Uniforms ranged out around the rapidly quieting crowd. As the tension subsided a degree, a youngish cop jogged over to Maya and said, “We’ll take it from here, ma’am. The chief would like a word with you.”
She tried not to wince at the “ma’am,” which served only to underscore her status as not-quite-a-cop. But there wasn’t time for regrets, not while her wristwatch clicked down past two minutes thirty seconds.
She hastened to the knot of cops gathered near the chief’s car just as two vans and a box truck arrived in a cloud of dust, bearing John Sawyer, the leader of the Bear Claw Bomb Squad, along with his team of experts.
“He said I had ten minutes,” she told the group. “We’ve got two-thirty left, give or take. The park is cleared of people, but there’s a petting zoo in the livery building and close to three hundred head of bison pastured right behind the buildings.”
“Not much we can do about that now,” Chief Parry said pragmatically, but his grizzled, careworn face settled into deeper lines at the prospect of bloodshed, human or otherwise. When Sawyer joined the group, the chief quickly updated him. The two put their heads together to rough out a plan, which gave Maya a moment to glance at the others.
Alissa’s honey-blond hair was tied back in a ponytail and stuffed under a navy BCCPD ball cap, while Cassie’s straight, nearly white-blond hair was shorter now, cut near her shoulders. Tucker stood just behind Alissa and off to one side, shoulders stiff and protective. A wolf guarding his mate. Knowing that the task force had remained active even after the capture of Nevada Barnes three months earlier, Maya was faintly surprised by the absence of Special Agent Seth Varitek. Cassie’s nemesis-turned-lover had been loaned to the task force for help with the evidence work, but perhaps he was off on another case.
In Varitek’s place, a stranger stood at the edge of the group, part of the conversation but apart from the center of it. He was maybe a shade over six feet tall, lean but muscular. He wore navy pants and a crisp white shirt at odds with the heavy boots on his feet. His close-cropped sandy hair was standard military, as was his stiff-backed posture, and she sensed him studying her from behind his dark sunglasses.
She felt a shimmer of familiarity. A cold crawl moved across her shoulders and up her neck to gather at the base of her skull.
Who was this guy?
Her watch beeped to indicate sixty seconds left in the countdown. Thirty.
In silent accord, the cops turned toward the Chuckwagon Ranch as the seconds bled away. There was no way they could search the entire place in time. They didn’t even know where to begin.
As the final few seconds ran down on the digital display, Chief Parry nodded to Maya. “Good work getting everyone out. They’re safe, thanks to you.”
It was the first time he’d spoken to her since he’d taken her badge. The recognition warmed her, but she said, “I was just doing my job.”
Then the time ran out. Her watch beeped the end of the promised ten minutes. They braced for an explosion.
Nothing happened.
Seconds ticked by. Then minutes. Still nothing.
Maya’s brain sped up. Her thoughts quickened to a blur, but it was Sawyer who said, “Think it’s another dud?”
During the Museum Murder investigation, Cassie’s house had been rigged with a gas leak and a detonator that hadn’t triggered. Sawyer later determined that it had never been intended to blow. It’d been a fake, designed to confuse them. Scare them.
Could this be the same?
“It would fit with the Mastermind’s pattern,” Maya said quietly. “Hell, there might not even be a device. He probably got off on phoning in a threat and watching us scramble.”
She told herself not to be ashamed by the false alarm. There was no way she could have known, no way she could have chanced ignoring the call.
But still, she squirmed at the sidelong glances of her former coworkers and the stranger in the dark glasses.
Sawyer gestured to his team. “We’ll suit up and search the property to make sure. It’ll take a few hours.”
“With all due respect,” Maya said, “I’d suggest you check the vehicles first. The tourists are pretty edgy to leave.”
“With all due respect,” the chief said, “you should go with them. The media will be here any minute. If they catch wind that you’re involved with this bomb scare, the next thing we know, it’ll be splashed across the six o’clock news. Suspended cop receives bomb tip. Film at eleven. Hell, they’ll want to know why you received the call. Is it because you’re the last Forensics Department cop to be targeted? Or maybe it’s completely unrelated. Maybe this is about the Henkes trial next week. Lord knows, you’ve ticked off more than a few people with that.”
His words dug at Maya’s suspicions, at the places she hadn’t yet managed to armor. “That would make it completely related,” she snapped. “Why do you think I was here in the first place? Henkes is—”
“He’s right,” Alissa interrupted, though her voice was laced with apology when she said, “You should go. Leave your cell phone with us for analysis. Tucker and I will swing by your place later to get a full statement.”
Ouch. Maya fought the wince, crossed her arms and nodded tightly. “Of course. I’m sorry.” She forced the words through a throat gone tight with resentment.
Was this what she’d been reduced to? Waiting at home for her friends to drop by with a crumb of information?
When nobody argued, she swallowed the anger and pushed through the group. Her path brought her between Alissa and the stranger.
Alissa touched Maya’s arm and mouthed, “I’m sorry. We’ll talk later.”
The stranger just looked down at her through his shaded lenses with an intensity that set off warning bells.
Maya had the wild, uncharacteristic urge to reach up and pull those glasses down so she could see his eyes. But wild urges were self-destructive. She knew that much from experience. So she sniffed and pushed past him, bumping his arm with hers to let him know she wasn’t intimidated.
Damned if he didn’t flinch.
THE FLASH CAME THE MOMENT she touched him.
Blood. Death. Violence. Heat. Thorne held himself rigid and weathered the sensations, which were part memory, part anticipation. He gritted his teeth and forced himself not to show the whiplash of mental flame, of pain.
Hell, he thought when she was gone and the images faded, what was that?
It was a stupid question. He knew precisely what it had been. But why here? Why now? It had been years since his last vision, years since the doctors had assured him the flashes were nothing more than random synapse firings, courtesy of the drugs he’d been given during his captivity on Mason Falk’s mountain.
Years since he’d blocked the images, which had often come too close to prescience for his comfort.
He rubbed the place on his arm that she’d touched, where the contact had arced through the fabric of his shirt and punched him in the gut with the flash.
Or had that been nothing more than memory of their brief history?
She hadn’t recognized him. He shouldn’t have been surprised, given how much he’d changed since his brief stint teaching at the High Top Bluff Police Academy. His hair had been long then, and he’d been weak from the aftereffects of his captivity. Twitchy from the post-traumatic stress. He’d taken his first drink at ten each morning, and spaced five more whiskeys out through the day, staying sober enough to teach his classes, buzzed enough to avoid the memories. The visions.
He didn’t remember much about the half year after his captivity, but he remembered her. The moment he’d heard her name again