Page 45 of Mile High Mystery

Shelby wrenched open the door and peered out in time to see the red glow of disappearing headlights. The silence that followed fell heavy as a blanket. “I don’t see anyone,” Zach said. He stood over her, also looking out the door.

She waited another long minute, then opened the door a little wider. Zach’s neighbor emerged from his door. “What was that?” he asked when he saw the two of them looking out.

Shelby tucked the gun in the back of her jeans and pulled her shirt down over it. “I don’t know,” she said. “Did you see anyone?”

The neighbor shook his head. “Maybe it was a car backfiring.”

Still wary, Shelby stepped outside, but Zach pushed past her. “Your car,” he said, and pointed at the rental Shelby had picked up in Junction. The sedan leaned sharply to one side. She followed Zach over to the vehicle and looked down at the flat tires on the passenger side. The tread on the nearest tire had clearly been shredded by the impact of a bullet.

The neighbor had followed them out. The young, stocky man, dressed in gray joggers and a T-shirt that didn’t quite cover his belly, let out a low whistle. “Someone doesn’t like you,” he said.

Shelby suppressed a shudder. She was used to people not liking her, or at least not liking the job she had to do. But maybe this attack wasn’t really about her. Maybe whoever had done this had known she was inside with Zach, and he was the real target.

Chapter Thirteen

For the second time in as many nights, Zach stood in the parking lot in front of his townhouse with a sheriff’s deputy. Shelby was talking to the wrecker driver who had come to tow her rental car to his shop, where he had promised he would replace her destroyed tires in the morning.

“Do you think the same person who shot out her tires broke into my townhouse last night?” Zach asked.

Deputy Owen turned from his contemplation of the car to meet Zach’s gaze. “I don’t know,” he said. “Do you?”

“Maybe whoever did this thought that was my car.” He looked past her to his truck, parked just a few spaces down.

“Maybe,” Owen said. “Or maybe they knew the car belonged to an FBI agent and were making some kind of statement.”

Zach nodded. In the almost two weeks Shelby had been in Eagle Mountain, plenty of people would have passed on the news that an FBI agent was staying at the Ranch Motel. They probably even knew she was investigating the murder of a woman at the Forest Service campground. A few of them might even have connected Zach to the woman. Everyone on Search and Rescue knew that last fact, and one or more of them might have talked.

“What was Agent Dryden doing here tonight?” Owen asked.

Besides kissing me senseless?Zach struggled to turn his thoughts toward a safer answer. “She had some more questions about what happened here last night,” he said.

Shelby stood back as the wrecker hooked on to her car then slowly winched it onto the flatbed. She waved as the wrecker drove away, then rejoined Zach and Deputy Owen. “He thinks he has the right tires in stock and can get them on first thing in the morning,” she said.

“That’s good.” Though he felt stupid as soon as the words were out of his mouth. Nothing about this situation was good.

She turned to the deputies. “Can I see those bullets you recovered?”

Owen took a small bag from the left breast pocket of his uniform shirt and passed it to her. She studied the two misshapen slugs in the bag. “Twenty-two long rifle,” she said.

“Common as dirt,” Owen said. “We’ll check for prints, but I doubt we’ll find anything.” He returned the bag to his pocket. “Have you made any enemies lately, Agent Dryden?”

She shook her head. “I don’t think this was about me.”

All eyes focused on Zach. He held up both hands. “I don’t know what’s going on,” he said. “I haven’t done anything to anyone.”

“We can give you a ride to the motel,” Deputy Owen said.

“I’ll take her,” Zach said before Shelby could answer.

“I’ll go with Zach,” she said. “But thank you.”

They waited until Deputy Owen had left before they went back inside the townhouse. The closeness of moments before had vanished, replaced by tension like a thick fog between them. Shelby collected her purse and slung it over her shoulder. “I apologize for my unprofessional behavior,” she said, looking not at Zach, but at the space where only moments before they had clung to each other.

“I don’t know. I thought you kissed pretty good for an amateur.”

She glared at him. So much for trying to lighten the moment. “I don’t think you did anything wrong,” he said. He moved in closer to embrace her, but she sidestepped the move.

“I doubt my supervisors would agree.”

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