K-9 Ranch Protection, page 1
“Everyone evacuate the building. There’s a bomb,” Izzy announced.
The police board members instantly ran from the room.
Izzy hurried to catch up to the K-9s and Austin. She stepped inside the bullpen.
Thor, the explosives K-9, sat a few feet away from a desk. Her desk.
It was then she noticed a backpack under her chair. A beeping filled the room, then intensified.
Izzy’s heartbeat slammed in her chest. The bomb was about to blow.
The K-9s bolted toward the entrance, where Austin stood. The group scrambled to get away from the ticking time bomb.
They reached the exit, and Austin thrust open the door, hauling Izzy with him.
Seconds later, a thunderous explosion rocked the building, sending debris pelting through the station and out the shattered front glass doors.
The impact shoved Izzy to her knees on the snowy walkway. The attack revealed one thing.
None of them were safe...
Darlene L. Turner is an award-winning author who lives with her husband, Jeff, in Ontario, Canada. Her love of suspense began when she read her first Nancy Drew book. She’s turned that passion into her writing and believes readers will be captured by her plots, inspired by her strong characters and moved by her inspirational message. Visit Darlene at www.darlenelturner.com, where there’s suspense beyond borders.
Books by Darlene L. Turner
Love Inspired Suspense
Border Breach
Abducted in Alaska
Lethal Cover-Up
Safe House Exposed
Alaskan Avalanche Escape
Crisis Rescue Team
Fatal Forensic Investigation
Explosive Christmas Showdown
Mountain Abduction Rescue
Buried Grave Secrets
Yukon Wilderness Evidence
K-9 Ranch Protection
Visit the Author Profile page at LoveInspired.com.
K-9 Ranch Protection
Darlene L. Turner
A man’s heart deviseth his way: but the Lord directeth his steps.
—Proverbs 16:9
For Helen, Melanie and Sara
You have blessed my life.
Acknowledgments
To my hubby: Jeff, thank you for putting up with my overactive writer imagination. I’m thankful that you get me. I love you.
To Valerie Beaman Miller: Thank you so much for letting me use Névé (and her name!) as the inspiration for my Alaskan malamute and for answering my questions. Anything I embellished for fiction is totally on me.
To my editor, Tina James, and my agent, Tamela Hancock Murray: You are both amazing and I’m thankful for your continual guidance.
To Sara Davison, Helen St. Martin and Melanie Stevenson: We’ve nicknamed ourselves the “Fab Four” as a joke, but I’m SO thankful God put us together. We fit perfectly.
Jesus: Thank You for always guiding my path. You’ve got me!
Contents
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
Epilogue
Dear Reader
Excerpt from Guarded by the Marshal by Sharee Stover
ONE
The computer screen flashed white and turned black. Constable Isabelle Tremblay’s hand flew away from the keyboard and the hairs on her nape prickled. She glanced around the Harturn River Police Department’s bullpen. All the monitors had gone dark. Not good. She shoved her office chair back and spun to her coworker. “What’s happening?”
Before he could respond, menacing laughter exploded through their system, and a skull appeared on all screens. A message in bold red letters displayed beneath the frightening image.
IZZY, BACK OFF OR DIE.
A collective gasp filled the room.
Izzy bolted to her feet. She caught the meaning behind the message, and it confirmed her suspicions. Chief Constable Justin Tremblay’s death wasn’t from a heart attack.
Her father was murdered.
As quickly as the screens had flickered, they returned to normal. How had someone infiltrated HRPD’s secure computer system? Their IT department was the best of the best. Plus she completed a double check recently of their firewalls. Her cyber knowledge verified they were impenetrable.
Or, at least, she thought so.
“Tremblay, my office. Now!” The voice of newly appointed Chief Constable Eric Halt boomed from the hallway.
“You’re in trouble now,” Constable Fisher said. “Did you click on something?”
She raised her hands. “No, I was just about to shut down for the day.”
The older male constable clucked his tongue. “Well, I’m guessing from that message you’re still secretly investigating your dad’s death. You need to let sleeping dogs lie.”
“I can’t.” Izzy shuffled through the hallway as her cell phone buzzed in her vest pocket. She ignored it and knocked on Chief Constable Halt’s door.
“Enter.”
Izzy inhaled and stepped into the office. “You wanted to see me?”
The chief lifted his index finger. “Thanks for the update. Make sure we’re locked down. We can’t let this happen again.” He slammed the receiver back into the cradle and gestured toward the chair in front of his desk. “Sit.”
Definitely not good. She obeyed.
Halt peeked over his reading glasses, eyes glaring. “Didn’t I tell you to drop your investigation? This message tells me you didn’t listen.”
“Sir, I haven’t used our department resources and have only investigated on my own time.” She leaned forward. “Plus this message tells me I’m on the right track. Dad was murdered.”
The man’s eyes softened. “Listen, I’m really sorry about your father’s death, but nothing suspicious materialized. He had a heart attack while driving and crashed. End of story.”
Izzy was tired of hearing that lie. Even her own mother told her to back off, but Izzy couldn’t. “He just had his annual physical and was in perfect health.”
Halt drummed his fingers on his desktop. “Well, he was under a lot of stress the past couple of months. That may have triggered the attack.”
Izzy shook her head. “It didn’t. I figured out from his journal notes he was investigating some sort of drug cartel. Do you know anything about that?”
The chief constable stopped drumming his fingers. “No. What else did you find?”
“The rest of his notes are in code. That’s what I’m trying to ascertain.”
“Odd.” He pointed to his phone. “Well, IT informed me that someone clicked on a link included in a fake company email sent to all of us. Whoever sent it is good. The bogus link unleashed a virus. Did you?”
What? “No. That email came in just as I was shutting down to leave for the day.”
He crossed his arms. “Well, IT narrowed it down to your computer. Are you absolutely sure? Don’t lie to me.”
She popped to her feet. “I. Did. Not. You know I have—”
“I know. I know. Your partner told me about your memory. Must be nice to never forget anything.” He tapped his thumb on the desk. “I’ll get IT to investigate further. We need to determine where the virus came from and if it has compromised our system.” He placed his hand on the phone. “Dismissed.”
Izzy left the office, his words lingering in her mind.
Must be nice to never forget anything.
Some days Izzy wanted to forget. However, her hyperthymesia prevented her wish from becoming a reality. Having a perfect memory had certainly given her an edge when solving cases in her hometown of Harturn River, British Columbia, but it had also been the brunt of continuous jokes throughout her life. To where she tried to keep her condition a secret. Until her ex-partner, Austin Murray, convinced her to use her detailed memories to their advantage.
Her cell phone buzzed again, thrusting her out of thoughts of the past—and Austin—the man she had tried hard to forget. Unsuccessfully.
She fished out her device and swiped the screen.
Sims. Her father’s confidential informant.
Figured out the cipher.
Izzy sucked in a breath. Sims came through. Now she’d be able to read her father’s final encoded entries in his journal. Perhaps his notes would lead her to his killer.
Good. Off shift. Where can we meet?
Three dots bounced on her screen as she waited for his answer.
1 hour behind Chuckie’s Bar and Grill. Bring the journal.
Izzy tapped in her last message.
See you soon.
She hurried back to her desk, gathered her belongings and snatched her winter coat from the back of the chair before leaving the police station.
A brisk wind slappe
She jogged to her vehicle and pressed her key fob to unlock the door. A piece of paper stuck under her windshield wiper caught her attention. A wind gust flipped the top half over, revealing a message.
We’re watching.
She bristled and peered around the lit parking lot. Nothing suspicious materialized. Izzy lifted the wiper and removed the note. Only the simple two-word message appeared on the paper.
However, the underlying threat seeped off the page. Whoever hacked into their police system wanted to ensure she understood their order to stay away.
But they underestimated the Tremblay determination flowing through her veins. The threat only escalated her resolve to find her father’s killer. Izzy suppressed the trepidation threatening to overpower her thoughts, shoved the note in her purse and climbed into her SUV. I’ll find your murderer, Dad, if it’s the last thing I do.
Forty minutes later at her house, Izzy finished scanning the last pages of her father’s journal. She would not risk losing any valuable information if something happened to the book. Especially now that she was close to deciphering its contents. Her father must have suspected the threat on his life as he’d mailed the journal to her condo’s address the day before his death. Because of this, she was positive it contained valuable information that would uncover his killer and what he’d been working on. Izzy yanked the thumb drive from her laptop as her eyes shifted to the brown journal sitting on her desk. A thought tumbled into her mind.
Keep the two separate.
But where should she hide the drive?
She spotted her father’s box of items from the police station, and an idea formed. Izzy took out his favorite coin from its pouch and dropped in the drive. She wouldn’t hide it inside her condo because that’s the first place anyone would search. Izzy put on her jacket and placed the journal in her purse. She stuffed the thumb drive in one coat pocket and her bear spray in the other. Being off duty meant she had to leave her weapon behind, but the repellant would at least give her some type of protection. Izzy snatched her key fob and raced outside to hide the drive in her favorite spot in her backyard. Somewhere no one would think to look.
She turned into the darkened alleyway and parked her SUV beside a dumpster fifteen minutes later. Before exiting to meet Sims, she punched in her partner’s personal cell phone number and waited.
“Hey, Izzy, what’s up?” Constable Douglas Carver asked.
The man’s experience had impressed her throughout the past few years, and she needed his advice. Plus his fatherly demeanor comforted her after her own father’s death. “Doug, I have a lead on the cipher to decode Dad’s notes. I’m about to meet with Sims but wanted to see if you could come too. I need your help.”
“I’m in a meeting with Austin Murray going through pictures of his dogs. Halt tasked me with buying one for the K-9 unit. Where are you?” The concern in his voice filtered through the phone.
Izzy stiffened at the mention of her ex-partner’s name. Austin Murray’s failure to act at a crime scene had robbed their police station of Sergeant Clara Jenkins—Izzy’s best friend and mentor. Clara died that night from a gunshot wound to the chest. Ten years had passed since Austin quit the force, and Izzy had stayed away from the man, even with Harturn River’s small population of thirty-five thousand. Izzy had secretly fallen for her partner, but the pain of losing Clara caused Izzy to suppress her true feelings for the man.
She was aware of his K-9 ranch which also included horses, cattle, and other farm animals, but had purposely avoided going there. She bit her lip. “I’m behind Chuckie’s Bar and Grill about to talk to Sims. How much longer will you be?”
“Izzy, what’s going on? I can hear the concern in your voice.”
She explained the events of the past hour, including the note on her windshield. “Sorry I didn’t contact you earlier. There wasn’t time. I could use your years of expertise. And backup, of course.”
“Are you calling me old?” His teasing tone made her smile.
“Never.”
“On my way. Don’t do anything stupid.” He clicked off.
A door slammed nearby, startling Izzy. She turned and spied Sims lighting a cigarette beside the bar’s back entrance. She studied the surroundings before hustling to his side.
The informant puffed out a cloud of smoke. “’Bout time you got here. You bring the journal?”
She patted her purse. “Yup. Where’s the cipher?”
He tapped his temple. “In here.”
Izzy gritted her teeth. How had her father put up with this man? His cocky attitude had annoyed her over the last week. She found Sims’s number hidden under the inside tab of the journal’s cover. Her father had spoken of the man often and how he’d helped him put away many criminals, so she called Sims. Right away, he agreed with her suspicions of foul play in her father’s death. “Sims, please tell me what you discovered.”
He took one more drag of his cigarette before dropping the butt to the ground and stepping on any remaining embers. “It’s really quite simple. Your dad always loved his books. He used the book cipher. Show me the journal.”
Izzy withdrew the book and opened to a page containing her father’s cryptic notes of numbers. “There’s a number at the top that doesn’t seem to follow the same sequence as the others.”
“Interesting.” Sims pointed. “I believe these numbers mean the page, line and word needed to decipher the message. You just have to figure out which book and edition he used.”
Izzy palm-slapped her forehead. “Of course. Why hadn’t I thought of that? How did you figure it out?”
“I remembered something he said to me the day before he died. He said he loved the way Sherlock used a book cipher in one of his novels.”
“Right. The Valley of Fear. It was Dad’s favorite.” She latched on to Sims’s arm. “Wait, do you think he used that book for the cipher?”
He shook his head. “Doubtful. Too easy. Since he sent the journal to you, it’s a book only you would guess.”
“Right.” Izzy’s memory pictured every book on her shelves, but nothing stood out.
“Don’t limit it to your current bookshelf. Go way back, it could—”
A shot pierced the frosty night.
Sims dropped.
“No!” Izzy fell to her knees and placed two fingers on his neck. No pulse. She hung her head. The man was gone.
Movement rustled behind her.
She jumped upright and pulled out her bear spray, still clutching the journal.
“Don’t even think about it,” a sinister voice said. “I have a Glock pointed at you. Drop the can and turn around slowly.”
Bear spray couldn’t outrun a bullet. Izzy obeyed and turned to face her attacker.
The man stood away from the bar’s back entrance light, concealing his identity. However, something about his voice triggered a memory. A meeting at HRPD’s station behind closed doors six months ago. She had caught a portion of the conversation as she left the building. The angry words surfaced in her memory. Even though the speaker had lowered his tone, she didn’t miss the whispered words.
He can’t find out.
The sentence returned, but she couldn’t assign the voice to a name. Had the person lowered their pitch tonight to disguise themselves?
“Toss the journal on the ground and kick it to me.”
A phrase her father used to say came to mind.
Izzy always give an assailant what they ask for. Your life isn’t worth it.
Besides, she had scanned the contents. She did as the attacker commanded.
“Now the drive.”
She chewed on the inside of her mouth, contemplating how they acquired that information. “What drive?” She had to stall for time. Doug, where are you?
“Don’t play coy. You’re your father’s daughter. Of course you made a copy.”
“Did you kill my father?” She held her breath in anticipation of the man’s answer.
