With a Vengeance

Praise for the Zoe Chambers Mystery Series

BRIDGES BURNED (#3)

“I’m a huge fan of Dashofy’s Zoe Chambers series and I loved
Burned Bridges
. The action starts off with a bang and never lets up. Zoe’s on the case, and she’s a heroine you’ll root for through the mystery’s twists and turns—strong and bold, but vulnerable and relatable. I adore her, and you will, too.”

– Lisa Scottoline,

New York Times
Bestselling Author of
Betrayed

“So polished, so intriguing, and so darn good.”

– Donnell Ann Bell,

Bestselling Author of
Buried Agendas

“Dashofy has done it again.
Bridges Burned
opens with a home erupting in flames. The explosion inflames simmering animosities and ignites a smoldering love that has been held in check too long. A thoroughly engaging read that will take you away.”

– Deborah Coonts,

Author of
Lucky Catch

LOST LEGACY (#2)

“A vivid country setting, characters so real you’d know them if they walked through your door, and a long-buried secret that bursts from its grave to wreak havoc in a small community—
Lost Legacy
has it all.”

– Sandra Parshall,

Author of the Agatha Award-Winning Rachel Goddard Mysteries

“A big-time talent spins a wonderful small-town mystery! Annette Dashofy skillfully weaves secrets from the past into a surprising, engaging, and entertaining page turner.”

– Hank Phillippi Ryan,

Mary Higgins Clark, Agatha and Anthony Award-Winning Author

CIRCLE OF INFLUENCE (#1)

“An easy, intriguing read, partially because the townfolks’ lives are so scandalously intertwined, but also because author Dashofy has taken pains to create a palette of unforgettable characters.”

–
Mystery Scene Magazine

“Dashofy takes small town politics and long simmering feuds, adds colorful characters, and brings it to a boil in a welcome new series.”

– Hallie Ephron,

Author of
There Was an Old Woman

“The texture of small town Pennsylvania comes alive in Annette Dashofy’s debut mystery. Discerning mystery readers will appreciate Dashofy’s expert details and gripping storytelling. Zoe Chambers is an authentic character who will entertain us for a long time.”

– Nancy Martin,

Author of the Blackbird Sister Mysteries

“New York has McBain, Boston has Parker, now Vance Township, PA (“pop. 5000. Please Drive Carefully.”) has Annette Dashofy, and her rural world is just as vivid and compelling as their city noir.”

– John Lawton,

Author of the Inspector Troy Series

“An excellent debut, totally fun to read. Annette Dashofy has created a charmer of a protagonist in Zoe Chambers. She’s smart, she’s sexy, she’s vulnerably romantic, and she’s one hell of a paramedic on the job. It’s great to look forward to books two and three.”

– Kathleen George,

Edgar-Nominated Author of the Richard Christie Series

“A terrific first mystery, with just the right blend of action, emotion and edge. I couldn’t put it down. The characters are well drawn and believable…It’s all great news for readers.

– Mary Jane Maffini,

Author of
The Dead Don’t Get Out Much

Books in the Zoe Chambers Mystery Series

by Annette Dashofy

CIRCLE OF INFLUENCE (#1)

LOST LEGACY (#2)

BRIDGES BURNED (#3)

WITH A VENGEANCE (#4)

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Copyright

WITH A VENGEANCE

A Zoe Chambers Mystery

Part of the Henery Press Mystery Collection

First Edition | May 2016

Henery Press

www.henerypress.com

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever, including Internet usage, without written permission from Henery Press, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Copyright © 2016 by Annette Dashofy

Cover art by Stephanie Chontos

This is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real locales are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Trade Paperback ISBN-13: 978-1-63511-017-3

Digital epub ISBN-13: 978-1-63511-018-0

Kindle ISBN-13: 978-1-63511-019-7

Hardcover Paperback ISBN-13: 978-1-63511-020-3

Printed in the United States of America

Dedication

To all the selfless men and women in law enforcement, EMS, and fire/rescue, who put their lives on the line every day.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

As always, without my wonderful team of experts, this book would not exist.

Thank you to my law enforcement friends, Bernie LaRue, Terry Dawley, and Kevin Burns for guiding me through the techniques used in these kinds of circumstances and for giving me ideas I’d never have thought of on my own. Thanks to Chris Herndon for answering my ghoulish autopsy questions, to Diana Stavroulakis for helping keep my characters legal and above board, and to my dear friend Jessi Pizzurro for catching my mistakes in the hospital scenes. Also a special thank you to another dear friend, Stephanie Szramowski, for sharing her exploding airbags experience with me so I didn’t have to go out and wreck my car in the name of research!

Any mistakes in this book are entirely my own fault, not theirs.

I have a fabulous support team in my Pittsburgh Sisters in Crime and Pennwriters. I wouldn’t be here without you! Thank you to Ramona Long for creating the morning sprint group without which I’d never get any pages written, and to Heather Desuta for your graphic art brilliance.

Words can’t express how much I adore my critique group who pick my pages apart and then lovingly brainstorm them into something far better. Jeff Boarts, Tamara Girardi, and Mary Sutton, you’re the best! Thank you. And thank you to Ann Slates for being my extra set of proofreading eyes.

Huge hugs and many thanks to the team at Henery Press: my editors, Kendel Lynn, Erin George, Rachel Jackson, and Anna Davis; my wonderful cover artist, Stephanie Chontos; and the man behind the curtain, Art Molinares.

And last, but not least, much love and thanks to my husband Ray for all his support and his willingness to get out of my way (translation: go fishing) so I could get some work done in peace and quiet.

One

Adrenaline kicked Zoe’s pulse into high gear. The black Glock clutched in her hands weighed more than she’d imagined. She wished she’d had a chance to test the weapon on a firing range at a bullseye target. Instead of here.

A shooter had reportedly been seen in this school bus parking lot. Zoe advanced although her feet felt rooted to the ground. She eased around the fender of one empty bus. Ahead of her, voices. Shouting.

There. Inside the next bus. A large man with a gun. Worse, he held Zoe’s partner, a female police officer, in a chokehold, the weapon aimed at the cop’s head.

“Shoot him,” her partner yelled. “
Shoot him
.”

The man appeared crazed. “Get away,” he bellowed at Zoe.

“Drop the weapon,” she ordered.

“Shoot him,” the female officer demanded.

Zoe’s hands held steady. But with the shooter using her partner as a human shield, her target was small. His head. And her partner’s head was right there too. If Zoe’s aim was off the least bit…

“
Shoot him!
”

The man’s finger was poised on the trigger. Zoe aimed. And squeezed. The gunshot popped. And the scene in front of her froze.

The lights of the classroom came up. The Meggitt firearms projection screen in front of her took up most of one wall and showed a red dot on the shooter’s head by his ear. Nearly a miss. But good enough.

The other Citizen’s Police Academy students burst into applause. One of them, a retired Marine, said, “Oo-
rah
.”

Zoe Chambers laughed, relieved the exercise had ended without her making a fool of herself. Even more relieved it was only a simulation. As a paramedic, she was accustomed to saving lives. Not taking them.

With the Glock—a very real handgun made incapable of live fire—hanging at her side, she turned to see the instructor grinning at her.

Pete Adams had taken time from his job as Vance Township’s police chief to run the simulator for the Monongahela County’s CPA. “Not too shabby, Chambers.”

Zoe’s cheeks warmed. She gingerly set the Glock on the desk next to Pete. “I can’t believe how scared I was.” She pressed a hand to her chest. “I knew it wasn’t real, but no one told my heart.”

County Detective Wayne Baronick rocked back in his chair next to Pete’s. “That was good shooting,” he told the class. “But I’m not sure in a real-life situation, it would have been the wisest choice.”

Deflated, Zoe battled to keep from glaring at the detective. She was here to learn and experience. Not bask in false glory.

Wayne tipped his head toward the still frozen image on the screen. “You should have ordered the assailant to drop his weapon.”

“I did.”

“Not loud enough.” The detective demonstrated, barking out, “Drop the weapon!” in a voice that reverberated inside the small classroom.

Zoe had to admit, she would have dropped her gun if ordered to do so in that booming voice.

“And if you had waited a little longer, he was going to surrender as the scenario progressed.”

But I didn’t know that
. Zoe kept her thoughts to herself. The purpose of the exercise for the non-law-enforcement students was to gain insight into what police officers faced every day in the streets. The danger. The split-second decisions.

Pete’s cell phone rang. “Take over, Detective.” He rose from his chair at the Meggitt control. “You done good,” he whispered to Zoe as he turned toward the back of the room.

She contained a smile and returned to her desk.

Baronick called, “Next.”

Another student, one of the regulars, moved to take his turn at a new scenario. Zoe was there for only the one class. When Pete accepted Baronick’s invitation to lead the Firearms Training module, he’d invited her along for the ride, claiming it might help in her struggle to decide about her career path in the County Coroner’s Office. She had no clue what a shoot-or-don’t-shoot exercise had to do with whether or not she wanted to perform autopsies, but she wasn’t going to argue the point. It was an evening out with Pete. Not quite a date. They still sucked at those.

Pete drifted toward the back of the classroom, his phone pressed to one ear, his fingers pressed to the other. Zoe couldn’t see his face, but his shoulders tensed. The room lights dimmed, and another interactive scenario played out across the screen. Zoe, however, watched Pete with the same trepidation she’d experienced a few moments earlier when faced with a hostage situation.

Gunshots rang out. The lights came up. The room erupted into laughter. The student had emptied his virtual magazine without one clean hit.

Pete pocketed his phone and turned, his gaze locking on Zoe’s. “I’m sorry, Detective Baronick. Something’s come up back in Vance Township. I’m afraid I have to leave.”

Baronick raised an eyebrow, and Pete whispered something to him. The detective’s jaw tightened and he gave Pete a quick nod. “I can give Zoe a lift home.”

“No. She’s with me.” Pete crooked a finger in her direction.

Ordinarily the domineering gesture might have irked her. But the grim pallor of Pete’s face told her now was not the time for smartass quips. She snatched her purse from the back of the chair and scurried after him, catching him in the hall. “Pete?”

He didn’t slow his long stride. “There’s been a shooting. An ambush.”

She jogged to keep up. “Ambush? Where? Who?”

“One of your medic units responded to a call. I don’t have all the details, but two paramedics were shot.”

Zoe stumbled, her knees suddenly weak. Pete kept going. She regained her balance—and her wits—and caught him once again. “Shot? Who? How bad?”

“I don’t know the victims’ names yet.” They reached the heavy metal front doors, and Pete punched through. “One medic is being Life Flighted to Pittsburgh.”

The cool evening air of early September chilled Zoe. “What about the other?”

Pete stopped so fast, she almost slammed into him. He turned to face her, his dour expression telling her the awful truth. The second paramedic—one of her colleagues—was dead.

The fifteen-mile trip between the county seat and Vance Township usually took a half hour. Zoe had made it in twenty minutes when driving the ambulance, lights and sirens. With Pete behind the wheel of the police department’s Explorer, odds were good they’d beat her old record by at least five minutes.

Pete’s radio, tuned to a non-public channel, crackled with a steady stream of police chatter as every department within a twenty-five-mile radius responded to the scene. The unknown shooter was still at large. State Police manned roadblocks, and county law enforcement had set up a command center near the shooting. Vance Township Officer Kevin Piacenza, who’d been first on the scene, had the lead, with Pete giving orders over the mic.

The one detail they weren’t broadcasting was the names of the ambulance crew.

Zoe’s partner, Earl Kolter, wasn’t supposed to be on duty. She prayed he hadn’t been called in for some reason.

While Pete drove and took charge of the crime scene remotely, Zoe pulled up Earl’s number on her phone. He answered, his voice tight.

Her relief was short-lived. “Earl, have you heard?”

“Hell yes, I heard. Where are you?”

“On my way back from Brunswick with Pete. What happened?”

“Barry and Curtis responded to a call of an ATV accident out in the cuts behind Dillard. They called in that they were on the scene, but nothing more.”

“Barry and Curtis?”

“Yeah.” The line went quiet for a moment. “I thought you knew.”

“They haven’t given any names over the police radio.” Barry Dickson and Curtis Knox. Two men Zoe had known for years. She’d graduated high school with Barry, and she’d gone through paramedic training with Curtis. She’d worked with both on dozens of calls. “I—I heard one of them is…” She couldn’t choke out the word.

Apparently Earl couldn’t either. If it weren’t for the background noise, she’d have thought they’d been disconnected.

When he responded, his voice had dropped. “Barry didn’t make it. They’re Life Flighting Curtis to Allegheny General, but we haven’t had an update on his condition. From what the guys said, it didn’t look good. He lost a lot of blood.”

Ahead, a string of red taillights sliced through the night and indicated they were approaching one of the police roadblocks. Pete swung the SUV into the other lane, roaring past the line of cars. On the left, the small parking lot of a squat, single-story brick building housing a medical clinic had been transformed into news media central. Already, a pair of satellite trucks were setting up for remote broadcasts of the incident.

“Any word on whether they’ve caught the guy?” Earl asked.

“Not yet.”

“Let me know if you hear anything.”

“I will. You do the same, okay?”

Zoe ended the call as Pete eased past the Pennsylvania State Trooper manning the roadblock.

Pete raised a hand, acknowledging the trooper, before once again mashing the gas pedal to the floor. “You got names?”

“Dickson and Knox. Curtis is still alive. For now.”

Pete’s face tensed in the glare from the dashboard lights. “Good men.”

The next two miles rushed past in a blur. The radio blared reports of new roadblocks.

The police had cordoned off a five-mile radius. No one in. No one out. State Police were responding with a helicopter with thermal imaging. Yet so far the elusive shooter remained at large.

Pete slowed as they entered Dillard. Five police vehicles from various jurisdictions idled at each corner of the usually quiet coal-mining town. Officers attired in Kevlar patrolled the streets.

After jouncing over a half mile of deep ruts, Zoe spotted the milky gray glow of rescue lighting on the horizon marking their destination. They topped one last rise, and the crime scene lay before them.

Halogen lights attached to rumbling generators turned the darkness into artificially vivid daylight. Law enforcement vehicles from a variety of jurisdictions parked around the periphery of a manmade canyon, the result of decades-old strip mining. A trio of firetrucks formed a barricade of sorts at one end.

At the center of the chaos, one Monongahela County ambulance. Zoe recognized the unit she and Earl usually drove on their shift, now a lonely witness to the unthinkable. Several yards in front of it rested an overturned all-terrain vehicle. On the ground next to the ambulance, a body.

Pete cruised the perimeter to park between a boxy truck with Monongahela County Police Department Mobile Command Center emblazoned across the side and a white van bearing the county coroner’s insignia. Franklin Marshall had beaten them there.

Pete opened his door. “Stay close to me. The scene isn’t secured. We don’t know the shooter’s location.” He glanced toward the ambulance. “And Dickson isn’t going anywhere.”

The gravity of the situation settled even heavier over her. Barry was dead. Curtis was gravely wounded. And there was a very real possibility that others, including her and Pete, could still be in danger. She shivered. In the distance, hounds barked. Multiple helicopters
thwap-thwap-thwapped
overhead in a cloudless star-filled sky. “News choppers?” Zoe asked.

“Some. Plus the State Police.” Pete took her arm, guiding her toward the box truck. “They’re using night vision to search for our shooter from the air.”

Coroner Franklin Marshall and Officer Kevin Piacenza stood inside the mobile command center truck. The cases Zoe worked had never brought her in contact with it before, and she gave the inside of the high-tech beast a curious perusal. A pair of county police officers wearing headsets manned computer keyboards. Radios broadcast an array of police transmissions.

“Update?” Pete asked Kevin.

“No shots have been fired since I arrived on the scene. The K-9 unit arrived about ten minutes ago and is doing their thing. The search helo’s been circling and hasn’t located anything suspicious. Roadblocks are in place.”

“So we have nothing.”

“If he’s still out there, he’s hunkered down.”

Franklin clamped a hand on Zoe’s shoulder. “It sounds safe enough for us to retrieve the body.”

Pete turned to her. The intensity of his pale blue eyes might have made her blush under different circumstances. Tonight, though, his concern chilled her. Franklin was taking her into a potential active shooting zone, and it was up to Pete to give the green light.

Kevin looked back and forth at them. “From the position of the victims, we believe the shot came from that wooded area to the west. I had the fire department park their trucks on that side. Circling the wagons.”

Pete shot a look at the young officer.

Kevin shrugged. “My granddad makes me watch cowboy shows with him when I go to visit.” He grew serious again. “Anyway, they should be safe.”

“Provided our sniper hasn’t relocated,” Pete said.

Zoe’s chill deepened into her bones.

The coroner, his hand still gripping her shoulder, must have felt her shudder. “You don’t have to go in,” he said, his voice soft, understanding.

Zoe recalled the time she and Barry had responded to a barroom brawl. The police were tied up with a traffic accident. Rather than wait, Barry put himself in harm’s way to shield her and their patient, bringing them both out unscathed.

She steeled herself against her fear. “I’m ready. Let’s go.”

Franklin clapped her on the back before heading for the door.

She followed, pausing to meet Pete’s eyes. His jaw was clenched so hard, she half expected to hear his teeth crack. An unspoken order—
be careful
—passed between them.

As she stepped out into the night air, his command over the police radio trailed after her. “The coroner and deputy coroner are coming out.
Cover them
.”

Pete hated everything about this incident. Two men he knew and respected, emergency responders, who put their lives on the line every day, had been gunned down by a coward. One wouldn’t be going home again. The other? Too soon to call. And now Zoe was walking smack into the middle of ground zero.