She gave him a shaky smile, both appreciating the effort and not wanting him to see too deeply into her soul. Working with detectives was hard enough—they were trained to see what you weren’t telling them. But someone with years of experience as a psychologist and a therapist? The more time she spent with him, the more she wondered if he could tell everything she was thinking.
She redirected her gaze to her stack of cases before Jax could make out the other thing she couldn’t help feeling when he was around—attraction.
He was so different from Juan. Half a foot taller, Jax was slower to smile but more likely to have it burst into a full-blown grin when he did. His skin was darker and smoother, his body more lean muscle than Juan’s heavier bulk.
But it was more than just the physical differences. Her husband had been hard to win over, suspicious and wary until you proved you could be trusted. Jax seemed to approach everyone like his friend, until proven otherwise. Probably a result of their respective professions.
In other ways, she could see definite similarities. Juan could fill a conversation with lots of small talk so you didn’t even realize you’d shared a lot more with him than he had with you. It was a skill that had come in handy as a detective, but frustrated her in the early stages of their relationship. Only once they’d been dating for a few years had he really started opening up to her.
From the little bit she’d asked about Jax’s personal life, he hadn’t seemed closed off at all. Still, he was good at pulling personal information out of others. It was certainly something that was helping him reach victims. Maybe that was why she’d connected so easily to him.
Was that all this was? Her projecting a connection because she needed someone to help her process the fact that Juan’s death had gone unsolved? That she’d let it go unsolved, by running across the country instead of staying and trying to figure it out herself?
“No,” Jax said and for a minute, Keara wondered if she’d spoken her thoughts out loud.
“What?”
He sighed, ran a hand through his hair that mussed it up just enough to make Keara long to fix it for him. “I thought maybe I’d found something, but I didn’t.”
He tossed the case summary printout on his No pile, then gave her an encouraging smile. “We’re onto something. I can feel it.” His eyes were already on the next case file as he muttered, “We just have to keep searching.”
A smile pulled at her lips despite how discouraged she’d started to feel. For a minute she just watched him, then Patches nudging her leg made her refocus.
Petting the dog with one hand, Keara flipped open a new case file and her heart gave a hard thump. “No way,” she breathed. She yanked the page closer to her face to scrutinize the scanned picture of a symbol. It looked eerily similar to the one found at the murder, down to the spray paint.
“What is it?”
Jax sounded distracted and Keara shook her paper at him, her excitement growing. “I think I found something. It’s...” She shook her head, surprised at the crime. But there was no question that the symbol was the same. “It’s an arson case. Unsolved, no promising suspects. It’s from six years ago, in Oklahoma.” She set the paper down. “Maybe that’s why the detectives never found Rodney after Juan died. He’d already moved on to Oklahoma.”
“Keara.” Jax looked up at her, surprise and intensity in his gaze. “I’ve got something, too.”
Her pulse jumped again as she leaned toward him across the desk, trying to see his case details. “Another fire?”
“No, another murder. Five years ago, in Nebraska.”
Excitement filled her, churning in her stomach along with too much coffee. “He was heading north. He was slowly moving toward Alaska.”
Jax’s gaze met hers again and she saw her excitement reflected there. “Maybe.”
“Maybe? No, definitely.” The buzz she’d felt last night when she’d discovered Rodney had a roommate returned, headier now.
She tossed the case information into her Yes pile and kept searching. Over the next half hour, her excitement dimmed slightly, as no new cases looked connected. But then she and Jax found three more in rapid succession, until they had a stack of five with the exact same symbol. The symbol was drawn in different ways, found in different places at the crime scenes, but they had to be connected.
“We’re onto him,” Jax said, grinning at her over the newly divided stacks of cases.
The dimple just visible on his right cheek as he smiled at her almost made her smile back. Except...
“There’s just one problem,” Keara told him, dread already balling up in her stomach again.
“What? That we probably haven’t found everything?” Jax referred to the fact that there was one time gap big enough that they’d agreed there was probably at least one more connected crime. “I’m sure another one will surface eventually.”
“Not that,” Keara said. “Every single one of these cases is in a different jurisdiction. Hell, every case is in a different state.”
“Okay, but—”
“Jax, he set off this bomb in Luna, left behind this symbol.” Frustration welled up, made her want to take it out at the gym on a punching bag. “This pattern suggests he commits one crime and then leaves. He’s probably already gone.”
He stared back at her, his grin slowly fading.
Beside her, Patches whined and nudged her leg.
Keara looked down at the dog and gave her a grateful smile, tried to will forward some positive energy. They’d found the criminal’s trail, but had it already gone cold here?
Boom!
A sound like thunder directly overhead exploded in her ears, making her flinch and instinctively leap to her feet, her hand already near her weapon.
Through the glass walls of her office, her officers were doing the same, glancing questioningly at one another.
Then the silence following the loud noise was replaced by screaming.
Before Keara made it to her office door, the door into the bullpen opened.
Charlie Quinn, one of her longest-term veterans, appeared, looking pale. Even from a distance, she could read the words on his lips.
“Bomb.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
There was chaos in her police station.
Her officers were all racing for the door, some grabbing weapons from desks and shoving them in holsters, others looking around with panic. The door into the bullpen was open—and probably the door to the station beyond that—so Keara could hear the panicked cacophony outside, too. Screams, crying and a persistent wailing that sent a chill through her entire body.
After yanking open the door to her office, Keara raced into the chaos and yelled, “Wait!”
Her officers stopped moving toward the exit, but their gazes still darted all around. Her veterans seemed filled with anxious determination, ready to find out what was happening and help. Some of the newer officers looked stiff with uncertainty. None of them had ever faced anything like this.
Neither had she.
Dread settled in her gut, her pulse picking up at the worry she wouldn’t know how to manage this properly. Houston was a big city, but even there, she’d never been on the scene of a bomb. The closest she’d come was seeing the aftermath of the Luna explosion.
“Right now we don’t know anything.”
“We know it was a bomb outside, maybe on the street,” Charlie interrupted, his voice deeper than usual with tension. “Lorenzo and the Rook are out there.”
At his words, everyone started moving again.
“Stop!” Keara demanded. “Listen. We need to be careful. What we don’t know is if there are more bombs set. Sam, I need you to stay here and manage the station. Field calls, deal with anyone who comes in off the street and get paramedics on scene. Then call the hospital in Luna and tell them to expect injured. We might need their m
edevac helicopter. Line it up.”
Sam Jennings nodded. He was a five-year veteran who was typically cool under pressure and great at multitasking, especially when it involved tech. But his movements were shaky as he headed toward the front of the station.
“Everyone else, keep your eyes open and stay in contact with each other. Let’s go.”
As her officers started running for the door, Keara turned back toward her office to ask Jax to inform the FBI.
He met her gaze immediately, and there was worry in his eyes, even as his attention seemed to be half on the phone at his ear. Moving the mouthpiece backward, he called to her, “I’m on with Anderson. The FBI is on the way. They’re coming with agents and evidence techs. They’ll handle the bigger investigation—they assume it’s connected to Luna. They want you to focus on helping the injured and securing the scene.”
Keara didn’t bother being offended at the FBI instantly calling jurisdiction. They had more experience, more resources. She was happy to focus on the safety of her citizens and let the FBI take the lead. Nodding, Keara delayed a few seconds to take in the calm steadiness of Jax’s presence. Then she took a deep breath and raced after her officers.
As soon as she stepped outside, a wisp of smoke wafted toward her, the acrid taste of it filling her mouth and then her lungs. Her eyes watered, partly from the smoke, but mostly from the scene in front of her.
The grassy park down the street from the police station—a popular place for citizens to dog walk or picnic—was now a bomb site. Flames leaped out from a small gazebo at the back of the park, close to the woods. The charred ground around it, a blackened patch where bright blue wild irises had just been starting to bloom, reminded her of the scene at Luna. The set of swings at the center of the park were warped and partially collapsed, one swing completely missing. People were scattered around, some lying on the ground, some hunched over, and others stumbling away.
She’d known some of the victims at the Luna bombing. She knew almost everyone who lived in Desparre.
Keara ran faster. She heard the heavy police station door slam closed and looked back to see Jax hurrying after her. She immediately glanced toward the ground at his side, but he’d left Patches in the station. Probably because of the debris that might be dangerous for her to walk on.
Whipping her gaze back to the park, Keara scanned the area, trying to take in everything at once. There were people staggering backward, their movements and expressions full of shock. Others seemed frozen. Still others were helping, moving toward the park instead of away from it, risking their own safety for their neighbors. That included her officers.
Whoever had done this was either fearless or making a statement. The park was less than a hundred feet from the police station.
Slowing to a stop as she neared the park, Keara searched for anyone whose reaction seemed out of place. Either too calm or worse, pleased. But everyone appeared shocked and scared. No one was hurrying away from the scene, either.
She glanced at Jax, who’d paused next to her. His expression was serious and troubled, but he still managed to radiate a certain calm. No wonder people gravitated toward him in a crisis.
He shook his head at her and she realized he’d been looking for the same thing, studying people with a psychologist’s perspective.
Whoever the bomber was, he was either long gone or one hell of an actor.
“Chief!”
At the tearful tone of Lorenzo, one of her steadiest veterans, Keara’s gaze whipped back to the park.
At the edge of the grassy area, near the road, Lorenzo was bent over someone.
The dread in her gut intensified, bubbling up a familiar grief. She didn’t need to see the face of the person on the ground to know who it was. The newest and youngest member of her force. Lorenzo’s partner, twenty-year-old Nate Dreymond.
Rushing over, Keara dropped to the grass next to Lorenzo.
Nate was prone on the ground, eyes closed and face ashen. There was blood on his head, and his arm was stretched out at an unnatural angle.
“We were heading out for patrol. Someone in the park called us over. I’m not sure who it was or what they wanted.” Lorenzo’s words were rapid-fire, his voice shaky. “Rook was ahead of me. When the bomb went off, something flew this way and slammed into him. I don’t know what it’s from, but—” he gestured to a piece of metal, twisted and unidentifiable, and covered in blood “—the force of the blast knocked me down, too.” His hand, shaking violently, went to his own head.
When he met her gaze, his focus seemed off, too. “When I could get up, I came over here, but—”
“No,” Keara whispered, the image of another man’s blood filling her mind. She leaned down, pressing her ear to Nate’s chest. She expected to hear nothing, but a weak thump thump came through.
“He’s in bad shape,” Lorenzo finished.
Letting out a long breath, Keara sat up again and barked into her radio, “Sam, get that medevac from the Luna hospital. Nate needs it.”
She scanned his prone form, looking for injuries that needed immediate attention. She’d gotten basic training in first aid over the years in Houston. It had been a long time, though, and she frantically ran through the mental checklist she used to know by heart.
She didn’t see any way to help him. He was unconscious with a clearly broken arm, but the blood on his head wasn’t still flowing.
“Medevac is coming,” Sam’s strained voice informed her. “They’re twenty minutes out.”
“Help!”
Keara’s head popped up at the cry. She put her hand on Lorenzo’s arm and asked, “You okay?”
“Fine,” Lorenzo said.
There was no doubt he needed to get checked out by a doctor, but she nodded. “Stay with Nate. Call me if anything changes.”
Then she pushed to her feet and hurried across the park to the person calling. The grass felt strange beneath her boots, crunchy where it should have been soft. As she ran, she passed by other Desparre citizens, some simply looking dazed and others clearly injured.
There was a family, fairly new to Desparre, with a six-year-old and a new baby on the way, hugging each other and crying. The owner of Desparre’s downtown bar, wrapping his bleeding arm with his own shirt. A loner who lived up the mountain and came into the park every few weeks but still stuck with his own company, sat on the ground, looking dazed. He had a hand to his head and both legs were bleeding, but nothing was gushing.
Keara scanned each of them, but kept moving. None needed immediate attention.
The fire at the gazebo was growing, flames devouring most of it now. The structure was relatively far from other buildings, but it was close enough to the woods to be a concern. She lifted her radio and said, “We need to manage this fire.”
“On it,” Tate Emory answered and from her peripheral vision, she could see he was also on his cell phone, probably with the tiny fire department. They were located on the edge of Desparre and they served the whole county, including Luna and other neighboring towns. They were also all volunteer and had similar hours as her officers.
“I’ve got some citizens lined up to bring buckets from the bar while we wait for the fire department,” Tate told her. “We should be able to keep this from jumping.”
“Good. Radio if you need more help,” she instructed, then jammed her radio back into her belt.
At the edge of the gazebo, she discovered who had called for help. Talise Poitra owned the grocery store in downtown Desparre. She was friendly and quick to advise outsiders, which Keara had discovered her first week in town. Talise had celebrated her seventieth birthday last month and hung balloons all over the grocery store. She’d stopped by the police station with cake and told them she insisted the entire town celebrate with her.
Right now the woman with the long gray hair, easy smile and deeply weathered skin from a life
time in Alaska was holding her leg with one hand and her ear with the other. A deep gash ran the length of her right thigh and blood spurted out at regular intervals.
Swearing, Keara yanked at the sleeve of her police uniform until the arm ripped off. She dropped to her knees and tied the fabric around the top of Talise’s leg. But no matter how hard she yanked the knot, blood was still pumping.
“I got it,” Jax said, suddenly beside her, his belt in hand. “Brace yourself,” he told Talise, then tightened the belt over the fabric.
Talise went pale, her eyes rolling backward as she swayed. But she stiffened before Keara could grab her. Her hands dropped to the ground, bracing herself, and Keara saw more blood on the woman’s right ear.
Fury overlaid the dread she’d been feeling. This was her town. These people were her responsibility.
She put her hand on Talise’s arm, trying to comfort her, even as her gaze met Jax’s.
“Two bombs,” he said, his tone filled with meaning she didn’t understand.
She shook her head and he added, “Two bombs in less than a week. Just one town apart.”
The implications sank in fast. The crimes they’d been poring over this afternoon had been filled with differences. The only commonality they’d shared besides the symbol was that the perpetrator hadn’t struck again in the same jurisdiction, or even the same state.
“It’s not the same person,” she breathed.
CHAPTER TWELVE
The day had gone by in a blur of blood and fire and pained cries. But rushing from one person to the next hadn’t been able to fully distract him from the panic.
Over his years on the Rapid Deployment Team, he’d gotten used to mass casualty events. They didn’t get any easier, but the fear and panic of his first few scenes hadn’t returned in years. Not until today.
Only after most of the victims had been checked by paramedics and Keara was helping put out the last of the fire had he realized why. A flame had sparked, creating a loud boom that sounded like a bullet, and his gaze had leaped immediately to Keara.
Harlequin Intrigue April 2021--Box Set 2 of 2 Page 46
