Missing and Endangered (Joanna Brady #19)(90)

“Good,” Joanna said, “I couldn’t agree more, and you’d better believe I’ll be there.”

“By the way,” Robin added. “How’s the road situation down your way? I heard it snowed pretty hard overnight.”

“It snowed?” Joanna repeated. “In that case I’d really better get moving.”

She pulled on her uniform pants, hurried back to the bedroom, and peered out through the burglarproof window screens. The overhead sky was lit by a sliver of waning moon, while the landscape all around the house glowed an unearthly white.

“Crap,” she muttered aloud. Her Interceptor was equipped with all-wheel drive, but that offered scant protection from the many nutcases who would be out and about with less than zero understanding about how to drive in inclement weather.

She arrived in the kitchen a few minutes later to find a travel mug loaded with coffee sitting on the table. Next to it was a fried-egg sandwich.

“Eat that before it gets cold,” Butch told her. “Can’t have you riding off into battle on an empty stomach.” He stood watching as she pulled on her jacket and retrieved her weapons from the laundry room’s gun safe. “So they’re going to get him?”

“Looks like it,” she said, “and I’ve been invited to attend the party.”

“By the way,” Butch said, “I just got an e-mail from the school district. The roads are bad enough that school’s been canceled for today. That means we’ll be going into full-bore cookie-making mode.”

Joanna kissed him good-bye. “I think an entire day of messing with cookie dough will be good for what ails Beth and Jenny both. It’ll take their focus away from all the bad stuff and put it on some good.”

Nodding, Butch hugged her close. “Stay safe,” he murmured in her ear.

“I will.”

A call to Dispatch as she left the ranch let her know that the worst part of the trip would be crossing the Divide north of Bisbee, where several cars had spun out onto the shoulder. Knowing that people would be wondering why she was driving past accident scenes without stopping to help, she turned on her flashing lights to give herself a visible and hopefully understandable excuse for ignoring them. Somewhere south of Tombstone, she remembered that morning’s board of supervisors meeting.

“Siri,” she said aloud, “call Tom Hadlock.”

Joanna had copied him on her budget-request paperwork once it was finished, but she still had concerns about Tom’s public-speaking capabilities. Under intense pressure would he be the best advocate for her department? Maybe or maybe not, but she hoped that today he’d measure up, because no matter what, Joanna was going to Tucson right now to participate in that FBI takedown. This was personal for her. Her choice had far more to do with her being a mother than it did with her being a sheriff. Gerard Paine had attempted to murder Jenny, and Joanna wasn’t about to apologize that for this time at least she’d come down on the side of motherhood.

“What’s up?” a groggy Tom muttered when he came on the phone. “And why are you calling so early?”

“It’s time to wake up and smell the flowers,” she told him. “And when you come to work, be sure to wear your dress uniform.”

“How come?”

“This is your call to duty, Tom,” she told him. “I hope you’re up for an appearance before the board of supervisors, because you’re pinch-hitting for me today.”

“Are you kidding?”

“Not in the least. I’m on my way to Tucson to take part in an FBI raid to take down a guy who tried to have Jenny murdered and very nearly succeeded.”

“Wait,” Tom said, now fully awake. “Someone tried to kill Jenny? Where? When?”

“In Flagstaff,” Joanna answered, “night before last.”

“I never heard a word about this,” Tom grumbled. Clearly he was offended that he’d been left out of the loop.

“The FBI asked us to keep the whole thing under wraps in hopes of catching him off guard, and it sounds like their ploy has succeeded.”

“Who is he?”

“He’s the ex-boyfriend of Jenny’s roommate—a cyber ex-boyfriend at that, and a pedophile besides.”

“Great,” Tom said. “He sounds terrific, but if he’s the roommate’s ex-boyfriend, why would he target Jenny?”

“Because Jenny helped Beth stand up to him.”

“I see,” Tom said, but since he was a lifelong bachelor with no kids of his own, Joanna wasn’t at all sure he did.

“Okay,” he added after a pause, “dress uniform it is, and I’ll do my best.”

“I know you will,” Joanna told him. “You always do.”

By the time she reached St. David, the snow was gone completely, and she finally gave herself permission to eat Butch’s now-cold sandwich. North of Benson she had just passed the exit ramp to Patagonia when her phone rang with Frank Montoya’s photo in caller ID.

“Good morning, Frank,” she said. “What’s up?”

“I’m on the scene of a fatality fire,” he said. “The Nite Owl burned to the ground early this morning. The fire was discovered around five A.M. By the time firefighters arrived on the scene, the building was fully engulfed. The remaining structure was so unstable that we weren’t able to let investigators inside until just a little while ago. They reported finding two dead bodies in the debris and called for the M.E. Doc Baldwin says that the victims are a male and a female, both of them shot in the back of the head, execution style.”