With a Vengeance Read Free

miles rushed past in a blur. The radio blared reports of new roadblocks.
    The police had cordoned off a five-mile radius. No one in. No one out. State Police were responding with a helicopter with thermal imaging. Yet so far the elusive shooter remained at large.
    Pete slowed as they entered Dillard. Five police vehicles from various jurisdictions idled at each corner of the usually quiet coal-mining town. Officers attired in Kevlar patrolled the streets.
    After jouncing over a half mile of deep ruts, Zoe spotted the milky gray glow of rescue lighting on the horizon marking their destination. They topped one last rise, and the crime scene lay before them.
    Halogen lights attached to rumbling generators turned the darkness into artificially vivid daylight. Law enforcement vehicles from a variety of jurisdictions parked around the periphery of a manmade canyon, the result of decades-old strip mining. A trio of firetrucks formed a barricade of sorts at one end.
    At the center of the chaos, one Monongahela County ambulance. Zoe recognized the unit she and Earl usually drove on their shift, now a lonely witness to the unthinkable. Several yards in front of it rested an overturned all-terrain vehicle. On the ground next to the ambulance, a body.
    Pete cruised the perimeter to park between a boxy truck with Monongahela County Police Department Mobile Command Center emblazoned across the side and a white van bearing the county coroner’s insignia. Franklin Marshall had beaten them there.
    Pete opened his door. “Stay close to me. The scene isn’t secured. We don’t know the shooter’s location.” He glanced toward the ambulance. “And Dickson isn’t going anywhere.”
    The gravity of the situation settled even heavier over her. Barry was dead. Curtis was gravely wounded. And there was a very real possibility that others, including her and Pete, could still be in danger. She shivered. In the distance, hounds barked. Multiple helicopters thwap-thwap-thwapped overhead in a cloudless star-filled sky. “News choppers?” Zoe asked.
    “Some. Plus the State Police.” Pete took her arm, guiding her toward the box truck. “They’re using night vision to search for our shooter from the air.”
    Coroner Franklin Marshall and Officer Kevin Piacenza stood inside the mobile command center truck. The cases Zoe worked had never brought her in contact with it before, and she gave the inside of the high-tech beast a curious perusal. A pair of county police officers wearing headsets manned computer keyboards. Radios broadcast an array of police transmissions.
    “Update?” Pete asked Kevin.
    “No shots have been fired since I arrived on the scene. The K-9 unit arrived about ten minutes ago and is doing their thing. The search helo’s been circling and hasn’t located anything suspicious. Roadblocks are in place.”
    “So we have nothing.”
    “If he’s still out there, he’s hunkered down.”
    Franklin clamped a hand on Zoe’s shoulder. “It sounds safe enough for us to retrieve the body.”
    Pete turned to her. The intensity of his pale blue eyes might have made her blush under different circumstances. Tonight, though, his concern chilled her. Franklin was taking her into a potential active shooting zone, and it was up to Pete to give the green light.
    Kevin looked back and forth at them. “From the position of the victims, we believe the shot came from that wooded area to the west. I had the fire department park their trucks on that side. Circling the wagons.”
    Pete shot a look at the young officer.
    Kevin shrugged. “My granddad makes me watch cowboy shows with him when I go to visit.” He grew serious again. “Anyway, they should be safe.”
    “Provided our sniper hasn’t relocated,” Pete said.
    Zoe’s chill deepened into her bones.
    The coroner, his hand still gripping her shoulder, must have felt her shudder. “You don’t have to go in,” he said, his voice soft, understanding.
    Zoe recalled the time she and