However, the instructor had been so impressed with her final test results; he’d recommended her to Captain Hennessey for immediate training to be the new bomb technician.
The glowing recommendation obviously overrode any flack he received from Councilman Peters about her being the first female on the bomb squad. She was given the only new position, much to the continuing vocal disapproval of one Councilman Peters. His personal goal for the last five years had been to get her off the squad. Today might be his lucky day, given the explosions from the day before.
Sabrina had been moving along just fine in her career, if not her personal life, but the bomb exploded…and Jake entered to soothe her fears. So she was batting five hundred.
Tongues were really going to wag when they found out about Jake. Should she try to hide him? She was taking a huge risk to her iron-hard, bitch façade to allow a man in to her life publicly. There was that reputation she’d carried all these years. Who was she kidding? One solid look at her face, and Murphy was going to know everything. It wouldn’t stay a secret after that. Men were inherently worse gossips than women, in her opinion. For that matter, he had a smirk on his face right now.
“You sleep well last night, Sabrina?”
“None ya.” She sipped her black coffee for strength.
“You look very…rested today,” he said politely.
“Whatever you are driving at, Murphy…please just get it out of your system. I’m too tired to fight you off today.” She figured he would hem and haw a little before guessing about what happened with Jake, but no, he went for the jugular.
“I just hope you were practicing safe sex last night. You do remember how to do that, right? ‘Cause I could sign you up for the health class they give here once a month if you’re rusty.”
Sabrina sucked in a mouthful of hot coffee at the words ‘safe sex’ and tried to clear it out of her lungs, coughing furiously through the rest of what he said, including the final word ‘rusty.’
“Murphy…” Sabrina got her coughing under control enough to express her feelings about safe sex, but Hennessey’s door sprang open with a bang. Peters strode out red faced and muttering under his breath. She slouched down in her seat, hoping not to be noticed.
“Morgan! Murphy! In my office! Now!” Hennessey uttered in a controlled shout as the Councilman exited the room, never once looking back. They made an immediate beeline for his office. Hennessey closed the door behind them.
“Thanks for gracing us with your presence, Sabrina. We’re just so grateful you could come in today.” She could tell by the sarcastic tone of his voice he wasn’t angry.
“Well, I was just sleeping in for the first time in five years after the worst day I’ve spent in the bomb squad to date. No big deal!” she shot back.
She wondered what he’d say if he found out exactly what she’d been doing before he called this morning. Which brought some unsolicited thoughts to her mind of Jake…naked, stroking her while he watched the orgasmic reaction on her face. It forced her to shift in her seat.
“The site investigators from advance team pulled the ‘intact’ bomb you two defused out of the hotel building rubble about an hour ago.” Hennessey read from a paper in his hand as sat down in his chair.
“Thank God,” Murphy said quietly.
Hennessey continued, “The city structural engineer said the blast direction and debris pattern suggests the bomb that detonated was at the opposite end of the hotel on the basement level from where you two were working.
“He also said the fact that the building was partially intact after the initial blast suggests the second device imploded and was buried below the floor, out of sight.”
“So we’re off the hook?” Sabrina asked on a sigh.
Hennessey nodded. “Chief Cochran is the official incident commander for both bomb sites. He’s on his way over to personally confirm the bomb at the hotel was underground and declare it to be a fact in writing. This suggests further that we weren’t meant to find the actual bomb set to detonate. It’s a freaking miracle no one was killed. Your bomb still read thirteen minutes and some change. I understand you had forty plus minutes on the timer at the get go. Right?”
Sabrina and Murphy both nodded.
“After the first bomb blew at the old city hall building, I convinced the local feds to give us jurisdiction over it. Now that two bombs have blown up, the FBI will be involved. The good news is Chief Cochran was able make a special request, so at least we’ll get someone who will play nice with us.”
“But we’ll still be in on the investigation, right?” Sabrina asked.
Hennessey nodded. “The crime lab already disassembled the recovered device and found a couple of interesting components. The first was a letter.”
“Like the Scarlet one?” Sabrina couldn’t help the remark, but regretted it with the face Hennessey gave her. “A” was for Adultery. Jeez, where was her mind? Obviously, it languished sedately back in bed with Jake.
“No, a written one, buried in the center of the stack of C-4. Would you like to know what it said?”
At Sabrina’s nod, he continued. “The exact wording was, and I quote, ‘The little pumpkin knows why this had to happen.’”
“The little pumpkin?” Sabrina asked as a tingle ran up her spine. It sounded familiar. Where had she heard that?
“Any thoughts? Beyond the obvious crazed-psycho ones?”
“I think I’ve heard it, but I can’t place where I know it from. A nursery rhyme maybe? Is it a written note or typed?”
“Typed. They are sending it over with the other evidence.”
“What was the other interesting component?” Murphy asked.
“A relay device was located under the first layer of C-4. It’s possible when you defused the first bomb, it sent a signal to the other bomb, thereby arming it. They’re combing the blast area for remnants of the detonated bomb to confirm it. Puts this guy on a whole different playing field.”
“Meaning what?” Murphy scrunched his eyebrows in question.
“It comes across as particularly vengeful, don’t you think?” Hennessey asked.
“Yeah, but only to the bomb tech involved,” Sabrina said more to herself than anyone.
“Thanks for the segue. Councilman Peters expressed his standing concern about you being on the post-investigation team, Sabrina…as usual. He didn’t think incompetence should be rewarded.”
Sabrina’s sat up straight, her spine snapping to rigid attention, and she geared herself up to protest, but Hennessey put up a hand to stop her.
“I must say I really enjoyed telling him about the bomb you defused, which was found completely intact. He hadn’t heard that particular piece of information yet.”
There was a knock at the door, and Chief Cochran stuck his head in when Hennessey barked, “Enter.”
He stood and turned to her and Murphy. “Set up an area to work on this pronto. Get a tech up here for the media film from both sites. Start with the history of each of the buildings, any threats against it, etcetera. You know the drill.” He dismissed them to talk to the Chief.
Sabrina and Murphy stood and exited. Chief Cochran gave Sabrina a wink, which she returned as she passed him. He was Jake’s boss, and she liked him already.
She and Murphy staked out the conference room closest to their desks in the big open room. It had the biggest table and a cork bulletin board running the length of one wall. They tacked up history on the former city hall building and hotel bomb sites, along with site pictures, addresses, and owners.
Half an hour later when they dispersed back to their desks, Chief Cochran was just exiting Hennessey’s office. He strolled over to Sabrina’s desk with purpose and promptly parked himself comfortably in her extra chair. He didn’t speak immediately. He just watched her with a thoughtful, reminiscent expression on his face.
“I was there, you know,” he finally said very quietly.
“I’m sorry?” Now what? Sabrina was having troubl
e enough focusing on her work with flash memories of rolling around with Jake in her bed this morning without adding a deep, meaningful conversation with his boss.
Had Chief Cochran already heard about Jake dropping her off wearing the same clothes he was wearing when he took her home last night? Maybe two blocks away hadn’t been far enough. Boy, the grapevine worked double overtime on her love life.
Sabrina tried to invent an explanation of what Jake was doing spending the night at her place. One would think she’d just gotten caught with her pants down on Lover’s Lane by a police patrol. She was an adult. She could have a sex life, if she wanted.
“I was on one of the responding fire trucks…the day your parents were killed.”
Sabrina was so not expecting him to start a conversation on that subject. Talking about her parents’ deaths was a whole other conversation challenge for her.
“Oh…I…” She had no idea where the Chief was going with this unwanted conversation. Better to stutter and remain silent. Let him do the talking. Not very many people knew the specifics about her parents’ deaths. Somehow, it had come up during the newspaper interview from a couple months back. She’d practically had to promise the reporter her first unborn child to convince him not to delve too deeply or print any details, ironically enough.
“Terrible day. It was the worst run I’d been on as a fireman back then. Deliberate destruction is more abhorrent than accidental, of course, but that day was bad on so many levels. I came on scene right when they were loading your mom into the ambulance. It was a visual…I’ve never forgotten to this day.”
He paused. Sabrina watched wide-eyed and silent as he took a deep breath and continued, “Later, I found out they’d taken her to St. Catherine’s Hospital and went for a visit late that same night when I got off work. That’s when I found out she…hadn’t made it…you know…afterwards.”
Sabrina closed her eyes, trying to calm down.
“I visited you that night, too,” Chief Cochran continued. “I’m certain you wouldn’t remember, of course. You were so tiny. I have a daughter exactly a week younger than you. I used to think about you every year when her birthday rolled around.” He smiled regretfully, and she saw tears well up in his eyes.
Sabrina was touched. She could picture him as a young man with a daughter the same age, seeing what must have been horrible carnage. The personal level he’d endured.
“So, anyway, that’s why I remembered your name yesterday, and I wanted to tell you that I’m glad you grew up and turned out so well. Each year, I hoped that, wherever you were, you were having a good day. I guess I always figured you’d been adopted.”
“No. I grew up in an orphanage, but it wasn’t so bad,” she added quickly. The orphanage part wasn’t a secret, but the ‘wasn’t so bad’ part was a lie. It had been a difficult childhood for her. She wouldn’t wish it on anyone. One of the big reasons she’d joined the bomb squad—her mission in life became the need to spare anyone else a life without family.
Murphy stepped up and mumbled something about the case.
“Good. I’m glad. Thanks for letting an old man reminisce.” He stood up.
Thank heavens, this was about over.
Sabrina stood with him and put out her hand. He grabbed it and pulled her into a loose embrace, patting her back twice.
“Oh, yeah, and another thing. Jake’s a good boy. You could do worse than to end up with him. I’ll make sure he knows I’ll kick his butt if he doesn’t treat you right.”
“Oh, you don’t have to do that.” You really don’t. Sabrina caught Murphy’s amused look from the Chief’s declaration. Great, just what she needed, a father figure to go with her brother figure.
“It’s my pleasure. There’s no man good enough for either you or my daughter, but Jake comes close. My daughter is already married to a pretty good guy with her own little ones now.”
Great.
“Thank you,” Sabrina said and meant it. She’d never known anyone who knew she was alive after her parents died. There had been no remaining family members to care for her after her parents had gone. Her father had himself been an orphan, and she’d been told later that her mother’s family either couldn’t be tracked down or didn’t exist. It was strangely comforting to now know that a young fireman with a family had been touched enough to look in on her so many years ago.
Point goes to girly emotional side.
The Chief walked away, and Murphy surprised her by not commenting. Maybe he saw her face and was worried she would become emotional again. Good call.
“I just got the film footage from both scenes from the news stations. The tech is setting it up. Let’s go check it out,” he said.
Sabrina nodded, not quite trusting herself to speak, and followed him to the room where the audiovisual was set up. They begin combing the film footage for anyone out of place or acting strange at the two sites. They didn’t find anything remotely significant until the third time through.
“Stop,” Sabrina said as the camera panned the crowd at the former city hall building.
“Where?” The audiovisual tech backed the footage up a few seconds.
“There. Stop on that woman in the green print dress. She looks pretty upset for an empty building being threatened. I wonder why.”
“I don’t know.”
“She’s the only one that looks interested at all. It’s probably nothing, but let’s check her out.”
“Yeah. Get a print of her face and blow it up to an eight by ten,” Murphy told the tech. “Now, let’s check the second site film for our mystery woman.”
Sabrina took the copy of the picture the tech handed her and studied it. The woman looked distinctly familiar. It took a minute to circulate in her brain, but when she realized who the picture made her think of, she had to force herself not bend over in pain. Her breath whooshed out of her as the realization slammed into her. The woman looked nearly identical to the image Sabrina carried of her mother. She tried to rationalize it. The woman didn’t really look like her mother. It was just because Chief Cochran dredged up her old memories, she thought. Her emotional, girly side was out and on the loose, forcing her to see her mother’s face everywhere she looked. It would pass. She handed the photo to Murphy, trying to keep her face from crumbling into a thousand pieces.
“You know what’s funny?” Murphy asked as he studied the eight by ten. “This picture looks a little like you.”
“What?”
“Look. The hair is about the same color, and she’s got that same distasteful look you get on your face when you see Councilman Peters. I remember because I saw it this morning.”
Sabrina snatched the paper out of his hand and studied the photo, ready to debate it, but he was right. Perhaps that was why she saw her mother in the photo.
Sabrina supposed she looked a little like her mother. Coincidence, her mind screamed, until a wishful thought came to mind. What if she had family she didn’t know about? Maybe the State Family Services had overlooked someone twenty-three years ago. Maybe this woman was a long-lost cousin or something.
“Check it out!” the tech said excitedly. “Here she is again at the second site. Isn’t that her?” Sabrina and Murphy crowded around the monitor again.
The tech showed the fifteen-second footage of the woman in the crowd after the bomb had exploded. They caught the look of utter disbelief on the woman’s face. She watched with a look of horrified fascination as she approached the yellow police line. The film swung around to show the bombed building. The woman who reminded her of her mother put her hands up to her face like she was personally affected by what happened there.
“We need to find this woman and see if she knows something or is just emotional at explosions. Run her face through the local criminal database systems and see if she has a record first,” Sabrina said. “ Check the federal databases next. How long will it take?”
“Depends on if I find her or not,” the tech said irately. He pushed his glasses up on
his nose, closed his eyes, and took a deep breath as if trying to control his snippy attitude. It didn’t seem to be working. After a few deep breaths, the tech sat up straighter in his chair and ran his hand through his tousled, unruly mop of a hairdo for the umpteenth time. He pushed a few buttons on his equipment but didn’t say anything else.
“How long if you don’t find her?” Sabrina countered.
“Seven or eight hours for local and federal combined.”
“Get on it. We’ll also float it around the neighboring police precincts to see if anyone knows her, but we shouldn’t get our hopes up. She looks out of place for the area to me. Probably just generally upset at the situation,” Sabrina said.
“We might get lucky this time,” Murphy shrugged and smiled. “Our mystery woman is the bomber and our case is solved. Easy.”
Sabrina rolled her eyes and shook her head. Murphy laughed. He wasn’t that optimistic either, but he always tried to get a rise out of her. She stopped taking the bait years ago and gave him her standard screwed-up, grumpy face before turning toward her desk.
The phone on Sabrina’s desk was ringing when they returned to their desks. She picked it up. “This is Morgan.”
“Sorry, I was looking for a bomb tech babe named Sabrina.” Jake sultry voice practically melted the wires as she sat down.
Internal temperature rising, she cleared her throat. “How can I help you?”
“I can’t get you out of my mind. I can smell you on me from this morning. It’s driving me insane.”
Sabrina exhaled a whoosh of air in the phone, her mind racing for a response. “So…so what does that mean?” She couldn’t help but smile. Her chest warmed from the inside out.
“It means we don’t have to go out in public if you agree to see me tonight. Let’s order in Chinese takeout and eat at my apartment. Private enough for you?”
Blonde Bomb Tech Page 8
