Perilous by E. H. Reinhard

phone and looked at her over my shoulder. “Is that him?”
    She nodded.
    “Is he at the station?” I asked.
    She asked if he was at work. “He’s there,” Melissa said.
    “Tell him we are on our way there. Have him meet us out front.”
    She did.
    I looked back at Callie. She was gripping her arms, huddled toward the middle of the seat. In our rush out of the house, no one bothered to grab jackets. I unzipped my hooded sweatshirt, took it off, and handed it back to the girls. “Here, try to keep warm.”
    “What about you?” Callie asked.
    “I got the heat vents.”
    The cold air whipped through the broken windows of the SUV. The heater had no chance of keeping up. Callie and Melissa huddled in my sweatshirt in the backseat.
    We pulled in to the Cedarburg police station ten minutes later. I parked nose first between two cruisers at the front. The three of us got out. Scott Cooper, accompanied by two other officers, walked from the front doors and met us on our walk up to the building.
    “Let’s get inside. Is everyone all right?” Scott asked. He was a little heavier than I’d remembered, but his short blond hair was the same as it had been since high school when he dated Melissa. Below his name plate was another that read: Sergeant.
    We followed him in and stood in the enclosed entryway of the police station. A chandelier hung from the ceiling, and tile covered the floor. The far wall had a general office and a dispatch window. Locked doors led into the police department itself. Hot air blew from the vents to combat the arctic air blowing in from the front doors opening. I got as close to the vent as I could to defrost.
    “We’re fine,” I said.
    “What the hell happened, Carl? Melissa said someone was shooting at you guys out at her place?”
    “There’s two dead at the house, one more that was blocking the driveway and shooting at us as we left.”
    “What?” Cooper asked.
    “I think it was a hit squad.”
    “Hit squad?” the other officer asked. The plate on his tan police jacket read McIntyre. He was tall and thin with jet-black hair forming a widow’s peak at the front.
    I nodded.
    “We put a two-four-six across the radio right after Melissa called. We should have police at the house within a few minutes,” Cooper said. “You guys come with me.”
    Cooper opened the door to the right of the dispatch window and walked us into the station. We made our way past the front dispatch command center and through their small bullpen. I took the place in: six desks, four additional officers, and a handful of miscellaneous staff milling about. At the back left of the building, Cooper opened the door to a conference room and sat us inside. McIntyre took a seat at the end of the table.
    Cooper sat next to Melissa. “Are you okay, Mel?” he asked.
    She leaned back in the chair and rubbed her eyes. “I’m okay.”
    “How did they know where we were?” Callie asked.
    In the rush to get out of there and get the girls somewhere safe, I hadn’t even thought about it. The truth was, I didn’t know. They’d known our plans somehow. They knew we’d be at my sister’s, and they knew where my sister lived. I thought about it further.
    “I don’t know, Cal.” I looked to my sister. “Melissa, let me see your phone.”
    She handed it to me, and I dialed my father’s house. A dozen or so rings later, the call went to their answering machine. I tried his cell phone, followed by my stepmother, Sandy’s. Both went to voice mail.
    “Shit.”
    “What?” Melissa asked.
    I handed her the phone back. “I tried calling Dad. No answer on any of their phones. The cell phones are turned off. They’re going straight to voice mail.”
    “They could be out and about or something. Dad’s not the best with remembering to take his cell phone.”
    I said nothing. She was right, but it was doing nothing to ease my mind. If they’d found her address, they could just as easily have found my father’s.
    “You’re