Page 78 of Serve ’N’ Protect

“What’s a BOLO?” she asked. Markus would know, but he wasn’t here.

“Be on the lookout,” she answered. “If anyone spots the vehicle, we’ll pull over the driver and bring them in for questioning. Now, let’s go inside and have a look at that video.”

They went inside the store where Nino Perez, the head manager, escorted them into a security room with two monitors and a shelf stacked with audiovisual components.

“I’m so sorry this happened to you.” As Nino pulled out a chair for her to sit on, his dark eyes brimmed with kindness. “We’re restocking a cart for you with everything you purchased. No charge. You and your family have been customers of ours forever, so this one’s on us.”

“Thanks, Nino.” Slamming to the pavement hadn’t helped any, and as she eased onto the chair another shaft of pain shot up her leg all the way to her hip.

“Give me a minute to cue up the video.”

Nino clicked a mouse several times, rewinding the footage until she appeared on the screen, pushing the cart across the pavement. The black truck appeared out of nowhere as she frantically tried to move the cart out of the way. She closed her fingers around the arms of the chair, knowing what was coming next. She dove out of the way with barely a foot to spare. If she hadn’t abandoned her cane stuck in the storm grate, she—not the shopping cart—would have taken the brunt of the impact. Until that moment, she hadn’t realized just how close she’d come to actually getting run over.

“Can you cue up footage from the other camera, the one facing the street and the entrance to the parking lot?” Trooper Collins pointed to the other monitor. “Go backward in time from when the truck nearly hit her. I want to see what the vehicle was doing right before that.”

It took a few minutes before Nino could find what Trooper Collins was looking for. According to the time stamp, the black pickup turned into the lot about a minute after she had driven in and parked. The pickup, however, parked along the curb in front of the store, remaining in that same location until the moment she rolled her cart off the curb. As soon as Cassidy went onto the pavement, the truck started to move. When she crossed the yellow divider stripe in the middle of the road, the truck veered from his lane directly at her.

She swallowed the rising bile in her throat.

“Could be he was distracted then realized he’d almost hit someone and took off.” Trooper Collins’s eyes narrowed then she pursed her lips. “Or he could have been aiming for you.”

The grip she’d had on the armchair tightened. “You don’t really think…” She trailed off as the possibility took root. “I don’t believe it. Why would someone want to hurt me?”

“Why did someone break into your house and attack you?” Collins countered, ramming home the point that she’d been the victim of two violent crimes.

“Someone attacked you?” Nino’s voice was incredulous, his kind expression turning to one of shocked horror.

Cassidy’s jaw dropped. “Do you believe the same person did this?”

“What I believe is that it’s a pretty big coincidence. And”—the trooper pointed to the screen—“it’s not a great picture, but it sure looks like the driver has blond hair.”

She peered closer. Trooper Collins was right. The picture wasn’t clear, but the driver of the pickup definitely didn’t have brown or black hair.

It could have been Hugh. It could have been anyone with blond hair. Cassidy pressed her fingers to her temples. “I can’t believe Hugh would do something like this.”

“We don’t know it’s him, but I’ll talk to him, see if he has an alibi for today.” Trooper Collins made a few notes in her pad. “I’m calling in the same detectives I gave your burglary report to. Do you have someone you can stay with? Your neighbor?”

Cassidy’s heart lurched. She meant Markus. “No. He, uh, moved out.”

“Do you have anywhere else you can stay besides your house?”

“Why?” she asked, as the hairs on the back of her neck began prickling again. She already knew why but needed her to say the words that she was still having difficulty believing.

“I could be wrong,” the other woman said. “I hope I’m wrong. But I think someone just tried to kill you.”

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Markus stared, first at the crackling fire in the stone fireplace, then at the little boy snuggled in the crook of his arm. Joey had fallen asleep there after a lengthy game of bull rider, in which Markus was the bull and Joey was the rider.

He and Ghost had been staying with Matt and Trista for nearly a week now. Since the night he’d left Cassidy’s house then driven aimlessly for hours, thinking about how badly he’d messed things up with her. Going back to his own house had been the original plan, but the idea of being alone no longer held the appeal that it usually did. Before he knew it, he was parked in front of Matt and Trista’s place next to Kade’s Homeland Security SUV.

With the holidays coming to a close this week, Kade had just finished out the last of his temporary duty assignment in the capitol. Along with Jamie Pataglio, Kade and Markus were the only bachelors left in their K-9 band of brothers. Gravitating toward Matt’s house was a given.

“Go figure.” Kade sat on the other end of sofa and took a swig from his beer. His new pure-black Belgian sheepdog K-9, Smoke, lay down at his feet, resting his snout on Kade’s size-thirteen shit-kickers. “You’re a kid magnet. Who knew?”

Yeah, who knew? After Cassidy’s nephew, Finn, had stuck to him like glue Christmas Day and now Joey, he had a sneaking suspicion that was true. Surprisingly, he was finding that he didn’t mind.

He pushed a lock of hair from Joey’s eyes, awed at how soft it was. As soft as a puppy’s ears. And the boy looked just like Matt. Dark-haired and dark-eyed. Joey’s lips parted and he drew in a deep, noisy breath.