“Hold your position,” Emmett said. “We’re coming. Let Melody and Dusty clear the house before anyone enters.”
Tugging their canines away from the open door, Colt and Maren waited on the sidewalk as the rest of the team descended. Melody and Dusty entered the house, looking for any evidence of explosives.
They returned a few moments later. “It’s clean,” Melody stated with a frown.
“Any signs of life?” Emmett asked as he charged up the porch steps toward the front door.
“Not that I can tell. Whoever was here was careful not to leave behind any visible trace,” Melody said.
Exasperated at encountering another dead end, Maren entered the empty house and headed up the stairs with Haven. Colt and Rusk followed right behind her, while the others fanned out to let their dogs sniff every inch of the place.
Neither Haven nor Rusk alerted in the bedrooms on the second floor. All three were vacant. The house appeared abandoned.
In the farthest bathroom, Haven alerted at the side of the bathtub. Maren hurried to peer over the lip and discovered a discarded hand towel lying inside the bathtub.
With her heart rate speeding up, Maren told the group, “Got something.”
Emmett and Colt hurried to her position with their canines. Both Rusk and Gemma let out a bark. The two dogs were also alerting on the towel.
Putting on rubber gloves she’d grabbed from her pocket, Maren lifted the discarded towel. “Haven alerted. I don’t know whose DNA is on this, but it has to be someone’s scent held within one of the evidence bags. Maybe this wasn’t a clinic, per se, but more of a holding ground until they could move the women to a medical facility.”
“Sound reasoning,” Emmett said. He took the towel, put it into a new evidence bag with gloved hands and signed his initials to the outside. Maren did the same.
“I’ll have this analyzed and find out whose DNA is on it,” Emmett said. “Eva’s already working on finding out who owns this house. Let’s canvass the neighborhood and see if anybody has seen something or knows anything that’s useful.”
Glad to be out of the depressing structure, Maren, with Haven, Colt and Rusk, headed down the street.
Before they approached a neighboring house, a wave of despair and anxiety about her sister’s well-being crashed over Maren, pricking her eyes with the burn of tears. Fear for not only her sister, but her sister’s child, dug into her mind.
Growing up, Maren had been the strong one of the two of them. The one Opal had always turned to for comfort. They were stronger together than apart. Until their parents’ death.
Opal had turned inward, withdrawing from everyone, even Maren, while Maren’s rage at the injustice of the person getting away with murder had spurred her to push forward, excelling at school and then the police academy.
She could see now how single-minded she’d been, using academics and the drive to become a police officer as her way of coping with their deaths. Opal had eventually started using drugs to numb her grief.
Neither of them had sought help or found comfort in each other. They’d drifted apart until Opal cut ties and disappeared. And now she was on the run with bad people after her.
“Opal must feel so alone…” Her voice broke. “Dead to everyone who knew her, with nowhere comforting to turn. Not even me.”
Colt halted as Haven whined and brushed up against her legs. The dog seemed to always sense when Maren was upset.
“You can’t give up hope,” Colt said. “We’ll find her.”
He slid an arm around her shoulders and drew her close. The warmth of his bigger body wrapped around her, soothing her pain. For a moment, she rested her head on his shoulder, realizing how far she’d come to be able to trust this man. “Thank you. I needed to hear that.”
He was silent for a moment, then patted her shoulder before releasing her and stepping away.
A coldness seeped in. Unaccountably, she missed the anchoring effect he provided. The steadiness of his close presence.
“Right now, we have to focus on the investigation at hand,” he said, his tone all business now. “We know one of the baby smuggling victims was in that house because the dogs all alerted to a scent. Which victim remains to be determined but all the victims deserve our full attention.”
He and Rusk strode off, leaving Maren to stare at his retreating back with a surprising amount of hurt crowding her chest. She couldn’t help but feel that he was withdrawing emotionally from her, as if comforting her had been too much for him. Knowing how badly he’d been burned by his last romantic partner, she understood his caution. But they weren’t romantically involved.
Unless he was afraid that she’d become too attached because of his efforts to offer solace?
No worries there.
She would emulate his guarded demeanor. Keeping a barrier up between them would be in both of their best interests. They were working a case and needed to keep their judgment clear. No emotional entanglements.
