Shadow Point Deputy

One deputy wants to keep her safe.

Another one wants her dead.

Rita Horn doesn’t know the identity of the uniform-wearing criminal targeting her. But Officer Cole Garrett vows to bring the rogue deputy—whoever he is—to justice. Strong, sexy and determined to protect, the heroic cop sparks feelings in Rita that she can’t deny, even as the danger swells around them.

Garrett Valor

JULIE ANNE LINDSEY is a multi-genre author who writes the stories that keep her up at night. She’s a self-proclaimed nerd with a penchant for words and proclivity for fun. Julie lives in rural Ohio with her husband and three small children. Today, she hopes to make someone smile. One day she plans to change the world. Julie is a member of the International Thriller Writers and Sisters in Crime. Learn more about Julie Anne Lindsey at julieannelindsey.com.

Also by Julie Anne Lindsey

Federal Agent Under Fire

The Sheriff’s Secret

Discover more at millsandboon.co.uk

Shadow Point Deputy

Julie Anne Lindsey

www.millsandboon.co.uk

ISBN: 978-1-474-09352-1

SHADOW POINT DEPUTY

© 2018 Tyler Anne Snell

Published in Great Britain 2019

by Mills & Boon, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers 1 London Bridge Street, London, SE1 9GF

All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. This edition is published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, locations and incidents are purely fictional and bear no relationship to any real life individuals, living or dead, or to any actual places, business establishments, locations, events or incidents. Any resemblance is entirely coincidental.

By payment of the required fees, you are granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right and licence to download and install this e-book on your personal computer, tablet computer, smart phone or other electronic reading device only (each a “Licensed Device”) and to access, display and read the text of this e-book on-screen on your Licensed Device. Except to the extent any of these acts shall be permitted pursuant to any mandatory provision of applicable law but no further, no part of this e-book or its text or images may be reproduced, transmitted, distributed, translated, converted or adapted for use on another file format, communicated to the public, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of publisher.

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Version: 2020-03-02

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Dedicated to cat ladies.

You are my people.

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

About the Author

Booklist

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

About the Publisher

Chapter One

Rita Horn parked her new pickup truck in the muddy gravel lot across from the docks. She dragged a bag of dry kibble from the bed and squinted at a dozen feline silhouettes framed by the sunset. It was a shame so many cats were homeless in Shadow Point. She’d take them all in if she could, but the three she already had were sure to protest.

“Here, kitty, kitty,” she called, shivering against the brisk autumn breeze. Feeding the strays seemed a decent compromise to adopting them all, but it didn’t minimize the guilt she experienced every time she stopped to check on them. If they had to be on their own, she supposed the abandoned factories along the waterfront made a decent haven. There was camaraderie, no natural predators and plenty of mice to sustain them when Rita worked late and missed her usual stop.

The cats swarmed her ankles as she rounded the building’s edge, mewling and climbing over one another to get to the food. She stopped at a line of cement bowls she’d purchased from a local landscaper when the pet store versions had insisted on blowing away.

“Who’s hungry?” She tipped the bag over the bowls, filling each to its rim. “Ah-ah-ah.” She nudged a growling pair apart. “No fighting. There’s plenty for everyone.”

The bag was nearly empty when a latecomer trotted into view. The little orange-and-white tabby had something smeared over its face and down one side.

“What is that?” Rita crouched for a closer look. Deep crimson streaks flattened the kitty’s fur into matted stripes. Rita clutched her chest. “My poor baby. What happened to you?” She reached for the tabby, but he jumped free with a hiss. It was easy to forget many of the cats were feral, not abandoned. It had taken weeks to get some to come out and see her at dinnertime. She clucked her tongue and extended a hand with the last of the kibble on her palm. The little guy wouldn’t survive long with an injury that had bled so much. He needed the wound cleaned, antibiotics and probably stitches.

“Kitty,” she cooed. The injured cat darted away, and Rita dashed after him, leaving the empty bag behind.

“Kitty, kitty, kitty.” Her sensible three-inch heels clicked and snapped against the cold ground as she gave chase. She stopped short at a fence marked NO TRESPASSING. The cat paused a moment beyond the chain- link barrier before screeching out of sight.

“Darn it.” She dropped the kibble from her palm and scanned the scene, debating the importance of her flawless, law-abiding record when that kitty needed a doctor.

A line of bloody paw prints knotted her tummy and propelled her to action. If she was caught, at least she could give a good explanation. Surely no one would fault a woman for trying to help an injured animal.

Rita shored up her nerve and tugged the gate where a thick chain and padlock held it loosely to the fence. There was enough space to slip inside if she held the gate and ducked beneath the chain, so she took a deep breath and went in. She followed the trail around the factory’s edge, admiring the soft cotton candy glow of a setting sun as it gave way to twilight. The cat stared down at her from a windowsill eight feet in the air. “Are you even hurt?”

She scanned the scene for another injured animal. Where had the blood come from, if not from the cat who was wearing it? A dark puddle drew her forward, toward a narrow object several yards away. The air seemed to sizzle with danger as she scooped an expensive-looking pen off the ground. An odd thing to find at an abandoned factory, unless developers had been here. Maybe the state was finally going to make good on the promise to renovate the area. She froze as the tip of her shoe slid against the slick cement and swallowed a scream when the puddle came clearly into view, red as the sun burning its last rays of daylight off the water.

Rita raked her cell phone from a coat pocket with trembling fingers. There was far too much blood to have come from a cat.

A sudden splash sent ice fingers down her spine, and the low murmur of voices pushed her back to the building’s edge. She closed her eyes to summon a thread of bravery, then peeked toward the sounds with caution.

The angle of the sunset reduced both figures to faceless silhouettes. They were clearly male with broad shoulders and strong gaits, but they were of strikingly different heights. Together, they strode beneath a cone of security light, revealing one man’s dress shirt and the other’s official-looking jacket, complete with patches she couldn’t read from that distance. Rita’s heart took off at a sprint as a dark stain down the front of the dress shirt began to look a lot like the puddle she’d just seen. The man with the stained shirt wiped his hands on a rag. A gun holster nestled safely against his side.

A black sedan seemed to manifest from the shadows, parked silently beside a line of blue barrels. The trunk popped open as the men approached, revealing what appeared to be more blood and a number of firearms. The man tossed the rag into the trunk, then dragged a suit jacket out. He threaded his arms through the sleeves and fastened two buttons over the broad crimson stain.

Rita swiped her phone screen to life. The little device rocked unsteadily in her sweat-slicked palm. Her breaths shortened and her heart rate spiked uncomfortably. There wasn’t enough air, and she couldn’t swallow. Rita gripped her phone tighter and fought the wave of panic quickly taking control. Not since she lost her mother had anxiety come on so quickly.

She pressed her back to the wall and returned the phone to her pocket. She needed to sit down before she fell over. Her eyelids slid shut for an internal pep talk, and she reopened them with purpose. She’d make the call from someplace safe. Someplace she could breathe. She forced the last ounce of bravery from her bones and tiptoed back through the shadows, along the building’s edge, careful not to let her heels smack against the ground.

The snick of a closing trunk and soft purr of an engine were behind her. A set of low growls rose before her near the food bowls. Rita’s muscles tensed. No fighting, she prayed. Not now.

The sound grew steadily into the familiar squawks of a feline brawl. A beam of light flashed over the ground before her, sweeping and narrowing as it drew nearer.

“Who’s there?” The man in the official-looking jacket moved in her direction. The familiar Cade County Sheriff’s Department logo was on his chest.

That could not be good.

Rita burst into motion, running as quickly as her trembling legs would carry her toward her truck, through the chained gate and across the gravel lot.

“Stop!” the man’s voice boomed behind her, punctuated by the echoes of heavy footfalls.

Not today, officer, she thought as she dived behind the wheel. Something bad had definitely happened at the docks tonight. She didn’t know what, and she wasn’t about to become another puddle on the concrete.

Chapter Two

Rain poured over Deputy Cole Garrett’s hat and slicker. Heavy storm clouds had masked the sunrise, but Shadow Point was still in motion. The blue-collar town had risen with the sun for a hundred years. Farmers. Bus drivers. Factory workers. Somehow the body pulled from the river wore a watch worth more than Cole’s first truck.

He peered through the downpour at his older brother and current Cade County sheriff, West Garrett. “Recognize him?”

West’s frown deepened. “Nope.”

Dressed like he was, no one probably would. Folks with that kind of money drove right on through Shadow Point. “Maybe he was visiting family,” Cole suggested, “or was here on business.”

West shot Cole a look. “By the looks of the bullet hole in his forehead, business wasn’t good.”

Members of the local coroner’s office loaded the waterlogged body onto a gurney and covered it with a white sheet. The medical examiner presented West with a clipboard. “We’ll do our preliminaries and get back with you.”

West followed the coroner back to the van.

Cole flashed his light over the scene, seeking anything that might explain how a stranger wound up murdered and floating in the water before dawn. The river had surely stripped the body of any clues, but maybe the killer had left footprints or the shell casing on land.

He moved methodically upriver, toward a set of abandoned factories by the docks. The shielded space seemed a more likely location for an execution than the sodden, unobstructed field where the body had been pushed ashore.

He returned the flashlight to his belt as the storm peeled back its efforts. A swarm of cats came into view near the largest building, gathered beneath a broad metal awning. They cried at the sight of him, and Cole changed trajectories, drawn to the mass of complaining felines.

The coroner’s van motored away in the distance, rounding a bend and drifting out of sight. West’s cruiser rolled quietly into a muddy gravel lot near the factory.

The world grew brighter by the second, finally relieved of the relentless storm.

“A bit off the path, aren’t you?” West called, slamming the door behind him.

Cole stared at a line of cement bowls and a shredded cat food bag. “I don’t think so.” He nudged the soggy paper with his toe. “Someone fed the cats. Wasn’t the first time, either. They didn’t scatter when they saw me.”

West cast a glance at the crowd of furry spectators, then turned his attention to the cruiser. “There were some tire tracks where I parked. They’re washed out. Tread marks are gone.”

“Let’s measure them,” Cole suggested. “Could be something. Might be how they brought the body here.” Cole moved toward the cats, shooing them and scrutinizing the only patch of dry ground for miles.

“West.” A set of bloody paw prints and the pointy outline of one shoe appeared beneath a broad awning. A white slip of paper clung to the sheet-metal door. A receipt dated the night before. The rest of the print was blurred away but he was certain it said cat food. “We’ve got a witness out there somewhere.”

RITA STARED AT the clock above her fireplace and debated leaving for work an hour early. She’d been dressed since dawn, having given up on sleep hours before. The raging storm had rattled her windows and her mind. Each time her lids had grown heavy, she imagined the man from the docks trying to break down the door, only to wake again with the realization it was just the wind.

The same carousel of questions ran endlessly around her mind. What had she really seen? What sort of thing would involve so much blood, the docks and the local sheriff’s department? Did the man giving chase recognize her? If so, what would happen next?

She’d watched the news on the edge of her seat, waiting for reports of whatever had happened at the docks, but there were none. Nothing in the morning paper, either.

A sharp pounding on the front door nearly sent her out the back. She inched across the living room and peeked through the curtains. Her little brother, Ryan, stood on the porch rubbing his palms together and puffing into his hands. The temperature must’ve dropped after she’d left the docks.

She opened the door with a forced smile, then jerked him inside. “Hey, what are you doing here?” She secured the door behind him and flipped the lock, hoping to look more normal than she felt.

He dragged his gaze from the locked door to her. “You said I could borrow your truck. My new roommate is moving in.” He tented his dark brows, green eyes flashing in suspicion. “Are you okay?”

Ryan was nineteen and a sophomore at the university one town over. He was a full seven years her junior, with a misplaced big brother attitude. She’d helped raise him, and not the other way around.

“Yep.” She tugged her ear and hefted a passing cat into her arms. The sight of her feline family usually brought her great comfort, but today they only delivered flashbacks of the docks.

“I thought you didn’t have to be at work for an hour,” Ryan said.

“I don’t.”

He scanned her freshly straightened living room, the result of too much time and anxiety with zero sleep. “Since when are you up and dressed by now, and why is your place so clean? What’s going on?”

Rita’s cheeks ached from the forced congeniality. What she wanted to do was cry. “Nothing.” She dropped the act and pinched the bridge of her nose with one hand while cradling her kitty with the other. “I had trouble sleeping. Can I get you some coffee? Are you hungry?” Her gaze jumped again to the hands of the clock that never seemed to move. Going to work early wasn’t a bad thing. It was normal, really. Not for her, but lots of other people did it. Maybe she could finally make some headway with the files on her desk, and the distraction would keep her mind off the slew of questions that she had no way of answering.

Ryan’s hand danced before her. A US Army key ring swung from one finger. “Did you hear anything I just said?”

“What?”

He cocked a hip and dropped his arm. “Did someone hurt you?”

“No. Of course not.” That was funny. Self-defense was a mandatory course of education in the Horn family, had been even before they’d lost their mother. Though no amount of self-defense training could’ve saved her from the drunk driver who’d taken her from them.

Rita dropped the cat on the couch. “Let me grab my purse.” Her breath caught as she pulled back the zipper, revealing the pen she’d found at the docks inside. She’d considered throwing it away when she found it in her coat pocket, but decided to keep it until she knew what had happened. Maybe it was evidence.

“Give me one more minute,” she called into the living room.

Rita grabbed a sandwich bag from the lazy Susan and wrapped the pen in tissues before stuffing it inside. If being trampled by thirty cats at an abandoned dock wasn’t contamination enough, one night in her disaster of a handbag had surely ruined the pen’s chances of being useful. But with technology these days, maybe someone could do something with it. If only she knew who to give it to or if she should. She rubbed her forehead and swallowed a lump of emotion. Was it evidence? Was she crazy? Maybe both. She sealed the bag and stuffed it back into her purse.

“Found it.” She dropped the bag on the couch beside her white Himalayan rescue. The other two cats leaped onto the sofa and stuck their noses into her bag.

She presented the key to her new truck on one palm. “Take care of my baby.”

He made the trade with enthusiasm, dropping the key to his twenty-year-old yellow hatchback into her newly empty hand. “And you take care of Suzie Sunshine.”

Rita snorted and dragged one finger in a small X shape over her heart. “Do you need money for gas or lunch? How are your grades?”

Ryan backed toward the door. “I’m good. Grades are fine. I am meeting the guys for a cram session, though. So I should get going. I’ve got two morning exams. All those professors want me to learn things.” He pretended to choke himself.

Rita clapped slowly, and a genuine smile formed on her lips. “The future of America, ladies and gentlemen.” Education had always been high on Rita’s priority list, but never on Ryan’s. It had been all she could do to convince him to get a degree before enlisting in the army alongside their father. With a degree he could at least enter the service as an officer and be prepared for a career afterward.

He turned for the door.

“Wait.” Rita pried the pile of cats from her handbag and set them aside. “I’ll walk you out.” She stroked the kitties’ heads and scratched their chins. “Try to behave.”

A thick fog had settled in after the night’s heavy rains, making it impossible to see the stop sign at the end of the block and adding a Hitchcockian feel to her already pear-shaped world.

Ryan angled her silver Ford smoothly out of the driveway.

She coaxed his rusty hatchback to life. The stench of exhaust bit her nose and the air.

Ten minutes later, she set her purse on the municipal building’s security scanner and nodded at the guards. She collected her things on the other side and walked quickly away, feeling irrationally conspicuous, knowing the pen lay inside.

Her heels snapped and cracked against polished marble as she crossed the cavernous foyer and climbed the wide, sweeping staircase. Cade County wasn’t small, but it was rural, and the population was low, making one grand building a sufficient hub for the courthouse and local government offices, including hers at the County Treasurer. Oil paintings of the governor, senator and US presidents lined the second-floor hallways.

Rita ducked into her office and dropped onto her rolling chair with determination. Once she cleared the clutter from her head and desk, she’d give the sheriff’s department a call. Anonymously. She’d been trespassing, after all, and she wouldn’t be in this predicament if she’d obeyed the law and heeded the sign. She dropped her head into waiting palms. What would she say? She suspected that something bad happened? The storm had surely erased any evidence, and hadn’t a deputy been there last night?

Why, yes. He had. And she’d run from him. A groan escaped her lips.

“Good morning, Rita!” A perky voice split the silence.

Rita jerked upright. “Hello.”

The receptionist stared expectantly. “You’re here bright and early.” She fluffed giant blond hair and straightened a spray of stiff bangs.

“Hoping to catch up.” Rita motioned to the pile of folders on her desk.

“Any luck?”

“Not really.” She shouldn’t have come in today. The office didn’t feel like a distraction. It felt like a prison. “I think I’m going to make a coffee run before I get started.” Maybe a little fresh air would help. “Can I get you something?”

The woman raised her steaming mug higher. “Kinda got that covered.”

“Right. Sorry.” Rita grabbed her coat and purse. “I won’t be long.” She straightened her white silk blouse and black pencil skirt, then hustled downstairs, taking the side exit into a public garden to catch her breath.

A slight drizzle forced her to stay near the door, where a small overhang served as shelter. The benches were wet. The ground waterlogged. Narrow puddles filled the spaces between walkway paving stones. She inhaled the cool, misty air and shook her hands out at the wrists. She didn’t need fresh air or caffeine. She needed answers, and the only way she’d get them was to call the police like she should have done last night. It was better to report something that turned out to be nothing than to not speak up and find out later that her call could have helped someone.