Say Goodbye (Romantic Suspense #25) - Karen Rose Page 0,36

They paused to study the scene on the roof. The first responders had cordoned off the entire stairwell and the crime scene unit had already constructed an evidence grid. Twine crisscrossed the roof, blocking off search areas, each a square foot.

A man in white coveralls approached and Tom flashed his badge. “Agents Hunter and Croft.”

“Sergeant Howell, SacPD CSU.” He offered them both protective booties.

“Report, please,” Croft ordered quietly, as they slipped the covers over their shoes.

“Someone was here,” Howell said. “Latent is taking prints from the stairwell and the railing around the perimeter of the roof. We’ve got a boot print in the dirt close to the railing.”

“Camera feed?” Tom asked, looking around them. He’d seen several cameras in the building’s lobby and in the stairwell. There was another one mounted to the outside wall enclosing the stairs, but it had been painted over.

“One of my techs is getting the feed from the building’s security.”

Croft picked her way to the edge of the roof. “Entry and exit points?”

“We can’t be completely certain until we get the security footage, but it appears he used the stairwell exclusively. There’s a brick off to the side of the ground-floor door.” Howell grimaced. “The security chief wasn’t happy to see the brick or the butts on the ground. Apparently, employees use the brick to prop the door open while they slip out for a smoke.”

Tom sighed. The best security systems were often ruined by a single human trying to circumvent the rules. “I’ll need copies of the footage, as soon as possible.”

Howell nodded. “Of course.”

Tom followed Croft to the edge of the rooftop. She was staring down, examining three depressions in the sandy dirt on the roof. “He had a tripod,” she said. “Set himself up here.”

Tom crouched down to simulate the shooter’s viewpoint. He could see through the glass door of the optometrist, but the signs in the windows blocked his view of the eye doctor’s interior. “He had only a narrow window of opportunity to get Mercy Callahan,” he noted. Or Liza, because he had not a single doubt that she would have protected Mercy and Abigail with her own body.

His chest constricted when he realized how close she’d come to being hurt. He drew a breath that physically hurt. Liza. Dammit. This was how he’d felt when she’d joined the army without telling him first. Like a sledgehammer to his heart. Worry and hurt and helplessness.

Howell crouched next to him. “Agent Rodriguez called it in after the woman accompanying the presumed target noticed a flash of light from this spot on the roof. The woman was standing in front of the door, but she must have a hell of an eye. I don’t know that I would have noticed it from there. Rodriguez said that once she’d pointed it out, he briefly glimpsed someone, and got them out of there.”

Tom’s jaw tightened and it was suddenly important that she be acknowledged as more than the woman who’d accompanied Mercy Callahan. “Liza Barkley. She spotted the shooter.”

She’d been standing in the direct line of fire. He wondered if she’d been scared. He knew he was scared at the thought of her in the path of a sniper’s bullet.

The Liza he’d known before the army would have been terrified, but she would have done the right thing anyway. Trouble was, he didn’t recognize parts of the Liza who’d returned from combat duty. That needed to change. He’d asked about her experiences in the military, but she’d always evaded his questions, and he’d respected her need for privacy.

He wondered if he should have. Maybe he’d left her alone with her memories for too long.

“Well, she’s got one hell of an eye,” Howell stated again. “Rodriguez said she was as cool as a cucumber. Just pointed it out and told him to bring the car. She got Callahan and the little girl to safety and made sure the optometrist’s receptionist was away from the window as well. She handled everything so calmly that no one panicked.”

“She served in Afghanistan,” Tom said quietly. “I think she’s seen much worse.”

He was going to get the specifics this time. Something had been bothering her for months and he was going to get to the bottom of it. He knew that she had PTSD, but she would never talk to him about what had happened to her over there, and that sent another sharp pain into his heart. He didn’t want Liza to suffer anything. She’d already had a