“You’re sure?” Rafe questioned.
“I’m sure. I felt someone messing with the book bag, but I didn’t fall until someone kicked in my left knee.”
“You see anyone?” Rafe was already taking his notebook from his shirt pocket.
“Just a bunch of students, mostly young.”
“Four classes were emptying,” Rafe said before Katie could ask. “We’ve had the instructors supply their attendance charts. Maybe you know the teachers—Burt Taylor was teaching an economics class, and CeeCee Harrington was teaching an English class.”
“I know CeeCee.”
“To be safe,” Rafe added, “we’re also talking to the students who were filing into those same classes for the next period.”
“That’s a lot of kids,” Katie said. “Plus, some of them have boyfriends or girlfriends who walk them to class.”
“It’s a long shot, I agree, but right now it’s all we have.”
“Okay!” Katie held up one hand. “No more case talk. Janie, how do you feel?”
Janie closed her eyes as if she had to think about the answer. Katie met Rafe’s eyes and grimaced.
“I feel like someone tried to kill me,” Janie said, and promptly drifted back to sleep.
“And,” Katie said, eying Rafe, “I’m sure the sheriff of Laramie County is going to make sure that doesn’t happen again. Right?”
Before Rafe could answer, his radio sounded. For the last four days, every time he got a call, it had something to do with the Brittney Travis case.
Almost as if God understood he didn’t need other distractions.
No, almost as if God understood that Janie Vincent was distraction enough.
* * *
THEY’D KEPT JANIE in the hospital overnight, just as a precaution. Now, breakfast was over and she’d already had her blood pressure taken twice. She wanted to go home. For the fifth time she texted Katie. U almost here?
Katie didn’t respond and Janie hoped that meant she was busy driving.
Janie hadn’t been in the hospital since the day seventeen years ago when Tyre, a young black leopard, had taken exception to her walking into his enclosure.
She’d been looking for Katie. Even back then, she’d known to go to Katie. The cat had taken two steps in her direction, leaps really, and she’d not been afraid. After all, she’d watched Katie work with both Tyre and his brother, Aquila. At age six, Janie hadn’t figured out the difference between pets and wild animals.
That changed in a twinkling.
Tyre had swiped just one paw at her, claws digging into the side of her face, and took her down. It lasted maybe ten seconds and then Katie had been there, making noise, getting Tyre away from her, subduing him.
It had been Katie and Jasper, her father’s right-hand man, who’d stopped the bleeding and called the ambulance.
Her father had picked her up from the hospital the next day. He’d not commented on her stitches, not asked her how she was feeling, or anything. A month later, when the stitches had been removed and the doctors had concluded she’d be fine—no damage to her eyesight—he’d shipped both Katie and her off to live with his older sister.