Page 66 of Shielding Aubree

He turned his head and saw Jagger Kline standing in the opening of the doors that led out to the pool deck. "Hey, Jagger. Everything okay?"

"Yeah. Everything is fine with me. I just wanted to stop in and see if I could use the pool."

Ruben nodded but took a moment to speak.

He was watching Jagger's expression and his stance.

His face didn't show much more than his normal guarded expression, but it was the tight line of his shoulders that said he had something he was working through.

"Go ahead," Ruben nodded. "I just cleaned the deck but as long as you avoid the wet spots, I'm good with you coming in."

Ruben turned back to look at the mountain lion just beyond the wall, but the creature was gone.

He scanned the campus in and around the pool area, but he couldn't see a thing beyond the normal landscaping he saw every day.

Part of his head said that he'd just been imagining things, but something deep in his chest said that there was something else happening.

He just didn't know what it was.

It's amazingthe things that pop up in your memory when you weren't thinking about it.

Or when you're desperate not to think about the trouble you were actually in.

Tied up and crammed into what was likely the trunk of a car, it kind of made sense that her mind would conjure up another memory.

Something similar.

But then again, what would be similar to getting kidnapped by a murderer?

Maybe... that was the answer.

Swimming in and out of consciousness, her shoulder and hip bouncing heavily against the hard shell of the trunk, pictures came out of the darkness.

It was late and the road ahead of her was just reflective paint and darkness. The music on the radio was from her phone connected to the car with Bluetooth. Queen's Radio Ga-Ga was coming through the speakers, and her fingers were tapping on the steering wheel along with her left foot as she focused on the road ahead and staying awake.

It was just another drive home from the police station when her headlights caught the outline of two cards on a side road.

Leaning forward, closer to the wheel she saw that one car was parked in front of the other, headlights on, and the car behind it was lighting up the back of the first car.

Dead battery?

It wasn't until she was almost driving past that road that she saw the distinctive lines of rooftop lights on the second car.

A traffic stop?

But where were the lights on top of the car?

Her instinct told her something was off.

There could be any number of reasons why those two cars were on the side of the road like that, but she whipped a U-turn on the main road and drove down the side road toward the other cars.

When her headlights washed over the cars from the back, she could see an officer standing beside the driver's window of the front car.

Knowing procedure the way she did, she lowered her window and stayed put in her car. Getting out without the benefit of her own red and blue lights could be a horrible mistake.

People jumping out of their cars at a traffic stop would make any law enforcement officer nervous.

This late at night on a road with no streetlights? Even worse.

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