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“So you have him in custody?”
Sutton shook her head. “Two men picked him up and tossed him in the back of a dark-colored truck. We didn’t get a good look at any of them. The camera was pointed much too low for that.”
“A dark-colored truck?”
Sutton nodded, withdrew her palm, and cued up a blurry picture. Lila’s body lay half out of frame, completely vulnerable to anyone who might happen by. The bottom half of a green truck sat in the right foreground. A figure jogged toward it, caught mid-stride by the camera. Only his black pants and dark crimson boots had been captured.
Dixon. Dixon had been there.
The other figure must have been Tristan. Both had walked by and left her like she was nothing.
But they had saved her life, hadn’t they?
Why had they taken Peter Kruger with them? Why had they left her behind?
“We’ve had no luck tracking the truck. The suspects took your gun, too. We only found your tranq. I didn’t even know you carried a live backup. On any other day, I would have thought it a bit much.”
Lila licked her lips. Sutton now thought of her as some Roman barbarian, ready to kill at the slightest provocation.
“I have to give you credit for shooting him after you were tranqed. All those lessons with me and Sergeant Jenkins paid off, even if your hand-to-hand training never did.”
“How did you find me?”
“Someone who lived in the apartment building heard the shots, saw the blood, and fetched Sergeant Hill at the gatehouse. It went out over the radio as a shooting. Took about ten minutes to get the information straight, but by then your mother was in hysterics.”
“Don’t worry,” Helen assured her. “I saw photos of the scene. Unless that truck delivered your assailant directly to a trauma center, there’s no chance he could recover with that amount of blood loss. Even if he made it to an ER, he might not pull through. We’ve sent messages to every hospital within a hundred and fifty kilometers. No one has been admitted anywhere near New Bristol with a gunshot wound. He’s crawled into a hole, and he’ll die there.”
Helen’s palm computer beeped, and she retreated from the room to check it.
“Chief, I promise you, I will find the man who did this,” Sutton said. “I shouldn’t have let you go without an escort, not after you increased security. I should have found you and asked why. I should have been taking your security much more seriously. Just because you’re not the prime anymore, doesn’t mean that others accept it. Assassinations are rare, but they still happen. I should have—”
“You shouldn’t have done anything. I’m the chief of security. I should be able to handle myself.”
“Not against an assassin. All it takes is one slip. I won’t make another mistake. I promise you that I will keep you safe from now on.”
“Stop it. You’re wigging me out with all the—”
Helen walked back into the room and sat upon the swivel stool, her mouth slack, eyes wide. “The results just came back on the blood. They wouldn’t release them before, kept saying they needed to re-check. I thought…”
“What?”
“The blood belonged to Peter Kruger.”
Sutton laughed, a nervous little skitter that died in her throat when Helen and Lila did not join in. “You’re serious. Peter Kruger tried to murder the chief?”
“Peter?” Lila asked, feigning ignorance.
Sutton raised a brow.
“The asshole tried to kill me. I refuse to call him Mr. Kruger ever again.”
“It’s his blood at the scene,” Helen confirmed. “Tell her about the other thing, commander.”
Sutton dug into her coat pocket and handed Lila a baggie filled with a single piece of cardstock. Lila instantly recognized the flyer for the American Abolitionist Society. The red text swam as though she had been hit by another dart.
“This was found, pinned to your blackcoat under one of your stars. We couldn’t pull any prints or DNA off it, but it looks like Peter has friends. I’m trying to run the name of this organization, but so far…”
Lila gripped the sheets as Sutton droned on, suddenly feeling very exposed in the hospital, just as exposed as her body had been in the photograph. Her breathing quickened, and she heard the beeping of her heart-rate monitor slowly increase.
