Twisted (3 page)

The store owner’s gaze darted to her. His tense expression morphed into relief.

Allison’s skin prickled. Her attention snapped to the customer at the counter with his back to her. Greasy brown hair, oversize leather jacket, shoulders hunched up around his ears. His body moved back and forth with the agitated tic of a tweeker.

Holdup.

The news flash was accompanied by a kick of dread as she realized that both her hands were full.

Always keep your gun hand free.
Allison knew that. She’d had it drilled into her by every firearms instructor she’d ever met, and yet here she stood with an armed assailant, encumbered by a frozen pizza and a bag of kitten chow, her service weapon tucked neatly beneath her jacket. Panic threatened, but she tamped it down as she
scrounged for a plan. If she dropped her groceries, she’d startle him—

The man whirled around, and she cursed her hesitation. She looked at his pistol and widened her eyes in fake surprise.

“Step back!”
He jabbed the gun at her with a shaking hand, then spun back to Sal.

Allison scanned her surroundings. No other customers, thank God. Two cars in front, including hers. No getaway driver in the other vehicle, but the headlights glowed, hinting at a running engine. Why hadn’t she noticed it? She was 0-for-3 here, and her marathon workweek had now culminated in a string of potentially deadly mistakes.

The situation worsened as another car turned into the lot, pulling up to a gas pump. She hoped they were paying outside.

The perp spun toward her, panicked. White male, five-ten, one-forty. Dilated pupils. The tremor in his gun hand extended to his whole body; he was clearly jacked up. Bad news for everyone. So was the fact that he’d made no effort to disguise himself and seemed oblivious to the security camera mounted behind the cash register. Even from ten feet away, Allison could smell the desperation on him.

“I said
back
, bitch!”

She stepped back obediently and tried to look meek.

He turned to the register. “The
money
!”

Sal reached for the cash drawer. It slid open with a
ping,
and Allison watched the store owner, noting all the details she’d missed at first glance. He didn’t just look
tense, he looked frightened. But it was a fierce frightened, like a cornered animal. Sweat beaded at his temples as he glared at the man aiming the gun at him.

Allison eased forward. Sal glanced at her, and his defiant look had her pulse racing. She knew exactly what he thought of this two-bit meth fiend trying to rip off his business, and she hoped he wasn’t rash enough to do anything stupid before she got this under control.

Allison slid a glance at the gunman. His attention bounced nervously between Sal and her, and she prayed he wouldn’t notice the bulge beneath her blazer. She needed to get her hands free.

Sal took out another stack of bills, his eyes imploring her to do something. The perp caught the look and thrust his gun at her.

“You! Over there!” He waved the pistol at the soft-drink station.

Damn it, she needed to get closer, not farther away. Her best chance was to disarm him at close range.

“Now, bitch!”

She took a baby step back.

“Now!”
A burst of spittle accompanied the command.

Allison took several steps back, looking deep into those desperate eyes. It was the desperation that concerned her. Those wild eyes told her he’d shoot her as soon as look at her, and the knowledge made her chest squeeze. She’d thought about being shot in the line of duty, but she’d never envisioned having her life ended by some tweeker with rotten teeth.

He turned and grabbed the bills with his free hand as Sal stacked them on the counter.

“Faster!”

A flutter of movement in the convex mirror near the ceiling caught her eye. She tried not to call attention to it, but she glanced up to see someone slipping from the corridor at the back of the store into the aisle closest to the door, which led straight to the register. Tall and dark-haired, the man wore a charcoal suit and looked remarkably like the defense attorney Allison had gone to war with in court just last week. But it wasn’t the attorney. This man was leaner and broad-shouldered and made a lot less noise.

“That’s
it
? That’s all you
got
?” Meth Man snatched up the pile of twenties and waved them at Sal.
“I want all of it!”

Sal grumbled a response as Allison cut a glance to her left. The businessman hunched low now behind a beer display. His gaze locked with hers, and his hard expression commanded her to stay put.

Crap, just her luck.
Don’t try to be a hero,
she tried to tell him with her eyes, but his focus was on the confrontation now.

“Hand it over!”
The perp was bobbing up and down on the balls of his feet—shrill and angry, but distracted.

Now was her chance.

She flung the pizza away like a Frisbee. In the next instant of confusion, she whipped out her gun and lunged for the man’s weapon.

His pistol tracked her far too closely. She registered the black barrel pointed at her face as a shoe came up and the gun cartwheeled out of the perp’s hand.

Allison thrust a heel into the side of his knee. He howled and crumpled to the floor. The man who’d kicked the gun away shoved Allison aside and flipped
the robber onto his stomach. A Glock appeared from nowhere, and he jabbed it against the perp’s neck.

“Don’t move!”

Allison’s mouth fell open. The man turned and gave her a blistering look.

“Who the hell are you?” she demanded.

“You plan to arrest this guy?”

Her shock lasted maybe a second, and then she sprang into action, jerking a pair of handcuffs from her belt and elbowing the suit out of the way. “I got it,” she said, taking control of the prisoner with her knee on his back.

The robber squirmed and spewed obscenities as she yanked his wrists behind him and slapped on the cuffs. Allison’s back felt damp. She took a steadying breath and tried to regain her composure as she conducted the pat-down.

“You’re under arrest,” she said, with much more bravado than she felt at the moment. Her lips were dry, her hands clammy. She glanced up at Sal, who was on the phone with the 911 dispatcher. “Tell them to send a cage car,” she told him.

Sal nodded.

“You got any other weapons on you?” she asked the perp. “Knives, needles, drug paraphernalia?”

He didn’t answer and she checked his pockets. When she was satisfied, she started to climb off him.

He exploded in a blur of movement. Pain stung her cheek as she caught an elbow, and she had to sit on his butt to make him stop thrashing. The man in the suit pressed a shiny black wing tip between the prisoner’s shoulders as Allison struggled with his legs. At eye level was a shelf of fishing supplies, and she grabbed a roll
of twine. She ripped open the package with her teeth and lashed the binding around his ankles. The prisoner cursed and squirmed for a while, but eventually the fight went out of him. He was trussed like a turkey now, and she knew she was going to catch all kinds of S&M jokes from the guys at work.

Allison glanced up at the man now leaning against the checkout counter. His palms rested casually on the Formica, and the Glock had disappeared beneath his suit jacket. He hadn’t even broken a sweat.

He lifted a brow at her. “Not bad, Officer.”

Okay, he was definitely a cop. DEA? Immigration? FBI? And suddenly it hit her. She knew exactly who he was and why he was here.

The corner of his mouth curved up, and she felt a surge of annoyance.

“You have a permit to carry a concealed handgun?” she asked, although she knew the answer.

He sighed and reached into his jacket. He pulled out a leather folio and flipped it open.

“Special Agent Mark Wolfe, FBI.”

Allison sat in the interview room, running through the surveillance video for the fourth time. It didn’t get any less embarrassing with each viewing.

Distracted police detective walks into a store, failing to notice the car parked out front with its engine running. Detective shops for groceries. Detective interrupts robbery-in-progress armed with kitten chow instead of a gun.

She watched the surveillance cam bird’s-eye view once again, as Mark Wolfe burst out from behind the
beer display to kick the gun from the perp’s hand the instant before it could have gone off.

She shuddered. A fraction of a second later and she might not be sitting here, all because she’d neglected to follow her most basic training. She watched herself cuff the perp, and even the grainy recording didn’t hide her shaking hands.

Disgusted, Allison ejected the disk from the player and slipped it into an evidence bag. She dropped it into a brown accordion file already fat with paperwork. She’d spent two tedious hours booking Steven P. Irby, thirty-three, for aggravated robbery and resisting arrest, and another two completing the reports. Now she was exhausted, cranky, and in dire need of a hot shower.

Allison went back to her desk, where she locked her case file in a drawer for tomorrow. The bullpen was empty, but she spotted a fellow detective from the Crimes Against Persons squad coming out of the break room.

“Heard about Sal’s,” Jonah Macon said. “You all right?”

“Fine.”

He glanced at her cheek, and his frown told her she had a bruise where Irby’s elbow had landed. “The fed already left, I take it?”

“Slipped out right after Sean took his statement,” she told him.

“That was fast.”

“Said he had a plane to catch.”

“Bet he missed it.”

Allison pictured Mark Wolfe leaning against the patrol car as he gave his statement. Cool. Composed. He’d watched her from across the parking lot with those
brown-black eyes, and she hadn’t been able to read his opinion of her. But she could guess. He had an arrogance about him that indicated what he thought about their small-town police department.

Jonah was still staring at her. He had something on his mind.

“What?” she asked.

“Nothing.”

“No, really. What’s your take on him?”

“Don’t have one. He talked to Reynolds.” Jonah moved for the door, and she knew she was getting the brush-off. “Go home, Doyle. Get some sleep. Looks like you need it.”

Allison watched him leave, unsettled by what he’d told her.
Not your case,
she reminded herself. And anyway, she had enough to worry about. She made her way downstairs and once again took off for the night. She hitched herself behind the wheel of her dinged Chevy pickup and coaxed the engine to life. Then she pulled out of the parking lot and headed for home.

Alone in her truck, she took what felt like her first deep breath in hours. She tugged the elastic band from her ponytail and buzzed the windows down to let the cold air whip through her hair. But her mind wouldn’t clear. She kept picturing that gun.

All those years, all that training, and still she’d ended up on the wrong side of a loaded weapon. It was a blow to her reputation, and worse, her confidence. And although no one had said anything directly, she knew her sloppiness hadn’t gone unnoticed by her coworkers.

The night was blustery. Discarded candy wrappers tumbled down the street and huddled together against
curbs and tree trunks. Sagging jack-o’-lanterns sat in doorways, gazing out with empty eyes. The costumed kids who had scampered up and down the sidewalk only a few nights before were now safely in bed where they belonged.

The street’s small brick houses gave way to cookie-cutter apartment buildings where young professionals enjoyed workout rooms and greenbelt views. At least some of them did. Allison hardly ever opened her blinds. And when she had time to work out—which she hadn’t lately—she either went for a run or hit the no-frills gym at the YMCA near the police station.

Allison parked and gathered the pet food off the seat, along with the frozen pizza Sal had given her as a thank-you when she’d left his store. She collected her mail before unlocking her door. Silence greeted her. She stood still for a moment and listened to it. It sounded different tonight. Lonelier.

Or maybe she was just in a mood.

She dumped the mail on the counter and shrugged out of her blazer. Then she removed her holster and boots. She filled a cereal bowl with cat food and stepped onto her patio, where a striped tabby was waiting impatiently beside the railing. She set the food down for him and scratched his ears.

The air outside smelled of burning wood. The temperature had dipped, and it was the first night cold enough for fireplaces. Allison leaned against the railing and gazed out at the trees. The thicket looked dark and foreboding—probably because a woman had been killed there recently. The discovery of her remains had sent a shock wave through town and put the entire San
Marcos police force on high alert. And though everyone was working to maintain a calm front, the department was reeling. Crimes like that just didn’t happen in this community. Drug busts, yes. Convenience store robberies, yes. Last summer they’d even had a school shooting.

But women being murdered and left to rot in the woods? That sort of thing didn’t happen here.

Except it had.

Allison wasn’t even on the case—yet—but still she felt connected to it. It wasn’t just the brutal nature of the crime or that it had happened only steps away from her home. As one of the few female cops in this town, Allison felt particularly responsible for the women here, and she was determined to see justice done.

Back inside, she turned the shower to scalding and tossed her wilted shirt onto the floor. She thought of that gun barrel again and suddenly she really, really didn’t want to be alone tonight.

She showered and pulled on jeans and a fresh top, then stood before the mirror in the hallway—critiquing, debating, and critiquing some more.