Abigail plucked at the blanket covering her. “Oh, little sister, when are you going to learn?”
Laurel stood. “I’ll let Agent Norrs know you’re recuperating well. Apparently, he’s quite worried. When are you going to stop manipulating him?”
“You think I’m using him?” Abigail pressed a hand to her chest. “You don’t think it’s true love?”
“We both know you’re incapable of real love. You don’t have the slightest idea what it means.” With that, Laurel shoved out of the hospital room, shaking her head.
It was possible someone in the Genesis Valley Community Church congregation wanted revenge for Zeke’s death. He’d been their spiritual leader for years, and some people didn’t care if their messiah turned out to be a monster. They’d follow him straight into the fire and call it faith. But Laurel had no idea where he’d even been the past sixteen months. He’d disappeared without warning, and when he returned, he acted like nothing had changed.
He could’ve made enemies in that time. Dozens. But the real problem, the one Laurel couldn’t ignore, was Abigail. The hobbies her sister had gotten involved in—misguided experiments, questionable medical research, people she manipulated for funding or data or who knows what—those had created their own kind of wake. One had even turned into a serial killer.
Those were just the possibilities Laurel knew about.
She pushed through the hallway doors back into the waiting room, mind still spinning. Walter sat in one of the hard vinyl chairs, hunched over his phone, the screen glowing blue across his pale face. He didn’t look up. He didn’t even blink.
“Walter.” She slowed. “What’s wrong?”
He exhaled sharply, staring down at the screen, his expression carefully controlled. Too controlled.
She stepped closer, her mind already cataloging the details like a micro-tightening at the corner of his mouth, a fractional delay in his blink rate, the way his shoulders squared just a little too precisely. Not shock. Not panic. Suspicion? Calculation? Her pulse ticked up. “Walter?”
His gaze lifted. A flicker of something passed over his face. A hesitation. One she couldn’t track. “It looks like my brother’s missing,” he said, pushing to his feet. “I have to go, boss.”
Brother? What brother?
Chapter 3
Alight rain began to mist the plaza as the crime scene tape flapped uselessly against a growing wall of press and bystanders.
Huck finished reading the text from Laurel and tucked his phone in his back pocket. Truth be told, he liked her safely away from this scene. “Norrs?”
Agent Norrs finished a phone call and strode toward him. “What?”
“Just received a text from Laurel, who’s on her way to Elk Hollow for an unrelated case. Abigail is going to be fine and can probably go home later today. Bullet hit the vest and just sliced across her arm.” He studied the able-bodied agent. “Why was Dr. Caine wearing a bulletproof vest?”
Norrs flushed. “She’s had a couple of threats lately. I figured it might be somebody from her dad’s congregation, or maybe someone who’s against pot farming, so I made her wear it.”
Huck doubted very seriously that anybody could make Abigail do anything. Sometimes he forgot the doctor also owned a successful marijuana farm. “You probably saved her life. Send me the threats.”
Norrs’s thick chin lifted. “I’m looking into it.”
Huck sighed. “This isn’t a federal matter, and you know it. I’ll see what I can do to get assigned to it.” In Washington State, Fish and Wildlife officers were fully commissioned and could work on any case. However, an attempted murder case was a rare one for his department. Yet . . . he was a sniper. Or had been one in the army, anyway.
The shot earlier had cracked like the world had flinched.
Norrs looked toward the street. “I can’t believe someone shot at my woman.” Anger flushed red across his face. “Nobody saw a shooter? Not even a vehicle?”
Huck shook his head. “One shot, suppressed. Not random. Not close. The kind of shot that didn’t come from panic. It came from planning.”
Norrs’s chin dropped. “You’re saying a sniper shot her?”
“Yeah.” The plaza was loud with working deputies, humming camera crews, and reporters shouting names over each other.
Huck crouched low by the point of impact and saw a small chip in the granite column just left of where Abigail had been standing. He pictured her again. Five-nine, squared off slightly at an angle. The round had hit the upper part of the vest and clipped her left arm. That meant the shot had come down, not across. A high trajectory. The shooter hadn’t been on street level.
He turned slowly, scanning rooftops above the crowd and the press vans. The Tempest Grain Cooperative building loomed three blocks away and was made of red brick, twelve stories, busted windows, and no tenants. High enough. Dead-on line of sight. It was the only thing tall and vacant enough to work.
Boots approached fast on the sidewalk, heavy and irritated.
