Chapter 18

ERIC

Later that evening, I picked up my coffee cup and frowned. Empty again. I really needed to do something about the amount of caffeine I was drinking, but that could wait for another day. I had a hero on the brink of death and a medical examiner who couldn't find him. If Aaron died before he made it to the next scene, the story was over.

I rubbed my hand along my jaw as I walked across to my whiteboard. Aaron Connelly might be James Bond on steroids, but even he couldn't defy death. Something had to happen to give him another hour or two of breathing time, something no one was expecting.

"How will we do this, Sherlock?"

Without lifting his head, Sherlock looked up at me and sighed. He was a dog of few words, except when it came to mealtimes.

"Aaron's been shot. He's cold, hungry, and in the middle of a National Park. What would he do to stay alive?"

Sherlock yawned.

"He can't sleep. The mafia's closer than the medical examiner. How can we change that?"

Sherlock's paws covered his eyes.

The story couldn't be that bad. My eyes narrowed as I studied the next couple of scenes. Somewhere along the line, the medical examiner had missed an important clue. I needed to make sure he not only found it, but he linked it to Aaron's disappearance.

After twenty minutes of tossing around different ideas, I was still no closer to getting out of the hole I'd painted my hero into.

Finding inspiration from within the cottage's four walls wasn't happening. In desperation, I grabbed my cap from a hook beside the front door. "Let's go for a walk, Sherlock. It might clear the cobwebs from my brain."

Sherlock leaped to his feet, almost nose-planting into the wooden floor in his haste to get outside.

With one word from me, he sat on the edge of the veranda instead of racing off into the wilderness.

After punching in the code for the security alarm, I headed toward Sherlock. "Good boy. Let's see if we can buy our hero some time." And hopefully, by the end of the night, Aaron Connelly wouldn't be dead.