“Let’s go.” Ellie brushed past Chet, leading the way over the curb, into the wet grass, not sure what she was going to find inside and not sure she wanted to find out. As soon as her feet hit the moist gravel, she hurried to a gallop, the small stones on the driveway making scratching noises under her boots and the rain hitting her face. Then she heard it. Crying, loud sobbing, swearing. The gallop turned to a sprint, and Chet gimped along behind her, slowed by the injury that had forced him off a fire truck in the first place.
“Go! Go!” He waved her forward, and Ellie didn’t look back. As she turned the corner where the driveway bent, the shouting got louder, and she found a man lying prone on the driveway. He was wearing a white dress shirt nearly drenched with rainwater, half-tucked into a pair of khakis. And there was blood. Lots of it flowing from his shoulder and spreading down his sleeve. Was this the gunshot wound? The patient was moving, rolling slightly from side to side, a phone lying on the ground beside him.
“Sir, sir, you need to stay still.” The man stopped rolling on the ground and then picked up his head, and Ellie was stunned. “Steve.” Amelia’s husband—who also happened to be one of Ellie’s closest friends. “Oh my God, Steve.”
The six-foot-two former firefighter was lying covered in blood and writhing on the driveway. Steve’s face was coated in a pale mud, wet trails cutting through the coat of gray. More blood had soaked through the front of his shirt and dripped down his sleeve. Even with just a preliminary check, she saw there was clearly a hole in his shirt. A bullet hole. God, no . . . It was true. Steve started to turn onto his back when Ellie knelt down next to him and dropped her bags.
“Hey. Stop. Let’s stay here for a second.” She put her face close to his, assessing his breathing and hoping he didn’t notice how hard she was trying to keep her voice steady. He’d been screaming just fine, no wheezing, no blood from his mouth. Airway seemed okay, but who knew what awaited them on the other side of his body. “Hey.” Ellie spoke loudly and tried to get inside Steve’s line of vision. “Can you tell me what happened?”
As Ellie pulled out pieces of gauze from her kit and pressed them against the hole in Steve’s shoulder, he put his face into the gravel again. He was crying. Panic pounded at the back of her mind, only kept at bay by pretending the man she was working on wasn’t the man who tugged her ponytail every time she beat him at cards or always picked up on the first ring when she called for advice. No, this was a random patient—someone else’s brother-in-law, someone else’s friend, someone else’s cheerleader.
Chet approached, set down his kit, and lowered himself to his knees. “What’s going on?”
“Gunshot wound, left shoulder. Airway clear,” she mumbled, keeping it cool, professional. “Steve, what happened to your shoulder?”
Steve took in a shaky breath and then another, swallowing a few times like he was holding back vomit.
“Two men came into the house. They wanted money. They wanted me to open the safe. I started to, but then Amelia brought in coffee, not knowing what was going on . . . and then . . .”
“Then what?” Ellie asked, hands frozen in midair. Chet, reading his partner’s emotional state, took over, adding another piece of gauze over Ellie’s.
“I was getting the money from the safe, and then I heard the shots. At first I thought the men shot each other because one ran out the office door but then . . . then . . .” He hesitated as if he could see the picture every time he blinked. “I looked over the counter.” Steve lifted his tearstained face again, eyes blurry with moisture. “He shot her. He shot Amelia.”
CHAPTER 4
AMELIA
Monday, April 4
Five weeks earlier
Amelia tossed another steak packaged in Styrofoam and Saran Wrap onto the counter. It was going to be an interesting night. Caleb texted about an hour after Amelia’s gig started and let her know that, one, he’d be staying for dinner; two, Steve was mad but not crazy mad; three, the police had already been by and filed a report; and four, the insurance company would be coming out tomorrow so Steve could file a claim. Well, that took a few worries off her mind.
The insurance money would help pay for the tires, the police would find who did it, and Caleb would give his brother, Collin, someone to talk to, since Dad wasn’t exactly conversational and Steve wasn’t the biggest Collin fan in the world. Amelia had already threatened Steve with no dessert if he didn’t play nice, but he had always been overprotective of Ellie and, during Amelia and Steve’s ten-year marriage, he hadn’t taken to any of her boyfriends, starting with Trey Martin from her eighth-grade health class.
“Hey, hon.” Steve walked through the office door, still wearing his button-up work shirt with an embroidered house above the breast pocket.
They’d been married ten years, but Amelia always felt a little jolt in her stomach when she saw her husband after being apart. He was still as handsome as the day they met twelve years ago.
Amelia had insisted she’d never marry a firefighter. She saw her mom live with the fear of a firefighter’s wife and how the job wore on her father emotionally and physically.
She’d walked into her dad’s firehouse countless times through her life. There was a legend that she’d taken her first steps across those cool tile floors and into her father’s arms. But when she visited her dad at work after freshman year of college and the hunky twenty-three-year-old firefighter smiled at her in a whole new and exciting way, she knew Steve Saxton would either break her heart or steal it. Later it seemed to make sense that she’d find her husband there; everything else she’d ever loved had been a part of that place.
“Hey!” Amelia wiped her hands on a paper towel and then met Steve at the table. She perched up on her tiptoes to give him a brief kiss. The lines on his forehead worried her. Signs like that used to be subtle, but after years of experience, she’d learned the road map to Steve’s displeasure pretty early. She hadn’t considered that even when Steve retired from firefighting, she would still worry about him. Every day. She wrapped her arms around his waist, hoping it would calm him or at least distract him. “You get things figured out with the police?”
Steve sighed, put his arms around Amelia’s shoulders, and pulled her in for a hug. “Yeah, Jackson says that there’s not much they can do besides file a report and maybe send someone around to drive by the house now and then. He thinks I should put up cameras. It’s at least a thousand bucks, but there’s a guy in Randall who can do it pretty cheap.”
More money. Steve didn’t talk about the business with Amelia very often, but she could always tell when times were tight. He’d get quiet, snap at the girls if they made too much noise, and the house would turn into a mausoleum where the first question everyone asked before doing anything was, “Wait—is Daddy home?”
“Hey, whatever you need. I got paid a little something today. We can put it into a camera fund.” She nuzzled her face against his chest, the buttons on his shirt rubbing against her cheek.