Capitol K-9 Unit Christmas: Protecting Virginia. Lenora Worth

growled, the sound a soft warning that pulled John from sleep. He sat up, scanning the dark room for signs of trouble. The living room was empty, the TV still on whatever station John had been watching when he’d fallen asleep on the couch.

      “What is it, boy?” he asked, keeping the light off as he walked to the window where the dog was standing.

      The dog growled again, nudging at the glass, his gaze fixed on some point beyond the yard.

      Virginia’s house?

      John leaned closer, peering out into the blackness. Ice fell from the inky sky, glittering on the trees and grass, tapping against the garage roof. Not a good night to be out, but he thought he saw a shadow moving near the shrubs. As he watched, it darted through the thick foliage, sprinted into the open.

      Medium height. Slim.

      Virginia?

      Samson stopped growling, gave a soft whine that meant he recognized the person running toward the garage.

      Virginia, for sure, and it looked as if she was in trouble.

      He ran to the door, yanked it open. He was halfway down the stairs when Virginia appeared. She barreled toward him, wet hair hanging in her face, head down as she focused on keeping her footing on the slippery stairs.

      “Everything okay?” he asked.

      It was obvious everything wasn’t.

      She had bare feet, no coat, skin so pale it nearly glowed in the darkness.

      “I’m running through an ice storm in bare feet,” she responded. “Things are not okay.”

      “What’s going on?” he asked, grabbing her hand, urging her up the last few stairs and into the apartment.

      “I locked myself out of the house.” Her teeth chattered, and he grabbed the throw from the back of the couch and dropped it around her shoulders.

      “Should I ask why you were outside in the middle of the night?”

      “I smelled cigarette smoke and thought it was coming from inside the house.”

      He didn’t like the sound of that.

      The police hadn’t found cigarette butts on the property, but that didn’t mean the guy who’d been there wasn’t a smoker. “I’ll go check things out,” he said, grabbing Samson’s work lead and calling the dog.

      “Don’t go rushing over there yet, John. I’m not done with my story.”

      “The ending isn’t as exciting as the beginning?” he asked, grabbing a towel from the linen closet and handing it to her.

      “I’m not sure.” She wiped moisture from her face and hair, then tucked a few strands of hair behind her ear. “The cigarette smoke was coming from outside. Some guy walking his dog. When I went to go back in, the door closed.”

      “The wind?” he suggested, and she shrugged.

      “That would be a logical explanation.”

      “But?” he prodded, because he thought there was more to the story, and he wasn’t sure why she was holding back.

      “I’m going to be honest with you,” she said with a sigh. “I was diagnosed with PTSD a few years ago. I went to counseling, worked through a lot of issues, but I still have nightmares. I still wake up in the middle of the night and think someone is standing in my room or hiding in the shadows. Sometimes I think there’s danger when there isn’t.”

      This was part of what she hadn’t told him earlier. She’d hinted at it, said she’d nearly died, but she hadn’t given details. He’d done a little digging and asked a few questions. Morris hadn’t been eager to give details, but there’d been a few newspaper articles written about it. Local Attorney Shoots Wife and Self in Apparent Murder-Suicide Attempt.

      Lots of speculation as to why it had happened, but there’d been no interviews with Virginia or her grandmother-in-law, so no one knew for sure how a seemingly rational high-level attorney could snap.

      Personally, John didn’t think he’d snapped. He thought the guy had been out of control from the get-go, that he’d just been hiding it from the world.

      “The worst mistake you can make—” he began, taking the towel from her hand and using it to wipe moisture from the back of her hair. The strands were long and thick and curling from the rain, and he could see hints of gold and red mixed with light brown “—is hesitating to ask for help because you doubt your ability to distinguish real danger from imagined danger.”

      “I think I’ve proven—”

      “You’ve proven that you’re strong and smart,” he said, cutting her off, because thinking about what she’d been through, the way she’d probably spent her entire marriage—in fear and self-doubt and even guilt—made him want to go back in time, meet her jerk of a husband and teach him a lesson about how women should be treated. “You might jump at shadows, but you’re not calling for the cavalry every time it happens.”

      “I guess that’s true,” she conceded with a half smile. She had a little color in her cheeks, a little less hollowness in her eyes.

      “So, tell me what happened with the door. You don’t think it was the wind.” Not a question, but she shook her head.

      “I turned all the lights on in the house.”

      He’d noticed that, but he didn’t say as much, just let her continue speaking.

      “Then I went downstairs, lay down on the couch and fell asleep. When I woke, the lights upstairs were off.”

      “Power outage, maybe?”

      “The other lights were still on.”

      “Did you check the circuit breaker? Maybe you blew a fuse. It happens in old houses.”

      “I might have checked, if I’d been able to get back in the house. The door locked when it closed. I couldn’t remember if Gavin installed a lock that does that, but...” She shuddered and pulled the blanket a little tighter around her shoulders.

      “I don’t think he did.” And that worried John. There’d been evidence that the guy who’d been in Virginia’s house had stayed there for a while—clothes in the closet, an unmade bed. It could be that he’d returned, found a way in, gone back to whatever he was doing before Virginia had arrived. “Tell you what. Stay here. Samson and I will go check things out.”

      “I gave the spare key to Gavin and Cassie, and the doors are all locked.”

      “I’ll call Gavin and ask him to meet me at your place. I’ll call Officer Morris, too. He should know what’s going on.” He attached Samson’s lead, and every muscle in the dog’s body tensed with excitement.

      Samson loved his job, and John loved working with him. He was one of the smartest, most eager animals John had ever trained.

      “Heel,” he commanded as he stepped outside. “Lock the door, Virginia. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

FIVE

      John called Gavin on the way down the stairs and asked him to call Officer Morris. He didn’t want to make the call himself. He knew what the DC officer would say—stay clear of the scene. Let the local police handle things.

      Wasn’t going to happen.

      If someone was in the house, John planned to find him. Virginia had been through enough. He wasn’t going to stand by and watch her be tormented. So far, that was what seemed to be happening. No overt threats of danger, no physical attacks, the guy seemed more interested in terrifying her than in hurting her.

      That could change, though, and John wasn’t willing to wait for it to happen.

      The upstairs