An FBI Special Agent--even one on leave, celebrating Christmas in her old hometown--is not going to let some lowlife mess with her family. A strange man follows Dawna Shepherd's little brother two hundred and twelve miles across West Texas, of course she'll stop the jerk cold at the Shepherd front door.

But when Dawna yanked open the door to the chill December evening, the light from the electric icicles glinted off a golden seven-pointed star. She realized her visitor was holding up a badge case.

"Team Leader Tommy O'Brien," the man said, "official business."

A man with New York City in his voice has official business in Amity, Texas? Curious, Dawna kept her mouth shut, studied her visitor. O'Brien was her height--six-three. Thick through the torso but not fat. In his forties, about ten years older than she was, time etching a trio of lines across his forehead. His Irish blue eyes were so deep set they looked as if they'd been smudged in with a sooty finger. Dawna was a sucker for eyes like that. But O'Brien's appeal was negated by the ready-to-jump alertness in his posture. Ten seconds, he'd be threatening to put cuffs on her. Another rush of adrenaline hit her bloodstream, instinctive reaction to the menace coming off O'Brien as strongly as a bad scent. She squinted to read the print on his badge. Fugitive Recovery Team.

"A bounty hunter," Dawna said flatly. She kept on her game face, stern and impassive, her body blocking the doorway. Fugitive recovery agents had the legal right to pursue bail jumpers across state lines, but they worked for bail bondsmen, not law enforcement. So O'Brien wasn't all that official. And he wasn't all that bright, either. What fugitive did he think he'd find in the home of Police Chief Donald Raymond Shepherd, Dawna's father? "Who you huntin'?" she asked.

"Astrid Anderson." O'Brien brushed a thick lock of dark hair off his forehead and held up a mockup of a wanted poster in his left hand. His right fell casually to rest on the extension baton tucked into his belt. He wore leather gloves, the fingerless version preferred by serious shooters.

Dawna plucked the poster from his hand, hiding her shock. She knew the pallid girl pictured there. Baby-fine ash-blonde hair skinned back in a pony tail that emphasized the high hairline, the pale streaks of her eyebrows blending into the shiny whiteness of the broad forehead. The young woman was Bailey Winters--the same Bailey Winters who'd hurried into the house only minutes before with Dawna's brother Zane. Both seniors at Texas Tech, the two now huddled in the kitchen, waiting for Dawna to handle the man who'd followed them from Lubbock to Amity.

But the pictured woman couldn't be Bailey, Dawna realized. Astrid Anderson was wanted for a murder in connection with the robbery of a Bronx savings bank in 1971, nine years before Bailey was born. "You got the wrong house," Dawna said to O'Brien. "There's no Astrid Anderson here."

"Jane Winters, then. That's the name Anderson may be using now."

Bailey's mother? Dawna shook her head, vibrating her tumble of blonde curls. "Not possible."

O'Brien folded his arms, the ends of his fingers bluntly pink against the dark leather of his jacket. "Jane Winters was born March 14, 1950 in Eugene, Oregon. Got a drivers license in Odessa, Texas in 1978. During that twenty-eight year gap, she had no drivers license, never held a job, never filed an income tax return, never owned a credit card and never borrowed money. Makes me want to ask Jane Winters what she was doing between 1950 and 1978. And since Bailey Winters came straight to this house, I thought I might find her mother here."

"You didn't." Dawna's basketball instincts kicked in. The other team comes at you suddenly with a strategy you've never seen before, you don't try to guess how to respond. You get control of the ball, call a time-out, analyze the play. Dawna pushed the door shut, slammed the dead bolt home.

O'Brien spoke loudly from the other side. "Ma'am, there's a very serious charge against Astrid Anderson. Really, you don't want to find yourself aiding and abetting a murderer. You think about it. I'll be in town till I get some answers. You want to talk to me, you got my cell phone number right there."

Dawna waited, her back against the door, until she heard O'Brien step off the front porch.

Then she was brushing past the darkened Christmas tree, pushing through the swing door into the kitchen, jerking the cell phone out of Bailey's hand, shutting that down.

Bailey backed herself up against the formica-topped counter. Her lanky frame seemed to shrink inside her baggy warmups, the catsup-red pants riding low on her narrow hips. She held her hand out to Dawna, begging for the phone back. "I got to talk to my mom."

"That's what he wants you to do," Dawna said. "He's outside right now scanning cell-phone conversations, waiting to listen in."

Zane snorted and moved closer to Bailey. "You don't know that." The shortest of the Shepherd family--only five feet nine--and the darkest, he flanked Bailey like a stunted shadow.

"He's a bounty hunter, that's how they work." How we all work when we're hunting, Dawna amended to herself. Right after denying knowledge of a fugitive's whereabouts, a liar invariably tries to warn the fugitive of what's going down. Listen in on that call, you can often locate the person you're looking for.

Shoot, what was Dawna doing, interfering with the lawful apprehension of a fugitive from justice? An FBI agent, she couldn't obstruct O'Brien just because her unreasonable gut told her he was a dangerous threat.

(The full text of “Boot Scoot” appeared in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine in 2002.)

©2001, Diana Deverell