Page 3 of Outlaw Ridge: Hayes

“Dispatch isn’t answering,” she muttered after a couple of seconds. Frowning, she glanced in the direction where the truck had fled. “Let me get the prisoner inside, and I’ll go after it. You think the shooter was gunning for Petey?”

Hayes considered that a moment. “Maybe. Obviously, he’s a class A dirtbag and no doubt has plenty of enemies.”

But that suddenly didn’t feel right.

And Hayes didn’t like that tightness that began to form in his gut. That tightness had a way of letting him know that something more than just the obvious was wrong here, and since that sensation had saved his hide a time or two, he didn’t ignore it.

Still keeping watch in case the shooter returned, Jemma took hold of one of Petey’s arms, and Hayes took the other. This time, it was a perp-run, and despite the man’s hampered movements, he was clearly ready to get inside and away from anyone who possibly wanted him dead.

Jemma threw open the door to the police station and muttered more profanity when she stepped into a spray of water. The overhead sprinkler system was spewing, and Hayes quickly realized why. There was smoke coming from the back of the building.

“What the heck,” Jemma muttered. “Trace? Clayton?” she called out, the urgency in her tone and on all over her face.

Those were no doubt the names of the deputies who were supposed to be on duty. But no one was at any of the desks in the bullpen that was in the center of the large open space.

“Trace?” Jemma tried again, and this time there was even more alarm in her voice.

No answer.

With the water continuing to shower them, Jemma let go of her grip on Petey, and taking out her phone again, she called the fire department while hurrying past the sheriff’s office. Hayes kept Petey in tow and was right behind her, but he could see that it, too, was empty.

That knot in his stomach got a whole lot tighter.

She raced to the back of the building toward the source of that smoke. “Clayton?” she tried again, making another call, and he saw that she pressed Sheriff Marty Bonetti’s number.

It rang. And rang and rang. Before it went to voicemail.

Jemma’s breath was gusting now, but she kept searching. Kept calling out the names of the two deputies. Kept getting no response from them.

She threw open a door at the end of a narrow hall, and she switched on a light to what appeared to be a breakroom with a counter, microwave, and leather sofa well past its prime. There were some traces of smoke here coming from a trash can in the center of the room, and the water from the sprinklers had pooled on the floor.

But it wasn’t just water.

There were red streaks snaking through it.

Hayes followed the source of those streaks to the far left corner of the room. And he saw them.

Two men in deputy uniforms identical to the one Jemma was wearing. The pair were on the floor, both lying in a pool of blood.

And both men were very much dead.

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Chapter Two

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Jemma felt the icy slam of emotions go through her body, and it took a few seconds for her mind to register what she was seeing.

Trace and Clayton were on the floor.

They’d been shot in their heads.

Jemma bolted toward them, slipping in the water and the blood. She skidded across the floor and would have likely slid right into the deputies if Hayes hadn’t taken hold of her and pulled her back to her feet.

She took a moment, gathering her composure and her breath. Took another moment just because she had to force herself to stay put. Jemma wanted to rush to them, to check for a pulse. She wanted to help her fellow officers. But somewhere in her muddle of thoughts, she knew there’d be no heartbeats. No breaths.

No life.

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