Texas K-9 Unit Christmas. Shirlee McCoy

caught in her throat.

      She had to get up, walk through the dining room and open the front door. Every movement hurt as she dragged herself upright and shuffled out of the kitchen.

      “Emma!” The front door rattled, and she took a step toward it, dizzy, off balance. She tripped over something, her hands hitting the ground seconds before her head crashed into the tile floor.

      TWO

      Police Lieutenant Lucas Harwood rounded the corner of Arianna’s Diner, his K-9 partner, Henry, padding along beside him. The place had been closed down for eight months, and it had the lonely, empty feel of an abandoned building.

      It had been an abandoned building.

      That had changed, though. Emma Fairchild had bought the property. According to her aunt Bea, she should be there now, working to get the place ready for its grand opening. So far Lucas hadn’t seen any sign of her. The lights in the diner were off. No hint of activity inside the building.

      It was possible Bea was mistaken. Emma was a grown woman. She might have gone out with friends or gone on a date. He had to be sure, though. He’d taken the report, and it was his job to follow up on it.

      He walked through a small alley that separated the diner from the store beside it. Nothing unusual there. No sign of a struggle or trouble. No sign of Emma, either. The musty scent of dirt and garbage hung in the air, the shadowy alley the perfect place for transients to camp out for a night or two.

      The alley spilled out into the diner’s back parking lot. One car was parked near a burned-out streetlight. No one in sight, but the back door yawned open, something lying on the ground in front of it. He approached cautiously, Henry whining beside him. Trained in apprehension and protection, the three-year-old German shepherd mix could sense trouble a mile away.

      “What is it, boy?” Lucas murmured as he bent over a large purse, its contents spilled onto the ground. He lifted a wallet in gloved hands. Three dollars and a debit card. Massachusetts driver’s license issued to Emma Grace Fairchild. Brown hair. Blue eyes. Five foot two. One hundred and two pounds. Tiny, just as she’d been all through junior high and high school. They’d been friends then. Close friends. It had been years since he’d seen her, though.

      Henry whined again, his nose raised to the air, his ears alert. He smelled something.

      “Seek,” Lucas said, giving Henry the lead.

      The dog ran through the open doorway, and Lucas followed.

      “Police!” he called. “Anyone here?”

      Silence, darkness. Still no sign that Emma was there.

      Henry barked quietly.

      “Seek!” Lucas commanded, and the dog nosed the ground, found a scent and followed it through the large room. Lucas had been in the diner quite a few times when he was a kid. The place had always been hopping with activity. Now it was dead quiet.

      Someone was there, though. Lucas could feel it.

      He pulled his service revolver and eased into the dining room behind Henry. Even in a city the size Sagebrush, there were plenty of criminals. The diner’s original owner had been one, working for a crime syndicate responsible for several bank robberies and murders. In the end she’d become a victim of the organization she worked for.

      The inky blackness made it nearly impossible to see into every corner of the room, but the furniture had been removed. Not a lot of hiding places. He ran his hand along the wall, trying to find a light switch.

      Henry barked twice. Anxious. Ready to go. Whatever he was trailing, it was close, but Lucas wasn’t going to walk into it blind.

      He finally found the light switch, flipped on the lights. Saw Emma just a few feet away, facedown, blood on the floor near her head. It looked as though she’d been trying to get to the front door. She hadn’t made it. He knelt beside her, pushing back the heavy fall of her hair and probing her neck. Her pulse beat steadily beneath his questing fingers. Alive.

      He called for an ambulance, then covered Emma with his jacket. Blood seeped from somewhere on the back of her head, pooling on the floor near her ear. He gently parted her hair, trying to find the wound, praying that it was superficial. He found a lump and a large gash, his fingers trailing over the swollen broken flesh.

      “No!” She jumped up, screaming so loudly that Lucas thought she’d come pretty close to rupturing his eardrums.

      “Em—” he started, but she was sprinting from the dining room as if a serial killer was after her. He just managed to snag the back of her bright pink coat before she reached the back door and ran out into the night.

      She swung around, her fist aimed at his chin, her eyes wild with fear.

      “Calm down!” he commanded, grabbing her hand before she could connect.

      She blinked, her smooth brow furrowing. “Lucas?”

      She knew him. That was good. Maybe she hadn’t taken as big a hit on the head as he’d thought.

      “Yes.”

      “What are you doing here?”

      He would have answered, but she swayed, nearly collapsed. He helped her onto the floor, tucking his jacket around her shaking shoulders. She was in shock, her skin leached of color, dark bruises standing out on her cheek and jaw.

      “It’s going to be okay,” he said, but he didn’t think she heard. Her eyes were closed, black lashes fanning across her cheeks. His heart jerked, his muscles tight with the need to take Henry and hunt down whoever had done this to her.

      He’d seen women and men in worse shape. He’d tended victims of domestic violence, gang violence and accidents. In his years working on the Houston Police Force, he’d faced plenty of tragedy and dealt with plenty of drama, but he’d never tended a victim who’d been a childhood friend. Now he was back in Sagebrush. It stood to reason that he’d know some of the victims he helped.

      He scrounged through a box of supplies that sat next to an industrial-sized refrigerator, found a set of plastic-wrapped cloth napkins and ripped it open. He didn’t have time to deal with personal feelings. Emma was still bleeding, a new pool of blood forming under her head. He snagged a napkin from the package and pressed it to her head, sirens screaming in the background as he tried to staunch the flow of blood.

      Pain ripped through Emma’s head, and she moaned, trying to pull herself out of the darkness she’d fallen into.

      Something pressed against the back of her head and white-hot pain seared through her. She jerked away, swinging her fist before she had time to think about what she was doing.

      “Calm down,” someone said.

      Not someone. Lucas.

      She knew the voice as well as she’d known the face.

      She forced her eyes open. Somehow she’d ended up on the floor again, a leather jacket thrown over her as Lucas pressed something against the lump behind her ear.

      “I am calm,” she muttered, pushing his hand away and feeling as if she were back in grade school, fighting with the cutest boy in class. Not surprising. She and Lucas had spent most of fifth grade at each other’s throats. Up until middle school, they’d been as bitter as two enemies could be.

      “I’m trying to stop the bleeding,” Lucas responded reasonably, pressing on the painful lump again.

      Obviously, he’d matured in the decade since they’d last seen each other. He’d also become a police officer, if the dark blue uniform and shiny badge peeking out from beneath his coat were any indication.

      “Thanks, but I’d rather bleed to death than have your hand pushing through the back of my head,” she managed to say past gritted teeth.

      “I’m not pushing that hard.”

      “You’re