Everything happens for a reason...
Mama had told Juliette that so many times over the years and so often during the long months of her terminal illness. Not wanting to argue with or upset an invalid, Juliette had just nodded as if she’d agreed with her. But she hadn’t really. She had seen no reason for Mama getting sick and dying, no reason to work two jobs to pay off Mama’s medical bills and her own community college tuition.
But as she stared up at the little blond-haired angel sitting atop the playground slide, her heart swelled with love, and she knew Mama had been right. Everything happens for a reason, and Pandora was that reason.
Her daughter was Juliette’s reason for everything that had happened in the past and for everything that she did in the present.
“Is it too high?” she called up to the little girl who’d convinced Juliette that since turning four, she was old enough to go down the big kid slide. She was small for her age, though, and looked so tiny sitting up so high that a twinge of panic struck Juliette’s heart.
Maybe she was just uneasy because it looked as though it might start storming at any moment. The afternoon sky had turned dark, making it look more like dusk than five thirty. Since July in Red Ridge, South Dakota, was usually hot and dry, rain would be a welcome relief—as long as it came without lightning and thunder, which always scared Pandora.
Juliette probably shouldn’t have stopped at the park that apparently everyone else had deserted for fear of the impending storm. But when she’d finished her shift as a Red Ridge K9 officer, and had picked up her daughter from day care, the little girl had been so excited to try the slide that she hadn’t been able to refuse.
“Come on, honey,” she encouraged Pandora as she pushed back a strand of her own blond hair that had slipped free of her ponytail. “I’m right here. I’ll catch you when you reach the bottom.” She wouldn’t let her fall onto the wood chips at the foot of the slide.
“I’m not scared, Mommy,” Pandora assured her. “It’s supercool up here. I can see all around...” She trailed off as she stared into the distance. Maybe she could see the storm moving in on them.
As if she sensed it, too, Sasha—Juliette’s K9 partner—leaped up from the grass on which she’d been snoozing. Her nose in the air, the beagle strained against her leash that Juliette had tethered around a light pole. Sniffing the air, she emitted a low growl.
Despite the heat, a chill passed through Juliette. Sasha had been trained for narcotics detection. But what was she detecting and from where? Nobody else was in the park right now. Maybe the scent of drugs had carried on the wind from someplace else, someplace nearby.
“Mommy!” Pandora called out, drawing Juliette’s attention back to where she was now half standing, precariously, at the top of the slide.
“Honey, sit down,” Juliette said, her heart thumping hard with fear.
Pandora ignored her as she pointed across the park. “Why did that man shoot that lady with the purple hair?”
Juliette gasped. “What?”
Pandora pointed again, and her tiny hand shook. “Over there, Mommy. The lady fell down in the parking lot and she’s not getting back up.”
Like her daughter, Juliette was quite small, so she couldn’t see beyond the trees and playground equipment to where her daughter gestured. She hurried toward the slide and vaulted up the steps to the top. Then she looked in the direction Pandora was staring, and she sucked in a sharp breath. About two hundred feet away, in the parking lot behind the playground area, a woman lay on the ground, a red stain spreading across her white shirt while something red pooled on the asphalt beneath her.
“Oh, no...” Juliette murmured. She needed to get to the woman, needed to get her help...but before she could reach for her cell to call for it, a car door slammed and an engine revved. That car headed over the grass, coming across the playground.
The shooter must have noticed Pandora watching him and figured she’d witnessed him shooting—maybe killing—someone.
Juliette’s heart pounded as fear overwhelmed her. She wrapped her arms around Pandora and propelled them both down the slide. Ordinarily her daughter would have squealed in glee, but now she trembled with the same fear that gripped Juliette.
The car’s engine revved again as it jumped the curb and careened toward them. Juliette drew her gun from her holster as she gently pushed Pandora into the tunnel beneath the slide. The side of the thick plastic tunnel faced the car, which had braked to an abrupt stop. A door creaked open.
Juliette raised her finger to her lips, gesturing at Pandora to stay quiet. The little girl stared up at her, her green eyes wide with fear. But she nodded.
Sasha was not quiet. She barked and growled, straining against her leash. Instinctively she knew Juliette and Pandora were in danger. But with the man between them now, Juliette could not release her partner to help. And maybe that was a good thing. She had no doubt that Sasha would put her life in danger for Juliette’s and especially for Pandora’s.
Juliette would put herself in danger for Pandora, too.
Crouched on the other side of the tunnel so he wouldn’t see her, Juliette studied the man who’d stepped out of the sedan. He’d pulled the hood of his light jacket up over his head, and despite the overcast sky, he wore sunglasses. He was trying hard to disguise himself. But was it already too late? Had Pandora seen him without the hood and the glasses?
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