To Bedevil A Beauty (Southern Sanctuary - Book 5) (8 page)

“You’re
more than welcome darling girl.”  Kimberly breathed out a sigh as Berry
finally closed her eyes.  Glancing down at her shaking hands she smiled
ruefully.  She’d been so tense since she’d heard the news that Berry had
been hurt.  Even more so when she realised she’d finally have a chance to
talk… really talk with Berry.  Something the two of them hadn’t seemed to
do since before Berry had gotten married to that snake charmer Robert
Granger. 

Heavens,
she wanted to hurt that man.  For tricking Berry into marrying him. 
For using her daughter.  For giving Berry that wary, watchful look in her
eyes.  For making her doubt herself.  For leaving her all but
penniless and scrounging to support herself and her mother-in-law. 

Berry
would be horrified to know that she knew that last part… that the whole family
knew.  That they’d conspired and plotted and planned to get Berry back to
Haven Bay, give her a job, a home… a Sanctuary and maybe… just maybe, Kimberly
crossed her fingers, maybe Berry would find love here.  Her little girl
deserved no less.

Digging
out her phone Kimberly paused for a moment.  She hadn’t liked the fact
Berry had gotten hurt but she needed to trust that the Goddess would keep her
little girl safe.  Harder still for Kimberly was to place her trust in
Aunt Alma.
 
Who would ever have thought
there’d come a day when she would conspire with Alma… against her own child, no
less?  Heavens, just remembering her own rocky road to romance made her
grind her teeth in frustration.   But this wasn’t about her, this was
about Berry.
 
She’d do anything for
Berry.  Quickly, before she could change her mind, she tapped out a message. 
B in position.  Release the cats
.

Chapter
Seven

Ramsey
sat nursing a beer whilst he waited on his burger.  For the umpteenth time
he checked his watch.
 
Gideon still had
an hour left on his shift guarding Berry and he didn’t want to look as if he
were undermining his subordinate by showing up early.  God, who was he
kidding, he didn’t want to look too eager.

It
had been a hellish twenty-four hours since Berry had been shot in the High
Council car park.  The fact that they didn’t know anything more about who
pulled the trigger or why, was not for lack of trying.
 
Or for that matter competence.  His
officers had readily stepped up in the crisis.
 
Proving themselves capable, smart and dedicated.  And it wasn’t like
they lacked manpower.
 
Within five
minutes of his initial call a doctor, who just happened to be in the Council
building at the time of the shooting (what were the odds?) was attending to
Berry in the parking lot.
 
Two minutes
later an ambulance was pulling up and a whole pack of locals, belonging to the
neighbourhood watch scheme, had turned up en masse to help. 

Their
co-ordinator, a large sturdy fellow, a few years older than Ramsey, had
introduced himself as Elijah, an intense man with hard, flat eyes of a
soldier.
 
He’d advised that the
neighbourhood watch members were there to help search the Nature Reserve. 
Ramsey hadn’t protested the help of amateurs, not with the seriousness of the
situation and the fact that they desperately needed some answers.  Nor did
he mention how strange it was that all the volunteers had knives or swords strapped
to their bodies, or that they moved like silent professional hunters.

Ramsey
would have given a kidney to be able to head to the hospital and check on Berry
personally but he forced himself instead to focus on the job of setting up a
temporary command post in the parking lot.
 
Grimly he tamped down his concern for Berry Malone and forced his
attention to the job. Sending Zeke to follow up at the hospital and assigning
the rest of his immediate personnel to search for the bullet, the spent shell
casing and any evidence left behind by the shooter that might help them
identify who he was.

Elijah’s
volunteers focused on finding the gunman’s trail in the woods. A challenging
assignment as the sun dropped rapidly from the horizon, leaving them to work by
torchlight.   Maureen organised a number of the local ladies to drop
by with food and carafes of coffee throughout the night.  Now, more than
ever, Ramsey appreciated the community spirit of Haven Bay.  No one
complained. No one gave up.  In anything, as the night progressed it
seemed like more and more volunteers arrived to report to Elijah for an
assignment.

By
dawn they’d found where the bullet had lodged, after it travelled through
Berry’s arm.  Prying it out of the black Mazda 6 side panelling felt like
a hollow victory – now they needed to find the gun to confirm a match. 
Ramsey was studying the .38 slug in its plastic forensic bag when one of
Elijah’s team strode out of the Nature Reserve to grab some breakfast and
advise that they’d finally locked onto the gunman’s trail, and were tracking it
back to the source. 

While
he waited on more news his cell rang, his gut roiling, it was Zeke calling from
the hospital. Up until now Zeke had been texting any updates on Berry’s
condition.  The fact that he was calling couldn’t bode well.

“Tell
me?”  He demanded in his roughest voice.

“I
think we should move her.”
 
Zeke stated
bluntly.

“Why?” 
He tensed, had something happened?  Had the gunman tried again?

“She’s
stable but we can’t protect her here without more bodies.  The doctors are
happy to release her with a few provisos.  I think we need to move her
somewhere more contained.”

Ramsey’s
gut eased, thank God his team were intelligent independent policeman. 
“Haven Bay has a safe house for just such an emergency?”

“I
know Aunt Kimberly would be happy to take her home but I was thinking that the
best place for Berry would be your place.”

“My
place?”  Ramsey wasn’t sure if he’d heard Zeke correctly or if he was
putting words in his officer’s mouth.

Zeke
must have assumed Ramsey’s gruff question translated to reluctance on his part.
“Think about it Chief.  You have that spare bedroom.
 
You’re on the second floor, no buildings
nearby of comparable height.
 
No clear
lines of sight if we are dealing with a shooter.  There’s only one other
apartment on your floor and you need a code for the entrance door and the
elevator.  We won’t have to waste manpower; probably one guy per shift on
the apartment door would cover it.”

“Yeah.” 
Ramsey nodded even as he continued to frown.  What if Berry really had
remembered who he was?  Recognised him from that day in court? 
Understood that he was responsible for imprisoning her husband…
ex-husband?  How happy was she going to be waking up in his apartment? 
Well, too bad. Her safety trumped her… anger?  Outrage? 
Disgust?  He supposed he’d be finding out before too long. “Make it happen
Zeke.  Set up a bodyguard roster… put me down for the nightshift.”

Ramsey
had just hung up when his walkie talkie crackled to life, Elijah’s
neighbourhood
watch volunteers
had found an abandoned camp site at the farthest end of
the Reserve.  Ramsey and Mac drove out to the spot via a series of
meandering back roads and dirt lanes.

It
wasn’t much of a camping spot, Mac advised upon their arrival, amateur
location, it would have flooded in the first heavy rainfall to come along.
 
Ramsey studied the scene with an experienced law
enforcement eye. The brand spanking new two man tent contained one rumpled
sleeping bag. Both it, and the tent, still had magnetic theft prevention strips
attached to them.  No sign of the shooter, only some empty tins, a dead
fire in a makeshift pit and several bottles of water.
 
There was nothing obvious that would help in
providing a clue to the shooter’s identity or current location. 

Elijah
had bought along two of his volunteers to the campsite. A woman who was busy
sniffing the air and an older guy, who was studying the suspect’s footprints as
if they held the secrets to the universe.  Ramsey didn’t protest their presence,
it wasn’t like the Southern Sanctuary had sniffer dogs on the payroll, they
needed answers now, not later.

Ramsey
was leaning back against the cooling hood of his car, staring unseeingly at the
abandoned campsite when the older male volunteer wandered over to his
side. 

“How’s
Berry?”

Ramsey
instantly snapped into the here and now, his eyes flashing storm cloud
grey.
 
Just who was this guy to be
asking?  He looked to be in his early forties, just under six foot with
brown eyes and hair shorn close to his skull.  He failed to be intimidated
by Ramsey’s glare, just stood there staring back at him, then he blinked and a
small reluctant smile tugged at his lips.

“I’m
David Malone by the way… Berry’s Dad.”

Oh
Geez, this was Berry’s Dad?  How?  The man didn’t look old enough to
have a daughter in her thirties.  But he could see the resemblance, the
colour of the eyes, the dusky skin and no doubt if David grew his hair out it
would be a curly riot.

“She’s
fine… hurt, in a little bit of pain but the Doctors are saying she got off
relatively lightly.”  No wonder the man had been out all night searching
for clues, he wanted the bastard who’d hurt his daughter found. “We’ve moved
her to a safer location. She’ll need to stay put until we can establish the
threat level.” 

Ramsey
brushed his hair out of his eyes, noting there were three new neighbourhood
watch volunteers moving into position at the edge of the clearing.  The
trio looked to be related, dark hair, similar features, large of frame and they
moved through the trees like ghosts.  Ramsey stared at them, the older
guy, the one seemingly in charge of the three met his gaze and stared back…
something in his look… surprise?

“Who
are the new arrivals?”  Ramsey queried David Malone.

“Who?” 
David looked around.

“The
ones Elijah’s going over to talk to.”

Now
that David had a direction in which to look he suddenly appeared to know who
Ramsey was referring to.  “Sorry.”  David rubbed his eyes. 
“Long night.  Those are some of the folks from over in Hidden Cove. 
That’s what I was coming to tell you.  I found two distinct sets of
tracks.  One goes South-west and one heads North, toward Hidden
Cove.  I guess Elijah notified them. The terrain in that direction can get
pretty dense and rough.”

Ramsey
nodded thoughtfully.  “You seemed to find the outbound trails pretty
quick, how come it took you so long to find the camp?”

High
colour stained David Malone’s cheeks.

Ramsey
bit back a groan.  “Hell, that sounded like I was criticising you, I
wasn’t, I swear.”

David
chuffed a tired laugh.  “Don’t worry, I know what you meant.  There
were two men… here at the camp.”

“You
sure?”  There was only one sleeping bag, Ramsey noted.

“Yeah,
definitely two, though I think only one of them, the shooter, spent a lot of
time out here.  He’s not an easy guy to track… he moves…
inconsistently.”  It took David a while to find the right word. 

Ramsey
couldn’t help but wonder about the word he really wanted to use.  “So the…
inconsistent one, the hard to track one, he’s our shooter.
 
He sets off for Haven Bay, while his partner
waited for him here, then they either went North or South.”

“I
think they split up.”
 
David was
frowning, looking northwards. “The shooter heading that way.”

Ramsey
nodded, he was a city boy, he’d never been camping a day in his life.  But
even so, he knew enough that David Malone was holding something back… hell, the
whole town was holding something back.  “I’m not asking you to swear in
blood or anything, but if you could use one other word to describe the shooter,
other than inconsistent, what would it be?”

David’s
brown eyes stared at Ramsey like he was reading into his soul.  “Crazy…
out and out crazy."

Ramsey
spent the rest of the day in his office, fielding calls and following up
leads.  Mac thought he had a line on where the tent and sleeping bag were
stolen from so Ramsey let him run with that.  Maureen had the local
grapevine wrapped around her petite wrist, it was a no brainer to assign her to
co-ordinate all the search teams continuing to look for the shooter and now his
mysterious partner.

Just
after lunch, a stray thought had blipped through his tired brain… what if… what
if Berry’s ex-husband was somehow involved in all of this?  Hmm, it was
easy to check.  After a quick search through the National database he put
a call in to the head of the cushy minimum security prison where Robert Granger
was imprisoned. 

The
bastard had been very lucky. When it had been revealed at his trial that he’d
been stealing from his clients’ accounts - the Midnight Raiders included - the
judge had deemed it too risky to incarcerate Robert in the same facility as his
very pissed off former clients.  So minimum security prison it was, three
meals a day and according to the website a comfortable bed.  How was that
justice?

Leaving
a brief message of why he was calling Ramsey placed the phone receiver down,
staring at it hard.  His gut was clamouring, Robert Granger, somehow, some
way, the bastard was involved in this.  Damn, he hated waiting.

And
he was still waiting six hours later as he sat in the Five Alarm bar, right
next to his apartment building on the foreshore… waiting for a phone call and
for his burger.  Releasing a deep sigh Ramsey willed himself to relax,
he’d been up way too long. But it was over thirty hours now since the shooting
and it felt like they were nowhere with the case.

He
let his eyes roam the relatively empty bar.  Strange, since the place had
been opened the same week Ramsey had arrived in town, you would have thought
the locals would have flocked to a new establishment.  The bar, according
to Maureen, was located on the site of the former fire station.
 
Hence the name, Five Alarm. The building
having sat empty and unused for almost fifteen years until the current owners,
two brothers, arrived in town to snap up the property and convert it into a
bar.

They’d
wisely kept all the original red brick, knocked out the back wall of the
station and built a patio out to meet the sandy beach, filling it with low comfortable
sofas and tables, umbrellas available to block out the sun when it was out and
gas heaters on rollers for the cooler nights. 

Ramsey
had chosen to sit indoors, his back to a wall, just the way he liked it. 
From his position he had an excellent view of the entire room, the dark
hardwood floors, matching long bar, the walls behind it decorated with bottles
filled with colourful red liquid that appeared to glow and swirl.  With
its ridiculous high ceiling and clean industrial yet comfy feel, Ramsey
couldn’t understand why the locals weren’t here three deep.  The new
owners appeared to be genial enough.
 
Yet
besides a few tables occupied by couples and a larger table towards the front,
full of men in their early twenties, the place was barely a third full. 
And it wasn’t like the food was bad.  Ramsey gave a nod of thanks as the
only waitress on duty – a redhead with pretty blue eyes - swooped by and
deposited his burger.  Giving him a friendly grin but not stopping to
chat, thank God, since he was starving and not in the mood for small
talk.