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Luke reached behind him and unlatched the snap holding his Taser. Then he held his hand up in the air as a signal to Fletch. The car door slammed across the street.
Winters released Kyle. The teen slid down the wall as his father made a stumbling move toward Luke.
Luke took a solitary step back as Winters hit the ground in front of him, tripping over his own stupid self, landing face-first hard enough to break his nose. Blood sprayed and dotted the ground, but Luke didn’t give the man time to let out more than a groan of pain before he stepped over him, wrenched one of Winters’s wrists behind him and slapped the cuffs on him. “Rex Winters, you’re under arrest—”
“Look out, Sheriff!”
Luke leaned back as he saw the raised arm and beer bottle in hand come arcing down. But it was too late. He closed his eyes as the glass smashed into the side of his head, spraying him with beer and blood.
Pain exploded against his temple. Luke braced a hand on Winters’s back to stop from face-planting onto him. The sound of fast-moving footsteps told him Kyle was making a run for it. Blinking blood out of his eye, Luke struggled to stay on his feet, but the gray-hoodied figure darted out of sight, the jagged bottle dropping from Kyle’s hand as he ran off.
Fletch cursed and grabbed Luke’s arm, hauled him over to the brick wall and shoved him down. He finished cuffing Winters before returning to Luke’s side. Luke waved him off, swallowing the dizziness and nausea against squeezed eyes. He should have known, should have anticipated Kyle’s reaction. Should have remembered...
“I’ll call Ozzy,” Fletch said. “Have him put out an alert on Kyle—”
“No.” Luke shook his head and caught himself before he toppled backward. Holly’s milk shake threatened to come back up and say hello. He took a deep, deep breath, then another as the pain settled and pounded. “No. Let’s get this guy to holding. We’ll deal with Kyle later.”
“But—”
“I’m the boss,” Luke reminded him as he swiped his hand across his forehead. “Lock him up. Tow his car to impound. Start the paperwork. Then we’ll worry about Kyle.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
“JEEZ, SHERIFF, HOW big was the bottle?” Ozzy asked Luke as he and Fletch dragged a stumbling, semiconscious Rex Winters into the station.
“Big enough.” The headache slamming against Luke’s skull was going to be with him for a while, but it wasn’t anything he hadn’t dealt with before. Explosions and flying glass were nothing new—hadn’t been in the service, certainly not while he’d been on the bomb squad. Growing up with his father had been a great training ground.
Fletch had defied his orders—somewhat—by calling for an EMT unit. They’d been on scene in minutes, setting Winters’s broken nose, writing up a report and addressing the three-inch gash in Luke’s scalp. He’d ignored their insistence he go in for X-rays. He’d already spent enough time in hospitals, the past eighteen months especially.
“Knew that boy of mine wasn’t no coward.” Winters’s eyes rolled back in his head. Luke took more pleasure than he was comfortable with in slamming the cell closed. Immediately, Karma herself visited as the noise echoed in his own head to the point he swayed. With white knuckles, he gripped one of the cell’s bars as he stared at his first arrest as sheriff. “You can’t hold me here!” Winters bellowed as he collapsed on the wafer-thin mattress.
“Sleep it off,” Luke ordered and closed the door into the holding area. “What’s going on here?” He frowned at the new batch of cables and tech manuals open around Ozzy’s desk.
“Troubleshooting,” Ozzy mumbled. “I swear it was working great this morning. But when I got back from lunch, I tried to log in and the entire system’s locked up. Some malware program I’ve never seen before. Don’t know how it got into our system. The only emails I’ve opened have been from state agencies.”
So much for running the registration on the gun he’d found in Kyle’s pack or familiarizing himself with Rex Winters’s file to see if he’d violated any stipulations in his former dealings with the law.
“What are we going to do about Kyle?” Fletch asked, handing Luke a couple of aspirins and some water. “He assaulted an officer.”
Luke ignored the question but downed the pills as he withdrew to his office. He came up short when he noticed the transom window slightly ajar, mud caked on the ledge. He pulled the latch shut, pushed it open with one finger. He frowned. Circling to his desk, he saw another clump of dirt near his chair, another under his desk.
“Boss?” Fletch asked as Luke headed outside. “What now? You should be sitting down.”
“Need to check something.” Luke walked behind the station, shoved himself through the thicket of bushes to a small clearing. The ground was lower here, but not so low someone couldn’t reach the window. In fact, he didn’t have to do anything except look straight ahead to see into his office.
He poked his fingertips under the frame of the window, which popped open with little pressure. He bent down to examine the ground and the fresh footprints, two sets, along with a couple of bicycle tracks and uneven indentations.
“You going to share with the rest of the class?” Fletcher asked from behind him.
“Someone was in my office while we were gone.” Luke squatted down to peer under the raised foundation and spotted a large tree trunk lying on its side, something wedged under it. He dug into the ground and pulled out a filthy, familiar butterfly, minus its chain.
Luke pushed himself up, then braced his hand on the wall for a second, squeezing his eyes as the world tilted around him. “Those footprints, there.” He pointed behind him as the nausea churned.
“Couple of kids, maybe.” Fletch moved closer. “Not very big at all.” He put his own sizable boot next to one, pulled the window open until it stopped. “Yeah, definitely kids. An adult couldn’t squeeze in this opening. Someone playing tricks on you?”
“Sure looks that way.” Luke walked back inside as the pranks over the past few mornings began to make sense. “Ozzy, I need you to check my computer.”
“For what?” Ozzy blinked as if the idea hadn’t occurred to him.
“My email. Just do it, please.” He waved Ozzy into his office and waited while his deputy accessed the system. “Check the trash and spam folders. Anything there?”
“Hang on.” He inserted a USB drive. “I’m going to run a restore program...bingo! The malware file was sent from your email address.”
“Thought so.” Luke’s headache got worse. He shoved the butterfly into his pocket. “When?”
“Two hours ago.” Ozzy squinted at the screen. “That doesn’t make sense.”
“Because I wasn’t here two hours ago. Were you?”
“No, sir. I ran to the diner for lunch. But I wasn’t gone long.”
Long enough.
“It’s going to take some time to get the system up and running again. And it looks as if the program deleted a bunch of emails. I’ll see if I can restore those, as well.”
“Can you do it from your computer?” Luke asked.
“Yeah. I’ll get remote access. Don’t worry. I’ll get it fixed.”
“Someone’s declared war on you,” Fletch said.
“So it would seem.” And given the escalating weapons they were using, he could only imagine what his two nemeses would come up with next. When was that aspirin going to kick in?
“You should go home, boss. Get some rest.”
“Whether I’m there or here, I’ll be doing the same thinking.” He’d only feel worse at home.
“Then, sit your backside down on that sofa.” Fletch pointed at the worn leather seat behind the door. “Or get yourself down to the urgent-care clinic. I’m not losing two bosses in less than a week.”
“I’m touched you care.” Luke did as Fletch requested and sat. Mercifully, the room stopped playing Tilt-A-Whirl.
Cash wandered over and dropped his chin onto Luke’s knee, doggy eyebrows knitting in canine concern. Luke scratched the top of his furry head. “I’m fine, boy.”
Even the dog looked skeptical.
“You might want to clean yourself up.” Fletch shoved a damp towel into Luke’s limp hand. “Unless you want to get blood all over the fine upholstery.”
Luke chuckled. The sofa he was sitting on was older than he was.
“Got it!” Ozzy cackled. “Now all I have to do is...” The rest of his thought trailed off as he dashed to his own desk. A few minutes later he called out, “We’re back online! Wait...now what’s going on? Why have all our file names been changed?”
