Dentons both seemed confused and frightened by that. “You don’t mean forever, do you?” her mother asked with tears in her eyes.
Nina shot Thomas a thankful glance. “We hope it won’t come to that. For now, we’ll be in touch to coordinate things as soon as she’s clear to leave the hospital. And we’ll have someone here to escort all of you to your destination.”
“Meantime, we have the deputy and a K-9 team member here, so she’ll have two people guarding her door at all times,” Thomas added. “And if she tells either of you anything, please let us know. We can’t help her if we don’t know what we’re dealing with.”
Kelly’s parents nodded, but they looked shell-shocked.
“We can also have her moved to another room,” Nina said, promising to talk to the hospital administrators.
She and Thomas went to take care of the details. Soon, everything was in place to move Kelly to a room near the nurses’ station, where she could be monitored more closely by both the guards and the staff.
Having assured her parents that Kelly would be safe, and telling them they’d be watched, too, Nina and the marshal went back to headquarters, hoping to question the man they’d taken into custody.
Three hours later, after questioning the noncommunicative suspect and then going over files and trying to establish leads, all they had to go on was the suspect’s rap sheet of petty crime, and the fact that he refused to give them any information. Robby Collier was a local who’d been minding his own business in a bar when he’d been offered a job paying a huge amount of money.
He regretted that decision, but said he couldn’t tell them anything more. “The man made it pretty clear if I got caught, I was on my own. I don’t know nothing except I was supposed to take down the guard at the door.”
“I guess you didn’t think that part through, either,” Nina had noted, before they left him locked up tight.
“He thinks he’s safer in lockup than out there,” Thomas said now. “This has Russo all over it. He hired someone to bring down the guard, which means he was probably in the hospital, too. I’m surprised he didn’t shoot dear Robby on the spot for failing in his mission.”
“But they locked the place down,” Nina said, regretting that she’d left Sam with the handlers here while they’d gone to the hospital. Sam could have helped chase down the assailant. “He had to get away quick. Why would he send someone so unreliable and, well, green?”
“He messed up and left a witness, something he’s never done before. And now, because of one determined K-9 officer, he wants this over and done. He has to know you’re FBI by now. You’re both still in danger.”
“So because the heat’s on, he turned to desperate measures and sent that clown to do his dirty work,” Nina said.
“Russo knows how to get away in a hurry,” Thomas pointed out. “He wouldn’t hang around since this mission got botched, too. But...he’s not going to give up. Like our Robby, he knows he’s in serious danger himself. Whoever hired him has been informed by now that things went bad.”
“But how did he know the girl wasn’t dead? We haven’t released any details to the press.”
“The crime scene,” Thomas said. “It was active and it got a lot of attention. Anyone could have seen the first responders carting Kelly away. I walked right up. A reporter or newshound could have easily done the same.”
“Russo could have still been hanging around, too,” she said, glad Sam had picked up his scent. But then, Sam did specialize in cadaver detection and he’d done that job to perfection last night. After that, a lot of people had passed through those woods.
Tired and unable to gather her thoughts, Nina stood up and stretched. “I’m going home tonight. Tim and Zeke checked my place and it’s safe. No one’s been there that we can tell.”
“That you know of,” Thomas retorted. “You’re safer here.”
“I’m safe at my house, too,” she replied. “I have security and I have Sam. And I have several weapons.”
“A woman after my own heart,” he deadpanned. “I’ll be two miles down the road, letting Penny Potter and the Wild Iris staff pamper me.”
“Good.” She kind of wished he’d offered to at least come to her house for coffee. But then, they’d both drunk enough of that dark brew...and she had to resist whatever was brewing between them, too. “I’m going to decorate the tree I brought home the other day before all the needles fall off, and make myself a big cup of hot chocolate. Maybe watch a sappy Christmas movie just for kicks.”
In reality she’d grab some popcorn and go back over this bizarre case. But he didn’t need to know that.
They walked out together, both searching the area for another sniper, Sam trotting at their feet and two armed guards set up in the parking garage. When they reached their vehicles, Thomas turned to her. “I’m kind of lonely, you know. I haven’t had a real Christmas in years. I’d enjoy helping you decorate that dying tree.”
Nina’s heart betrayed her by bouncing all around her chest. “Are you inviting yourself to dinner, Thomas?”
“Are you asking me to dinner, Nina?”
“No.”
He laughed. “Then yes, I’m inviting myself to dinner, but I really only wanted to decorate the tree. But if you insist...”
“I don’t recall insisting.”
“But you were thinking it, right?”
She wondered how he did that. No wonder bad guys tried to steer clear of him.
“No,” she said with a laugh, “I was thinking too bad I don’t cook.”
He leaned close, his whisper half a step away. “Even better. I do.”
She’d never had a man cook for her before. Should she tell him to get lost? Or should she let him follow her home so they could brainstorm this case all over again?
She glanced down at the rottweiler. “What do you think, Sam? Should Thomas cook us dinner, but only because we want to pick his brain later and try to figure out things on this investigation?”
The big dog looked from her to the marshal and let out a woof.
“I think that was a yes,” Thomas said, his handsome face full of a triumphant smugness.
“Only because it’s Christmas and you’re a stranger in a strange land.”
“I hear that,” he replied. Then he scanned the parking garage. “We sure don’t need to be standing here out in the open arguing about it, so let’s go.”
* * *
Nina turned off the security alarm and rushed inside the tiny cottage she’d lived in since she’d arrived in Iris Rock a few months ago. The drive to and from Billings could be tricky on a night such as this, when a new snowfall seemed imminent. But she’d grown up in the bitter cold of Wyoming and knew how to mount snow tires on her vehicle and how to use her head and her driving skills while braking. She was pretty capable at most things, except when it came to kitchen duty. But she wasn’t really serious about letting Thomas cook for her.
“What was I thinking?” she asked Sam. He shadowed her, hoping for his own dinner. “I don’t have food and I don’t cook. I can’t offer him your dinner, right?”
The dog shot her a doleful glance that stated “Nope.”
Knowing Thomas would be close behind her, she tidied up, clearing away the local paper and some research books and novels off the couch, then hurried to change into jeans and a blue-and-white-striped wool sweater. She was running a comb through her tousled hair and putting on pink lip gloss when the doorbell rang.
She’d