He gave her a quick, ridiculously hopeful grin. “Don’t let me stop you.”
“Good night, Riley.”
“Good night, Teresa. Sweet dreams.”
Riley could make even that well-worn and generally meaningless phrase sound too perceptive. As if he suspected he might play a role in her dreams. It bothered her that she couldn’t absolutely swear he wouldn’t make an appearance there—or that he never had before.
She let herself in her house quickly, locking the kitchen door behind her. Now she really was wide awake. She opened the pantry and started pulling out the ingredients for muffins. She supposed it wouldn’t hurt to have breakfast prepared a few hours early.
She wasn’t quite ready to face her dreams tonight.
Riley’s telephone rang at two-thirty Tuesday morning, jarring him out of a sound sleep. “What?” he barked into the phone, groggy and disoriented.
“It’s Lindsey. Someone just tried to kill R. L. Hightower.”
The succinct statement brought him upright in a hurry. “Where are you?”
“Outside R.L.’s house. You might want to come. Bud’s here, and he’s understandably upset.”
“I’m on my way.” He was already reaching for his jeans when he tossed the phone into its cradle.
The scene outside R.L.’s house was chaotic. It was a normally quiet, middle-class neighborhood with big yards putting some distance between the early seventies ranch-style houses. Accessed by a circular concrete driveway, R.L.’s house was set back several yards from the road. That driveway was filled with vehicles, including a fire truck, an ambulance and two marked police cars. Groups of people stood around the vehicles, among them several faces Riley immediately identified.
The scene took him back several months to the fires that had distressed the community, including the one that had killed R.L’s friend Truman. But the arsonist had been caught and was now in jail. What on earth had happened?
Even as he hurried toward one of the groups, Riley automatically noted the damage to the house. Several windows were shattered, all on the right front side of the house. Because he’d visited his uncle’s friend several times, Riley knew the windows were in R.L.’s bedroom. He watched as the ambulance was maneuvered carefully out of the crowded driveway, lights flashing as it turned onto the street and disappeared.
“Riley,” Lindsey called. “Your uncle is over here.”
Moving toward his co-worker, he saw that she was standing beside her husband, Chief Dan Meadows. Dan was talking to Bud, who was gazing toward the house with a look of shock on his slack face.
“Bud?” Riley put a hand on his uncle’s shoulder. “Are you okay?”
Bud’s response was slow in coming. “R.L. was hurt, not me.”
“Is he all right?”
“He will be.” It was Dan who answered. “He’s lucky. Had he been sleeping in his bed, he would very likely have been killed. But his back was hurting tonight, so he slept on the floor, instead. He was hit by some debris, got a few cuts and bruises, but he’ll recover. He called Bud even before he called nine-one-one. We got here close to the same time, about twenty minutes ago. R.L.’s been taken to the hospital for observation.”
“What happened?” Riley addressed the question to Dan, since Bud still seemed too shaken to answer.
“Someone shot into R.L.’s bedroom through the windows. The bedding looks like Swiss cheese. Lamps and mirrors and damn near everything else in the room are all busted up. Like I said, if he’d been in bed…” Dan let Riley mentally complete the grim alternative.
“Have you caught the shooter?”
“No. I’ve got officers combing the neighborhood for witnesses now.”
Riley’s attention was torn between wanting to know more details about the attack and worrying about Bud, who was uncharacteristically quiet and unresponsive. “R.L.’s going to be okay, Bud. Dan said he wasn’t badly injured.”
Bud merely nodded.
“Maybe you should take him home,” Lindsey murmured, touching Riley’s arm.
“Yeah. You’re covering the story?”
“I’ve got it. Take care of your uncle.”
“C’mon, Bud, let me take you home.” Riley tugged lightly at the older man’s shoulder. “Just leave your truck here. We’ll get it tomorrow.”