by Bonnie Vanak
Not daring to move her further, in case of a neck injury and shattered vertebrae, he held his shirt against her head, his hand trembling.
“It’s okay, baby. It’s okay. I’ve got you,” he whispered, everything inside him bunched up in knots. Rex licked her face.
People were running toward him. The whine of sirens grew louder. Help was arriving. Hurry. In his mind’s eye, he flashed back to that terrible night when he was a teenager. House burning, broken glass littering the front yard, his screams echoing through the night as the sirens wailed a mocking song... Too late, too late, too late...
Not too late. Quinn was breathing. Alive.
EMTs rushed forward. One medical professional squatted by him, opened a kit. West was dully aware of the man trying to shoulder him aside.
“We’ve got this,” the paramedic assured him. “Let us treat her.”
Let her go. They’re professionals. But everything inside him screamed to hold on and not let go of Quinn because if he did, he could lose her.
She might die, just like his mother, father and little sisters.
She will die if you don’t move it, Brand.
Dragging in a deep breath, he stood and stepped aside.
With quiet, swift professionalism, the paramedics went to work, swapping out his soaked shirt for real bandages, putting a neck brace on her to prevent her head from moving, starting an IV, taking her pressure. He heard a buzz of words, saw them slide Quinn onto a backboard and then lift her onto a gurney.
She’s going to be okay. Has to be okay. I can’t lose her.
Everything inside him fought to run back to his truck, race after the screaming ambulance. Follow her to the hospital, make sure she got treated, hover until she opened her eyes and looked at him.
West clenched his hands and unclenched them. Using a breathing technique he’d learned from a therapist who’d treated him for PTSD, he centered himself and his thoughts.
The best way he could help Quinn was by doing his job. The sooner he helped catch the bastard doing this, the safer she and the town would be.
“Brand!”
He turned at the sound of Finn Colton’s voice. The chief looked at the departing ambulance, his expression grim. “What happened?”
West told him about finding Quinn, as others arrived and began to work the scene.
He knew cops, knew the tight brotherhood. Quinn had been injured—one of their own, family—and they were going to work this case hard.
West didn’t need to get insider information on the local cops to ascertain this. He knew human nature.
Finn gave him a hard look. “Brayden and Shane are on their way to the hospital, and they’ll question Quinn if she wakes up. I need you to stay here, work the scene.”
West nodded, though he fought the instinctive need to rush to the hospital with the chief. He turned back to his truck to fetch his equipment.
No one knew what Quinn meant to him. They had kept their relationship secret on purpose. But right now, as he jogged back to his truck, Rex at his side, he was the one who could openly claim her and join her brothers at the hospital.
* * *
Firefighters had quickly doused the flames and now the cops were working the scene. Someone had marked Tia’s body.
What was left of it.
He saw a high-heeled red shoe attached to a section of bloodied leg sticking out from beneath half a large-screen television. High heels. Quinn had not worn high heels. Not during the day. At night she liked wearing them when they met in secret outside town. Dinner, a show, good times.
He liked her in high heels, and when she wore them to bed last week...
Was she okay?
Focus, Brand. Focus.
West dragged in a breath and studied the body with cool, professional detachment. Tia lay on her side. One of her arms had been torn off in the blast, and her torso was horribly mangled.
Burns covered her body and part of her head...
He looked at Tia’s head, noting the head injury and exposed brain matter with analytical coolness. If she had died before the explosion, the autopsy would confirm it.
“Find,” he ordered Rex, his death grip on the leash making his palm sweat through the latex gloves.
Rex combed through the building’s rubble to search for secondary devices. Nothing found. But near what had been Tia’s desk, West found pieces of the bomb, including the detonator.
Cell phone. Same kind of burner phone used in the first bombing.
Until the pieces were tested, he couldn’t be certain, but he suspected it was the same type of bomb that had gone off earlier in the abandoned building. The first bomb was a trial run, probably to see how much damage the unsub could inflict.
But something had gone wrong. The killer hadn’t known that Quinn delivered lunch here every day around noon. Nor had he anticipated the device wouldn’t totally destroy evidence.
Or had he? Quinn had told him that everyone knew her schedule—that every day she hand delivered lunch to Tia, one of her best clients. Tia always ate at twelve thirty sharp. The woman ran a tight schedule.
He returned to his truck, fetched his equipment. With methodical care, he combed through the scene. Gray file cabinets were dented, some of their contents blown out. The computer was in shards, but if Tia backed her files up to a cloud, they could access them.
Maybe one of her clients had a grudge. Damn, it was better than thinking someone had it in for Quinn, or wanted to cause more than one injury.
In the rubble, he found the thin stump of a cigar. West bagged and tagged the evidence. Tia smoked. A fact Quinn relayed to him previously, her pert nose wrinkling in disgust. Tia even liked to light up Cubans after hours. But everything had to be looked over.
Something glinted among the rubble in a shaft of late-afternoon sunshine.
West crouched down and studied the fragment. The edge of a key chain, rounded, with the etching of a pine cone. He could just make out part of an address.
#5 Pine P.
Pine Paradise? Acid crept into his throat. Too much of a coincidence.
He knew this.
Pine Paradise specialized in cabins in the thickly wooded canyon south of Red Ridge.
After Quinn had told him she had a key to a cabin there, he planned to take her for a weekend. Maybe taking Quinn with him for hikes in the woods, long bouts of lovemaking into the night. He liked that area of South Dakota; it was quiet, peaceful, and enabled him to think and find peace. Get away from all the people in town and the nosy neighbors. He could use his gray matter to fit together pieces of a complex puzzle called the Coltons, figure out if they were covering up evidence of Demi Colton’s whereabouts.
Question her further.
Pine Paradise offered quiet, small cabins near a creek reputed to have excellent trout fishing. Each cabin was set back from the road, nestled in the thick woods. Isolated and accessed only by a dirt road, they were far apart from each neighboring cabin to offer seclusion and privacy.
When he’d first arrived in town, he’d asked Tia, Red Ridge’s reigning queen of real estate, about renting a Pine Paradise cabin. She’d haughtily informed him that the cabins were occupied. The property is unavailable, Mr. Brand. Got it?
The woman was just...nasty. He could understand why she mistrusted him for being an outsider and FBI, to boot. Some locals had looked at him with suspicion. Small town, strangers. But Quinn had told him the real estate agent was one of her best clients and a cold, demanding person. It wasn’t him. It was Tia’s personality.
Did that personality get her into trouble? Had the real estate agent gotten into a squabble with someone who decided on permanent payback by killing her?
Until the autopsy was performed, they could not confirm his suspicion that Tia had been killed prior to the explosion, and the killer had used the bomb to c
over his or her tracks.
There was another troubling idea in his mind. Maybe Quinn had been the real target.
In his gloved hands, West fingered the evidence, his mind clicking over the facts like a computer.
What if there was a connection between the killer and this property? He needed to find out exactly what other properties Tia owned.
But Pine Paradise was a good, isolated place to hide while experimenting with making bombs, far away from the inquisitive locals. Someone who wouldn’t hesitate to blow up buildings and kill innocents like Quinn to cover a larger crime.
But what if this bombing was connected to the Groom Killer? There was no evidence yet to link the two crimes, but as an investigator trained to be thorough, he couldn’t rule it out. He had to look at all angles.
Maybe the bomber wanted to kill Quinn because she was related to Demi Colton.
Even without the autopsy report on Tia, West’s instinct warned whoever had planted the bomb didn’t do it to kill the real estate agent. Bombs were tricky. Sometimes they didn’t detonate, so as a means of killing someone, they were unpredictable.
The killer hadn’t used enough explosives to totally destroy Tia’s body. He’d planted the bomb in the wrong place. Maybe he—or she—had been in a hurry. Or perhaps the bomber’s intention had been to destroy evidence.
Or unfamiliar with exactly where to plant a bomb in order to do the most damage, and destroy the evidence one wanted to cover up.
And then Quinn had interrupted the crime. That meant she was a witness, and whoever did this would want to erase any evidence.
Eradicate any witnesses, especially one Quinn Colton.
Later, he and Rex would take a road trip to Pine Paradise. But not for trout fishing.
Fishing of a different sort—searching for Tia’s killer.
Chapter 5
West couldn’t wait to get to the hospital to check on his fiancée. As soon as his shift ended, he would see her.
Quinn had to be okay. She was a fighter.
He drove to his apartment in town and dropped off Rex. The dog looked up at him and whined, sensing West’s emotions. He hunkered down and patted Rex’s head.
“She’s going to be fine, boy. She’s going to be fine.”
Maybe if he said it enough times, it would be true.
Anxiety tightened his stomach. Driving to the hospital, West wanted to break every speed limit in town. Not possible. No one knew of their relationship. Had to play it cool.
Doors to the Red Ridge Community Hospital ER swished open. He flashed his badge at the front desk, asked for Quinn Colton.
The nurse barely looked up. “She’s still in the ER. Room three. But you can’t see her yet. The chief called, gave strict orders only family can be with her.”
The hell with that. “Who’s with her now?”
The nurse kept scribbling on a pad. “Her brothers.”
Maybe he was a stranger in town, and Finn Colton held the power with the hospital staff. But nothing would prevent him from seeing his love.
West ignored the nurse, went straight to the closed doors leading from the waiting area to the nurses’ station. A burly security guard narrowed his eyes.
“You have a pass?” the guard asked.
“The only pass I need.” He flashed his badge. “FBI. I work with Shayne and Brayden.”
“The chief said—” the guard began.
“Family only. We’re brothers in arms. I found Quinn in the rubble. Need to check on her.”
He stared down the guard and the man nodded. “All right.”
The security guard pressed the button and the doors swished open to admit him.
Smells assaulted him as he entered the treatment area. Antiseptic, bleach, sickness.
Death.
I’m sorry, West. There was nothing we could do.
Gritting his teeth against the memory, he arrived at room three, where the nurse said he’d find Quinn. Shane, her brother, hovered outside the curtained area.
“Why are you here? Finn gave orders only family is to stay with Quinn.” Shane gave him a suspicious look. “Shouldn’t you be on the scene?”
“I came to check on her.”
Shane turned more wary. “Brand, we’ll take care of interviewing our sister. She doesn’t need extra stress right now.”
Deep breaths. “How is she?”
Shane glanced at the closed blue curtain. Murmurs came from within.
“Brayden’s in there. She finally woke up.”
Well, thank the good Lord for that. “What other injuries?”
“Lacerations, left wrist may be broken, but X-rays aren’t back yet. Biggest problem is the head injury. We don’t have answers yet.” Shane folded his arms across his chest.
West paced, hooking his thumbs in the belt loop of his jeans. “Where’s the doctor? When will we know anything for certain?”
“A major car accident and the bombing have the hospital staff split. We’ll need to sit tight.”
West didn’t care if the entire town suddenly needed medical care. All that mattered was Quinn. “Damn it, what’s taking so long?”
“Cool it,” Shane snapped in a low voice, his stress and worry about his sister obvious. “If you want to be useful, go back to work and find this bastard who hurt my sister. You’re not needed here.”
“Yes, I am. She had a bad head injury.” He stopped, tried to peer past a slim crack in the curtains. “She has to make it. And if I get my hands on the bastard who did this, I’ll break his neck.”
Shane frowned. “What’s it to you?”
Telling the truth hadn’t been in the game plan. They’d wanted to keep their engagement a secret. But with two protective brothers, and a hospital staff who wanted to allow only family in to see her, he knew something had to give.
Still, he hesitated. “I’m the one who found her. Maybe even saved her. I’m concerned.”
Shane relaxed. But he narrowed his eyes. “You may be on the level. But still, you’re a fed.”
West didn’t care what he thought. He needed to see her. Now. “I’m going in,” he announced, as if the room were an active crime scene filled with danger.
Danger of a different sort now—because he was scared as hell of losing the woman lying on that stretcher. Shane started to protest. He ignored him.
Lifting the curtain with one hand, he stepped inside the room.
Brayden sat by Quinn’s bed. Her eyes were closed and a huge white bandage covered her head. Red stained the bandage. West saw red himself, red rage at the bad guy who’d hurt his woman.
Her left wrist was splinted, and she had a bruise and some cuts on her face. But she was alive, breathing. He watched her eyes flutter.
“She’s awake?” he asked.
Brayden looked as wary as his brother. “Why are you here?”
“Came to check on her. I found her.” West crouched down, staring at her too-pale face. “Where’s the doctor?”
“They had a trauma case come in. I’m supposed to make sure she stays awake.”
Relief filled him. Awake was good. From experience, he knew she shouldn’t fall asleep again until the medical staff felt confident she could hold a conversation, and her pupils weren’t dilated. The injury could get worse.
“What did you see when you arrived on scene?” Colton demanded.
West briefed him. “She must have been entering the building. Judging from the position of the detonator, the bomb went off on or near Tia’s desk.”
“If Quinn had been at Tia’s desk, she’d be gone.”
Nails and bolts churned in his guts. “How is she? Does she remember what happened?” West asked.
“Give her a minute, she only woke up a little while ago.” Brayden gripped her hand. “We’re still waiting on tests. But sh
e’s alive. I wanted to question her soon as she fully wakes up.”
Finally Quinn’s lovely eyes opened. She moaned, and Brayden hastened to soothe her.
Colton didn’t know he and Quinn had dated. But what mattered most right now was the woman on the stretcher. West smiled at her.
“Hey there, sleeping beauty.” Maybe using his secret nickname for her would trigger a smile. “How are you feeling?”
Her hand went to the large bandage on her head. “It hurts.”
“I know. Must ache something awful. But it will get better.” He squatted down to eye level with her. “You’re going to be fine. Up to kissing speed in no time.”
Brayden frowned. Well, that would puzzle the guy, and he’d set things straight with the man later. All his attention zeroed in on Quinn.
And then his heart dropped to his stomach as she stared at him with no glimmer of recognition. “Who are you?”
His stomach knotted. The woman he adored and loved had no idea who he was. No memory of first meeting him. No memory of the laughs they’d shared, the stolen moments of togetherness, the lovemaking...
The fact she’d agreed to be his wife.
He was a total stranger to Quinn Colton.
Chapter 6
Her head ached, and so did her throat. Her left wrist throbbed. It felt as if someone had shoved sand into her eyes, as well.
She wanted to wake up, sit up, but her body wasn’t working properly. Everything felt sluggish, as if she were swimming upstream in thick oil.
Beeping machines. Sterile, awful smells. Voices murmuring near her. A thick pressure on her arm, and then it eased off. Blood pressure cuff... She recognized the sensation.
What happened? From the morass of confusion in her mind, she pulled out a name. Quinn. Her name was Quinn and something horrible made her end up here. The pain was incredible.
Quinn blinked hard, wishing someone would pull out the rail spike driving into her head.
“Easy there,” a deep male voice said. “Quinn, do you know where you are?”
