Easy Prey. Lisa Phillips
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Although Fix had always held himself separate from Jonah and his brother—the rich kids. Fix and his sister had grown up in a double-wide with their alcoholic mom.
Now it was just another day, just another fugitive.
A car with out-of-state plates and a sticker in the back window—a rental—was parked outside the entrance. Jonah ran, legs pumping, hands gripping his Glock in front of him. Sweat chilled on his forehead as he jumped over strewn two-by-fours, branches and other debris. The floodwaters had reached roof height, and this place was a mess.
He’d been chasing this guy for two miles already. Had Fix found a place to hunker down?
Jonah didn’t know of any connection the man had to the zoo, now or back when it’d been open. The previous manager had been killed in the flood, his body never found. Jonah had heard they were bringing in someone new to reopen it, some kind of wild-animal expert. But he had bigger things to worry about than an attraction he was never going to visit.
“We’re coming in the east entrance but there’s a lot of debris.” Hanning’s voice was breathy.
Deputy Marshal Eric Hanning was a member of Jonah’s team. He was also engaged to another teammate, Deputy Marshal Hailey Shelder. The two had fallen in love after they were forced to rely on each other during the recent flood, when the team had been hunting an escaped convict.
Jonah had been shot in the stomach, and promoted, all during that same manhunt. Now he was in charge of not just the team but the whole office.
Of course Jonah had wanted the job one day, but not like that—not because their former boss had turned bad. The team hadn’t seemed to mind, even though it took a few weeks recovering from his wounds for Jonah to settle in. Boss or not, Jonah would always be a boots-on-the-ground kind of marshal.
The man he was chasing now was low-level. Fix Tanner hadn’t shown up for his court appearance, but Jonah wanted him for more than just the fact that he should be in jail. Fix had a boss. Fix’s boss had a boss. That made for a lot of fingers in a lot of pies, all of which were here in his town. Jonah wanted charges brought against all of them.
The door was open on the first building, so Jonah stepped silently up the stairs, slowing his pace. Blood rushed in his head, and the beat of his heart pounded in his ears in the silence. If one of his team radioed in now, the sound would be deafening.
While Hanning and Shelder took the east entrance, his other two team members, Jackson Parker and Wyatt Ames—a former SEAL and a former police detective, respectively—were on the west side. The zoo wasn’t all that big. Fifty acres. It should take minutes for them to meet in the center where the lake was.
Jonah flipped on his flashlight and scanned the room.
The beam moved over a body—a woman. Jonah crouched and touched her shoulder. She shifted, moaning as though the soft touch hurt, but it was her warmth that sent a rush of relief through him. He couldn’t help her if she was dead, and murder investigations weren’t his jurisdiction.
Jonah pulled out his cell phone and called emergency dispatch, then informed his teammates of what he’d found. “Anyone got a location on Tanner?”
“Negative.”
“Not yet.” Parker’s determination was only in part due to his having been a SEAL. The man was also incredibly stubborn.
“Keep searching,” Jonah said. “I’ll wait with her.”
“Her?” The interest in Ames’s voice was unmistakable.
“She’s hurt, Ames. But it’s not Tanner, it’s a woman.”
Jonah turned his attention to her. Had Fix Tanner done this? He wouldn’t put it past the man, but Jonah had been chasing him only minutes ago. Now Fix was who knew where, and this woman had been hurt because Jonah wasn’t fast enough.
Was his wound slowing him down? It was down to a dull ache most days, and he didn’t want to keep to his desk, but he didn’t want to put the team—or anyone else—in jeopardy, either.
He shouldn’t turn the woman if she was injured, but he brushed the hair back from her face enough to see who it was.
His voice was a whisper. “Elise.”
Flashes of the past ran through his brain like a movie reel. Cookouts, the lake and little Elise Tanner. They’d been friends all the time he was in high school, right up until he joined the marines. And then come home from deployment to find she’d married his brother.
Crumpled in a heap on the floor wasn’t just any woman. This happened to be the one woman in the world he’d never imagined he would ever see again, and now she was here. Jonah sank to his knees beside her and checked his watch. Emergency services wouldn’t be long.
“Elise?” He patted her cheek. It couldn’t be a coincidence she was here on the exact day Jonah was chasing her brother.
The years had changed both of them—that much was obvious. Still, in his heart she was the same smiling, teenage girl. Years lay between today and the day Jonah had returned from yet another deployment to discover she’d left town, consumed with her grief over his brother being killed in action.
For months his heart had warred between acknowledging she was simply grieving and the fact she hadn’t wanted him to help her through it. They’d had a close relationship once, but that apparently didn’t matter. She hadn’t trusted Jonah enough to be there for her when she needed it. She’d just banked the death benefits and left his mom’s pool house without so much as a note.
Chasing her down and demanding an explanation—or just making sure she was okay—wouldn’t have brought him any kind of satisfaction. She’d probably hated him for talking his brother into a military career. He’d hated himself well enough that Jonah hadn’t figured he could handle her anger on top of his guilt.
What was she doing back in town after all these years? He didn’t want to believe it had something to do with her brother, Fix, but if it did, then Jonah would have to face the consequences.
“Elise.” Jonah didn’t want to admit how much it hurt just saying her name. He refused to admit he’d missed her, even to himself.
She sucked in a breath and coughed it out. Her eyes flew open and she gasped, but she wasn’t looking at him.
“Elise.”
She pointed behind him. Jonah turned, but couldn’t see what she was trying to show him. Did she even know who he was? A guttural noise emerged from her throat.
“EMTs will be here in a minute.” He could hear the ambulance’s siren, close enough it was probably turning from Hancock onto the road that led to the zoo.
Her mouth moved, her lips forming a word he didn’t understand.
“Elise, I don’t know what you’re saying.” His stomach churned. What had happened to her? This woman was dressed for a safari, but the zoo was a wreck. No one should even be here.
“Elise.”
Her face reddened. Her mouth moved again, and she managed to say, “Bomb.”
Jonah understood that word. He grabbed up his flashlight and spun to shine it in the direction she’d pointed. Taped to the underside of the grimy desk, it was no bigger than the lockbox for a handgun.
He swiped Elise from the floor, lifting her body easily the way he’d done plenty of times in his mom’s pool. He burst from the office door into the night, vaulting the steps.
The building behind them exploded in a boom and a rush of flames.
The man dived and rolled, taking Elise with him. Aside from the bomb—which to be fair, was a pretty major distraction—she just couldn’t think of this