Malone held up his hand to stay the paramedic, who came to a standstill about thirty feet away.
“I should say ask her yourself,” Malone said, “but then you’d go do it. She was taken to the hospital for treatment. Again, something I recommend that you do.”
“She survived?”
“No thanks to you, I’m guessing?”
“That woman tried to kill me.”
“Can’t say I’m surprised.”
“Are you going to tell me who she was?”
Malone blew out a big breath. “We believe she was hired by the DC sex-trafficking ring to take out Daniel Ross because he was killing their girls.”
“Trent and I thought that might happ—” She silenced under his glare. No one liked being interrupted. “Sorry.”
“Uh-huh. Well, Ross’s van was found near a dive motel in Dumfries—where Hart was shot.” He held up a hand, and she shut her mouth. He continued. “We have an eyewitness who saw the entire thing, and his descriptions line up. Hart was shot by the woman and stuffed in the trunk of his Nissan by her and Daniel. There was also a young girl in the car.”
“The one I pulled from the barn.”
“I’d assume.”
“Okay, but if the woman was hired to take out Daniel, why didn’t she shoot him when she shot Hart? And why did Daniel help put Hart’s body in the trunk?”
“She had Daniel at gunpoint. But why she didn’t just kill him then, too, I don’t know.”
“Do we know the woman’s name?”
“This part you might do better sitting down for.”
“Tell me, and I’ll go to the hospital.” She’d prepared her mind to anyway, but Malone didn’t have to know that.
“She let it slip that Daniel was her brother.”
Her mind was murky, but eventually the name surfaced. “Christina Ross? But how? She’s dead.”
“She was ID’d incorrectly. Sometimes it happens…”
Malone had been right when he’d suggested it would have been best for her to be sitting for that news. Wow. Christina Ross was back from the dead—and she’d returned to kill her own brother. So many questions, starting with: what had happened to turn Christina from sex-trafficking victim into one of the perpetrators?
Sixty
Five days later, Sunday
Amanda hadn’t slept very well since the fire. The screams, the smoke, the heat, the feeling of being strangled. Every time she closed her eyes, she was back in the barn about to die, and she’d wake up drenched in sweat, the sheets soaking wet.
She’d survived, but she hadn’t gotten away completely unscathed. She’d hit her chin really hard in that loft, as well as her knee when she’d fallen down the stairs—not that she’d noticed until much later thanks to the adrenaline coursing through her veins—and she’d inhaled more than her fair share of smoke. But she was grateful there were no burns. Her doctor said she was lucky and told her to get some rest and pop ibuprofen as needed to ease the pain.
The “lucky” part was debatable,
and certainly not how she felt at the moment. Malone had forced her to take sick leave until her fate with Lieutenant Hill was decided.
But Amanda had her reasons for doing what she had. At least the girl was going to be fine—though it would be a long road ahead. They discovered her name was Abigail Butler, only fifteen years old. And Logan, who Daniel had taken from his home Monday night, had been dehydrated and starved for over twenty-four hours. He had recovered physically, but Amanda could tell he’d been mentally scarred by his experience—not that he was admitting as much to her. But she hadn’t talked to him a lot in the past week, and every time she did, he had a reason for cutting the conversation short.
She grabbed a coffee from her kitchen and got as comfortable as she could manage on her couch. She normally loved tucking her legs beneath her, but that was not on the agenda for the time being with her blasted knee. She grabbed a folder from the side table.
Malone had come by yesterday and delivered it to her. She really was living a waking nightmare. Not only had she disappointed him by “going rogue,” as he put it, but she hadn’t been able to question Christina Ross at all. It had been Cougar who got the job, along with Patty Glover in Sex Crimes. Malone didn’t want Trent to touch the case anymore either. Her partner was just one more casualty for how everything went down. Malone had strongly cautioned her not to speak with Trent until after her meeting with the lieutenant. She’d ignored his advice—apparently, she was in a rebellious phase—and was happy she had. Trent told her he didn’t hold any of what had happened, or what would, against her. As he’d said, “I’m a big boy, Amanda, and more than capable of handling whatever’s coming my way.” She hoped he was right.