“I don't know.”
“Bullshit.”
“She never gave her name. I never even saw her. Only him.”
“Phil?”
“Who?” The perp sounded truly baffled.
“The guy whose brains are all over the hall carpet.”
“He brought the cash.”
“So why kill him?”
“Didn't mean to. The gun, it accidentally went off.”
An idiot with a firearm usually had that result. “Where's your partner?”
“What partner?”
“Really? Do we have to do this the hard way?” He twisted the suspect's arm.
“Okay, okay!” He let out a small puff of air when Hank loosened his grip. “He got pinched last night. DUI.”
“You two sound like quite the pair.”
A ruckus sounded behind him. Before he could jerk his head around, a deep, booming voice echoed through the room. “Hands up!”
Two uniforms stood in the doorway, guns drawn and in a firing stance. Shit. He could read their nervous thoughts from across the room. Calm. He had to bring the situation down before he ended up with a bullet.
“I'm Sheriff Hank Layton from Dry Creek, Nebraska,” he said in the same tone he used with skittish animals. “I've apprehended a suspect who broke into my hotel room.”
“I said, hands up!”
He did not want to let go, but there wasn't much of a way around it. Putting his full weight into the knee grinding into the goon’s spinal cord, he unwrapped one finger at a time from around the man's arm and held his breath.
The asshole didn't move a muscle beyond letting his arm fall to the ground like dead weight.
Okay, this might work out. More confident, Hank raised his arms. “I have identification in my wallet. I'm going to reach around—”
He didn't get any further before the bathroom door flew open and Beth rushed out with a war cry.
Cop number one pivoted and fired in the same motion.
The room went silent except for the thump of Beth's body hitting the floor and a half second later, the sickening thud of what must have been her head bouncing off the tile.
“You fucking idiot! You just shot the victim!” Fear spiked so fast, bile rose in Hank's throat.
Taking advantage of the moment, the suspect jumped up and sprinted toward the door.
Hank didn't have time to process what had happened. Bounding up, he barreled toward the suspect, acting only on instinct and adrenaline.
Faced with a wall of blue in front of the open bathroom door, the man hesitated a foot outside of the uniformed officers' reach.
Just the opportunity Hank needed. He wrapped his arms around the man, taking him down hard, grinding his face into the carpet's brown fibers. “God dammit, put some fucking cuffs on him.”
One of the officers hurried forward and clamped the metal closed around the suspect's wrists. The officer who fired stood in the doorway, a deer-in-the-headlights look in his dark eyes.