Consumed (Firefighters #1)(96)

“No.” Jack took something out of his pocket with gloved hands. “We found this in your car, though. It was in buried in the inside jamb of your trunk.”

The lead slug was small, but that didn’t mean a thing considering how fast it could go when it was shot out of a frickin’ gun.

“She’s getting harassed on her phone.” Danny nodded at her. “Show them.”

Anne tossed the phone over. “The code’s four-nine-nine-nine. I got a call from a blocked number right before it happened. I didn’t check when I answered because I thought it was Danny. All I heard was whirring on the other end.”

“Did you meet with Ollie today?” Jack asked.

“Yes. And he had a lawyer with him. Sterling Broward.”

“I thought he just had a public defender. That’s what I saw listed on his case.”

“That was who showed up. I looked into him when I got back to my office, and he does a lot of defense work. For Ripkin Development. It wasn’t in the press, but I found it in court records. He tries to keep a low profile, unusual for someone who relies on word of mouth for referrals, right?”

Danny looked over. “I never liked Ripkin. Never. That fire at his house on the ocean was always bad news in my opinion. And he was creepy as fuck at the opening of the new firehouse six months ago.”

“Let’s get this logged in,” Jack said. “And we’ll get—”

“No.” Anne took her phone back. “I don’t want this going anywhere. I don’t want Ripkin to think I’m scared.”

“He just put a bullet in your fucking window,” Danny snapped. “Next time it could be your head.”

Jack nodded. “I gotta back my boy up here. Brave is just this side of stupid sometimes.”

Anne shrugged. “Fine, put in an incident report if you want. Take that lead slug back to the lab and see what you can find on it. Come back during daylight hours and see if there are footprints. Try and find out who called me and sent me the text. But I will bet this house that you will find no identifiers on anything. If this is Ripkin, he would hire a professional to scare me and they will leave nothing behind, and certainly nothing that ties this to him.”

There was some arguing at that point, and she agreed to file an incident report, but it was all just a waste of time. Then she enjoyed a lecture by Jack and his SWAT boys about staying safe, after which they left, disappearing into the night to whatever vehicle they had ghosted into the neighborhood in.

“I’m spending the night,” Danny announced before the front door was even closed.

Anne crossed her arms over her chest. She was about to say no when she saw Soot staring up at her, his eyes worried, like he sensed danger.

“Okay.”

“Good.”

“I have to take him out, and then we can see if the chicken is edible—”

Bing!

As her phone went off, she felt a spike of adrenaline. But it could be anyone, really. Right?

It was a text from that Gmail account: Left you present out in backyard.

“Shit,” she whispered.

Danny grabbed the phone and then marched to the back door. “Stay here.”

“Are you out of your fucking mind.”

Before she could stop him, he ripped open the—

When he didn’t move, her throat closed up. “What is it?”

Leaning to her desk, he took a pen out of the mug she’d put them in and crouched down. When he turned to her, there was a gun hanging upside down off the Bic, speared through the trigger circle.

“Guess this is what they used,” he muttered grimly. “And it looks like we’re calling Jack back over here.”

Her phone went off again with another text.

“Read that out loud,” Danny demanded.

Anne had to clear her throat. “ ‘Stop now and I go away. Your choice what happens next.’ ”





chapter




45



Anne must have fallen asleep upstairs in her bed because she came awake in the middle of an explosive blur of movement. Her brain, used to dealing with accident scenes, caught up quick with what was going on. Danny, who had been naked in between the sheets with her, jumped out from under the covers with such force that he hit the wall across the way.

“Danny! Are you shot!”

Even though the drapes were unruffled and the windows were intact and the security system wasn’t going off, somehow it was as if a bullet had hit him in the gut. In the nightlight’s glow, he was clutching his stomach like it had been struck.

Scrambling over to him, she pushed his hands out of the way—

Nothing but clean, unmarred skin. Yet he was staring down at himself in horror, his face contorted from pain.

“Danny?” When there was no response, she tugged at his arm. “Come over here and sit down. Come on, let’s take a look.”

His eyes, wide and white rimmed, struggled to focus. “Anne?”

“I think it was a bad dream. Come back to bed.”

He followed her as a child would and stretched out so she could have a proper look. Trailing her fingertips over the tattoos across his torso, she double-checked that her assessment was correct. But he wasn’t injured.

“I think it was a bad dream,” she murmured as she slid in next to him and pulled the covers back into place.