Page 25 of Deputies Under Fire (Renegade Canyon #2)

Eden kept watch around their surroundings as Rory and she drove away from the police station and back to the crime scene.

Rory was darting glances around, too. Because both of them were aware that a trip to, well, to pretty much anywhere could result in another attempt to kill them.

Still, this “message” was something they wanted to see.

Numbers that’d been carved into Carter’s body.

After hearing that bit of detail from Garrison, they’d quickly postponed the interview with Frank and wrapped up the one with Diedre.

While there was some circumstantial evidence against her, it hadn’t been enough for them to hold her.

Eden suspected the same would be true for Ike, though if any of the four—Diedre, Helen, Frank or Ike—would be arrested today, Ike would likely be the one.

But an arrest was nowhere close to getting a conviction.

There were huge holes in the case against Ike. So either Ike had put those holes in place to assure a nonguilty verdict or he wasn’t the killer.

Eden was going with the second option on this.

As much as she and Ike despised each other, she just couldn’t see him going about getting revenge this way.

Too risky. Too cat-and-mouse. She figured if Ike turned killer, then the bodies would have never been discovered, much less placed where they’d be found.

Once they reached the crime scene, Rory pulled to a stop behind the line of vehicles. The other deputies’ cruiser, Ike’s truck, and the three vans from the ME, CSIs and the bomb squad. The road was still blocked off in both directions and would likely remain that way for most of the day.

Eden spotted two members of the bomb squad using a small robotic device to scan an area about ten yards behind the welcome sign. While they worked, the CSIs were searching the immediate area around the body.

Along with Dewey Galway, the ME, their two fellow deputies were next to Carter. A photographer was snapping pictures.

All the responders looked up, acknowledging Rory and her with nods and muttered greetings as they got out of the cruiser and made their way to the murdered man.

The body was still sitting up, propped against the sign, but his shirt had been pulled up to expose his torso.

At first, Eden didn’t see a message, only the blood and the stab wounds.

But as she got closer, she spotted something.

The three numbers, 653.

“Mean anything to you?” the ME asked, looking up at them from his semistooped position over the body.

Eden repeated the numbers several times, but then shook her head. Rory did the same.

“I did a search of them on my phone,” Judson explained. “I think it could be part of an address. Or rather it used to be the first three numbers of the address for the Devil’s Hideout when it was still called a farm road.”

Eden groaned. The site of the first two murders. But with the barn now reduced to rubble by the IED, maybe the killer wanted to use some of the address numbers to connect the trio of dead bodies.

“But it could also be the number of a case file,” Judson went on.

“I’m talking way back before any of our time on the force.

Forty-three years ago,” he said, reading notes from his phone.

“Mellie and Frank Mott, who were both sixteen at the time, filed a report of someone firing a shot into the barn when they were inside it.”

Eden was sure she gave him a blank look because this was the first she was hearing of such an incident. “A shooting at the Devil’s Hideout barn?”

Judson nodded. “Of course, it wasn’t called that back then, and apparently, Frank was working there as a part-time hand after school.”

“So was Mellie, according to Frank,” Eden remarked. “I’m guessing she was there for work?”

“It doesn’t say, and the deputy who wrote the report, Cliff Marquez, died more than a decade ago,” Judson explained.

“But from the impression I get, I think Mellie and Frank must have been dating or just been friends, and she met him there after school. Someone fired a shot into the barn, but they never found out who, and in his notes Cliff didn’t speculate as to who might have done it. ”

Eden looked at Rory to see if this was ringing any bells. Obviously, it wasn’t. “I’ll call Aileen later,” he said, referring to his former boss, retired Sheriff Aileen Granger, who was Grace’s mother.

Even though the incident had happened decades ago, Aileen was still as sharp as a tack and would almost certainly recall a shooting. She might even be able to speculate as to whether or not it was playing into the current murders.

They would also need to talk to Frank. And Eden was already dreading it.

The man was uncooperative, and this wasn’t going to improve things.

However, Eden did find it interesting that they’d talked to Frank about when he’d worked with Mellie, and he hadn’t mentioned a shooting.

The odds were he simply hadn’t forgotten something as serious as that.

Rory shifted his attention back to the ME and the body. “Can you give us an idea of time of death?”

“Within the past four hours,” he answered. “No signs of a struggle. No defense wounds, but you saw the stun-gun marks?”

Eden and Rory nodded.

“There were four total,” the ME added. “Those two on his neck and another set on his back.” He eased the body forward a little, lifting the shirt to show them the two lesions.

So maybe the killer had sneaked up on him. But then why stun him twice? Unless the killer had wanted to immobilize Carter a second time after they’d arrived at the current location. That was the likely scenario since the first hit from the stun gun wouldn’t have lasted that long.

“He was stabbed seven times, mainly in the chest and stomach,” the ME continued after he’d maneuvered the body back against the sign post. “Not sure if one or more of the wounds hit anything vital, but I’ll be able to determine that in the postmortem.

My guess is the numbers were carved after he was dead.

” He looked up at his assistant, who’d been taking the photos.

“Let’s go ahead and get the body back to the morgue so I can get started on—”

The ME stopped, interrupted by a strange hissing sound.

“What the hell?” Judson muttered, and like Eden, Rory and Garrison, he was glancing all around them, looking for the source.

And they soon saw it.

About five yards away in the ditch, a fire ignited. It had been barely noticeable at first. But it didn’t stay that way. It soon soared up into a high flame. A flame that didn’t stay contained to that one spot. It burst out in all directions.

Mercy.

It was coming right at them like a giant fireball.

They all started running, but Eden glanced over her shoulder to make sure they weren’t about to be gunned down. She couldn’t see anything, including the bomb squad, because of the thick black smoke billowing out from the flames.

What the heck was this?

Maybe some kind of incendiary IED? If so, no one had stepped on it. And no one had been near it since they’d arrived on scene. So it could have been on some kind of timer.

And if there was one, there could be more.

Eden quickly got confirmation of that theory when two more fires ignited. One of the other side of the road and one in the ditch right next to the responder vehicles. Smoke was coming at them from multiple sides now, and she could even feel the heat from the flames licking through the air.

“I called the fire department,” Judson shouted. “They’re on the way. I told them to approach with caution.”

Good. Eden hadn’t seen any IEDs on the road itself, but that didn’t mean there weren’t any.

A fourth fire burst to life in the ditch practically right next to Rory and her. That gave her another jolt of adrenaline and sent her already accelerated heartbeat racing even more. She couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t see.

But she could hear.

And she heard something she definitely didn’t want to hear.

Gunshots.

Rory took hold of her arm and pulled her down on the road, trying to keep her out of the line of fire. She prayed the others were doing the same thing.

On her belly now, Eden drew her gun and lifted her head just enough so she could continue to look around. Beside her, Rory was doing the same, and like her, he was obviously trying to pick through the smoke to see their attacker so they could return fire and stop this.

But nothing.

More shots came. All at once. Dozens of them.

And they seemed to be coming from multiple directions. Sweet heaven. How many shooters were there? Had the killer sent a small army after them? If so, she wasn’t sure how they were going to escape. Every one of them could be killed right here.

The image of Tyler flashed through her mind, and she added more prayers. That her precious little boy was safe, that this wasn’t some two-pronged attack, where gunmen were at the ranch to go after him.

Eden dug out her phone from her pocket, and since she wasn’t even sure she’d be able to hear Grace, she sent her a text. Under attack here at the latest murder scene. Is everything okay there?

Everything’s fine here , Grace quickly texted back. Update me about the attack as soon as you can.

Eden would do just that. If they made it out of this alive.

“Do you see the shooters?” Garrison called out. It was hard to hear him with the barrage of shots slamming through the air and all around them.

Garrison was somewhere to her left, which meant he was closer to the ditch. Maybe another of those fire devices wouldn’t be going off there.

A bullet smacked into the road just a couple of inches from her, sending up some small pieces of asphalt. The projectiles flew through the air, one of them slicing across the sleeve of her shirt.

It’d come close.

Too close.

But she couldn’t say the same for most of the other shots. They seemed to be landing everywhere. So either the shooters had lousy aim, or…

Eden didn’t get to finish that train of thought because Rory finished it for her.

“I don’t think it’s gunmen,” Rory said, shouting to be heard about the deafening racket. “I think bullets have been planted in the fires.”

Yes, Eden realized that was exactly what was happening. The term was “cooking off” when ammunition was heated up enough in a fire to cause them to discharge. It didn’t make the situation less deadly, but it could mean there wasn’t actually a shooter nearby.

Could.

It was possible there was indeed a sniper, waiting to finish the job if the heated bullets didn’t kill them.

“Everyone stay down,” Rory shouted, and Eden saw him glancing in the direction of the cruiser.

He was no doubt wondering if they could make it there. Maybe. But if they stood, it would make them an easier target for those random shots.

In the distance, she heard the sound of a fire engine and hoped none of the responders would get hurt when they approached. Rory must have been concerned about the same thing because he took out his phone and called Dispatch to have their situation relayed to the fire chief.

Another fire shot up on the side of the road just ahead, and it didn’t take long before bullets started going off there, too. It seemed to go on for an eternity, but she knew it was probably less than two minutes before the fire engine roared to a stop not far from the other vehicles.

The crew didn’t immediately get out, and when they did, they were wearing helmets and vests that she was pretty sure were bullet-resistant.

More minutes crawled by, the hail of bullets continuing, while the firefighters hooked up the hose.

The moment they’d done that, they started dousing the flames.

Since the fires weren’t huge, they weren’t that difficult to put out, but there were four of them, so it took a while. Second by second, though, the sound of the gunfire began to trail off.

Rory and she stayed put, waiting. Hoping. Praying.

“Is anyone hurt?” Rory shouted.

“Okay, here,” the ME said. And one by one, the others reported in. All except Garrison.

“I took a bullet to the leg,” the deputy finally said, prompting Rory and her to start scrambling in his direction. Depending on the location of the injury, he could bleed out.

“Ambulance is on the way,” Judson told them, and he hurried over.

One look at the young deputy, and Eden knew it was bad.