Page 52 of Shelter for Martina

“What makes you think they were aiming at you?”

“Because some of us had been outside on our break.” He’d seen the tables outside the door, so he knew what she was talking about. “They all came in, but I was finishing my chips, so I sat there by myself for a minute. When I got up, I heard this popping sound and something hitting the side of the building. I ran inside, but it was too late. They just kept shooting.”

Bud knew what she was talking about. The metal-clad building was no match for a rifle. “Were they fast shots?”

“No. Not that fast, but they just kept coming. Nobody inside realized what was happening until I started screaming and running, and they all started doing the same. I think a couple of people were hit.” Eyes filled with horror, she looked up at him. “They got hurt because of me! It’s my fault!”

“No, baby. It’s not your fault. It’s the fault of whoever was doing that, not you. You didn’t do anything wrong.”

“I should’ve run away from the building!”

“If you’d done that, he would’ve killed you. Running inside was your only choice. Come on. Let’s get out here in the break room. You need to sit down.” His arm still around her, Bud led Martina out of the bathroom and into the little break room. When he had her seated, he asked one of the employees to go and get a deputy for him, and they sat until the deputy came to take her statement.

It was no surprise to him when AmosFletcher and AlexRoss showed up. “They’re collecting evidence. When we get one of the slugs, we’ll match it to the one we found in your engine block, but I’m betting it’ll be the same,” Amos told him with a sigh. “Whoever this is, they’ve got a hard-on for you and Mrs.Anderson. Are the two of you, you know,” Amos said, whispering, “together?”

“Yeah. And whoever it is, they’ve figured that out.”

“I see that.”

He didn’t want to ask, but he had to. “Are there any fatalities?”

“No. Just a couple of flesh wounds. Whoever it was, they were shooting high. They didn’t intend to kill anybody. They were just trying to scare someone. And now we know who it was.”

“Then there’s something you need to see.” Leaving Martina there in Alex’s care, Bud took Amos to the car and handed him the bag with the note. “Take this. I got it just a little while ago. Matter of fact, it was,” he said, pulling up the text he’d sent Len, “forty-eight minutes ago.”

“Plenty of time for them to come here and tear the place apart, which is exactly what they did. We need to catch whoever this is before they kill somebody.”

“I hate to tell you this,” Bud said, his voice low, “but I’m pretty sure they already have.”

Chapter 8

Bud didn’t quite knowwhat to do, so they stopped and got some food, then went straight to his house. As soon as they got there, he fed the horses in broad daylight, then went inside and set the alarm.

They spent the evening in interior rooms, away from windows. The only time he went near a window or door was to let the dog out and back in, and he didn’t go out with her. Watching her, he looked for signs that she might have heard anything outside, but she went out, did her business, and came right back in. At about nine, he asked Mr.Emerson to go out and check on the horses. His neighbor called back and said they were fine, so he and Martina went to bed.

There was no sex. He couldn’t take a chance on making any noise and not being able to hear something outside. She slept, but not well. Bud, on the other hand, lay awake, listening in the dark. Any sound, no matter how small, was cause for alarm. Morning seemed a million miles away, and when light finally seeped in around the curtains, he breathed a sigh of relief. They really weren’t any safer. It wouldn’t be any easier for them to see what was going on around them, considering how stealthy the attacks had been, but at least if something happened to them, someone else would probably notice.

Martina wasn’t going to work. No way would he let her. He put her in the cruiser with him and they went straight to the post. At least there he was pretty sure they were safe. The conference room was full when they got there that morning, and he deposited Martina in one of the smaller interior offices before he joined everyone else. “So, what have you got?” Len asked the two KDCI officers.

“Because of what we do, we’re able to access a lot of information. And we uncovered something interesting. We started matching burglaries with financial records.” Amos dropped a packet of information in front of every officer in the room. “As you can see, we followed the money trail backward. Every time a deposit was made, we followed it back to arrest records. You can see which ones were his paychecks and which ones weren’t.”

Bud flipped two of the pages and looked them over. “Am I reading this right?”

“Yep. About a week after every robbery, SheriffYoung has a sizeable deposit in his account. So we pulled financials for the suspect and, yep. Identical.”

“So that’s their sharing of the proceeds.”

“Yeah. We don’t know yet who they’re selling it all to, but it’s somebody close by or it would take a lot longer to get rid of.”

“This is a lot of money,” Eldred murmured. “Alotof money.”

“Yes. It is. That’s why we need to keep an eye out. This stuff has to be going somewhere.”

Len nodded. “Okay. Anybody else got anything?”

“Yeah. We still can’t figure out how they know about me and Martina. Somebody had to tip them off. We haven’t been extremely public, and unless they were following us, they couldn’t have known.” Bud sat back in his chair. “If anybody has any ideas, I’d love to hear them.” He looked around the room, and everybody was either shaking their heads or shrugging. Except for one person.

EldredMichaels sat there, head buried in the papers Amos had handed out. He hadn’t made eye contact with one single person the whole time they’d been in the room together, and Bud thought that was pretty odd. “Anything on the slugs from the shooting?”

---