This can’t be happening.
Yet…as twins, Maren and Opal had often shared a strange sensory connection. A connection that had Maren questioning from the beginning if her sister was truly dead. After having searched the riverbank for miles, trying to find any sign of Opal but coming up empty, she was sure she’d have physically felt the loss of her twin.
As she approached the clinic door with Haven at her side, an uneasy feeling shifted through her, causing the hairs at her nape to lift with alarm. As she reached for the door handle, Haven spun, faced the street and let out a series of frantic barks.
Having worked with Haven for over two years, Maren knew the tone of her partner’s bark.
Haven was alerting to danger.
But from where? And who?
Before Maren could formulate an action plan, gunfire rang out. Bullets pelted the building around her, coming within inches of slamming into her or Haven. The clinic doors exploded in a shower of glass. Terrified screams echoed from within.
Acting quickly, Maren crouched and reined in Haven’s leash. She hustled them both toward the nearest parked car to use as cover as more bullets peppered the front of the clinic and sidewalk.
Using the wheel well of a luxury vehicle parked at the curb in front of the building, and keeping Haven out of the line of fire, Maren reached for her cell phone. She called for backup and asked the dispatcher to alert her task force boss, FBI Special Agent Emmett Dane, that she was in trouble at the Barren Valley Clinic location. She was trapped and under fire.
Drawing her weapon, she debated returning fire. She wasn’t sure where the shots were coming from.
Why was someone shooting? Was she the target? Did this have to do with the illegal baby adoption ring? Or was she just in the wrong place and the wrong time? Could the onslaught of firepower be aimed at the clinic itself?
Aggravation chomped through her veins. She hadn’t been able to catch the woman who looked like her twin, maybe evenwasher twin, before she’d entered the clinic. Could she have actually been her sister? Was she the shooter’s target?
Or was her mind so fatigued that she’d imagined the resemblance?
Crouched behind the car for cover, she prayed backup arrived soon and braced herself for the shooter to strike again.
* * *
DEA Agent Colt Dawson and his K-9 partner, a German shorthaired pointer named Rusk, raced toward the woman, who was an exact replica of the suspect he’d been trailing. She and her dog were hunkered down behind a parked sedan. The woman had an arm around the Doberman, but he could also see she’d drawn a weapon.
Who was she? Some sort of law enforcement, obviously, if the vest on her K-9 was real. But which agency and why was she here? The woman he was trailing, Opal Anderson, definitely wasn’t law enforcement.
But he’d learned the hard way that people could be deceptive and sometimes the truth was difficult to discern. He’d made the mistake of trusting the wrong woman once before, but never again.
Confusion warred within his brain now as he assessed the situation. He’d been following the associate of the drug kingpin known as Shadow, hoping she’d lead him to the man responsible for so many illegal drug overdoses in the state of Colorado.
He had a personal interest in stopping the flow. After his own cousin OD’d, he’d spent most of his professional life in law enforcement on a quest to bring an end to the poison.
A tip from one of the DEA’s informants had alleged that the supposedly dead Opal Anderson was actually alive and hiding out in Barren Valley, Colorado, and would be able to give a location for Shadow. Could she identify the criminal?
Colt was counting on it.
Needing to follow the lead, Colt had hightailed it from Colorado Springs, where he’d been pounding the pavement trying to shake loose information on Shadow, to the flea-bitten motel on the edge of Barren Valley’s main drag.
For two days, he’d staked out the motel, waiting for some sign of the woman. He’d just about given up, thinking the break he’d been hoping for was turning into a dead end, when this morning, Opal Anderson had emerged from one of the rooms and caught the bus into town.
Colt had trailed her, and when the woman had disembarked at the stop near the clinic and approached the building, he’d parked and planned to follow her inside. He’d intended to corner her with the hope of flipping her to help them find Shadow.
He’d been momentarily distracted when he’d seen the other woman climb out of a brown-and-black Bronco.
The woman looked eerily like Opal Anderson. Only where Opal was gaunt, with hollowed-out cheeks and stringy hair, this officer looked healthy and agile as she and her K-9 partner had hurried after Opal.
But then, the world had turned to chaos seconds after Opal entered the clinic. The unknown woman was being shot at.
Keeping Rusk at his heels, Colt aimed his own firearm to where the shots had originated. A brick, four-story building across the street from the clinic.
He needed to find out what was happening.
