Cross Her Heart (Bree Taggert #1)(5)

Dana extended a hand. “You OK?”

Nodding, Bree let her partner pull her to her feet. Her knees trembled, but she sucked it up and forced them to straighten. The other cops would blame her breathlessness on the chase. She hoped.

Dana’s face was serious as she raked her eyes over Bree. “You’re sure you’re not hurt?”

Bree glanced around, aware that the other cops were watching her. Their scrutiny felt hot on her face. She rubbed her solar plexus. “Got the wind knocked out of me. I’ll be fine in a couple of minutes.”

“OK.” Dana steered her out of the alley to where she’d parked the car and opened the passenger door for her. “Sit down and catch your breath.”

Bree sat sideways, her feet in the street, and sipped from a water bottle she’d left in the car. Then she wiped her clammy palms on her thighs. Now that the incident was over, impending bruises were making themselves known. Her tailbone throbbed with every beat of her heart. But it wasn’t the aches and pains that rattled her, and it wouldn’t be the killer she’d chased that gave her nightmares.

It was the dog and the memories its snapping teeth evoked.

She shuddered, then took three deep breaths and did what she did best. She compartmentalized. She shoved that horror show back into the deep, dark hole where it needed to stay. She’d just gotten her heart rate and breathing under control when the phone on her belt vibrated. Bree looked at the screen. She’d missed a call while she was chasing Ronnie. She read the voice mail notification, and her heart did a double tap.

Erin?

“What’s wrong?” Dana narrowed blue eyes at Bree.

Bree stared at her phone. “My sister called.”

“When was the last time you talked to her?”

“A couple of weeks ago. You know my family is . . .” Bree searched for the word. “Complicated.”

“Uh-huh.” Dana was more than a coworker. She was Bree’s closest friend.

“We talk on the phone, but I haven’t seen her since she brought the kids to Philly last summer.” The last time Bree had visited Grey’s Hollow had been for Erin’s wedding four years before.

“I remember.” Dana was a history geek. When Erin and the kids came to town, she’d played tour guide, walking them through the Constitution Center, Independence Hall, and other sites. “Did she leave a voice mail?”

“Yes.” Bree’s finger hesitated over the “Play” button. She should wait until she got home to listen to her sister’s message. Unexpected news from Grey’s Hollow was never good. Bree’s heart began to thud again, fresh sweat gathered on her palms, and all her careful compartmentalizing went to hell. “Could you give me a minute, Dana?”

“Sure. No problem.” She turned and walked back to the cluster of cops at the alley entrance.

Planting her feet firmly on the pavement, Bree stabbed the “Play” button. Her sister’s voice was breathless and hurried.

“Bree? I’m in trouble. I don’t know what to do. I don’t want to give you the details in a message, but I need your help. Please call me back as soon as you get this.”

Worried, Bree pressed the “Call Back” button. Her sister’s line rang three times and connected to voice mail. Bree left a message. “It’s Bree. Sorry I missed you. Call me back.”

She lowered the phone and stared at it. She’d missed her sister’s call by only a few minutes. Where could Erin be? Bree played the message again. Her sister’s rushed words knotted in her belly.

Frowning, Dana walked over. “Everything OK?”

“She’s not answering her phone.” Bree called her brother, Adam, but the call went immediately to voice mail. She left him a message. Next, she dialed the salon where her sister worked, but the receptionist said Erin was off tonight.

“Try her later,” Dana suggested. “She could be in the shower.”

Bree drank some water and called Erin again. Still no answer. She replayed the message, tilting the phone so Dana could hear.

Dana’s blonde eyebrows lowered. “Your sister doesn’t seem like the type who gets in trouble.”

“She isn’t. Erin’s a head down, go to work, raise her kids kind of person. She doesn’t have time for trouble.” Bree rubbed the edge of her phone with her thumb. “But just her calling me for help means it’s something major. We’re not as close as I’d like.”

“Not your fault or hers that you weren’t raised together.”

Erin and Adam had been reared by their grandmother in Grey’s Hollow. Bree had been farmed out to a cousin in Philadelphia.

“My childhood isn’t my fault.” Bree tapped her phone screen and stared at the lack of notifications. “But the decisions I’ve made since reaching adulthood are one hundred percent my responsibility.”

“What are you going to do?”

As children, Bree and her siblings had survived a nightmare together. Despite the three hundred miles between them, they would always have a special connection. They were particularly tuned in to trouble, and Bree could sense from Erin’s voice that something was wrong. Really wrong. Erin’s tone wasn’t I’m late with the mortgage payment. She had sounded scared.

There was only one thing Bree could do.