Sasha couldn’t get her mind off the footage Darius had shown her. She’d never met those men or done anything to harm them, but they had almost killed her. It was also strange to think that Darius had gone to arrest them.
Why had Riggs let it come to this?
Back home, Nicole started a fire and made tea, setting their mugs on the end tables. “You’ve been quiet all afternoon. Are you okay?”
“I guess seeing that footage bothered me more than I realized.”
Nicole sat beside her, took her left hand. “Darius and Julia will find them.”
Sasha knew Nicole was right. “I just can’t believe Riggs was behind this. I don’t even know his roommate. Why would he try to kill me?”
“Riggs must have talked him into it. He knew you’d recognize him if you saw him, so he had his buddies do it. But it’s not your job to worry about this stuff.” Nicole picked up the TV remote. “What do we want to watch?”
They ended up streaming a documentary about the first all-woman team to summit K2. As riveting as the footage was, Sasha found herself checking her phone for new emails and local news updates—something that would tell her whether Riggs and his buddies were now behind bars and her life could return to normal.
Afternoon stretched into evening. While Nicole took Mocha out to go potty and then made a run to Food Mart for a rotisserie chicken, Sasha checked her social media, sure that Riggs’ arrest would be news in the climbing community.
Then she saw it—a breaking story.
Her heart raced.
Officer shot during suspect arrest. Shooter dead. Police seeking information.
She clicked on the story and watched a live report from outside the Boulder Justice Center.
“… had just arrested one man when another suspect in the case tried to run an officer down with his vehicle and opened fire, hitting the officer twice in the chest.”
The camera cut to a man in a SWAT uniform, other uniformed officers milling around in the background.
“At approximately sixteen-hundred hours today, Boulder SWAT, in cooperation with the Denver Police Department and the Forest County Sheriff’s Department, exercised an arrest warrant in the City of Boulder. We had one suspect in custody when another approached at high speed in his vehicle and opened fire on a Denver police officer. The officer, who was wearing body armor, was struck in the chest by two rounds and injured. SWAT returned fire, and the suspect in the vehicle was killed. The officer was transferred by ambulance to the hospital, and his injuries are being treated at this time. One suspect remains at large.”
On Sasha’s screen, the SWAT captain was still speaking, but Sasha couldn’t hear his words over the pounding of her own pulse.
Denver police officer shot.
Transported by ambulance.
One suspect at large.
If Forest County and DPD were involved, it must be Darius. It had to be Darius.
Sasha tried to send Nicole a text but was all fumbling fingers. No sooner had she hit send than Nicole walked through the door, groceries in her arms.
“I think Darius has been shot. I just saw a news clip about a Denver police officer who was shot while arresting someone with Boulder SWAT and the Forest County Sheriff’s Department. That could only mean—”
“Sasha, slow down.” Nicole set the groceries on the counter. “You think Darius was shot?”
Sasha showed Nicole the news segment. “Who else could it be?”
Nicole looked worried. She drew out her mobile phone, found Sasha’s text. “I’m going to call Julia.”
Why hadn’t Sasha thought of that?
Sasha listened while Nicole spoke with Julia, the phone on speaker.
“Sasha’s worried that Darius is the officer who was shot.”
“He’s okay, but, yes, he took two forty-five rounds to the vest. His body armor held—but only just. He’s got some bruised muscles and two huge impact marks. They transported him to the hospital to make sure there weren’t any broken bones or internal bleeding. Bullets can still do damage when they don’t penetrate.”
