Only Her (A K2 Team Novel) (6 page)

After signing the credit card receipt, Maria slid out of the booth. “I’ll just say that Cody’s one of the good ones.” She chewed on her bottom lip, making Riley think she was considering her words. “I’ll tell you that he was on the SEAL team with my brother and Jake. He was their sniper. Anything else, you’ll have to learn from him.”

A SEAL? She didn’t know much about the military or their branches, but she’d read a few SEAL romances, and those guys were supposed to be the baddest of the bad. And he’d been their sniper, so was his sole job to kill people? She wasn’t sure how she felt about that.

Maria was watching her as if waiting for a reaction. Before Riley could think of a response, her cell played the oldies song “Doctor! Doctor!” It would be Brooke or Michelle on the clinic landline, and they would only interrupt her lunch with an emergency.

“Yeah?” she said, the phone to her ear as she walked out with Maria. She listened to Michelle for a moment. “I’ll be right there. Tell Brooke to start flushing out his stomach.” Dammit, not another one.

“I’ve got an emergency.” She increased her pace, striding ahead of Maria. About to break into a run, she thought of Maria’s adorable cat, Mouse. Maria and Jake lived in her part of town. Turning and walking backward, she said, “Don’t let your cat out for any reason.”

“What?” Maria walked faster, keeping up with her. “Is something wrong?”

“Someone’s poisoning animals. Just keep Mouse inside, okay? Gotta run.” With that, she turned and jogged to her car.

“Call me tonight,” Maria yelled after her. “I might be able to help.”

Riley doubted it, but she didn’t have time to ask why Maria thought she could be of help. “Sure, okay. Later.” She jumped into her car, and backed out of the parking space. Not caring if she was speeding, she pressed her foot down on the gas pedal. If a cop stopped her, she’d just flash her doctor’s credentials and deal with the fallout when she arrived at an animal hospital instead of a human one.

“Call Emerald Coast Animal Clinic,” she said to Bluetooth.

“Calling Emerald Coast Animal Clinic,” the robotic voice confirmed.

“Update,” she said when her receptionist answered.

“Brooke’s flushing out his stomach. Hold on a sec while I go to your office.”

Riley impatiently tapped her thumb on the steering wheel, waiting for Michelle to come back on the line. Who the hell got off on poisoning helpless animals?

Duncan, the male mixed breed having his stomach pumped, had been her patient since his elderly owners had adopted him from an animal shelter two days before he was due to be euthanatized. Some cold-hearted bastard who’d never been caught had shot Duncan in the left eye when he was a stray. No one had wanted a one-eyed older pet until Mr. and Mrs. Vaughn had chosen him. They loved that dog.

“The Vaughns were standing in front of me when I was talking to you. They’re really upset,” Michelle said, coming back on the line. “I popped my head into the exam room on the way back here. Brooke thinks he’ll be okay.”

Thank God.
“I’m five minutes away. Tell her . . . Never mind, she knows what to do. Find out from the Vaughns how long he’s been sick. Be there in a few.”

The Vaughns were such a nice couple, and it would break her heart to have to tell them they’d lost Duncan. Arriving at her clinic, Riley slammed the gearshift into Park, and ran straight to the exam room.

“How’s he doing?” She slipped on a lab coat.

Brooke finished washing her hands. “I think he’s going to make it.”

Michelle poked her head in. “The Vaughns said they took him to the dog park to let him run. They’d been there about ten minutes when they noticed him next to a bush, eating something. Mr. Vaughn brought what Duncan didn’t get a chance to finish. Looks like hamburger meat. He said he thought it was suspicious that someone would leave a chunk of raw meat at a dog park, so he used his poop bag to scoop it up. I put the bag into a sealed plastic one and stuck it in the fridge. Is that okay?”

The poisoned meat evidence combined with the number of affected pets gave Riley hope that the police would finally take her seriously.

“You did great, Michelle. Thanks. Tell the Vaughns I’ll come talk to them in a few.” Riley did an exam, checking Duncan’s vitals, relieved that all his signs were close to normal.

“You’re going to be okay, sweetie,” she said when Duncan licked her arm.

Brooke brought a wet cloth over to clean his face. “I’m so glad we can give the Vaughns good news.”

So was Riley. “I’ll go talk to them. Bring him out when you’ve got him all pretty again.”

After sending Duncan home with his happy owners, she went to her office and called the police again. The dispatcher told her it would probably be the following day before an officer could come by to take a report. That sucked, but not much she could do about it.

She stopped by the front desk. “Michelle, when you get a chance, call the other clinics in the area. Ask if they’ve treated any poisoned animals.”

Thankfully, the remainder of the afternoon was business as usual. “What’d you find out?” she asked Michelle after the last patient of the day had left.

“No, none have had any that appeared to be poisoned. That’s good news, anyway.”

And maybe narrowed down the search to someone who lived in the area of the clinic. What kind of sick mind did it take to enjoy seeing an animal suffer? It made her sad and angry, and she decided to spend a few minutes with Cody’s dogs. That would cheer her up.

“Hey, Sally. You, too, Pretty Girl.” Riley opened the kennel door, stepping inside. Tails excitedly sweeping across the concrete, both sat, as if waiting for permission to greet her.

Never had she seen dogs trained so well. She lowered her butt to the floor. “You two doing okay?” Their tails picked up speed, but they didn’t approach. She should have thought to ask for command words.

“Come.” That seemed to be the magic word, as both bounded into her arms, Sally giving a joyful bark. She’d played with them for a few minutes, tossing their balls up in the air for them to catch, when her phone buzzed.

The caller ID displayed Cody’s name.

CHAPTER SIX

A
fter he and Ryan arrived in Fort Dodge and had checked into their adjoining rooms, Cody decided to use the ten minutes before meeting Ryan to call Riley. He pressed her number, flopping onto the bed as he listened to the ring tones.

“Hi, Cody.”

Expecting to leave a message because she would be with a patient, he was surprised when she answered.

“You there?” she said.

“Yeah. Yeah, I’m here.” Her voice, even with those few words, soothed him better than the finest scotch. With the phone pressed to his ear, he stuffed the second pillow behind his back.

“Guess what I’m doing right now?”

Things he’d like her to do popped into his head, and he willed them away. If she could read his dirty mind, she’d hang up. “I’m not good at guessing.” He rolled his eyes. Somewhere along the way, between graduating from college and now, he’d forgotten how to have a conversation with a woman.

A bark he recognized as Sally’s happy one sounded. “You’re playing with my dogs.” She would never know it, but she’d just stolen a piece of his heart.

“I am. Hold on a sec. Okay, you’re on speaker. Say something.”

That she would think of doing that made him want to kiss her. Not that he needed a reason. “Pretty Girl. Sally. You guys behaving for Riley?” Two excited barks answered him.

She laughed. “They’re going crazy trying to sniff you out of the phone.”

It was the first time he’d heard her laugh, and he liked thinking of her as happy. There was a knock on his door. “I have to go. Thanks for spending time with them.”

“We’re having a ball, so don’t worry. Um, I wanted to ask, would you mind if I take them to the dog park?”

Something in her voice set off alarm bells, but he couldn’t think of a reason to refuse. “They’d love that. They know all the commands, sit, come, heel.”

More laughter poured through the phone. “You should have seen them just now. They sat, then came to the phone, then seemed confused about how they were supposed to heel.”

“Down,” he said. “Did they lie down?”

“They did.”

It was the first time he’d given them commands via a phone, and he chuckled. Ryan knocked again. “I’ll try to call you tomorrow.”

“Okay. It was nice talking to you.”

“Same here.”

“Cody?”

“Yeah?”

“Be careful, okay?”

“Always am.” Her voice had been so soft when she’d said that, and as he hung up, he rubbed his chest, over his heart. The damn thing had gone all fluttery on him. Other than his teammates, and his parents from afar, when was the last time someone had worried about him?

“Coming,” he yelled at another series of knocks. He stuck his room key into his wallet, and went to the door.

“There was a robbery at a convenience store three nights ago in Sac City. The description fits this kid,” the Fort Dodge police chief said, handing the couple’s photo back to Ryan after making a copy. “Got the APB about it this morning.” He flipped through some papers on his desk.

And wasn’t that just great? Cody exchanged a glance with Ryan. The game had just changed.

“Was the girl with him?” Ryan asked.

Finding what he was looking for, the chief scanned the sheet. “No, just the kid. He had a gun. Clerk said it looked like an old one.” He eyed the copy he’d made of the photo. “I’ll be sending this out to the other police departments around here, along with the boy’s name.”

Ryan stuck the photo back into his file folder. “That’s fine. Any description of their car?”

Reading the APB again, the chief shook his head. “Not a good one. Dark. Midsized. That’s it.”

Cody turned to a map on the wall. “Where’s Sac City from here?” He scanned the area around Fort Dodge. Kincaid had arranged this meeting with the chief. Otherwise, the cop wouldn’t be so willing to share information with two men who’d walked in off the street.

“On the way out to Storm Lake. Take 20 out of Fort Dodge.”

Cody found Sac City, a small dot on the map. More interesting was Storm Lake, which was larger and had a big lake. A tourist destination that would appeal to a couple of kids and one they might think they could get lost in. It probably never occurred to the brainless twits that it was December. Although there was no snow yet, it was damned cold in Iowa. Had they even thought to bring winter clothes on their little adventure?

Ryan got the address of the convenience store the kid had robbed, and they both thanked the cop.

The chief came around the corner and walked them out. “You boys are some kind of elite team from what I was told, but don’t be going and testing our tolerance, you hear? This isn’t the Wild West.”

“We’re just here to pick up the girl,” Ryan said. “What you do with the boy now that he’s gone and gotten into trouble is your business. We’ll alert the police in whatever town we find them.”

“Fair enough, but I’ll call on ahead, make sure they know you’re coming.”

He and Ryan shook hands with the chief, and then headed for the Range Rover, which Ryan had pulled rank on and was driving today.

“Damn kids,” Cody said as they left the police station, heading for Sac City.

“Yeah, now he’s screwed up his life, getting an armed robbery on his record. Stupid of her parents to forbid her to see him, too. If they’d left things alone, a month from now, the kids probably would have broken up. That age, they get easily bored.”

“True.” In high school, he’d had the hots for one girl to the next one. He’d been a jock, and that alone had been a chick magnet. As a kid with hormones raging through him, he’d never been able to settle down with a longtime girlfriend. There were just too many pretty girls throwing their sweet little selves at him, so he didn’t get this Romeo and Juliet thing going on with these two.

He wasn’t particularly proud of his behavior looking back on it. His parents hadn’t appreciated all the phone calls from girls asking to talk to him, but he’d considered the professors old-fashioned. Although he had fond memories of those years, as a man and somewhat wiser, he could see their point. If he had a daughter and found out she was calling some boy, begging him to sneak out and meet her somewhere, he’d definitely have a problem with it. A real big one. And if he ever caught his son sneaking out to meet a girl, he’d ground him for a month.

Not that he would ever have a son or daughter. Out of nowhere, a picture formed of a little girl the spitting image of Riley.
Don’t go there, Dog.
But it was there in his mind and refused to go away.

“You and Charlie planning to have kids?” he asked.

“Not right away, but yeah. I can’t wait to have a little Charlie running around the house, chasing Mr. Bunny while driving Charlie crazy. It’s gonna be fun.”

“Mr. Bunny?”

Ryan grinned. “Our rabbit.”

“Get out. You have a pet rabbit?” As Ryan told the story of how that came about, Cody’s mind drifted back to Riley. Although he hadn’t planned to, later tonight, when they decided where to get rooms, he would call her to find out how her trip to the dog park went. Just a friendly phone call, that was all. He snorted.

“Let’s see if we can learn something new,” Ryan said as he pulled into the convenience store parking lot.

Thirty minutes later, they were back in the car. The only new thing they had learned was that before pulling out an antique gun and demanding all the money, the kid had brought a bottle of water to the counter and had asked how far Storm Lake was.

After leaving the convenience store, they stopped by the police department, and after a phone call between Kincaid and the Sac City police chief, they were allowed to view the videotape confiscated from the store’s security camera. Sure enough, it was their boy.

Justin Tramore, age seventeen, had politely asked his question, and after the answer was given, he’d pulled a turn-of-the-century Colt Single Action .38 from behind his back, pointing it at the clerk. “I’m sorry,” he’d said on his way out the door, after the clerk had handed over a little under two hundred dollars.

“At least he was polite about robbing the man,” Cody said. He shouldn’t feel sorry for the boy, but he did.

Ryan turned the car toward Storm Lake. “Tell it to the judge.” He glanced at Cody. “What’s your take?”

“Last place he used his dad’s credit card was when they arrived in Fort Dodge, and that was at a burger joint, of all things. I’m guessing it was about that time it occurred to them the card could be traced. They ran out of money, thus the robbery.”

“My thinking, too.”

“They’re probably feeling a little desperate by now, which makes them unpredictable. Don’t like that they have a gun.” Cody scratched at the tingling going on at the back of his neck.

“Yeah, me either.” Ryan slowed the car as they drove into Storm Lake. The sun was setting, and it looked like the town was closing up for the night. “Let’s find a place to get something to eat before they roll up the sidewalk.”

“I could go for a steak and baked potato with the works.”

Ryan put on his blinker and turned into a parking lot. “Ask and ye shall receive.”

Turned out the steak house was open until ten, and the food was good.

After a shower, Cody checked the time. Nine-thirty shouldn’t be too late to call Riley. Wearing his favorite sweatpants, he settled on the motel room’s bed, stuffing the extra pillows behind his back. Phone in hand, he hesitated. Maybe he shouldn’t bother her. Things could get busy tomorrow, though, if they managed to find the kids, and he might not have a chance to check in. He called her.

As he listened to the ring, he realized he wanted to hear her voice. He also admitted to himself that even though he couldn’t classify her as a girlfriend, if his head was in a better place, he’d be interested in a relationship with her. Very interested.

He got her voice mail. Disappointed, he hung up without leaving a message.

Riley washed the conditioner from her hair. The trip to the dog park had turned up nothing, which she hadn’t expected it to, but it was disappointing nevertheless. She had enjoyed playing with Cody’s dogs, while watching them closely to make sure they hadn’t eaten anything. She’d also posted several signs, warning owners to keep an eye on their animals and not to let them eat foods left behind by someone. It wasn’t her desire to panic anyone, but better a warning over seeing their dog get sick, or worse.