“I feel fine,” she insisted, starting down the steps. But she swayed as she reached the bottom, and John hurried to give her a bracing hand before she ended up facedown in the snow.
“Yeah, I can see how fine you are,” he murmured, tightening his grip around her arm to keep her from following Robertson. “Robertson strikes me as a capable guy.”
“He doesn’t know where to look for the tire prints.”
“Neither do you, really. Come on.” He tugged her arm, gently leading her back up the stairs to the house. He stopped before they entered. “Deputy Robertson?”
The deputy turned to look at him. “Yes?”
“Hold up. I’ll go with you to show you where I saw the car. Let me get Deputy Duncan settled.” He nudged Miranda into the house.
“You’re making me look like a slacker in front of my fellow deputy,” she grumbled, but she didn’t fight him as he led her back to the fire and urged her to sit. “Do you know how hard it can be for a female cop to be taken seriously?”
“I do,” he assured her. “But working when you’ve been told you have a concussion and need to rest doesn’t exactly shower you with glory. It just makes you look overeager.”
Her eyes narrowed. “You’ve been waiting to hit me with that all night, haven’t you?”
He smiled. “No, but you know I’m right. What would you be thinking right now if the shoe was on the other foot, and it was Robertson out there staggering and reeling against doctor’s orders, trying to prove he’s a hotshot investigator?”
“I’d think he was an idiot,” she conceded gruffly.
“I’ll be right back.” John laid his hand on her shoulder for a brief moment, his thumb brushing over her clavicle. The skin there was unexpectedly silky and delicate, an intriguing contrast to her tough, no-nonsense exterior.
He forced himself to turn and head out into the cold again, where he found Robertson waiting for him impatiently. He waved John to the passenger side and slid his own lanky body behind the steering wheel.
Robertson cranked up the heat to high as he pulled out on the highway. “Stop me short of where you saw the vehicle enter the highway,” the deputy said. “Don’t want to mess up the tracks.”
John told him to stop about twenty yards from the stand of shrubs that had hidden the intruder’s vehicle. “It should be about thirty yards up the road. I think he must’ve parked his vehicle behind those shrubs because they’d block my view of the car from the house.”
Robertson parked on the shoulder and pulled a flashlight from the cruiser’s glove compartment. “Stay behind me,” he told John.
John could have given the young deputy a few lessons on evidence retrieval, but he wasn’t a cop and this wasn’t his town. Plus, nobody liked a know-it-all.
The tire treads in the snow weren’t hard to spot, and to John’s surprise, they were nearly pristine. Apparently no other vehicles had passed on this side of the highway since the intruder drove away.
Robertson handed John the flashlight. “Can you hold this on the tracks while I get the casting material?”
John directed the beam toward the tire impressions, bending for a closer look. The treads had a pretty distinctive pattern. If the tire impressions the deputies had made earlier in the day were clear at all, they should be able to tell whether or not their intruder tonight was driving the same car.
Robertson stopped beside John. “Those are the same treads.”
John looked up. “Are you sure?”
“I’m the one who took the impressions this afternoon after the tow truck hauled the cruiser away. These look like fairly new tires. Firestones, I think. The lab in Lubbock will tell us for sure.”
“So I may have seen the man who shot at us this afternoon.”
“Looks like.”
“And we have no idea who he is or where he’s gone.”
“That’s right.”
John looked down the highway behind him, barely able to see his house, sitting small and isolated nearly a mile down the road.
And he’d left Miranda in there, alone and vulnerable, with a target on her back.
Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.
Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».
Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.
Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.