Page 23 of Close Quarters

The older man frowned. “Well, I guess. We don’t usually, at least not in the field, but I suppose we could.” He gave them a perplexed frown. “Aren’t you concerned about what happened to her?”

“Of course we are,” Alex replied. “There was an—incident last night we think she might be involved in. The police are handling it. In the meantime, we still have a job to do. Let’s get on the road.”

Dave pursed his lips, curiosity shining bright in his eyes along with a healthy dose of concern for his boss, but he nodded. “Okay.”

As he walked away, Katie turned and held out the van keys to Alex.

He took them with a smile, and they headed for the vehicle.

“This is nuts,” he said. “I don’t want to believe it was her who shot at us, but her disappearance does lend some credence to that theory.”

“Yeah. We’ll just have to wait and see what happens. I’m sure Seb has his deputies hard at work trying to locate her.”

Alex’s brow dipped in thought. “Yeah.”

Chapter 5

The door to the path lab swished open, and Alex looked up to see Seb walk in.

“Hey. What’s up?”

Seb glanced at the autopsy table where Alex worked on victim number four, an approximately fourteen-year-old girl, then up at the older man standing across the table from him.

“You must be Dr. White. I’m Sheriff Sebastian Archer.”

The older man smiled and offered him a wave of a gloved hand. “Nice to meet you. I’m sorry it’s under these circumstances.”

“Me too.”

“Do you have any news on Amanda?”

Alex wanted to know that too. He’d placed a call to her boss, Dr. Amos White, this morning on the way to the Paulsons’ and informed him of what was going on, then asked if he could come down and fill Amanda’s shoes to keep the investigation on track.

“Actually, I might. We were working under the assumption that she had something to do with the shooting last night, but we’ve gathered more surveillance footage since, and we went further back. Someone was waiting on Amanda when she left yesterday. The shots came from her car, but she didn’t do the shooting. There were two men in a black SUV. One hit her over the head and stuffed her into the back of their car. The second one was leaving in her SUV when you guys entered the parking lot.”

“My God! Do you think she’s still alive?” Amos asked, echoing Alex’s thoughts.

Seb shrugged. “Not sure. The blow didn’t look hard enough to kill her. And if they wanted her dead, I would think they’d have just shot her like they tried to do with Alex and Katie.”

“But why would they need her and not us?” Alex asked.

“Don’t know. I put a BOLO out on both SUVs. One of the cameras caught the license plate on the black SUV, but it came back stolen out of Denver. We’ll have to see what shakes out. In the meantime, Alex, you and Katie need to be careful. You probably should, too, Dr. White. Anyone involved in this case could be a target. The Paulsons had some high-profile clients, and any one of them could be out to stop us from uncovering something damning.”

“Well, I’m staying under your roof, I believe?”

Seb nodded.

“I should be well looked after, then.”

“Katie will be staying with me,” Alex said, making the decision right there. She’d probably rant and rave at him, but he didn’t care. “I spent the night at her place last night, but my house has an alarm system.”

Seb grinned. “How’d that go?”

The memory of that kiss they shared the other night flooded his mind, and his body stirred. He shoved the thought away and lifted one shoulder. “Better than expected.”

Seb’s brow quirked. “Hmm. Good. Where is she, anyway?”

“Upstairs in large storage. She took our victims’ clothes up there.”

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