Race Against Time. Christy Barritt

touch it, just enough to suck in a breath every once in a while. Plus the drugs were knocking me out. It was just a matter of time. I knew I was dead.”

       “What did the man do next?”

       “I heard a crash from the front of the house. It must have been you. The man ran to the bathroom. Must have jumped out the window.” She wiped the tears from her eyes again. “Have I said thank you enough?”

       “I’m glad I was jogging when I was.”

       “You’re a godsend.”

       “No one’s ever said that God sent me before. Usually the opposite.” He smiled mischievously.

       “I don’t know about that.”

       His smile disappeared. “Madison, think about this carefully. When the man ran, did he look panicked?”

       She thought about it a moment. “Not really. He seemed relatively calm. Of course, I was fighting for my life, so I wasn’t paying as much attention to him at that point. Is that really important, detective?”

       “It gives me insight into the man’s mindset. Every detail helps.” Brody met her eyes. “You have no idea who this man was, do you? No enemies or anyone who would want to harm you?”

       She shook her head. “No, not that I know of.”

       He shifted his weight to his other foot. “Tell me about this timer.”

       “There’s not much to say about it. My attacker seemed to be taunting me with it. At first I assumed the ticking was coming from one of my son’s toys or that Lincoln had been playing with the timer and left it on. I knew deep down when I heard the ticking the second time that something was wrong.”

       Brody started to ask another question when the doctor burst into the room. “Detective, I don’t recall giving you permission to come in here.” The doctor scowled at Brody as he walked briskly to Madison’s bedside.

       “I dropped something and he came in to help,” Madison jumped in, feeling a strange need to defend the man who, up until today, had seemed opposed to even giving a neighborly hello. “He did nothing wrong.”

       The doctor didn’t look convinced as he stared at Brody through his wire-framed glasses and tapped his finger impatiently against a clipboard. “I need a moment to examine my patient.”

       Brody nodded and looked back at Madison. “Thanks for your time. I’ll be in touch. And if you think of anything in the meantime…”

       “I know where to find you.”

       With another clipped nod, he left the room. Madison immediately missed his presence. Something about just having him in the room made her feel safer, as if everything would somehow work out. That same chill from earlier returned and she again faced the situation…alone.

      * * *

       Something about what Madison told him nagged at Brody. As he left her hospital room, he mentally replayed the conversation with her, trying to pinpoint whatever it was that seemed to be clamoring at him to take notice. Whatever it was remained on the edge of his rationing, taunting him.

       Brody waited in the hospital hallway until a deputy showed up to guard the door to Madison’s room before he went home to shower and dress. Most likely the killer wouldn’t be foolish enough to come to the hospital and finish what he’d started, but Brody wanted to be safe. Until they had a profile of this man, he’d take every precaution necessary.

       He needed to get to the station and talk to the sheriff, but first he needed to change out of his shorts and T-shirt. He gripped the steering wheel of his sedan as he turned off the highway and onto a more rural road leading toward his home. The glaring sun, unhindered by his visor, only further served to agitate him. What was it about Madison’s story that nagged at him?

       As he pulled into his driveway, he saw that the emergency crew was gone from Madison’s. Looking at her home now, one would never have guessed the tragedy that had almost transpired there. Inside would certainly be a different story. He intended on reviewing the evidence inside her home himself after he checked in with the sheriff.

       He quickly showered and changed into khakis and a blue, button-up shirt. Twenty minutes later he arrived at the neat, two-story station, his car crunching the gravel in the parking lot. As he looked at the brick-fronted building, he shook his head. What a change this place was compared to the precinct he worked at in Brooklyn.

       “The sheriff in yet?” he asked Miranda, the deputy working the front desk.

       She glanced up over the red frames perched on her nose. “Not yet. They’re finishing up that accident on the highway. Should be back anytime now.”

       “Thanks,” he mumbled, grabbing a cup of stale coffee on the way past.

       He nodded an aloof greeting to his colleagues before reaching his office. Once in his well-used swivel chair, he stared at his desk a moment. Where to start on this one? With typing up the police report, he supposed. Then he’d have to check in with the crime-scene crew to see what they’d found. Hopefully any additional evidence hadn’t been trampled.

       Halfway through typing his report, he stopped. There’d been two other suicides in York County in the past few months. York County wasn’t a huge place. What was the probability that the area had had two suicides within a four-month period?

       He wanted to look through those files again. They’d seemed open-and-closed enough at the time. But what if there was more to those cases than they’d first assumed? Brody found the reports he needed and began reviewing the information.

       The first suicide had happened in May. The man, Willie Fisher, was a mechanic. He worked for a local auto repair shop off Route 17, the main highway through York County. Two weeks before his death, Willie had been fired from his job for supposedly stealing money from the company. He’d claimed his innocence, but his reputation had taken a beating. He’d even gone to the doctor and been prescribed medicine for depression only three days before his life ended through carbon-monoxide poisoning.

       The second suicide was a young sheriff’s deputy named Victor Hanson who’d died in June. He’d just graduated from the academy a year earlier and seemed to have a promising career within the department. His wife had left him prior to his death. Victor’s suicide note alluded to the pain of her rejection being too much to take. He’d taken a gun to his head.

       Brody had actually bought his truck from Willie and he’d seen the man on occasion at the gym he frequented off Route 17. And, of course, he knew Victor from the Sheriff’s Department. Brody marveled how connected everyone was in a small town. This place was so much different than New York.

       He stared at the reports. Was there something here that he was missing? Could these deaths have been more than suicides? Could those men have been murdered? And, if so, what was the tie between their murders and the attempted murder of Madison?

       He couldn’t get the agonized look she’d had out of his mind. She’d handled the situation well and drawn from a deep strength within herself, one that impressed him. Even as she’d recalled the horrid details of what had happened, she’d seemed to have a peace about her. The woman, even in her battered state, was certainly beautiful. She was the type of woman who could turn heads and not even realize it. Petite and trim with blue eyes that matched the bay. Not that he’d noticed, he told himself.

       “How’s Madison doing?” Sheriff Carl appeared behind him, his brow still damp with sweat from being in the stifling heat outside. Brody often marveled that Sheriff Carl looked exactly like Andy Griffith from his later years on the TV show Matlock.

       Brody swiveled in his chair and decided not to mince words. “Sheriff, this wasn’t a suicide like we first assumed. Madison said a man attacked her and forced her to write that suicide note before attempting to murder her.”

       The sheriff’s eyes widened, as if in shock, before he slowly nodded. “I knew she wasn’t capable of suicide, especially not with that