by Cindi Myers
Rogers moved away, toward the door. “You can go now, but we’ll be in touch,” he said.
When he was gone, Ana and Rogers moved to the room next door, where Smitty and Cantrell had been observing through the one-way glass. “Good call on asking about Parker Stroud,” Cantrell said. “That got a reaction from him.”
“It was a reaction,” Rogers agreed. “I just don’t know what it means.”
“His grief was real,” Ana said. “I think he’s seriously depressed.”
“I agree,” Rogers said. “But that just gives him more of a motivation for wanting to harm the Strouds.”
“Do you think the Strouds really persuaded the school not to press charges over that fake bomb?” Smitty asked.
Rogers shrugged. “It makes sense. His mother was a key employee, close to the same age as the Strouds. She probably went to them for help and they leaned on the school to get them to agree to not press charges, provided Leo transferred to another school.”
“His mom sent him to a military academy for a year,” Ana said, referring to her notes.
“That didn’t come cheap,” Cantrell said. “I wouldn’t be surprised if the Strouds paid for that, too.”
“If he owes the Strouds so much, why blame them for his mother’s death?” Smitty asked.
“Maybe because he owes them so much,” Cantrell said. “Obligation carries its own weight.”
“You heard him,” Rogers said. “Everyone at school was an idiot. His teacher was an idiot. Elgin thinks he’s the smartest man in the room, whatever the room.”
“Maybe he thinks he’s smart enough to get away with planting a real bomb at the Stroud factory,” Cantrell said.
“That bomb wasn’t planted at a factory entrance,” Smitty said. “It was wired to a door only office personnel used. Only a few people had a key that would trigger the detonation.”
“Which brings us back to the Strouds,” Ana said. “Donna, Steve and Parker all have keys.”
“And Leo probably has Gini Elgin’s key,” Smitty said.
“The local police already searched her house,” Rogers said. “They didn’t find the key, or any bomb-making materials.”
“We need to monitor his phone and computer usage,” Cantrell said. “If he built that bomb, he had to get the materials from somewhere.”
“Did his mother have a storage unit anywhere near here?” Smitty asked. “Maybe he’s keeping the materials there.”
“We haven’t found anything yet,” Rogers said. He pointed to Cantrell. “I’ll see about getting permission to bug his place and monitor his computer.”
“Let me know when you’re ready,” Cantrell said. He was the team’s specialist in electronic surveillance.
“Have you two come up with anything yet?” Rogers asked.
Smitty shook her head. “Not yet.”
“We checked out the fired employee, Benny Cagle,” Ana said. “He was in jail in Vicksburg, Mississippi, where he had been living with his sister, when the bombing occurred.”
“Had been since before the Stomach Soother tablets were poisoned,” Rogers said.
“Do we think the crimes are related?” Smitty asked. “Are we looking for one person or two?”
“Seems a big coincidence to have two crimes like this centered around one small-town business, so close together,” Cantrell said.
“But two very different crimes,” Smitty said. “So maybe two different people with similar motivations.”
“What’s the motivation?” Rogers asked.
“I don’t know yet.” She shook her head. “We need to dig deeper with the Strouds. Maybe they’re hiding something.”
“Everybody is hiding something,” Cantrell said. “The question is whether their secrets are relevant to our investigation.”
They tossed around more theories for a few minutes, then the meeting broke up. Ana and Smitty headed for the ladies’ room. “How are things going with you and Jace?” Ana asked when she and Smitty were washing their hands at the row of sinks.
Smitty grimaced. “It’s okay. At least I’m not sleeping on the couch anymore.”
“Oh?” Ana didn’t even try to hide her surprise.
Smitty flushed. “I mean, I have a bed now. There was only one when we moved in, and Jace took it.”
“How gentlemanly of him.”
Smitty waved aside the comment. “He’s a lot taller than I am, so it made sense to stick me with the couch. I got the best revenge, though. My new bed is supposedly a lot more comfortable than the old one he’s sleeping on.”
Ana dug a tube of lipstick from her bag. “Things are going okay, then. Better than you expected?”
“Yeah. I guess so.” Smitty combed her fingers through her long hair.
“For what it’s worth, you two look good together.” Ana studied her fellow agent in the mirror. “Like a real couple.”
“Who would have guessed we were such good actors?” But Smitty’s cheeks were still pink, and there was a brightness in her eyes Ana hadn’t seen before. Ana smiled. She liked Smitty. She was a good agent, but maybe a little too tightly wound sometimes. Cantrell might change that.
“What are you smiling about?” Rogers asked when Ana rejoined him.
“I was thinking Smitty and Cantrell might make a good couple.”
“No way! Those two are like oil and water. I’m surprised they’ve been able to live in that trailer for more than one night without coming to blows.”
“They’re professionals.” But they were human, too. The job was only one aspect of their lives. She thought of her fiancé, Benning Reeves, and his two children. The four of them would soon be a family. Knowing that added meaning to her work.
“Cantrell and Smitty will both be glad when this case is over,” Rogers said.
Maybe, Ana thought. And maybe she was being overly romantic, seeing a match for those two. But stranger things had happened in this line of work.
* * *
JACE PUT A hand at Laura’s back as they walked across the parking lot from the police station. She forced herself not to shrug it off. It was the kind of gesture a husband might make to his wife and fit their cover. Truth be told, she didn’t really want to shrug him off. The weight of his hand was warm and pleasant—almost comforting. “Some of the guys at the plant were telling me about a lake south of town,” he said. “We should check it out.”
“Why? Does it have something to do with the case?”
“I just thought it would be someplace nice to see. You know, to relax.”
They reached the truck, he unlocked it, and they climbed in.
“All right.” Though she felt anything but relaxed around this man. She was so hyperaware of him—of his bulk filling the driver’s seat of the truck, the muscles in his forearm tensing as he shifted gears, the sweet scent of the cinnamon gum he chewed.
“Why do you always chew gum?” she asked.
He glanced at her. “Does it bother you?”
She shrugged. “I just wondered.”
“I quit smoking six months ago. I guess you could say I traded a nicotine habit for a gum habit.”
“Good for you.”
“Yeah, well, I still miss it. It’s just damned inconvenient when I’m working. Did you ever smoke?”
She shook her head.
“Yeah, I should have guessed.”
“What is that supposed to mean?”
“You’re like those girls I knew in high school—the ones who didn’t drink or smoke or swear or skip school or so much as jaywalk. They always looked perfect and spoke perfect and acted perfect.”
“And you didn’t want anything to do with them,” she said.
“Oh no. You’ve got it all wrong.” He shook his head. “Those girls were untouchable. And I wanted so bad to touch them, to make them feel. To he
lp them discover the bad girl I knew had to be hiding inside that pristine shell.”
The rich velvet of his voice and the teasing words sent a quiver through her, low in the belly. She had been one of those girls, the ones too afraid to ever break the rules. He was the kind of boy she would have shunned, too terrified of the things he might make her feel.
She was a woman now, one with enough experience that men like him no longer frightened her. Or so she told herself.
Neither of them spoke on the rest of the drive to the lake. Laura leaned back in the seat and closed her eyes, reviewing the interview with Leo Elgin, trying to sort out where his evidence fit with everything else they knew about this case.
The silver-blue expanse of the lake reflected the pines that crowded the shore on three sides, with a rough sand beach bordered by picnic tables nearest the lot where they parked. Only half a dozen other vehicles shared space in the big lot. “They must get crowds here on the weekends, with a parking lot this size,” Laura observed as she and Jace climbed out of the pickup truck.
“I’ll bet a lot of high school kids come here at night to make out and party,” Jace said. “At least, that’s what I would have done.”
Yes, Jace had probably been many a father’s worst nightmare in high school. “Did you ever do that?” he asked. “Sneak out to the park and party with your friends—or make out with your boyfriend, music playing low on the radio, the moon shining down?”
He made it sound so carefree and romantic. “My father was a lieutenant colonel,” she said. “And we usually lived on base.”
“So no guy had the guts to risk sneaking around with you,” Jace said.
“I guess.” She wouldn’t admit to Jace that she was the one who hadn’t had the courage to defy her father.
They took a path that circled the lake. The earthy smell of sun-warmed weeds and lake water mingled with the heavier perfume of honeysuckle. Laura breathed in deeply, feeling some of the tension of the day easing from her shoulders. “This was a good idea,” she said. “It’s relaxing.”
“It’s the water,” he said. “I read a study that says water relaxes us because it syncs up with our brain waves or something.”
She laughed. “That’s your scientific explanation—or something?”
He shrugged. “I don’t have to understand why being around water eases stress. I’m just glad it does.” He scooped a rock from the shore and sent it skipping across the glassy surface of the water—one, two, three, four times, concentric circles spreading out and colliding to form mesmerizing patterns. He moved with the grace of a boy—and the bunching muscles and sinewy strength of a man. Being with him made Laura so much more aware of herself not only as a fellow agent, but also as a woman.
What was wrong with her? she wondered. She had worked with other men before, and she had never been attracted to any of them. Maybe that was because she always put the job first and didn’t allow herself to focus on anything else.
Why was being with Jace so different?
“When I was a kid, for four or five years in a row, we went to a lake house on vacation,” Jace said, as they continued on the path. “The place was just a little cabin, nothing fancy at all, but we loved it. We fished and paddled around in a canoe or swam off the dock. In the evenings, my dad would build a fire and we’d roast hot dogs or cook burgers in packets of foil, or even fish we’d caught. Looking back, I realize that for my folks, it was probably a really cheap vacation, but my sister and I loved it so much. I think we would have chosen that little lake house over a big amusement park. At least I know I would have.”
“My parents sent me to a girl’s camp in upstate New York one summer,” Laura said. “Two weeks in a cabin with six other girls and six hundred spiders. I got poison ivy the third day, made a lanyard that was all knots, and almost shot my bunkmate in the head during archery practice.”
“Good times,” Jace said, and she laughed—a full belly laugh she couldn’t keep back.
“Let’s just say my first experience camping didn’t make me want to try again,” she said.
“I bet you’d be good at it now,” he said.
“What makes you think that?” She genuinely wanted to know.
“Because you’re not a whiner. And you’re practical. You assess what needs to be done and you do it. Those are great strengths for camping.”
“Who knew camping was so much like an investigation?” Their eyes met and her heart stuttered in its rhythm. When Jace looked at her, she felt as if he was really seeing her—all of her. She didn’t like feeling so exposed, even if the heat behind his look told her he liked what he saw.
He was the first to look away, however. He frowned over her shoulder. “Isn’t that Parker Stroud?” he asked.
She turned, moving slowly, as if she was merely brushing something from her shoulder, and glanced across the parking lot. Parker Stroud, dressed casually in jeans and a blue polo shirt, a West Virginia Mountaineers ball cap tugged down on his forehead, was striding away from a sleek black pickup truck. “That’s him,” she said.
“Let’s go see what he’s up to.”
Keeping a line of trees between themselves and Parker, they trailed him to a fishing pier that jutted thirty feet out into the lake. He stood, looking out over the water, hands clasped behind his back. “He’s waiting for someone,” Laura said.
“Maybe he comes out here to look at the water because it’s relaxing,” Jace said.
“Then why doesn’t he look more relaxed?”
Parker turned to glance toward the parking lot. Jace and Laura shrank further into the shadows as a slight figure in jeans and a gray hoodie slouched across the lot toward the pier. Laura studied the new arrival. Something about him was very familiar. “I think that’s Leo Elgin,” she whispered.
“Maybe,” Jace said. “He changed clothes.”
“He had time to do that.”
The two men stood a couple of feet apart, Parker with his arms crossed tightly over his chest, Leo with his hands on his hips. Jace and Laura were too far away to hear the conversation, but the men’s postures and expressions didn’t appear friendly. Parker started shaking his head emphatically, and then Leo abruptly turned and fled.
Laura moved back through the trees toward the parking lot, following Leo, while Jace stayed to watch Parker. But by the time she reached the parking lot, all she could see was a pair of taillights receding into the distance.
Her cell phone buzzed and she read the text from Jace letting her know Parker was headed her way. She took cover behind a van and watched while Parker stalked to his truck, got in and drove off.
Jace jogged up to Laura. “Anything else happen?” he asked.
“Leo drove out of here before I could even get his plate number,” she said. “The way he raced out of here, I’d say he was pretty upset.”
“Leo blames the Strouds for killing his mother,” Jace said. “Maybe he followed Parker here to have it out with him about that.”
“Parker manages the manufacturing facilities at Stroud,” Laura said. “So Leo may see him as being most responsible for the poisoned Stomach Soother tablets.”
“It’s not illegal to have a conversation,” Jace said. “And they’ve never denied knowing each other.”
“No.” She turned back toward their truck. “But I think this wasn’t a chance meeting. I think Parker was waiting for Leo.”
“We need to find out what they were talking about,” Jace said. “But we need to do it without blowing our cover.”
“I’ll see what I can get out of Parker,” she said. Though, considering Stroud’s generally surly attitude, that wouldn’t be an easy task.
Chapter Six
Parker Stroud didn’t appear in his office until almost noon the next day. He strode past Laura’s desk without a glance in her direction and shut his door firmly behind him. Laura deci
ded to wait to pass on the half-dozen messages that had come in his absence—two of them from his mother, who hadn’t sounded too happy that her son hadn’t shown up for work yet.
Ten minutes later, Laura’s phone lit up. “I need hard copies of all the quality control reports for the first quarter,” he said, and hung up before she could reply.
Since she had spent the morning continuing her search through the files, both online and off, Laura had no trouble locating the reports, though she wondered why Parker didn’t pull them up on his computer. She spent the next half hour printing and collating the reports, which were submitted twice a week. Scanning the documents as she worked, she saw nothing that raised alarms. Stroud Pharmaceuticals had apparently been meticulous about maintaining quality control. So how had the ricin gotten into those tablets?
She knocked on Parker’s door and, when he barked “Come in,” slipped inside.
“Here are the reports,” she said, laying the papers on his blotter. “And your messages.” She added the stack of While You Were Out slips.
He grunted, focused on the screen of his desktop computer. After a moment, he finally looked at her. “What do you want?” he asked.
I want to know what you and Leo Elgin were talking about last night, she thought, but said, “Do you need anything else?”
“When I need something from you, I’ll ask.”
Yeah, getting anything out of this guy was going to be tough. She turned to go. “Laura?”
She stopped and faced him. “Yes?”
“What did the FBI ask you yesterday?”
“If we knew anything about the explosion. We didn’t.”
“You can’t blame them for being suspicious. You and your husband are the only new people around here.”
“I guess you knew the woman who was killed?”
The lines around his eyes tightened. “Yes.”
“I always thought it would be nice, growing up in a small town where you knew everyone,” she said. “But when something like this happens, I guess it makes it harder.”
