by Bonnie Vanak
Quiet and strong, and handsome and rugged as a movie star. Her heart thumped a little bit harder each time he was around.
It hadn’t been love at first sight. More like love at first fight, she thought as she reached the bottom of the stairs. Quinn unlocked the door—her private entrance into the shop—and then locked it behind her. The door opened to her storage area. She skirted two heavy sacks of whole-grain flour and frowned at the mess on the floor. Last week she’d reluctantly laid off Jeb Plimpton, the teenager who swept up and kept her store tidy. More things on her to-do list, when right now all she could think about was adding West to the list, permanently.
West was a muscular, intimidating guy who scowled. Except around her. From the moment the tall, black-haired man with the chocolate-brown eyes had first walked into her shop, sparks had jumped between them. In his low, gravelly voice West had told her he wanted to order a meal to go. Something resembling red meat that isn’t that green sprouts froufrou food I heard you’re known for. Fresh roadkill will suffice. Don’t take it personally, sweetheart.
She’d set a kale smoothie in front of him and told him he needed “foo foo” in his tank because he looked like fresh roadkill. Run over twice. With a backhoe. And he should not “take it personally.”
Instead of sneering, West had laughed.
Her smile grew broader as she recalled that deep, grudging laugh. It had sent a tingle down her spine and a curious desire to coax more from him. She headed into the shop.
Austin Jones was already in the kitchen, lighting the gas range. Tall and wiry, he had been her best friend for ten years, ever since they met while taking cooking classes at the local college. They’d partnered in business together when she’d opened Good Eats, but Quinn remained the principal owner.
“Morning, sunshine,” he greeted her as he straightened and headed over to the counter, where a batch of fresh arugula waited. Austin began chopping and dicing, and snapped his chewing gum.
Quinn wrinkled her nose. “How can you chew that obnoxious stuff? If you’re craving apple pie, bake one.”
Austin patted his flat stomach. “Have to watch the waistline. This may not be dessert, but tastes as good. Apple gum. Besides, I need the wrappers.”
Right. Quinn picked up the foil swan her friend had made. “Future Christmas gift?”
“Don’t knock it. If business keeps going downhill like this, you’ll be lucky to get one.”
As she scanned the kitchen, her smile wilted like the greens she’d had to toss yesterday. “What happened to the Bernstein order? Shouldn’t you get that ready?”
“Canceled. They called this morning and said they were headed home early.”
Oh dear. The Bernsteins, summer visitors to Red Ridge, always hosted a huge end-of-summer bash for one hundred and fifty guests. For the past five summers, Good Eats had been their caterer.
“There will be other summer parties.” Quinn hoped she sounded more buoyant than she felt.
Yesterday they’d had to throw out nearly a case of fruit that had spoiled. Their main business came from healthy fruit and veggie smoothies, but she couldn’t keep paying bills for long on over-the-counter items. The catering end of her business had slid into the red with the Groom Killer on the loose. The news that someone was still murdering grooms before their weddings hadn’t been good for her wedding catering business, either.
Bracing her hands on the counter, she stared at the slim list of catered orders for the week. Quinn had counted on the Bernstein order to make payroll and pay for next week’s wholesale shipment of vegetables.
“How are we going to survive like this?” Austin gave a deep sigh, putting his hand to his chest.
Quinn gave him a playful poke. “If you want dramatics, try out for summer stock. We’ll get by.”
“Such an optimist. Did you pay the rent yet?”
Although the apartment rent was due later than the store rent, Quinn got a discount paying both all at once. “I will.”
If necessary, she’d dip into her savings account.
Austin set down the knife. “Quinn, do you want me to take care of it? I’d hate to see Larson start eviction procedures.”
Noel Larson wouldn’t evict. Not right away. He’d gloat over the fact she owed him, and then squeeze harder, putting pressure on her and humiliating her. Noel and his twin brother were real estate tycoons in Red Ridge. Their reach and their power made them nearly invincible. You didn’t want to mess with them.
“No. Stay away from him. I have the money, Austin, and I don’t want Larson thinking I’m dead broke.” She softened her tone. “I appreciate your offer of help, but you know me. I refuse to hand Larson that kind of power.”
“Pride goeth before homelessness,” he quipped.
She smiled. “Don’t worry. I’d never let that happen.”
Quinn felt warm inside as her thoughts drifted to West. By winter, perhaps she’d be married. Maybe even on her way to starting a family. Humming, she bustled around the kitchen.
Austin’s blue eyes twinkled behind the thick glasses. “You look so...glowing this morning. New boyfriend?”
She wished she could scream about her romance with West from the rooftops, but she couldn’t. For his safety. “I had a love affair with a nuclear reactor,” she teased back. “And a good night’s sleep.”
“I’m glad someone’s happy,” he muttered morosely as he set down the knife and scooped the greens into a bowl. “I can’t seem to get a date with everything going on in this town. At this rate, I’ll be more celibate than a monk on Mars.”
She laughed, and the laugh cut short as she suddenly remembered. West hadn’t used a condom this morning...
They’d been so eager, so tired from their jobs and so careful to make sure no one saw them together, they’d forgotten to be careful that way.
Anxiety arrowed through her. She checked the calendar on her Android phone. Too close to call. Pregnancy wasn’t on her to-do list. No Bullet Journal for that, she thought as she tucked her phone back into the pocket of her apron. Never mind the fact that West stated he didn’t want children, and she did. She longed to have two children, a real family with a mother and father who stuck around, unlike her shiftless dad, Rusty.
Maybe she could change West’s mind about having a family.
I need breakfast if I’m going to deal with this. Quinn opened the stainless steel refrigerator and gathered the ingredients for a blueberry-peach smoothie. When it was finished, she took it outside in the cool morning air.
Up and down Main Street, shopkeepers were opening their stores and starting business for the day. Summer business bustled in August with tourists who wanted some late-season fishing or hiking, taking kids to see Mount Rushmore and the Black Hills before shuttling them off to school. But not this year. Maybe the visitors heard about the Groom Killer and decided to stay elsewhere.
The brick facade of her little shop was aged, and gave Good Eats a small-town charm, along with the flower boxes lining the big windows overlooking Main Street. Her store, at the very edge of town, backed onto a wide-open field where there had been talk of developing a shopping center.
Those plans had been abandoned by the developer after business started going south in town.
Quinn had dug into her slim savings and purchased wrought iron bistro tables and chairs where customers could sit outside and enjoy a hot cappuccino or a cold smoothie in the warm weather. Once, the drinks were icing on her store’s financial cake; now they were the entire cake and frosting.
If she didn’t get a big order soon, she and Austin would be in financial trouble.
Never. Austin was her bestie. She needed him in her life as much as she needed West. And her brothers and sister.
Where was Demi?
She had constantly wrestled with worry over her kid sister. A bounty hunter, Demi was tough as nails, fierce,
and Quinn couldn’t help wondering if her half sister really had snapped and killed her ex-fiancé and the other grooms. Her ex had been the first victim. There had since been many more. According to the RRPD—many of whom were related to Demi and Quinn in some way—Demi was guilty. Others said she was being framed. All Quinn knew was that Demi was alone out there, supposedly trying to prove her innocence. At least, she’d texted as much to their brother Shane a couple months back.
Since then: radio silence.
What Quinn couldn’t stop thinking about was that when Demi had fled town, she’d been pregnant. She must have had the baby already. Or was about to.
Quinn sipped the shake and set it down on the table. Her phone buzzed and she reached into her apron to pull it out when a tremendous KA-POW split the air, startling her into dropping the cell phone and spilling her drink.
Shaken, she stood up, staring in the direction of the explosion. Her father’s bar was down that way...
In the direction West had taken when he’d kissed her goodbye and then headed for work.
Chapter 2
The abandoned hardware store had been totally flattened. West thought it looked as if a giant stomped on it, squashing the roof, toppling the walls and shattering what was left of the broken windows.
West was so focused on solving the Groom Killer case, on finding Demi Colton, that he figured her into every crime that affected Red Ridge. Blowing up a building to take the focus off the murders would allow her to sneak around the city more easily, hunt down the grooms who’d refused to hide their love and relationships.
But Demi hadn’t done this, unless she graduated to high-tech explosives.
Then again, Demi Colton was a smart woman, a clever bounty hunter, and anything was possible.
Lights flashed from RRPD patrol cars and fire trucks lining the dirt road in front of the abandoned hardware store. Nearby, several tent canopies sat over tables for collection of evidence—the command post—along with an industrial generator. Yellow crime scene tape had already been strung up along the perimeter, where a crowd of curious bystanders started to gather. He recognized some of the hard-core patrons from Rusty Colton’s bar and gritted his teeth. Drunk civilians were a pain to deal with, and worse at a crime scene.
His pulse raced as he parked his black Ford truck. West grabbed his kit, climbed out and then skirted around the side to let out Rex. The Lab jumped out and stood close to his side as West surveyed the detectives and cops already milling around the scene—the abandoned building he and Rex had jogged by earlier this morning. He raked a hand through his hair and sighed.
At his side, the dog gave him a reproachful look as if to say, I told you so.
“Hey, I checked it out,” he told Rex.
He took a deep, calming breath. Steady now.
Every time he investigated an explosion, he remembered that day when he was seventeen, and his entire family had been killed by a bomb. He had been the sole survivor.
Surviving only because he’d been out with his girlfriend, parked at the local lovers’ lane. The sex had been good, and quick and forgettable.
What he saw when he arrived home had not been forgettable.
Focus. Priorities. Safety first. West took another deep breath and glanced at Rex.
“Let’s do this.”
Every inch of the scene had to be processed, numbered and documented. His dog would alert him where the most evidence of the bomb was, while other investigators would sort out the scene for shrapnel embedded in the building and dirt.
But not until he and Rex checked out the scene for unexploded devices.
Ducking under the tape, he headed for the staging tent and grabbed a white hazmat suit and put it on, along with booties. Then he took the specially made booties he’d ordered for Rex and attached them to the dog’s paws, fastening them with Velcro. The booties would not only protect Rex’s paws from broken glass and debris, but helped preserve the integrity of the crime scene, as well.
Chief Finn Colton saw him and headed to the tent. He glanced at Rex.
“We’ve divided the building into four quadrants. Need you and Rex to search for secondary devices. When you give the all clear, I want you to search for evidence in the fourth quadrant—the southwest corner.”
“No prob.” West motioned to Rex and they entered the blown-out building.
The bomb had been a big one. Glass windows had been shattered from more than two hundred feet away and the boards that blocked the windows were now shards.
Any hopes this was a prank pulled by kids were immediately dashed. Kids who liked to blow things up wouldn’t cause this kind of destruction.
No, they’d take a pipe bomb into the woods and then explode it, watching the destruction from afar.
He recognized Cal Flinders from the district Alcohol, Tobacco & Firearms office. Cal was one of the few he trusted.
West nodded at Cal and gripped Rex’s leash. Safety first. If there were any unexploded devices on scene, his dog would detect them.
“Find,” he ordered Rex, still gripping the leash.
Rex combed through all the sectors, searching for secondary devices. When he finished, he remained standing. West stared at the wreckage. No bodies today.
Not like at his family’s house, where he’d screamed and tried to break past the barricades, get to his father, mother, two little sisters...
Focus. Rex looked up at him expectantly. All clear, we okay? the dog seemed to ask.
“Quadrants one, two, three and four all clear,” West called out.
Next, he began scouring the area of the building assigned to him. Rex sniffed through the debris. The bomb had detonated in the building’s center, where the worst damage was, but shrapnel traveled far. Patterns of the damage indicated how powerful the explosion was. Fortunately, no one had been injured.
Rex nosed beneath a piece of wood and sat. West hunkered down and examined the evidence.
Caked with dust and soot, it was heart shaped and partly bent. A woman’s gold compact, with a butterfly design. West photographed the item and then studied it. It was covered with a film of white powder.
Bomb residue.
A woman had been here. Possibly slept here, or at the very least, stayed here for longer than a few minutes. He started to put a marker by the place where it had been, and hesitated.
Maybe Demi Colton hadn’t planted this bomb, but this suggested she might have worked with the unknown suspect, the unsub. Or another woman had.
His cop instincts tingled. The RRPD assumed he was simply an FBI canine officer temporarily assigned to Red Ridge while one of their officers recovered from an injury.
No one on the force knew he was secretly investigating to see if the RRPD and Chief Finn and the other Coltons were deliberately dragging their heels on the Groom Killer investigation. If this compact belonged to Demi Colton, it might vanish before it could even be processed as evidence. Were the Coltons protecting their own? He didn’t know. Hell, he wasn’t even sure if his own secret fiancée was keeping her half sister’s whereabouts to herself. Better to be safe and bring the compact back to the district office to test it.
Looking around to make sure no one saw, West bagged the evidence and carried it separately instead of dumping it into the official evidence collection bag he carried.
Why blow up an abandoned building? What was the deal with the overkill? Was someone testing out how to cause as much destruction as possible?
Was it Demi Colton trying to diffuse attention so she could target her next victim without the cops on red alert for her?
He couldn’t remain there staring at the debris. He had to do his job. An RRPD cop in a hazmat suit came over as West removed an item from his kit.
“Nice.” The officer whistled. “You feds have the funding for the latest equipment.”
West looked at h
im. “You’re contaminating my crime scene.”
“Chief sent me over to see if you need help.”
“I don’t.”
Grunting, the cop left. West switched on the ion mobility detector and swept his assigned quadrant. The machine could pick up trace amounts of chemicals, helping him determine what kind of bomb had exploded.
The unit sucked in air to test for traces of chemicals. It didn’t take long.
Swearing under his breath, he switched off the machine. Just as he’d suspected, but the job required details, more details and more details.
Returning to the command post, he told Finn Colton what he’d found. Then West glanced at the man standing just outside the crime scene tape, staring with avid interest at the bombed building.
He jerked a thumb at the man. “Curious bystander?”
Finn shook his head. “Witness. He’s already been interviewed. Drove right past before the bomb exploded.”
After the chief summarized what the man had said, West decided to talk to the witness himself. Experience taught him it was best to get firsthand information himself, before memories grew dim. People’s detailed memories got muzzy real quick. Besides, if someone saw something linking Demi Colton to this explosion, and that interview got buried...
West peeled off his gloves and chucked them into a biohazard container, heading for the middle-aged man.
Slightly chunky, with quick, eager green eyes, the man looked around as if this were entertainment arranged just for him. West knew the type—self-important, glad to help, wanted to get his name in the paper. Still, he took a moment to study the witness. Though West had been in town less than a month, he didn’t recognize him.
West introduced himself and scribbled the man’s name—Santo Nestor. A cigarette dangled out of the corner of his mouth. He puffed constantly.
Nicotine addict.
“What were you doing at this end of town?”
Keeping his voice mild, he studied the witness’s eye movement. The man stared earnestly back at him.
“I was headed into the city to grab a bite,” Nestor said in a thick Hispanic accent. “I’m a salesman. Thought maybe I could scope the place out at the local eatery, make a few contacts. I sell aluminum siding for houses.”
