She nodded, and he had to trust she would keep herword. He moved inside, weapon now raised to eye level. He glanced around the room quickly but saw nothing posing danger. Keeping his back to the wall as much as possible, he walked quickly into the small kitchen. Nothing. It didn’t take him long to clear the rest of the house.
There wasn’t any danger here and, even more important, no dead body.
“It’s clear, freckles. You can come in.”
“Anything bad?”
He shook his head. “No, thank goodness. I was expecting the worst, and I’m happy not to have found it.”
He tucked his gun back into the waistband of his jeans, and the two of them began looking around. There didn’t seem to be anything out of place or any sign of foul play, even with the door cracked open.
Hell, this house was in the middle of nowhere. There was much more chance a wild animal would wander in here than people.
It wasn’t till they were near the back of the house and Bree passed by an open window that they heard the music coming from a large shed a couple hundred meters from the back of the house.
“That music wasn’t playing when we got out of the car. Maybe Glen is out there,” Bree said.
They started the whole process once again. Tanner tried to keep Bree shielded as much as possible as he called out to see if Glen was in the shed and identified himself.
He reached the door and had convinced himself that the man had just left the radio on when a shot fired from over their shoulder and blew out the window at the front of the shed, not five feet from where they were standing.
Bree gave a little scream and Tanner dived for her,knocking them both to the ground, as another shot rang out, this one going a little more wide.
Keeping Bree tucked behind him, Tanner pulled out his gun and fired once in the direction the bullets had come from. There was no way he’d be very accurate from this distance, but it would buy them a second or two.
“Stay low and get inside.”
Bree immediately began crawling toward the shed door.
He fired once again, only one time, wanting to save as many bullets as he could in case he needed them, but also wanting to give them a little bit of cover to make it.
Another shot rang out, this one going too high. Bree was inside already, so Tanner dived for the door, yanking it closed behind him.
The shed looked like it hadn’t been cleaned out in years. There was stuff everywhere—from stacked tires to old tools to piles of plywood. But the junk worked in their favor.
“Stay low and try to get behind something,” he said, guiding her to a spot behind the stack of tires. “If Glen starts shooting blindly the walls won’t stop bullets, but the other stuff will.”
“Are you sure that’s Glen out there? Why’s he shooting at us?”
“Maybe he saw me with my gun and got nervous.”
Or maybe they’d just found their killer.
“I’ll try to give him the benefit of the doubt,” he continued. “Mostly because Glen is either a really bad shot or he wasn’t trying to hit us. If he had wanted us dead, he could’ve done it the moment we stepped outside his house, from the angle he was at.”
Tanner stepped closer to the door. “This is CaptainTanner Dempsey,” he called out. “We just want to talk. Whatever’s happening here is a miscommunication.”
“I know who you are, cop.” That was definitely Glen Carrico’s voice.
“I know I had my weapon out, Glen, but that was because your front door was open and I thought there might be danger. It wasn’t intended in an aggressive nature toward you. So let’s just both put our weapons down and we can talk like reasonable adults.”
Glen scoffed. “I don’t think I have ever known a cop to be reasonable my whole life. Somehow I don’t think today is going to be my lucky day.”
“I’m not here as law enforcement, just as a regular person. I just want to talk.”
“Tanner Dempsey, hero of Grand County, not here as law enforcement?” Carrico gave a bitter laugh. “I know all about you, Dempsey. And you’re not going to get away with what you’ve been getting away with.”
“I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about, Glen. I didn’t kill those guys, so I’m not getting away with anything.”
