Alex stood in front of what used to be Grady’s General Store and swallowed a string of creative swear words. It was as if fate was making this part of her plan as difficult as possible.
Think, Alex, she told herself firmly. The only thing you’ll accomplish by having a hissy fit in downtown Monroe is drawing attention, and that won’t help the situation.
It was horribly frustrating, though, that the only place to buy a gun in Monroe was now a bombed-out wreck.
The only legal place to buy a gun, the logical voice in her head corrected her. Too bad she didn’t have any connections in this backward place. From her research, it had seemed like every resident was armed, from toddlers on up, but that didn’t do her any good unless she had a way to get hold of a gun. Any trip out of town would need to be explained to her extraordinarily nosy roommates and their cop love interests, and the required background check would be noticed by a certain Mateo Espina, and she didn’t want to make him curious enough to visit “Elena Dahl”…not until her plan had been set in motion. She’d been hoping that the Monroe general store owner could be convinced—either by flirting or cash—to forego the background check, but she hadn’t taken into consideration that the store wouldn’t still be standing.
“What happened?” The querulous voice made Alex whip her head around to see an elderly man standing next to her. She silently reprimanded herself for letting him sneak up on her while she’d been staring at the burned-out remains of the store.
“I don’t know,” she said, putting on her innocent Elena persona even as she eyed him carefully. Despite his frail, stooped body and the hazy cast to his eyes, she knew better than to underestimate anyone. “I’m new to town. Are you visiting?”
“’Course not. I’ve lived in Monroe since 1962.” He straightened as if offended by the idea that he wasn’t a local.
“You don’t know what happened to the store?” she asked.
His indignation faded, replaced by what appeared to be confusion as he studied the building’s blackened skeleton. “I don’t…” His voice trailed off, and then he turned toward her. “Have we met?”
“Not yet.” An idea began to sprout as she put on her sweetest smile and held out her hand. “I’m Elena Dahl. I’m staying with Jules… She works at the viner?”
His eyes lit in a moment of clarity. “Jules! Yes, she’s my favorite waitress. She always remembers that I don’t like onions. Nasty things. Even if you pick them out, the whole meal still tastes disgusting.” He shook her hand. “It’s a pleasure, Elena. I’m Bernard Wernicutt, but everyone calls me Bendsie.”
“Very nice to meet you.” Alex wasn’t lying. This was perfect. Even if Bendsie remembered giving her information on how to get a gun, he could be easily discredited. “Since you’ve lived in town so long, I’m sure you’ll be able to answer my question.”
“Bet you’re right.” His thin shoulders pulled back. “I know pretty much everything there is to know about Monroe.”
Her smile wasn’t fake anymore. “Jules’s place is so isolated. I would feel so much safer with some home protection. Now that this happened”—she gestured toward the bombed store—“where can I buy a gun in this town?”
“Well,” he said. “Word is that Gordon Schwartz has a whole armory. Bet he’d be willing to part with a pistol for the right price.”
Bingo. “Where can I find him?”
“Find who?” His gaze had gone hazy again, and Alex held back a groan.
“Gordon Schwartz.”
“Why do you need to find Gordon?” His tone grew scolding. “Nice girl like you should stay far away from that wild boy. He’s going to get himself into serious trouble one day. After he blew up the Johnsons’ beehive, he didn’t seem sorry at all…just sorry he’d been caught.” He peered at Alex’s face. “Who are you?”
She sighed silently and mentally revised her plan. “Elena Dahl. I’m friends with Jules, who always remembers you hate onions. You were just telling me about your favorite gun.”
“My favorite gun?” He seemed confused but not unwilling to follow her lead. “The Peacemaker?”
Ugh. “No, the semiautomatic.” She was fishing, but she really didn’t want to be stuck with a single-action revolver.
“The Springfield pistol?” His eyebrows drew together. “That’s not my favorite. I just kept it because my nephew gave it to me. Can’t think of any way to sell it without hurting his feelings.”
“I’d be willing to take it off your hands. Let’s go get it now.”
“Uncle Bendsie!” a man shouted from down the block. He started hurrying toward them, and Alex saw her opportunity slipping away.
Turning so her back was to the approaching nephew, she grabbed a Sharpie out of her messenger bag. Tugging up Bendsie’s sleeve, she scribbled 32 Blank Hill Lane on the inside of his wrist. “Bring the gun to this address. Can you remember that?” He nodded, but she was still doubtful, so she added Springfield before tugging down his sleeve again.
“Thirty-two Blank Hill Lane,” he said slowly, smiling slightly. “Delilah Garmitt’s place. She’s a beauty.”
Alex didn’t know who this Delilah was—probably some woman from Bendsie’s past—but she happily took his memory and ran with it. “That’s right, and beautiful Delilah needs a gun for protection.” Slipping the pen back into her bag, she saw that Bendsie’s nephew was just twenty feet away, and she gave him a friendly wave before turning back to Bendsie, lowering her voice. “You need to bring the gun to Delilah.”
His wiry white brows drew together. “Is her no-good dad drinking again?”
The nephew was close enough to hear, so she just nodded deliberately, hoping that Bendsie’d remember with the help of the address on his arm.
“Uncle Bendsie, there you are.” Turning toward Alex, Bendsie’s nephew gave her a tight smile that warmed as he gave her a quick up-and-down glance. She quickly hid her annoyance at the interruption beneath a shy smile. “My uncle tends to wander off as soon as I’m distracted. At least he remembered to put on his coat this time. Half the time he comes outside in his bathrobe.”
“You live close by, then?” she asked, mentally working out yet another plan in case Bendsie didn’t come through for her.
“Yeah, just a block or so away.” Bendsie’s nephew turned and pointed down the street. “See the house with the inflatable snowman in the yard? Ours is the one right past that—two-eleven—in case you find my uncle wandering around again.”
“Who are you?” Bendsie asked.
With an apologetic grimace, his nephew took his arm and started escorting him down the snowy street. Alex watched as they walked away, the wheels turning in her brain. If this worked out, if Bendsie managed to remember long enough, he’d bring the gun right to her.
Not only that, but he’d most likely forget he’d ever met her. Alex felt a slow smile stretch across her face. Maybe fate wasn’t laughing at her. Bendsie Wernicutt was better than Grady’s General Store ever could’ve been.
* * *
Just seconds after Kit sat down in the chief’s office with her pile of paperwork, Justice sprawled out on the floor next to her chair, Hugh opened the door and stuck his head inside.
“Hey, young’un. Grab your dog and let’s go.”
Standing, Kit snatched her jacket from the back of the desk chair and pulled it on. Justice bounced to his feet, as happy as she was to escape the tedium of the office, and she clipped on his lead. Despite her excitement about being interrupted, she had to ask, “Am I going to get into trouble with the chief for blowing this off for the second day in a row? I know he let me skip the paperwork yesterday because of the fire, but eventually I’m going to have to sign up for health insurance.”
“That can wait. This is a matter of life and death.” Without elaborating, Hugh charged down the hallway, leaving Kit to scramble after him. Even though her responsible side was pushing her to stay and finish what she needed to get done, her adrenaline-junkie side easily won. If she missed an important call just because she insisted on doing paperwork, she’d never forgive herself.
“Whose life and whose death?” she asked, catching up with him.
“Bendsie Wernicutt is the answer to both.” He surged forward, making her have to trot to keep up. For someone who’d recently injured his leg, Hugh was really fast.
“Whosie Whatsie?” she asked, trying to hide the fact that she had to skip every second step to not get left behind.
“Bendsie. He’s elderly, has dementia, and wandered away from his caretaker. Bendsie’s Springfield nine-millimeter pistol is also missing, although his nephew isn’t sure when the gun disappeared. Bendsie’s been randomly giving away his possessions lately.”
Despite her concern for the man, Kit felt a tiny hop of excitement at the thought of getting to do a search with Justice. “What are we waiting for?” She sped up so that Hugh fell behind her that time. “Let’s go find Bendsie.”
They basically raced to the squad car, where Lexi was already waiting. She looked like she was just as excited about the call, bouncing in the back of the car, her legs straight like pogo sticks. After loading Justice in the back, Kit automatically reached for the driver’s door, but Hugh cleared his throat. Hiding her grimace, she circled the car and got in the front passenger seat, twisting around to look in the back and make sure the dogs were settling in.
Justice was obviously ecstatic to be with Lexi again, basically curling his wriggling body around her, his tail whapping against the back of the seat. Although Lexi tried to feign long-suffering endurance of his affection, Kit saw the Malinois’s tail wag a few times before she got it under control again.
They pulled up to Bendsie’s address just four minutes after they left the makeshift station. Theo was already there, trying to question a middle-aged man who was pacing the walkway in front of the house. Kit got out and opened the back door. When she hooked the lead to Justice’s harness, his whole body quivered with excitement. He knew exactly what it meant when she used that loop—he was going to work, and there was nothing he enjoyed more.
“Finally!” The man plowed through the snow-covered yard toward them once Justice surged out of the squad car. “I hope the dog means you’re actually going to look for my uncle, rather than stand around flapping your lips.”
“Do you have something that smells like him?” Kit asked, falling into the familiar routine. “An item of clothing he’s worn recently that hasn’t been washed yet, for example?”
“Yeah, hang on.” The man reversed course and hurried into the house.
Once he disappeared inside, Kit shot a bland-faced Theo a sideways look. “You’re flapping your lips again?”
Behind her, Hugh coughed. Kit was beginning to recognize that as his way of smothering a laugh. “Yeah,” Hugh said in a low voice that didn’t carry to the house. “Theo’s a nasty lip-flapper.”
When Theo just gave them a flat, unimpressed stare, Kit met Hugh’s gaze and had to quickly look away again before she started laughing. A man is missing, she reminded herself, sobering quickly as the nephew reemerged, holding what looked like a flannel shirt.
“Here,” he said, holding out the balled-up fabric.
“Thank you.” Kit accepted the shirt. “Do you know if your uncle left out the front door?”
“He had to,” Bendsie’s nephew said. “The back door’s blocked. This is the only way out of the house.”
Kit offered the shirt to Justice, who snuffled at it furiously. She had to hold back a smile at how he never simply sniffed something. Instead, he threw his whole self into it, nearly burying his head in the fabric in his enthusiasm. After giving him a few seconds, she withdrew the shirt and told him, “Justice, find.”
The dog dropped his head toward the ground, his long ears flopping over his face, and started to search for Bendsie’s trail.
“Here.” Hugh held open a paper bag he’d just retrieved from the squad car and Kit dropped the shirt into it with a nod of thanks. Justice made ever-widening loops around her as she fed him more of the twenty-foot lead, focusing on staying out of the dog’s way.
When Justice lifted his head and let out his characteristic baying bark, Kit grinned. He charged down the driveway and into the street, quickly taking up all the slack in the lead. Kit chased after him, slipping a little on the packed snow in the road. Justice turned east, running back toward town.
Behind her, Kit heard the squad car’s engine start up. Since Hugh was jogging to her right, she assumed that Theo and the nephew were driving behind them. Justice turned again, to the north this time, trailed the scent a block, and then turned so they were once again heading east. Kit settled in, finding a pace that she could hold for miles and not letting Justice yank her out of it. Right away, she felt the same squeeze of her lungs that she’d felt the previous day running through the woods, and she slowed her pace a little more, even though she hated to do it.
“You don’t have to do that.” Hugh sounded irritated, and she glanced at him, confused.
“Do what?”
Now he looked annoyed, as well. “Slow down.”
“If I don’t, I’m going to be sucking air in about five minutes.” Her tone was a little snappy, but she couldn’t help it. She prided herself on her fitness, but this was a whole new environment. “The air’s a lot thinner here than I’m used to. I’ll adjust eventually, but you need to give me a few days.”
His aggravated expression dropped, replaced by surprise. “Oh. Sorry. Thought you were slowing down for me. I’m used to Theo and Otto trying to baby me.”
“Why would I slow down for you?” she said. “If you can’t keep up, just get in the car.”
“Oh, I can keep up.” He sounded like he was back to his usual self. “We could run all the way to Denver, and I’d still keep up. In fact, I could run even faster than you, much faster, but I don’t want to get ahead of the handler.”
“Hugh.” She gave him a sharp look, knowing why Theo always seemed to be at the end of his patience. Her competitive nature had flared at his words, but she’d be a miserable, air-sucking mess if she allowed him to goad her into running too fast. “If you keep this up, I’m going to have to race you, and we’ll both lose, because I’ll be puking and you’ll be limping and Theo will yell at us.”
Although he snickered, Hugh didn’t say anything else, and he gave a salute that Kit took as agreement. A tug on the lead brought her attention back to Justice, who was following his nose to the other side of the road.
They were running down Main Street, the highway that passed through town, and Kit was thankful for the following squad car keeping any incoming traffic from running them over. It’d only been six months, but she’d forgotten what it was like to have competent partners who had her back. Despite Hugh’s regular teasing and the occasional feeling that he and the other cops were holding back information, things were so much easier when she had a team helping her. For the first time in months, all she had to worry about was letting her dog lead her to the missing person.
As they passed through the center of the tiny downtown, people poked their heads out of the few businesses that were open to watch them jog down the road—dog, pedestrians, and squad car with the lights flashing. Kit got a glimpse of a few people in front of the VFW, but her attention was focused on Justice. As soon as they passed the vacant lot where the old diner had been, Justice took a sharp turn into the post office parking lot. Kit had a moment of hope that Bendsie was safe inside the heated building, but Justice didn’t pause. Instead, he headed straight for the trees bordering the back of the lot.
Hugh groaned.
“Last chance to catch a ride in the car,” Kit puffed as they plowed through the snowdrifts toward the tree line. He just shook his head stubbornly.
Once in the forest, the snow was only a few inches deep, and it got a little easier to keep from sinking. It wasn’t all easy going, however. The trees were closer together and the undergrowth was thicker here than in the woods they’d run through the day before. Justice wove his way through the evergreens, finding dog-size openings between the trees and brush, forcing Kit to stop occasionally so she could untangle the lead and find a human-accessible path. There were branches hidden under the snow, and she kept tripping over them. From the amount of swearing coming from Hugh, he was having the same problem.
Finally, the trees opened up, leaving plenty of room for two people and a dog to maneuver.
“Stop,” Hugh ordered, coming to a halt at the bottom of an old metal windmill.
Although she obeyed, she frowned at him. At the pace they’d been moving, they had to catch up with the elderly man soon, even if he had almost an hour’s head start. “What’s the problem?”
“I know this place.” He waved at the windmill as if that explained everything.
“So?”
“So I’m wondering what exactly is up with your dog.” He crossed his arms and stared at her, his frown belligerent.
“What? Nothing is up with him. He’s trailing Bendsie, who we need to find before he freezes to death!” Her voice had risen with each word, and she took a breath, trying to regain her sense of calm. “I think the question is what is up with you.”
“Fine.” From his tone, though, nothing was fine. “Let’s go. See where he’s taking us. Ask yourself if it seems familiar.”
“Nothing in this town is familiar,” she grumbled, but she turned to Justice, who looked as confused as she was feeling. “Justice, find.”
He picked up the trail in an instant, moving through the trees as quickly as Kit would let him. She ran a little faster than she should’ve, but she wanted to find Bendsie and get this call over with. Hugh was silent, but she could almost feel his judgmental gaze burning into her back. Shaking off the sensation, she followed her dog. It didn’t matter. Hugh’s strange, illogical temper tantrum didn’t matter. All that mattered was finding an old man with dementia and getting him home where he’d be safe.
It only took a few more minutes for Hugh’s accusation to make sense.
Justice burst out of the trees into a clearing, Kit behind him. No, not a clearing, she realized with a clenching stomach, a backyard. It was Jules’s backyard, to be precise, exactly where Justice had led them yesterday. She stared at her dog, confused. What was wrong with Justice? Even when he couldn’t figure out obedience commands to save his life, he was a natural tracker. Was he broken? Had the move to Monroe wrecked him somehow?
He didn’t look broken or wrecked or in any way uncertain as he towed her around the side of the huge, dilapidated house.
“I’ll have to ask the twins if they left a bag full of hot dogs somewhere around the house,” Hugh said. Although his tone was light, Kit felt her face heat with embarrassment, and she kept her gaze fixed on Justice to hide her expression.
“Let’s see where he takes us before assuming he’s wrong,” she said.
“This is the second time in two days he’s led us here,” Hugh said, not sounding as amused anymore. “Unless Bendsie started that fire yesterday and then moved in with Grace, Jules, and the others, the dog is confused.”
Quick words in Justice’s defense rose to Kit’s lips, but she clenched her teeth, holding them back. “We’ll see.”
“Hopefully soon,” Hugh grumbled as they jogged along the side of the house where the snowdrifts were higher.
Justice bounded around the corner to the front yard, pulling harder now. In front of the porch steps, he stopped abruptly and sat, facing the house. Her stomach sinking, Kit followed, looping the excess lead as she did so. It reminded her so much of the day before, when Justice had signaled at the back door, rather than the front. If Hugh was right, she’d never live it down at the station, and no one would ever trust her or her dog again.
Passing the overgrown, snow-heaped shrubs next to the porch steps, Kit came to an abrupt halt right next to her dog. A grin spread across her face, wider and wider until it ached with a wonderful, righteous burn.
“Good dog.” Pulling out Justice’s sock monkey, she played a quick game of tug with him—rewarding him for a successful track—before turning to the elderly man sitting on one of the porch steps. She heard Hugh talking on his radio, giving their location. “Hello. You must be Bendsie.”
He turned to look at her. “Who’s asking?”
“I’m Kit, and this is Justice.” The hound wagged his tail at the sound of his name. “That’s Hugh. We’re officers with the K9 unit, and we’ve been looking for you. Did you bring your gun with you?”
“My gun?” He glanced down at the empty hands resting in his lap and then back at her.
“Your Springfield nine-millimeter pistol.”
“Oh, I gave that to someone who needed it more than me.” His voice trailed off at the end, making the last few words a mumble. Turning his head, he looked into the trees bordering the yard.
“When was that?” she asked, and he looked at her blankly. “When did you give your gun away?”
“What gun?” His eyes narrowed. “Who are you?”
“I’m Kit.” She gestured toward the step. “Mind if I join you?”
When he didn’t object, she sat next to him, and Justice settled by their feet. Bendsie was wearing a coat and boots, she was happy to see. His hands and cheeks, although red from the cold, didn’t have the waxy appearance of frostbite. For an elderly man who’d just wandered a few miles, he looked better than she’d expected.
“Hugh,” she said, once he’d finished talking on the radio. “Mind lending Bendsie your gloves?”
“’Course.” He immediately removed them and helped Bendsie put them on. “How’s that? Warmer?”
“Murdoch, is that you?” Bendsie asked, rather than answering the question.
“That’s me,” Hugh said, straightening from his crouch.
“How’s that wild kid of yours? Still think he’s going to follow in the footsteps of your jailbird brother?”
Hugh’s smiled turned into a grimace as Kit raised an eyebrow at him. “Nah,” he said. “Hugh grew up to be a cop. He still likes picking locks, though.”
“A cop.” Bendsie shook his head. “Imagine that. Thought that kid would be locked up by his eighteenth birthday for sure, after that prank he pulled.”
Hugh’s forehead wrinkled. “The thing with the green paint?”
“No, the cow stunt.”
“Right.” Hugh looked amused and a bit nostalgic. “I’d forgotten about the cow.”
Kit looked back and forth between the men after they both fell silent. “You can’t just leave it there. What happened with the cow?”
Hugh made a zipping motion over his lips, and Theo’s squad car pulled up in front of the house, distracting Bendsie before he could answer. As she helped the elderly man stand, Kit decided she’d have to stop in and have a chat sometime. Not only could she check on him, but she also might be able to get the details of Hugh’s wild childhood. She needed to hear the cow story—and hopefully get some ammunition to torture Hugh with when he teased her about Wes.
Payback would be sweet.