Police Dog Procedural
Автор
Lena Diaz
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Chapter One
The painful echoes of the past whipped through Emma’s mind, chilling her far more than the autumn winds funneling down from Idaho’s Salmon River Mountains. She perched on the top step of her covered back deck, clutching a steaming coffee cup in her hands. The predawn sky began to lighten to a soft gray, allowing a first glimpse of the rolling land around her. But it wasn’t the K-9 training ring that she saw. Or the small horse paddock encircled by a white three-rail fence. Or even the golden larch trees just beginning to turn yellow amid the deep greens of the Douglas firs and western white pines. What she saw didn’t exist, not anymore. And yet it was as brutally real this morning as it had been when she was a little girl.
Maybe it was the surprisingly crisp chill of this late-September morning that had triggered the memories she usually managed to keep locked away. It had been an unseasonably cool day much like this one when she’d last seen her biological parents. Her father had been using her as a punching bag—again—while her mother sat on the other side of the room in a drunken stupor, ignoring Emma’s cries for help. She’d ignored Danny’s and Katie’s cries, too.
Emma had been the lucky one. She wasn’t hurt so badly that she couldn’t go to school. And her father hadn’t been careful enough about where he’d hit her this time. When her second-grade teacher caught sight of suspicious-looking bruises peeking out from beneath Emma’s long sleeves, she’d called the Jasper police. DCF, the Department of Child and Family Services, had taken Emma away. But they were too late to help her sister and brother.
Emma’s hands tightened around her coffee mug as the dark memories swirled. After being released from the hospital, she’d been placed with foster parents, K-9 unit Officer Rick Daniels and his community-minded wife, Susan. If not for them, and the teacher who’d refused to ignore the signs that others had, Emma would have been sleeping with the angels by now. Just like Danny and Katie.
Swallowing past the tightness in her throat, she sent up a prayer of thanks that she, at least, was spared. And that her birth parents were both in prison where they could never hurt another child. Twenty-three years. Had it really been that long since that awful day when she’d lost her siblings?
Another chilly breeze had her taking a deep sip of the hot coffee. She reveled in the burn that warmed her insides—much as Rick and Susan’s patient love and understanding had warmed her heart. Somehow, they’d eventually thawed out the ice around it that had enabled her to survive the eight long years of beatings, hunger and neglect. She thought about them, and missed them, every day. But it was the loss of her police officer father that hurt the most. Because he was the one who’d taught by example and helped her learn to trust again. He’d taught her that not all men were bad. He’d shown her that a real man, even if he was big and strong, used his strength to help others, not hurt them.
But even big, strong Rick Daniels wasn’t impervious to a bullet.
When Officer Walters had broken the news that Rick and Duke, his K-9 partner, weren’t ever coming home again, it had sent Emma into a dangerous tailspin. It had taken years for her to emerge from that dark place. And yet another police officer, like her dad, to help pull her out of it. Walters had done everything he could to turn her away from the destructive path she’d gone down. Thanks to him, and her dear mother, Susan, Emma had finally put her demons behind her.
Thank God the cancer had waited to take her mother until after Emma had straightened out. Susan had lived long enough to see Emma go to college. They’d made some wonderful memories that helped tide Emma over whenever grief reared its ugly head. Or when the other thoughts came, the ugly ones from her childhood.
She squeezed her eyes shut, wishing she could close her ears just as easily. The screams from her past were louder than ever, making her cringe against the sound of fear that had once been her constant companion.
Another scream tore through the air as the sun’s first rays warmed her face. Her eyes flew open. Those weren’t the sounds of her past. This was happening right now. Someone else was on the ranch, and they were crying, desperate for help.
She jumped to her feet, cursing when hot coffee sloshed onto her hand. She tossed the cup on the ground. The dogs were barking now, probably had been for a while. She’d been so caught up in her thoughts that she hadn’t noticed. Something was wrong, horribly wrong. And that mournful sound was coming from the front of the property.
She took off running, her boots digging into the grass and gravel as she whipped around the side of the house. Belatedly, she realized she should have gone inside and grabbed a gun first. No telling what she was about to find. But she couldn’t ignore those anguished cries for even one more second. She rounded the corner and skidded to a halt in the gravel out front.
No one was there.
The cries had stopped.
The dogs were no longer barking.
She looked past the circular drive, past the wishing well in the middle, toward the arched entry to the ranch a good hundred yards west. Both her property manager and head trainer would be here soon. But their usual parking spaces to the left of the kennels just past the circular drive were empty except for Emma’s rusty pickup truck. The only other vehicle was Shane’s RV, backed into its usual spot between the kennels and the small barn that housed her two horses. All was silent. Everything looked as it should, and yet something seemed...off.
Was someone hiding just inside the clumps of evergreens on the far side of the clearing, watching her?
Or hunkered down behind the wishing well a few yards away?
Did they know about her past and make those awful cries, realizing she’d feel compelled to run out here to help?
She cautiously backed toward the porch steps behind her as she continued to scan the trees, hills and outbuildings. Unfortunately, trouble was no stranger here at the Daniels Canine Academy. Part of it had been Emma’s fault, during her rebellious period after her father’s death when she’d hooked up with a bad boy, Billy. But later, as an adult, she’d brought even more problems to the ranch when she’d fostered troubled youths. The Jasper police had already been familiar with DCA because Emma trained their K-9s. But they’d become even more familiar because of her calls for assistance on numerous occasions. But that was years ago. She hadn’t fostered anyone for quite some time.
But she did have three at-risk high-school boys working part time here at DCA on weekends as part of their court-ordered community service.
William Shrader, Hugh Engel, and Kyle Norvell were a tight-knit group of friends. Emma had met with their families several times since the boys began working here to report on their progress. The parents all seemed nice enough and genuinely concerned about their sons. And the boys hadn’t given her any trouble. But for only being in high school, they each had a shockingly long history of trouble with the law.
She slowed to a halt, hating where her mind was going. She didn’t want to believe the worst. But experience told her she couldn’t ignore the obvious—that the boys were forced by a judge to work here as part of an agreement to stay out of jail. They hadn’t been working here for very long. Their resentment toward the judge could easily transfer to Emma. And she hadn’t known them long enough to establish any real trust between them. She had no idea what they might be capable of.
If one of them was behind the screams, it could be a prank. It could also be something more sinister, dangerous. She really wished she’d gone inside for a gun.
She cautiously backed a few more steps toward the covered porch that ran across the front of the little one-story house. A heart-wrenching cry sounded behind her. She whirled around. At the top of the steps, right outside the door, was a large wicker basket with a white blanket spilling out of it. Next to that was a pink vinyl bag.
Everything clicked together in her mind. The cries, the basket, that pink bag. No. No, no, no. Please. No one could be that cruel, that heartless, that...irresponsible, especially as cold as it was out here this morning. Could they? Well of course they could. She knew better than most that people could be cruel, heartless and downright mean.
She sprinted forward and fairly flew up the steps. Her pulse rushed in her ears as she dropped to her knees beside the basket and then flipped back the white blanket. The crying stopped. Tears spilled down Emma’s cheeks as she yanked her cell phone out of her jacket pocket and dialed 911.
A chill wind ruffled her hair and made a piece of paper flutter where it had been taped to the top of the basket handle. It was a cryptic note.
Please take care of my Angel.
“Jasper police, what’s your emergency?” a familiar-sounding young woman’s voice asked through the phone.
“Jenny, it’s Emma Daniels, at DCA. Someone trespassed on my property and—”
“Are you okay, Emma? Are they still at your ranch?”
“No, I mean, yes, I’m home. And yes, I’m fine. No one’s here. At least, I don’t think so, except—”
“I’m dispatching some deputies right now. I can send an ambulance, too, just to be sure you’re okay. It’s no trouble.”
An ambulance? Did she need one? It was chilly, but not freezing. And the temps would soar into the seventies as the sun rose higher. How long had the baby been left outside?
Dread had her heart lurching in her chest. She looked down again, then smiled through her tears as she lifted the precious bundle. “I don’t think we need an ambulance. But, yes, please, send one. Just to be sure. I really think she’s okay.”
“Who’s okay? Emma? Who’s there with you?”
“Someone sneaked onto the ranch and left something by my front door—”
“What did they leave?”
She hugged the bundle closer and tugged her jacket around it, rocking back and forth as she looked into the baby’s dark brown eyes. “An angel. They left me an angel.”
