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Nolan didn’t like being left behind. Sitting in the car like a flunky instead of the partner Mina claimed him to be. But he understood her reasoning for talking to Becca alone. They had to do whatever was best for Becca right now. She was the only person who mattered at the moment. But he sure didn’t want to miss out on any questioning Mina might conduct. He had to hope she would share all the information she learned.

Movement on the drive caught his attention. Mina raced toward him. The tight set to her face raised his angst.

No. No. Something had happened.

Something bad.

He was out of the vehicle before she could reach his door. “What’s wrong?”

“There’s a large pool of blood in her entryway.”

“And Becca. Is she?—”

Mina gave a tight shake of her head. “No sign of her, and she’s not responding when I call out.”

“Did you go in?” he asked, though it would be foolhardy to do so without backup if whoever caused the blood pool was still in the house.

“A few steps inside.” She shook her head in wide side-to-side movements. “I saw the blood and stopped. Called my sergeant for backup.”

Okay, so maybe they weren’t partners after all. Or she didn’t trust him. “I’m capable of backing you up.”

“I know. I assume you’re carrying.”

He pulled back his tuxedo jacket, revealing his holster. He drew his sidearm. “Let’s go.”

She held up a hand. “We wait for backup. For someone to mitigate the threat at the door while we go inside.”

She was following sound procedure, but… “Becca could be injured. Needing our help.”

“What good will we be to her if we’re dead?” Mina gave him a pointed look. “My sergeant is on a call only a few minutes out. We wait.”

“Fine.” He tried not to sound surly as he knew she was right. “Did you try calling her?”

“I don’t have her number.” She went around to the driver’s side of her vehicle and lifted the radio through the open door. “I need a phone number for Becca Sutton. Preferably cell.”

She got out her phone, but tapped the rooftop with her finger until dispatch broke through the silence and offered Becca’s information. Mina quickly entered the number in her cell. Nolan could hear it ringing from across the vehicle. In the distance, sirens blared in the night, and he prepared himself for going into the house.

“No answer.” Mina stowed her phone and nodded at the swirling lights flashing ahead. “It’s go time.”

A burst of adrenaline pushed him down the street to meet her sergeant. Mina joined him and handed him a flashlight, which he would definitely use in their exterior search.

The sergeant climbed from his patrol car beneath a streetlight, and the six-foot-tall beefy man with buzzed blond hair planted his booted feet. “Sheriff.”

“Sergeant Abell meet Nolan Orr,” Mina said. “He’s former law enforcement, and I’ve deputized him to help in this investigation.”

Surprise flashed in the sergeant’s eyes, but it quickly washed away. “Everybody calls me Abe.”

Mina pointed a finger at the house. “Nolan and I’ll secure the inside in case Becca is here and injured. I’ll take lead in the house. Abe, you have the door unless I call out.”

“Roger that,” Abe said, not questioning being left behind and having a temporary deputy get in on the potential action.

Maybe he’d been a sergeant long enough to know that protecting the exit was a vital job and one that took skill to handle should an assailant try to flee. More likely he was a good sergeant and swallowing down any frustration he might have.

Mina, not waiting for compliance, set off with clipped but urgent footsteps, her weapon drawn and held in front of her. Nolan rushed after her, taking in every inch of the luxurious property including the glow of outside lights falling softly on the sidewalk, hinting at a peaceful scene, not a place where a murder had likely occurred. The lights illuminated the foundation shrubs, too, the view calm and also belying the danger inside.

Mina slowed on her approach to the front door. The solid wood that looked original to the older home stood open, and she stepped over the threshold, then paused.

Looking over her shoulder and around her, Nolan caught sight of the viscous pool of blood she’d mentioned. Memories flooded his brain. His gut cramped. He’d only seen this quantity of blood once. His buddy. Lying on the ground. His lifeblood oozing around him until he lost his life in protection of their governor.

No, stop. Don’t let your mind go there. He was charged with having Mina’s back, and she needed him clearheaded.

They approached the bloody pool. No one could survive this level of loss. At least, not likely. He wasn’t an expert, but he suspected he was right. “We’ll have to get Veritas to run a sample. See whose blood this is.”

Please don’t let another person have died.

“Stick right on my tail,” Mina said, keeping her focus pinned ahead. “I’m counting on you to have my back.”

She shouldn’t have had to say that to him. Was it because she thought he’d deserted her once, and she feared he would do it again? No way he would abandon her here unless he was dead. No law enforcement officer worth their grain of salt would leave another officer vulnerable.

Nolan followed her under a wide arch into a formal living room. The nearest window was marred with telltale bullet holes and fissions in the glass extending outward. She stopped to take a look, and he moved closer to her.

“Looks like a bullet bullseye,” he said. “Since the mayor was shot this could mean the entryway blood is his.”

“Could be,” she said, getting closer and eyeing the glass. “The bullet had to come from the outside.”

He moved into place beside her for a better look. “The holes confirm that. A double pane window. Outside hole is smaller than the inside, so it would be the point of entry for the bullet.” He looked around for blood, but found none. He turned and put himself in the line of sight that a bullet could have traveled. Could have , as the glass would alter a shot somewhat. But the pool of blood in the hallway was in direct range.

“We move on,” Mina said and advanced further into the space.

He followed, his mind swirling with questions. The biggest still was, had the mayor or Becca been shot from this window? Seemed highly likely to him that one of them had been, but they would need a professional to trace the trajectory of the bullet. He would have to call Sierra back and ask her to process this scene too and have their weapons expert join them on scene.

He trailed Mina through the open doorway into a large dining room with a table and chairs for twelve people. The dark walnut gleamed as if it had recently been polished. He passed through the next doorway and reached the kitchen where Mina stood.

She turned to look at him. “Notice anything else?”

He shook his head. “I’ll ask for the Veritas team to come here too. Now that we have a likely murder scene, we should request they also perform a bullet trajectory. That will confirm that a bullet fired from this window could’ve struck the mayor or Becca.”

“We finish clearing the place before making that call.” She turned toward the opening in the wall. “Back to the entry for the main stairwell.”

He didn’t question but trailed her down the hallway, skirting the sticky pool of blood, to the front stairs. A slight trail of blood about a foot long appeared where a body could’ve been picked up out of the blood pool and then removed via the front door. Or they’d cleaned up other residual trails.

Made no sense, though. Why bother to clean up any of the blood, then leave a massive pool in the entry? He took a closer look. A footprint in the blood. If the killer cleaned up, they surely wouldn’t leave the footprint for forensics to evaluate.

“Coming?” Mina asked from the stairs.

He hurried ahead to a striped carpet runner covering original treads. He searched it for any bloody footprints but found none. They climbed the stairs and silently checked out two massive bedrooms with ensuite bathrooms.

“All clear,” he said, though she’d been with him on the search.

“No sign of a disturbance or struggle at all,” she said, already turning toward the stairway again. “Time for a perimeter search, and then we can really look at this place without fear of a shooter remaining on the property.”

They jogged down the stairs and out the front door.

“All clear out here,” Abe said.

She nodded. “We’ll head to the right. I’d like to get a look at that window from the outside. See if any tracks or other evidence were left behind.”

She started down a concrete walkway highlighted by ground floodlights and leading to the side of the house. She moved slowly, her gaze roving over the area like a searchlight.

Nolan eased behind her, looking into the lushly landscaped beds surrounding the home. Some of the rhododendrons and azaleas that grew so well in Oregon reached halfway up the wall, and they had to step out further to get around their girth.

She stopped near the broken window. “Looks like we have some fresh prints in the sand here.”

Nolan took as close of a look at the window as he could from his distance. “The glass is still fairly intact. Had to be a small caliber.”

“Likely a handgun,” Mina said. “The most common would be a 9mm.”

“The Veritas expert will be able to tell us for sure.”

Mina moved ahead. He followed again. At the gate and fence securing the backyard, she used her sleeve to undo the latch. Large hanging lanterns fully lit a backyard that opened into a wide expanse overlooking the cove from up high. A glass-and-metal fence illuminated by more accent lights secured the rear of the property but didn’t obstruct the view. A wide stone patio held casual furniture, and a large deck contained a massive teak dining table and chairs.

Nolan fought back a shiver. If Becca was living, they would change her whole world by telling her of her murdered father. No longer would she come back to this amazing backyard the same person she was before her father died. Everything was going to change for her, and he hated that. He hadn’t lost family members, but after losing his buddy, he knew the agony of loss. That was bad enough, he couldn’t imagine losing a father. He wasn’t close to his father, but by all accounts, her dad meant a lot to her.

Mina ran her weaponed hand and flashlight over the shadowed perimeter and lowered them. “I’m glad there’s no immediate threat, but it would’ve been nice if we’d found the shooter tonight.”

“That would be too easy.”

She glanced over her shoulder. “Additional backup should be here any minute, and they can secure the scene for evidence collection. Then we need to get over to the mayor’s house to see if Becca’s there or if we have a second crime scene.”

He nodded. “I’ll call Veritas on the drive, but mind if I take a closer look inside while we wait?”

“I’ll grab some booties and gloves from my car.” She bolted back toward the sidewalk, and he followed. He took a moment at the window to look in. Why, he didn’t know because they both had come to an agreement of what had happened, and now it would be up to an expert to determine the caliber of the weapon and the trajectory of the bullet.

She’d returned to the front door with her supplies and was talking to Abe. “Let me know when backup arrives.”

She held booties and gloves out to Nolan and put on a set of her own. A siren sounded at the main road as they entered the building together.

He moved to the doorway where the bullet would have come from and looked straight ahead. “Dr. Osborne said the bullet exited the mayor’s body. If in fact the bullet fired through that window hit the mayor, we should find the slug in the wall over there.” He pointed across the room, but Mina was already moving in that direction.

She stopped to examine the drywall. “Looks like we have an embedded slug. Small caliber. I still think a handgun is likely.”

Nolan joined her, his booties whispering over the tile floor as he walked. “It’s times like this that I wish Oregon had a gun registration law, and we had a database we could search for handgun owners in the area.”

“I agree, but it might not matter. The gun could’ve been stolen.”

“True,” he said and stared at the hole in the wall. “Maybe our shooter has a concealed carry permit. Everyone on the team had to get new permits through your office when we moved here. Have you issued any others lately?”

She shook her head.

“You’re sure? I mean you weren’t involved in issuing our permits, so maybe someone got one without you knowing about it.”

“Not possible.” She rested a hand on her sidearm. “I review every application before the permit is issued. Besides, no telling if the shooter even had a concealed permit. Most gun owners don’t. And who knows if he even resides in our county.”

He leaned closer to the wall. “Looks like our shooter has skills and one shot was all it took.”

She frowned. “Looks like he has skills in body removal too, because unless our shooter was strong, there should be some sort of trail from moving the body. Be it Becca or the mayor.”

“There is that one little comma on the circle of blood, which could suggest the body was dragged in that direction.” Nolan crossed the room and squatted. “There’s a faint dirt line that looks like it outlines a large rug. Our victim could’ve fallen half on the rug and half on the floor, and the shooter only had to slide the body down the rug, roll it up, and take him or her away.”

She joined him and squatted too. “Looks like you could be right. If so, the shooter’s clothing would’ve been soaked with blood as he held the victim to move him. We find the bloody clothing, we find the killer.”

“Same might be true of the footprint outside. We find the shoe…”

A car door slammed outside. Mina stood. “That’ll be my deputy. Let me give him instructions, and we can be on our way to the mayor’s house.”

Nolan nodded and stood. His night had started with an invitation promising a killer of an evening. The discovery of the mayor’s body had fulfilled the invitation’s promise. But had the invitation underplayed the evening? Did this pool of blood belong to Becca, and they were going to find another crime scene at the mayor’s house? Had two people lost their lives that evening?