Run to Ground(131)

He parked in front of the VFW and turned off the engine. Silence settled over the lot. The back of his neck prickled, and Hugh rubbed it, fighting the urge to turn and look out the back window of his pickup. He knew what he’d see if he did—absolutely nothing. Apparently, a side effect of getting shot in the leg was paranoia.

In the seat next to him, Lexi growled.

“Seriously? Are we having a mutual psychotic break, then?” he grumbled, although he followed his K9 partner’s gaze across the VFW parking lot and saw exactly what he expected: nothing. Rolling down his window, he listened. The street was as still and quiet as it always was so early in the morning. All he could hear out his open window was the first twittering of dawn birdsong and the howling, ever-present wind.

Several businesses had already closed for the winter, and the buildings looked abandoned. The town emptied out every fall, occupants and tourists fleeing to ski towns or warm beaches to escape the cold and storms. Hugh couldn’t blame them. As one of the few year-round police officers in Monroe, Colorado, he could attest that the place got pretty dull in the winter, when the few hard-core residents who remained got snowed in on a regular basis. With mountain passes bookending the town, the highway in either direction was closed more often than not.

The blackened ruin of the town diner a few buildings down from the VFW added to the post-apocalyptic feel. After an explosion destroyed it a few weeks earlier, the diner’s owner had moved into the VFW temporarily so that the Monroe residents weren’t forced to go without their morning eggs and coffee. She was planning to rebuild the diner, but the work wouldn’t start until spring. The construction crews abandoned town before winter just as quickly as everyone else.

Hugh frowned at the front of the VFW. Things had gone to hell over the past month. He missed the diner. In fact, he missed a lot of things he’d taken for granted a month ago: sitting in his usual booth, going to work, being pain free.

After checking to make sure Lexi’s window fan was on, he headed toward the VFW entrance. His scalp and the back of his neck began to prickle again, warning him that there were eyes on him. Slowing his stride, he surreptitiously glanced around, checking the surrounding buildings and the street.

No one was there.

Everything was silent, as if even the ever-present wind was holding its breath. The scuff of his boots against the pavement sounded too loud, and he stopped, this time not caring who saw him looking around. Nothing was moving, though. The entire town was still.

With a swallowed groan, he turned back toward the VFW. He’d been sensing these phantom stalkers for days now. Boredom and inactivity were obviously driving him insane. He’d only taken one more step toward the makeshift diner when Lexi started barking. Pivoting, he half jogged, half limped toward his truck. It was one thing to ignore his own instincts, but there was no way he was going to ignore Lexi’s. His partner was never wrong.

At the truck, he hurried to attach her lead to her harness, clipping it to the ring he used when they were going to do a search. Lexi quivered with anticipation, already in drive and ready to go.

As soon as he stepped back and gave the command, she was bounding toward the building across the street. It was a historic brick building that had been a bank at one point. Now, it housed a laundromat—closed for the winter—on the first level and several offices above.

When Lexi led him to the alley behind the building, Hugh was relieved. Without a uniform or a badge, snooping around the front of the laundromat was likely to attract suspicion from passersby. His relief disappeared, however, when Lexi led him to a back door and promptly sat, looking at him expectantly, waiting for him to open the door so she could continue tracking.

The door was locked. Hugh pulled his phone from his pocket but then hesitated. Everyone else was dealing with the Rack and Ruin bust. He wasn’t chasing a suspect or following a confirmed tip; he wasn’t even on duty. All he had was his K9 partner tracking an unknown scent. If this caused officers to be pulled off the drug bust, he could be endangering lives. They needed all the help they could get with that motorcycle club.

Dropping his phone back in his pocket, he pulled out his lockpick set.

His uncle Gavin had taught him how to open his first lock when Hugh was eight. It was the bathroom door, so it wasn’t the trickiest of locks, but they’d moved on to the front door dead bolt next. After that, Gavin had shown him the trick to opening school lockers, handcuffs, and car doors before he’d advanced to disabling alarm systems.

Uncle Gavin was currently serving a fifteen-year sentence at Colorado State Penitentiary for second-degree burglary. When Hugh was eleven, he’d been home when the cops had come for Gavin the first time. After the arrest, one of the officers had walked over to where a terrified Hugh had been watching on the front steps. The policeman had sat down next to Hugh, given him a rub-on tattoo of a badge, and explained the importance of leaving other people’s stuff alone. When the cops had left with Gavin, Hugh had decided to become a police officer. After all, the front of the squad car seemed like a much better place to be than the back.