Page 7 of Child In Jeopardy
It was a dark tangle of emotions, including fear and anger that he hadn’t given his father justice.
He wasn’t sure he could lose anyone like that again. Hell, he wasn’t sure he could get through this loss at all, ever, and as long as his father’s killer was out there, then Slater had failed at one of the most important things in his life. All the cop training and experience meant nothing until someone had paid for shooting his father in the chest and leaving him to die.
“You can tell me to mind my own business,” Luca said, snapping Slater out of his miserable thoughts, “but is the baby yours?” It was a reasonable question since Luca, too, had gone to school with Stephanie and Lana, and he knew that Slater and Stephanie had dated.
“No,” Slater assured him.
That was one of the few things Slater was certain of. He’d never had sex with Stephanie and had never visited a sperm bank or a surrogate clinic. And that meant Stephanie had lied.
“I’m guessing Stephanie was scared,” Slater added. “And she knew I’d protect Lana and the baby.”
Of course, that led Slater to a big question—who or what was Stephanie scared of? Her parents were a good guess, because there was that threat of losing her trust fund. But he couldn’t see her folks murdering their daughter. Still, it was possible, and it was why Pamela and Leonard Walsh were on his suspect list. Not at the very top, though. At the moment Officer Johnson held that position, and Slater needed to know how this man fit into the pieces of the puzzle.
His phone vibrated with a call, and Slater saw Ruston’s name on the screen. “I don’t think your guy is coming to your place tonight,” his brother immediately said. “I’ve had a monitor on the traffic cams, looking for this Officer Johnson, and there was an accident about an hour ago. Someone ran a red light, plowed into a black SUV, disabling it. The driver of the SUV ran from the scene, and he matches Johnson’s description.”
Slater cursed. “Do you have the camera footage?”
“I got a couple of still images from the footage. Sending them to you now,” Ruston said just as Slater’s phone vibrated again.
Even though they were grainy images, Slater had no trouble seeing that it was indeed Officer Johnson. The first photo was of the collision itself, and the next was of the man exiting the vehicle. The final shot was of him running away, and that meant the guy likely wasn’t a real cop. If he had been, there probably wouldn’t have been a reason to hurry away like that. However, staying put would have meant having to explain why he was wearing the uniform.
“I just filled Duncan in on this,” Ruston went on, “and he said for Luca and you to head on to the sheriff’s office so you can figure out what to do about Lana and the baby.”
Slater muttered more profanity. Not because he didn’t want to return to the sheriff’s office and deal with the situation of Lana and the baby. He did. But he’d also wanted to catch a possible killer.
“We’ll be there in ten minutes,” Slater said, ending the call so that he and Luca could head into the garage where he’d parked the cruiser.
Slater also reset his security system in case Johnson finally did show up, and then did something he rarely did. He activated the security camera that was part of his doorbell. It was something he normally reserved for when he was expecting a package and there was inclement weather in the forecast.
Even though Slater suspected Johnson wouldn’t be making a trip to Saddle Ridge tonight, he and Luca still kept watch. And saw nothing out of the ordinary. This was ranching country, where traffic pretty much dried up after dark, and tonight was no exception. They made it all the way to the sheriff’s office without encountering another vehicle.
When Slater stepped into the building, he immediately saw Lana in Duncan’s office. She was feeding the baby a bottle while she studied something on a computer screen that Duncan was showing her.
At the sound of Slater’s footsteps, her head whipped up, her gaze slicing across the bullpen and reception to meet his. There was plenty of concern and wariness in her green eyes, and he so wished he could tell her the danger had passed. But it obviously hadn’t. Not with Officer Johnson still out there.
Slater certainly wasn’t untouched by the fear he saw on her face. He hated that she was going through this especially whenthere wasn’t a surefire fix to the danger. Apparently, he also wasn’t immune to something else.
The realization that the old attraction was still stirring between them.
Well, it was for him, anyway. The heat had been there for years, lying dormant and then igniting every time he saw her. Each time, he’d shoved the attraction firmly aside. Or rather had tried to do that, since any kind of romance between them could create more ire for her from her parents. Added to that, Slater had dated her sister, and Lana had been in the military, nowhere near Saddle Ridge.
But she was here now.
And his body obviously wanted to remind him of that.
Once again, Slater pushed aside the heat and joined them in Duncan’s office while Luca went to his desk. Slater thankfully got the quick mental adjustment he needed. Because Lana was looking at images on the screen. It didn’t take Slater long to realize these were photos of Austin cops with the surname of Johnson. In the top corner of the screen was the close up shot of the man running from the scene of the wrecked SUV.
“He’s not a cop,” Lana immediately said. “At least not one with Austin PD.”
None of them seemed surprised about that, but Slater understood the sound of frustration that Duncan made. “We’re running facial recognition now to try to get a match,” he added.
That was a good step, but it might not be enough. “What about the hospital cameras? Maybe there’s something on the footage to tell us who he is.”
“Austin PD is still examining that.” Duncan made another of those heavy sighs. “The cameras in the hallway had been tampered with, so there’s no feed of the man going into or out of Stephanie’s room. He didn’t leave anything obvious behind,either, but the CSIs have gathered plenty of hairs and fibers and have sent them to the lab.”
Slater figured getting anything from that was a long shot since dozens if not hundreds of people could have gone in and out of that room in the past week. Still, it was something that had to be checked.
The baby caught Slater’s attention when he made a kitten-like sound after he finished the bottle. Lana set the bottle aside and moved him to her shoulder to burp him. The maneuver wasn’t completely smooth, but Lana was obviously taking good care of the newborn. And under bad circumstances. Her sister was dead, and there appeared to be a killer after her.