Protector by Laurel Dewey

woman. Everyone, that is, except for Emily, who watched Jane enter the elevator and disappear behind the steel doors.
     

Chapter 5
     
    It was just after 10:15 a.m. when Jane sped out of the DH parking garage. As she rounded her Mustang onto 14th Street and curved around the Civic Center, she noted that it had taken just over an hour for her life to fall apart.
     
    Jane saw the look on Weyler’s face after she disarmed the Mexican woman. She noted how he appeared genuinely guarded by her actions, as if it was something only a nutcase would do.
     
    Nothing made sense to Jane anymore. When she woke up that morning, she had a plan. She always had a plan. It may have been a little blurry due to the alcohol burn off, but there still was a plan. Jane figured she had three or four legal-sized yellow pads filled with angles, motives, wild theories and other sundry notations regarding the death of Bill Stover, his wife and daughter. Every time Jane awoke from that blistering nightmare filled with fire and Amy’s dying eyes, she’d jot something down on one of those pads. When she’d reread her scribble in the morning, sometimes she could only make out a word here and there.
     
    One thing was for sure, if this was the work of the Texas mob, it went against their usual pattern. Then again, it was hard to pin a hard-and-fast MO on a group that was still an unknown to law enforcement. In the end, Jane had only her gut intuition that had never failed her. After all, it was her gut intuition that told her that Mexican woman was up to something. That same gut intuition told her the Stovers’ death was not entirely the work of the Texas mafia. There was something or someone else. She could feel it.
     
    She could also feel that numinous nudge creeping up on her—that sensation that she was balancing on a slim blade between sanity and illumination. She thought back to the Mexican woman and the outstretched Glock. Twice before that morning, the image of an outstretched Glock flashed like flint in front of her eyes. But there was something attached to the jarring, disturbing image—a swath of navy blue and bright lights. And that sharp tug on her sleeve; the tug she physically felt in the stairwell.
     
    Jane pulled in front of her house just past 10:25. It was six hours before RooBar, her nightly watering hole in the center of Cherry Creek, opened for business. She hadn’t been there in a few days, preferring to get a load on at home. But most drunks like the comfort of a familiar bar and RooBar fit the bill for Jane. There was never a chance of running into fellow cops since they were more partial to the gritty downtown taverns. And it didn’t hurt that RooBar was located about a mile from her house.
     
    She sat in her car and stared into the void. A gentle breeze slipped through the car bringing with it the sweet smell of lilacs that were coming into full bloom. Jane started out of her car when she felt the concentrated beat of her pounding head. She cradled her forehead in her hands, attempting to press the pain back into her body. That eerie disconnect began to surface again but this time she fought hard to drown it. An old cop adage crossed her mind; a saying that was bandied around the Department when joking about borderline loonies: “They’re not crazy enough to check into the nut house, but they can see the front door from where they’re standing!” At that moment, Jane could clearly see that door.
     
    Standing on the front porch, Jane stared at the collection of rolled up newspapers, along with clumps of wind-blown leaves, dandelion fuzz and the mass of cobwebs. If her dad could see the mess, he’d have something to say about it. “Clean up your fuckin’ mess,” is what he’d say. Jane quickly shut off his voice. It was bad enough that she was going to have to visit his house at 6:00 that night. She didn’t need to have that voice inside of her head just yet.
     
    Once inside the house, Jane quickly poured