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The man she’d instinctively known was evil. Maybe even the devil himself.
* * *
Joe Kingsley had only gottena glimpse of the shooter but tried to keep the brief image locked in his mind as he scoured the area searching for him. Using his radio, he’d alerted the other officers on duty, giving the brief description of short brown hair and a long dark coat. Steele Delaney was the closest to him, and they’d fanned out, scanning the area for their shooter. Yet he couldn’t deny the perp could have easily dumped the coat and even the weapon by now. And there were still far too many people milling about, running chaotically around the scene of the crime making it difficult to quarter the area for a grid search.
It wasn’t easy to leave Elly behind. His boss and her oldest brother, Rhy Finnegan, would expect him to find and apprehend the shooter while also keeping Elly safe.
Ironic that she was the one to save him by shouting at him to get down a split second before the shooter fired another three rounds. Narrowly missing him, and Elly.
They’d lost Kyle. After seeing the massive blood loss pooling beneath his fellow cop, he’d known the shooter must have hit an artery below the bullet-resistant vest they were all required to wear. The loss of a fellow tactical team member brought a fresh wave of anger. He’d been shocked and stunned when he’d heard the gunfire, then watched as the ice skaters went down on their small patch of ice.
These active shooter incidents were out of control. He’d never felt so helpless in his entire life.
They needed to find this guy! Most shooters killed themselves or kept firing until a cop took them out. But not this one. The fact that this shooter had sneaked away was outside the norm.
And he didn’t like it. For all they knew, he’d escaped and was already planning his next shooting rampage. Maybe after he basked in the glow of his brutal success in taking out so many innocent victims. There was always an attention-seeking component to these events.
This one would be no different.
After a solid twenty minutes of searching, Joe, Steele, and Raelyn Lewis, the only three members of their team who had been assigned to the parade, had given up. He sent Steele and Raelyn out to scour for evidence, explaining his desire to check on Elly. Knowing Rhy would want that, too, the two cops had scattered to do what they could. He stood for a moment, considering what little he knew about their guy. The perp had seemed tall, but he had no way of knowing if the shooter had been standing on a chair or some other object while firing into the crowd.
On his way back to Elly, he stopped and provided aid to several victims who were thankfully not hurt too badly. Then he noticed dozens of cops swarming the area and knew additional help had arrived.
Now that the immediate threat was over, at least as far as he could tell, Joe was impatient to get back to Elly. He desperately needed to know she was safe.
There was a growing crowd around the ambulance carrying the logo that matched Elly’s uniform. He pushed forward, raking his gaze over the group of people until he found Elly’s auburn hair.
A wave of relief hit hard, yet he didn’t stop until he’d reached her side. “Elly? Are you okay?”
“Joe.” She turned and grasped his arm, leaning against him for a moment before letting him go. “Did you find him?”
“Not yet.” He winced at the disappointment in her gaze. “You’re sure you’re not hurt?”
She gave a slight nod, but her gaze skittered from his. She looked so pale that he feared she had been hit and didn’t realize it. He raked his eyes over her, finding plenty of blood smears but nothing that appeared to be a recent injury.
“I saw him.”
Her words were so soft with the chaos spewing around them that he wasn’t sure he heard her correctly. He put his arm around her slim shoulders and pulled her close so he could speak into her ear. “What did you say?”
“I saw him.” Her anguished gaze finally met his. “I literally bumped into him a few minutes before the parade started.” She shook her head. “His cold, dead gaze made the hair on the back of my neck stand up.”
An icy chill that had nothing to do with the winter weather washed over him. “You saw him up close?”
She nodded. “I didn’t know he had a gun or that he intended to hurt anyone. If I had, I would have told you or another cop. The minute I saw him, though, I felt he was evil. And now—this—” She broke off, biting her lip.
“He is evil.” Joe was still struggling with the idea that she had seen the shooter. “Elly, we’re going to need you to work with a sketch artist so we can get an ID on this guy. Can you do that for us?”
“Yes, of course.” Her voice lacked conviction, but she nodded slowly. “I’ll do whatever is necessary for you to find this guy before he hurts anyone else.”
“I know you will.” He cared for Elly, far more than he should considering she was his boss’s youngest sister. She was off-limits in a big way. Not that it was easy to ignore her when they were together. He was about to pull away when his gaze landed on her name tag pinned to her uniform.
Finnegan.
He could almost hear Rhy screaming in his ear. This was not good. He pulled Elly closer. “We need to call your brother.”
“What?” She stared at him as if he’d suggested they take a walk on the moon. “Don’t be ridiculous. We need to search the area for more victims.”
“Elly, this guy might figure out who you are.” He couldn’t quell a flash of panic. “You’re wearing a name tag. People in Milwaukee have heard a lot about the Finnegan family over the past twelve months. You couldn’t have gotten any more press coverage than if you were Hollywood superstars.”
