SHATTERED (4 page)

Chapter Four

By the time Nate finally bumped into his truck and stumbled the rest of the way to the house, he was experiencing an eerie sensation of being frozen and light-headed at the same time. His trusty jacket was more or less toast, but it had probably saved his life by maintaining his core temperature. Good thing he’d never had the opportunity to take it off.

He had no idea where or when he’d lost his hat, and his head was freezing. He loved the old Stetson, but hats came and went just like women.

All this was flittering through his mind while his light flashed over his truck, and he swore. He’d just finished paying the blasted thing off and he was no longer on the receiving end of a monthly paycheck. Look at the poor thing. The windshield had somehow survived, but the passenger window was gone, half the tires blown out, bullet holes down one side, and that was just what he could see in a glance. He swore again and felt like kicking something.

By the time he got inside the house, he was cold from temperature and anger. First thing to take care of was his arm. Hopefully he wouldn’t need to depend on Sarah to help him—so far she hadn’t struck him as the helpful type.

Where was she, anyway? Why hadn’t she been waiting at the door, anxious to hear the outcome of his mission? What was more important to her than staying alive?

Bypassing Mike’s body, he grabbed a bright throw from the back of a chair and started to drape it across the dead man, then stopped. The least he could do was preserve the crime scene until the experts got here. The camera on his phone had exploded with everything else, but maybe he’d find another one somewhere in with Mike’s possessions.

Which reminded him that Mike’s keys, wallet and cell appeared to be missing, along with his computer and who knew what else. Was this a robbery gone wrong or was it something more complicated?

He dropped the throw back on the chair and went looking for Sarah. He found her in her father’s room, poking into the now unlocked gun cabinet that Nate had opened by finding the key tucked away in the pocket of the hunting vest hanging beside it.

“What are you doing?” he said.

She turned suddenly, a bulging manila envelope in her hands. There were additional boxes and envelopes piled on the bed as well. Her eyes widened as though she’d forgotten he was there. Or maybe she was just startled he’d made it back alive. “Did you get him?” she asked. “Did you see who it was?”

“No to both,” he said.

She swallowed as she pushed her left hand down into her pocket. Was she holding something? The past hour or so had somehow honed her beauty into a grittier, darker form, enhanced by the dirt smudged on her jeans and across her cheek. In all honesty, it made her twice as sexy as she’d been, and that was saying something.

His head swam in the sudden heat of the room and he swayed a little. “What’s in the envelope?”

“Dad’s retirement stuff. I was looking for some old papers of mine.”

“Old papers,” he responded, his voice dry.

“Yeah. School papers, my diploma... Listen, it doesn’t matter. They’re not here.”

“Anything else interesting in there?” he asked, nodding toward the safe.

“No,” she said quickly. “Just genealogy stuff. Dad got off on that tangent a few years ago when he and Mom split up.” She stared harder at him, then gasped. “You’re bleeding!”

He followed the direction of her gaze to the torn, blood-soaked sleeve of his jacket and the red smears on his hand. “Yeah,” he said and sat down abruptly on the side of the bed.

She was there in front of him almost at once. “What happened?”

“Score one for the bad guy.”

“Oh, man, this is my fault,” she said, running to the adjoining bathroom and returning with a stack of clean towels. “Take off your jacket. Here, I’ll help you.”

She very carefully unzipped the front of his jacket, which put her head next to his, and he breathed in the scents of hay and snow, an odd combination and bracingly refreshing. Her hair brushed his forehead and he closed his eyes, not trusting himself to look at her. He’d always been a sucker for blue eyes and this wasn’t the time or place for that kind of thing.

“Easy now,” she coaxed and gingerly helped him get his good arm out of the sleeve. Then she began peeling away the other sleeve, which hurt like blazes, and he winced.

“Sorry,” she said. “Almost done.” She dropped the jacket to the floor. “We’d better get your shirt off, too.” That took longer and was agonizing for Nate as she freed his good arm from the heather-gray Henley and began the painstaking process of loosening the other sleeve from his injured arm.

“It’s stuck to the blood,” she explained.

He swallowed and nodded.

“Just a minute, okay?” She went back to the bathroom and returned a moment later with a brown bottle of hydrogen peroxide and bandages. “Maybe this will help,” she said and, using the towel beneath his arm to absorb the overflow, drenched the site with the peroxide, loosening the knitted material from the wound. A moment later she managed to slip the shirt over his head and he sighed deeply with profound relief.

She looked a little pale as she considered his arm but, to her credit, didn’t shy away. Instead she used more of the peroxide to bathe the site and peered intently at it.

Nate turned his head to try to get a good look. He was way too aware of her hand resting atop his bare shoulder, her fingers trembling as though her external coolness masked an inner repulsion at the sight of bloody flesh. The tip of her tongue flicked across her lips and he took a deep breath. He wasn’t sure if his reactions to her proximity were an attempt to distance himself from his injury or because he’d have to be in far worse shape than he was
not
to notice her.

“I think the bullet entered and exited the fleshy part of your arm,” she said.

He flexed his hand and tried out a smile. “It must not have hit anything too important on its way. It looks more like a graze to me. More of a nuisance than a danger.”

“Spoken like a true he-man.”

“Spoken like a guy stuck in the middle of a shoot-out.”

“I’ll wrap it with gauze.”

A few intense minutes later, his biceps was bandaged and she’d found a wool shirt of her dad’s with the tags still attached. “I sent him this for Christmas,” she said. “I guess he didn’t like the color.”

The color looked fine to Nate, kind of a deep blue. She guided it gently over his bandaged arm, then insisted on buttoning it for him. Once again, her face was close to his as she performed this chore, and once again, every one of his senses jumped into hyperdrive.

He caught her hand as she straightened up. “I could tell it was an...unpleasant...task for you,” he said, running his thumb over the tops of her fingers. “Thanks.”

“No big deal,” she said. “I’ve always tended animals, you know. In fact, I wanted to be a veterinarian.”

“What happened?”

“Life,” she said. “Now I work at animal clinics. Anyway, I’ve seen my share of bloody messes.”

“Still, your hand shook,” he said. “Maybe human gore is worse than animal.”

She shrugged and looked away. It was obvious to him that she wanted to let matters drop, but he couldn’t quite dismiss the feel of her fingers against his skin. Nevertheless, there were more urgent matters at hand. “I assume that old truck parked out front was your father’s only vehicle?”

“Yes. Why?”

“Because someone took his keys and wallet.”

“His keys.” If possible, she went whiter still. “Oh, my gosh. His garage.”

“What garage?”

“One of those storage units over in Shatterhorn. Maybe someone wanted access to it. I didn’t even think of that.”

“What did he keep in it?”

“Who knows? When I was a kid he kept business-related items there. I’m not even sure he still has it.”

“Okay, well, try this. Did he ever say anything to you about someone threatening him?”

“Not directly, but I know he’s felt restless and out of sorts since Labor Day and the mall shooting. Being the closest in proximity when the shooter killed himself really affected him, especially after the carnage the guy had created. And there was that last word the man spoke, too. It worried Dad.”

“You mean
pearl,
” Nate said.

“Yeah.”

One of the mall jewelry stores had contracted to keep a pricey shipment of Tahitian black pearls that were in transit to a big casino down in Vegas. The police had voiced the theory that the kid planned to steal them, but it seemed unlikely to Nate. Since when did a nineteen-year-old bring two loaded weapons to a shopping mall on the busiest afternoon of the summer to steal pearls? And if that had been his plan, why kill four people before taking his own life?

“I don’t know,” Sarah said. “Since the shooter never got around to actually stealing the pearls, Dad worried someone else would step in and try to do it. For a while he drove into town almost every day, watching and waiting. I tried to tell him the pearl shipment had been sent away the very next day, but he didn’t believe me, even when I sent him the newspaper article.”

“I didn’t know he was that troubled,” Nate said quietly, but it didn’t surprise him. When something horrific happened to a person, they were often driven to try to make sense of it. And sometimes, there just wasn’t a way to do that.

“Anyway,” she continued, “he’d been questioning everyone, making a nuisance of himself—at least that’s what I heard.”

“From who?”

“Someone told me.”

“Someone reliable?”

“More or less. My, er, source said Dad nagged the newspaper, the mayor, the police—anyone he could get to sit still while he expounded on his theories. I don’t think he made a lot of friends lately. And, of course, he knew Thomas Jacks. Everyone knew him.”

Thomas Jacks was the name of the gunman. Nate should have realized that in a town the size of Shatterhorn, people were likely to know one another.

“He just couldn’t get over the fact that boy caused all that heartache,” Sarah continued, “and not to just himself, but to his family. Even his past schoolmates, like Jason Netters. People kept asking themselves if they should have seen this coming, but by all accounts, Thomas was a good kid who loved his family and his country—it just didn’t make any sense.”

Was that why Jason had survived the barrage of bullets that had killed the two girls who had fled the protection of the cookie kiosk with him? Had Thomas spared his friend, or was it even possible Jason had been part of the crime?

“Did your father know Jason?”

“I don’t know. He knew Thomas because I babysat for him and his brother a few times. But Jason’s dad, Stewart Netters, is the newspaper editor, so I’m sure he got to know him recently.”

“I remember Netters,” Nate said. “He interviewed me and your dad and Alex after the shooting.”

“I read the article. Mayor Bliss hailed you guys as heroes. He said the whole thing would have been worse if the three of you hadn’t kept everyone calm. Dad said he didn’t deserve any accolades, that it was you and Mr. Foster who had police experience.”

“Your dad underestimated his role,” Nate said. The intended compliments she’d passed on about Nate made him cringe inside. He’d lost the lives of the two kids he felt responsible for—he was no hero. Desperate now to get the topic off of that day, he abruptly changed the subject. “Did you happen to find a camera anywhere?”

“It’s in the bottom drawer of his dresser,” she said. “Why?”

“Precaution,” he said, recovering the camera and checking to see if it contained film, which it did. From the corner of his eye he could see Sarah dividing her attention between him and her watch. What had she stuck in her pocket? Would she tell him if he asked? He doubted it, so he didn’t ask.

For a few minutes when she’d been helping him, he’d glimpsed a calmer, gentler side of her, but the nervous one was emerging again, complete with quick glances and fidgety hands.

“I need to get out of here,” she said under her breath.

“We need to talk,” he said.

“I don’t have time to talk. I have to get back to Reno.”

“Listen, if you won’t tell me what’s making you so damn anxious to leave in the middle of this storm, will you at least explain why you tried to ditch me and who the heck our visitor was?”

“I don’t know who it was,” she said with a subtle shift of her gaze that told him she was hedging at best, probably lying.

“Then why did you say my getting shot was your fault?”

“I said that? I don’t know.”

“You have an idea who this assailant is, don’t you?”

“No, none. How could I? Like I said, I hadn’t seen Dad in a while.”

“Then why did you come here?”

“I just wanted to talk to him.”

“About what?”

“How is that any of your business?”

They were back to square one, her defiantly standing her ground, him floundering around in the dark. He shook his head and headed toward the door. “You know, you’re a beautiful woman, Sarah Donovan,” he said, pausing by her side to look down at her. Big mistake—those eyes looked so innocent and guileless. “Under other circumstances I bet you’re fascinating company,” he added, “but right now, I’d settle for some straight answers.”

“Unfortunately, I have nothing to offer.”

“How about ID? Where is your purse or wallet or whatever?”

“It was taken from me. I have no identification with me.”

“And yet you managed to rent that bucket of bolts in the barn?”

“My stuff was taken after I rented the car.”

“So the rental agreement is in the car?”

“No, it was in my purse.”

He took a deep breath.

“Will you try to stop me if I leave?” she asked.

“Unless you can fly, I don’t see how you’re going to get out of here. But, yes, I
will
stop you.” He continued on his way.

For the next few minutes, he busied himself taking pictures of Mike’s still form and the surrounding area, covering his friend’s hands with plastic bags from the kitchen. He committed to memory any detail that might someday be relevant. While he did all this, he kept an ear out for Sarah, but things had grown very quiet. He was angling a shot from near the fireplace when a photograph propped up on the mantelpiece caught his attention, and he paused to study it.