and Lieutenant Sampson ran for the house.
‘Inside or outside?’ he demanded in a harsh whisper when he came through the door. He was unshaven, barely dressed, with his boots untied and his jacket flapping open, but his eyes were sharp and busy.
‘I don’t know.’ She breathed it, more than said it, feeling what every other person in trouble probably felt when the cops showed up and took charge. Saved, protected, grateful. She wondered what it would be like to be on the other end of that feeling, and realized for the first time that this was why good cops became cops in the first place, and that this absolutely, positively was what she wanted to do with her life.
He looked at where she was, backed into a corner; a little pajama-clad woman in bare feet holding a butcher knife. ‘Where’s your weapon?’
‘Upstairs.’
‘Jesus.’
He made her follow right behind him, his body blocking hers. While he searched the bedroom and the closet, Iris pulled jeans and a sweater on over her pajamas, strapped on her belt holster and drew her weapon. They searched the rest of the house top to bottom, and found the open basement window last. ‘In this way, out through the door you found open,’ Sampson said.
Iris was frowning at a pile of scattered boxes near the old furnace. Clothing had spilled out of them onto the cement floor.
Sampson followed her eyes. ‘Fire hazard there.
Too close to the pilot light.’
‘They weren’t there before. They were stacked against the wall over there, taped shut.’
‘Anything missing?’
‘I can’t tell. They’re boxes my ex-husband left behind, some tools and winter clothes, mostly.’
Sampson put the extra light from his flash on the pile, frowned at something, and started toeing clothes aside. ‘Looks like your ex left his wallet behind.’
Iris looked at the square of leather he’d picked up with a gloved hand. ‘That’s not Mark’s.’
Sampson opened the wallet, looked at the license through the plastic window, then up at Iris with a strange expression. ‘Stephen P. Doyle. Jesus, Iris. Kurt Weinbeck was down here.’
24
Sampson used his shoulder unit to call for backup while they were running up the basement stairs.
Fast, Iris thought. It’s all so fast. Something happens and there’s no time to think first, you just have to move and hope your thoughts can catch up with you.
She grabbed her parka from the kitchen chair and jerked on her boots while Sampson was still talking. ‘The house is clear, we’ll be outside, two of us. Tell the guys not to shoot us.’
Good idea. Remember to always instruct your officers not to shoot you. But then there was that backup thing… you called for backup and then, class, you goddamned wait for it to get there before you make a move, because making a move without it is how you get killed. So why wasn’t Sampson waiting? Because he has backup, silly. You.
The weight of that realization landed on her hard and almost buckled her knees. Being responsible for her own life was one kind of terror – she’d felt that for those minutes she’d been backed into a corner holding a butcher knife. But being responsible for someone else’s was so much worse.
She closed her eyes for the millisecond that was all they could afford before they went outside to look for Kurt Weinbeck, and when she opened them she was looking at the pegboard with its rows of keys. One of the pegs was empty.
‘Sampson.’ Her voice stopped him just as he was about to jerk open the door. ‘My keys are gone.’
‘Maybe you left them in the truck.’
‘No.’
‘It happens. You have a hard day, a lot on your mind, you forget sometimes -’
‘No.’
Something in her voice convinced him, and he went immediately still, except for his eyes. They moved slightly to the window, to the SUV that was sitting dark in the driveway, and then nodded once, silently, before easing open the door.
They stepped out onto the porch quietly, cautiously, their eyes and guns and flashlights trained on her SUV. They had a slight advantage because the porch was higher than the truck and they could partially see the interior, but there were still plenty of dark spaces their lights couldn’t reach. Plenty of space for Weinbeck to hide.
The only sounds were the hiss and chatter of ice pellets hitting the house, the windows, and the glazed trees. Iris thought she heard a beleaguered branch groan and creak under the weight of ice, but there was nothing more, not even a breath of wind.
She noticed a set of footprints leading from the porch out to her SUV. There was no telling how fresh they were, but they were already encased in ice, and for the moment, perfectly preserved. It gave her some comfort, knowing that if Kurt Weinbeck popped up out her very own truck and shot them dead, the BCA would be able to make perfect casts of those prints and put him away forever. The wires would pick up the story and CSI would write an episode in posthumous honor of Lieutenant Sampson and his trusty sidekick, Iris Rikker – sheriff for a day.