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“Under a minute,” Cameron said. “When we moved camp, he always followed. He was about a couple hundred yards behind when a truck ran over an IED. He disappeared, and I feared that he’d been hit and maybe crawled off and died. But the company was in chaos. We were pulling bodies out of the wreckage and getting the ones still alive on choppers. When it got dark, we sheltered in a small village that had been evacuated. He showed up in the night, found me, and lay down beside me. After that, he became a member of the squad and sometimes trotted ahead of the convoys when we were on the move.
“After that IED exploded so close to him, we figured out he must have identified a scent associated with IEDs that meant danger to him, because he began alerting on them. When he’d get a hit, he would stop in front of the lead truck in the convoy, which meant everything came to a halt. Once he indicated the location, we had different methods of dealing with them. After that, no one questioned his value. When I headed stateside, they knew he’d never work with anyone else. He didn’t belong to anyone but me. It took some paperwork to get him here, but here we are.”
“Yes, here we are. You came home for peace and quiet, and wound up in this mess,” Rusty said.
Cameron shook his head, then brushed a quick kiss across her lips. “There are all kinds of wars. What’s happening here is a war on humanity, and my family got caught up in it. I’ll do anything to make Jubilee safe again, and I’m never going to regret anything because it brought you back to me.”
She wrapped her arms around his neck.
Cameron held her without talking, sheltering her from the chill.
Chapter 10
The coroner arrived midafternoon, and the crime scene team behind him. At that point, it was in their hands. After an initial examination of the body, the coroner gave Rusty a rough estimate of the time of death. Confirmed for her the cell phone was not on the body, and that the victim had suffered a single gunshot wound to the chest from a distance away. He told them they were probably looking at a rifle as the weapon, and then his team bagged the body and headed for the morgue in Frankfort, leaving the crime scene team on-site still gathering evidence.
Rusty pointed out the trail cams, which they confiscated, along with personal info inside the trailer. While they were going through his car, one of the techs removed the carpet in the trunk and found a second laptop in the wheel well where the spare was carried.
“Agent Caldwell!”
Rusty hurried over to see what he’d found.
“The missing laptop?” Rusty asked.
“Or a second one, like a backup,” Cameron suggested.
“Why two when everything is saved in the cloud, or Carbonite, or a dozen other sites you could name for the same purposes?” Rusty asked.
Cameron shrugged. “Even if a laptop was destroyed, it would still take a second laptop to access what’s been saved, and maybe he was just OCD.”
“Maybe. We’ll send it to the lab,” Rusty said, eyeing the crime scene tech.
“Yes, ma’am,” the tech said, and bagged the laptop.
It was nearing sundown by the time the scene had been processed. The car was gone. Everything had been bagged and removed and the trailer hauled off to the lab. There was nothing left at the campsite. Not even the trash Vanzant had dumped in the barrel.
Cameron and Rusty were on their way back into Jubilee, and Ghost was asleep in the back seat. Rusty was quiet as they rode, thinking back over the day. All of a sudden she sat up. It was the look on her face that made Cameron curious.
“What?”
“How well do you know Sheriff Woodley?” Rusty asked.
“Only by name,” Cameron said. “He’s not from here. He came to the area ten years ago, worked as a night watchman at a warehouse, and with no law enforcement experience got elected sheriff eight years ago. Why?”
“Wasn’t he in charge of your niece’s kidnapping case?” she asked.
“If you call his foot-dragging reaction to imminent danger being in charge, then yes.”
“Tell me,” Rusty said.
So Cameron began explaining how the officers had arrived on the scene and immediately began interrogating Louis and Rachel as being guilty of their child’s disappearance, when it was obvious Rachel had been attacked, and Louis had been at work when the kidnapping occurred. Then Cameron filled Rusty in on the frantic race on the mountain, with the authorities joining in the search later rather than being the ones to initiate it.
“If Louis and Rachel hadn’t called on family, we would not have found Lili in time to save her life, and Biggers would have gotten away. Why do you ask?” Cameron said.
“I keep thinking about why the sheriff’s office would have responded to a crime scene that is within the city limits of Jubilee. Yes, it’s a couple of miles outside the main part of town, but it’s still within the city limits. He was actually shouting at Chief Warren when I walked up on them, insisting it was his crime scene to process.”
Cameron nodded. “Yes. I heard part of it.”
“So that would be twice Woodley has tried to impede the progress of incidents either involved or suspected to be involved in human trafficking.”
