She glanced at the windows of Nate’s apartment. Where was he? In all the time that she’d worked with him, he had been an early riser, taking the animals out at dawn, depending upon the season. Lately his schedule had been off and he’d been gone more than he’d been on the premises.
It was true they both did their own things with the animals and rarely checked in with each other…Yet this was far outside the bounds of their usual routine.
Weird.
So out of character.
Or was it? What did she really know about him? Not a whole helluva lot when you got down to it. So what was he up to? What was with the odd hours?
Realizing she couldn’t do anything about it now, she decided to talk to him later, if and when he showed up during her waking hours. Whatever his reasons for his odd hours, they were his business.
Unless he’s somehow involved in the fires…
“No way,” she muttered, angry with herself. Opening the door, she was immediately greeted by a series of excited barks, yips and even baying from Tattoo, the lone bloodhound that was a part of her pack. One by one, she greeted th
e dogs, then let them outside for exercise. “You all get another day off,” she explained, “except for you,” she patted Atlas’s broad head, a huge German shepherd with a head the size of a bear’s. She was rewarded with a nose against her leg as he begged for more. To the other dogs she warned, “But look out, cuz tomorrow, we’re back to work. Serious work,” she said, grinning at the animals. “Got it?”
Tattoo gave off a deep bark.
Cissy, an intense border collie whose face was half white and half black, barely listened. She was focused on stalking Atlas. The larger dog didn’t intimidate her in the least and now Cissy, eyes trained on Atlas, lay in wait, her body immobile and pressed into the ground as the big dog ignored her and relieved himself on a fence post.
“Sorry, Cissy,” Shannon said. “I don’t think Atlas ‘gets’ you. It’s a male thing.”
The border collie cocked her head as if she was truly understanding, while the others, after running off some energy, swarmed around Shannon’s legs. There were only five dogs, aside from Khan, all of which she owned. Usually she had at least twice as many, those she trained and those she boarded, but, over the past three months, in anticipation of moving, she’d whittled down the number of dogs on the premises to those she owned.
As they stretched their legs, rolled in the dry grass and sniffed around the pen, Shannon couldn’t help but look over the ruins of the shed, dark and ghastly, an anomaly on this bright day. Who had started the fire that had ruined the shed that held only leftover feed, tack that wasn’t used and a few pieces of nearly forgotten equipment? Why?
She glanced to the paddock where the horses were grazing and noticed Molly, nose to tail with a dappled gelding. Both horses’ tails were switching, their ears in constant movement as they swished at bothersome flies.
Who was the culprit who had set the shed afire, then waited to assault her? Remembering the attack, she tensed, feeling the man’s strength, sensing his rage.
She bit her lip and her eyes narrowed thoughtfully. If her assailant had wanted to kill her, it would have been a simple matter of shooting her while she was trying to set the horses free. If the would-be assassin had been worried about noise, the gun could have been silenced. Or he could have jumped her and slit her throat, or used the pitchfork to impale her rather than beat her senseless.
No, killing hadn’t been his motive.
Otherwise he would have torched the house, not the shed.
Whoever he was, he’d wanted her to be afraid, to know that he had some kind of power over her, enough power to steal her only child and taunt her with the fact that he’d kidnapped her.
So it has to be someone who knows how important the child was to you, how difficult it was to give up the baby. A relative? A friend? Confidante?
It wasn’t as if she’d kept her pregnancy a secret. A lot of people in this small community had known.
So what does kidnapping Dani Settler have to do with Mary Beth’s death? Shannon asked herself. Why had the bastard gone to such great lengths to spare her, but then make certain Mary Beth died? Horribly.
Shannon stared at the debris that had been her shed, the yellow tape now flapping in a slight breeze that had kicked up the dust and blown a few dry leaves across the field. She leaned against the top rail of the fence. Her thoughts, as they had all night, turned to Mary Beth. Shannon found it incomprehensible that her sister-in-law was dead.
Atlas came up and nuzzled her leg. Patting his wide head, she managed a smile. He was her best tracking dog. Confident but not aggressive, social but not to the exclusion of listening to commands, Atlas had the intelligence and nose to be an excellent search and rescue dog as well as a tracker. “Good boy,” she said, rubbing him behind the ears. “We’ll work together later. I promise.” His long tail wagged.
She glanced up at the sun, stealing upward in the morning sky, already promising the day would be another scorcher. She felt disjointed and achy, but she toughed it out, didn’t want to be groggy or distracted when Settler appeared.
She kenneled the dogs. As she was heading back to the house she heard the phone ring. Jogging as fast as her injuries would allow, she made it into the kitchen by the fourth ring, picked up, and shouted over the prerecorded message on her answering machine, “I’m here. Just give me a sec.” She managed to disengage the recorder as she read the caller ID message. It was Shea. “Hey,” she said, bracing herself against the counter. “What’s up?”
“A lot,” Shea said. Shannon could hear the strain in his voice. “First off, it looks like Mary Beth was murdered.”
Travis had told her as much but she started shaking inside anew. “It’s just so hard to believe.”
“Because I’m family, it was suggested strongly that I relinquish the investigation to someone else. You’ll probably get a call from Nadine Ignacio, she’s been my second in command and she’ll do a good job.”