Matt hugged me. “Oh, thank god,” he said. “You’re all right.”
“We just got a call there was another bomb threat,” Officer Banks said to the principal. Then he turned to me, looking angry. “That wasn’t you, was it?”
“No, it was me,” said Matt.
“There really is a bomb in the furnace room.” I held out the timer. “I just disarmed it.” I paused. “I think.”
“Is she telling the truth?” Officer Banks asked the principal. She nodded. The cop immediately phoned the bomb squad. It was then that I saw Ashley, watching the evacuation from the far end of the parking lot. But I pretended I hadn’t seen her, for the moment.
As Banks ended his call, I said, “Ashley set the bomb.”
“Are you sure?”
I showed him my smartphone. He watched the video of Ashley breaking into the furnace room and setting the bomb. “And she’s right over there,” I said.
As soon as I pointed at her, Ashley turned and bolted. Officer Banks scrambled to catch her. He nabbed her as she ran down the sidewalk, then hauled her back to his police car. Once there, he pulled her hands behind her back and slapped the cuffs on her.
“I want to phone my lawyer,” she said.
“You have your own lawyer?” I asked.
“My family does.”
“The first thing we’re going to do is phone your parents,” Officer Banks said.
“My parents?” Ashley shook her head. “It’ll be days before my parents get here. My mom is on another business trip in New York. My dad is on holiday with his new family in Costa Rica.”
“Who is responsible for you then?” I asked. “Who is staying with you?”
“Our housekeeper.”
“Your housekeeper?” I repeated.
“She was my nanny.” Ashley shrugged. “Mom is hardly ever around.”
I realized her housekeeper was likely the closest thing to a parent this girl had. I was suddenly grateful for my loopy mom. After my parents divorced, she had built her home business so she would always be around for me. We didn’t have much money, but I always had her attention and love.
“You made that first bomb threat, didn’t you?” I asked Ashley.
Ashley looked down, caught. “Yeah, so?”
“You put the blame on Tyler. Why him? Why not Spider?”
She shrugged. “You had already picked him out as a suspect. He’s a nerd. Keeps to himself. Nobody cares about him.”
“His dad cares,” I said. I glanced back to the field where Dean had joined his son. He put an arm around Tyler and nodded at me.
Ashley looked sad. I knew she felt her parents didn’t care about her. Not enough to be around when she needed them. In that moment I almost felt sorry for her. But then her expression turned to anger. “The bomb was your idea, you know,” she said to me.
I took a step back. “Mine?”
“I hadn’t thought of planting a bomb in that school,” Ashley said. “But then you thought there actually was one.” She looked smug. “Then I heard you talked the cops and firefighters into going down to the furnace room to look for the bomb. I realized that was the perfect place to plant a pipe bomb. If it set off the fuel in the furnace, the explosion would be way bigger. But the bomb wasn’t near a classroom, so no one would get hurt.”
Officer Banks put a hand on Ashley’s shoulder. “If that bomb went off in the furnace room, the whole school could have gone up in flames. Many kids would have died.”
Ashley’s face went white as she finally understood what she’d done. “Well, it was her idea, not mine,” she said, nodding at me. “It’s her fault.”
I felt sick to my stomach. I had been so sure I was seeing into the future. I had tried to stop the explosion from happening. Instead, I’d had a hand in creating the situation.
“Come on, into the car.” Banks held Ashley’s head so she wouldn’t hit it as he helped her into the back of the police cruiser. He closed the car door behind her, locking her in.
“That is one sick kid,” Matt said.
“But she’s right. All those students could have died, and it would have been my fault.”
Banks shook his head. “Don’t let that kid get under your skin,” he said. “Remember, she made that first bomb threat. And you certainly didn’t talk her into making that pipe bomb.”
Maybe, but I also knew I would never really be sure I had seen into the future. Had I stopped the explosion from happening? Or had I planted the seed in Ashley’s mind, setting off this chain of events?
I glanced at Ashley. She turned away and stared straight ahead. She didn’t look so cocky now.
SIXTEEN
The fire trucks arrived and the bomb squad entered the building. As Matt made a few calls, I watched with Tyler and Dean as the bomb squad carefully removed the pipe bomb from the school and loaded it into a special truck. Then the cops made another sweep of the school with the sniffer dog. When Officer Banks was sure the school was safe, he gave the okay to let the students back in. It was only then, after the cops and fire crews had left, that Matt and I finally left the school ourselves.
“Let’s grab a coffee,” Matt said. “I’ll drive.”
I got in his truck and we headed downtown. Matt parked opposite Tommy’s Café, the local hangout for cops and firefighters.
“No, not here,” I said. I glanced in the window. “The cops and firefighters are all in there. Fire Chief Wallis is there too. I embarrassed him.”
“You’ve got to face him sometime. Now is as good a time as any.”
“I guess.” Matt was right. Still, my knees felt like jelly as I got out of the truck.
I took a deep breath and pushed open the café door. As I entered, everyone turned toward me. One of the firefighters slapped Fire Chief Wallis on the shoulder so he would turn to see me. The chief paused a moment as he caught my eye.
Then he stood and clapped. One by one, every cop and fireman in that café stood and clapped. Even the servers stopped working and cheered for me.
“Are they making fun of me?” I asked Matt.
“No, they’re applauding you,” Matt said. “You saved a lot of kids’ lives today—their kids.” He nodded at the crowd that surrounded us. Then he stood back and clapped along with them.
I felt the tears start to rise. Then I felt a hand on my shoulder. I turned to find my mother there. “What are you doing here?” I asked her.
She smiled at Matt. “I heard there was a little party here in your honor.”
“You planned this?” I asked Matt. “Is this why you made all those calls earlier?”
“We all planned this,” the chief said. He raised his coffee mug. “To Claire!” he said.
Everyone in the café raised a cup and joined him. “To Claire!”
The firefighting team lined up to shake my hand, followed by the cops. Officer Banks was the last to congratulate me. “Claire, I was thinking we may hire you to help us on the occasional case,” he said.
“Seriously?”
“You’ve proven yourself.”
“You have a budget for hiring a psychic?”
He laughed. “I think I can get away with it if I call you a consultant.”
“Maybe you can make use of my skills as well?” Mom asked.
“Mom,” I warned.
Officer Banks turned to her. “I will take your calls from now on,” he said. “And I’ll listen to what you have to say.”
“That’s all I ever wanted,” Mom said.
Officer Banks tipped his police hat and joined the other cops at his table. Carol, my editor, took that as her cue to approach me.
“Claire, I have an apology to make,” she said. “I’ve known you long enough that I should have trusted you.”
“No apology necessary,” I said. “You had no reason to believe me. In the future, I’ll make sure I have the facts to back my story before I bring it to you or the cops.”
“Like any good reporter. Your job is open, if you still wa
nt it.”
I grinned. “I’ve got to pay the bills somehow.”
“See you tomorrow then?”
Matt wrapped an arm around my shoulder. “I think she deserves a day off after all this, don’t you?”
Carol nodded. “I agree.”
“What did you have in mind?” I asked Matt.
“I’ll think of something.” He winked, and I knew we’d be spending the day in bed. I was grateful. Aside from what else he had in mind, I could use a good sleep. This time, hopefully, without nightmares.
By the age of eighteen, GAIL ANDERSON-DARGATZ knew she wanted to write about women in small-town and rural settings. Today, Gail is a bestselling author. A Recipe for Bees and The Cure for Death by Lightning were finalists for the Scotiabank Giller Prize. She also teaches other authors how to write fiction. Gail divides her time between the Shuswap region of British Columbia and Manitoulin Island in Ontario.
Race Against Time is the third book in the Claire Abbott Mystery series. For more information, visit gailanderson-dargatz.ca.
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