Kitabı oku: «Rapid Fire», sayfa 2
He didn’t remember much about the half year after his captivity, but he remembered her. The moment he’d heard her name again after all these years, an image of her face had sprung into his mind full-blown.
Now, seeing her in person, he realized that she hadn’t changed a bit. She was still tiny, with every piece of her perfectly proportioned, just as she’d been when she’d taken his Advanced Criminal Psych class. Her dark hair was styled differently, hanging to her shoulders now in soft waves, but the face below was the same as he’d remembered, making him wonder whether the image in his mind had been memory or something born of another power, one he’d fought to block for nearly five years now.
He shoved his hands in his pockets and turned to watch her make her way down to the parking lot, shoulders tense beneath her blue short-sleeved shirt.
How could she still look the same when he was so different?
A phone rang, startling him with its strident digital peal.
“You take it.” The chief tossed him Maya’s cell.
Thorne caught it on the fly as it rang a second time. He struggled to refocus, to bring his wayward brain back from places it had no business being. His voice was gruff when he said, “Wouldn’t it be better to have one of the women answer and pretend to be Dr. Cooper?”
Parry shook his head. “He’ll know. During the other cases, he spliced a line into the PD security cameras so he could watch us at headquarters. Same thing at the museum when Barnes was captured. He’ll be watching somehow. You can bet on it.”
Accepting that, Thorne flipped open the phone and punched it to speaker before he said, “Hello?”
There was a pause—a long, thin stretch of silence with absolutely nothing on the other end.
“Hello?” Thorne prompted again, aware of the others watching him.
There was still no answer. Moments later, the call was disconnected.
Thorne muttered a curse. “Nothing.” He shook his head and returned the phone to Chief Parry, who had his own cell in his hand, perhaps to call in reinforcements at any hint of a break in the case.
Parry held Thorne’s eyes. “Nothing at all?”
Knowing what the chief was asking, Thorne shoved his hands in his pockets. “I’m a cop, not a magician.”
Before the chief could respond, Sawyer’s voice crackled from a nearby radio. “We’ve done a quick scan and we haven’t found a thing.”
“There’s no bomb?” the chief said quickly.
Sawyer’s transmitted voice responded, “I can’t be entirely certain until we’ve done a more thorough search. With explosives technology being what it is, a charge could be hidden anywhere. But the other devices this guy used were all pretty standard—none of the molded polymers or really high-power stuff. If he’s sticking with the pattern, I’d expect to find a fairly traditional device. But we’ve got nothing here. Nada.”
“Keep looking.” But when the chief lowered the radio, his expression was pensive. He glanced over at Thorne. “With what you know of him so far, would the Mastermind go to a more advanced explosive?”
“In my opinion?” Thorne stressed the last word, trying to remind the Bear Claw chief that he didn’t specialize in parlor tricks. “I don’t think so. Granted, part of his pattern is that he has very little pattern, but I’d say he has an ego. He wants to be feared, wants to be seen as the best. If he had more advanced technological abilities, I think he would’ve used them already. That leaves us three possibilities.”
The tall blond bombshell who’d been introduced to him as the evidence specialist, Cassie Dumont, raised her eyebrows. “Which are?”
Her prickly tone indicated that she had no intention of liking him.
Thorne answered, “Well, the first option is that our mastermind is playing with us again, that he phoned in a false threat just to watch us scramble. If so, we need to address the question of why he phoned Officer Cooper.” It felt odd to use her title, but it would be equally awkward to use her name for the first time in five years, for the first time since he’d woken up and found her gone after their one strange, disjointed night together.
They’d meant nothing to each other, yet she’d changed his life. A better man would thank her for it.
Instead, Thorne was lined up to take her job.
“He’s targeted her because she’s a woman,” said the lean, rangy cop who’d identified himself as Detective Tucker McDermott, Homicide, “and because she’s a member of the Forensics Department.”
“Maybe,” Thorne said. “Or maybe there’s something else going on here. Option number two is that—regardless of the mechanized voice, which seems to indicate the Mastermind—this could be about a different case entirely.”
Cassie scowled. “Henkes.”
“Right,” Thorne said. The chief had brought him up to speed on the case during the ride to the ranch. “What if one of his supporters is trying to discredit her?”
“Then they’re a bunch of idiots,” Cassie snapped. “Maya’s reputation is impeccable.”
Except for the part where she was suspended for accosting a suspect without proper procedure or backup, Thorne thought, but didn’t say it aloud because the psych specialist’s friends were going to like his third possibility even less.
The chief must have sensed his reluctance, because he said, “And the third possibility?”
Thorne tried not to feel a beat of empathy when he said, “Maybe there was no bomb threat in the first place.”
He’d expected Cassie to blast him, and was mildly surprised when it was Alissa who got in his face in a single smooth, nearly deadly move. She didn’t raise her voice, but her tone was chilly when she said, “What, precisely, are you implying? Are you saying that Maya—logical, grounded, patient Maya—phoned in a fake bomb threat?”
He glanced down toward the parking area. Sawyer’s men must have cleared the vehicles to leave, because he saw a gaggle of kids being herded back onto a school bus. Unerringly, his eyes were drawn to the dainty, dark-haired figure of a woman standing near another woman, apparently deep in conversation.
“Nobody knows precisely what happened that night. All we know for sure is that Henkes was shot with Officer Cooper’s weapon,” he said, more to himself than to the others. “What if…”
He trailed off as he saw her peel away from the others down in the parking lot and head toward the main park entrance.
“What if?” the chief prompted.
“Never mind. I’ll be right back.” Without waiting for the chief’s okay, Thorne picked his way down to the main parking lot. He wasn’t sure what prompted him to follow her—curiosity, maybe, or the memory of the strange flash he’d experienced when she’d brushed past him. But as he hopped over the turnstile and tried to figure out which way she’d turned on the deserted main street, he felt an unfamiliar, unwanted prickling in his brain.
Danger.
“HANNAH?” SEEING NO SIGNS of the little girl who had slipped away from her mother out in the parking lot, Maya cursed under her breath and turned down a cross street toward the pony rides.
She’d promised to find the child, wanting to keep the mother outside, where it was supposedly safe.
Now she wondered whether she should have passed off the request to one of the uniforms, someone with a gun and backup, just in case.
She heard the bellows of agitated bison from the other side of the buildings. According to the ranch hands, the police sirens and unusual activity in the park had upset the animals, leaving them tense and edgy.
She was thankful that the creatures were safe behind the wood-and-electric-wire fencing.
The bomb techs were working somewhere in the park, sweeping each building for explosives, but Maya was alone when she reached the pony ride area and shouted, “Hannah! Hannah, are you in here?”
Smothering the unease, she scanned the scene. Eight shaggy, child-sized ponies were tied to a railing near the entrance to a small sand-covered riding ring. Their eyes rolled white at the edges and their feet moved quickly, tapping up clouds of restive dust. She heard a low rumbling noise, like a plane flying overhead, though there was no sign of a contrail in the blue sky.
“Hannah?” she called again. “Your mother sent me to get you. Come on out, honey!”
But there was no sign of the child. Check the pony rides, the girl’s mother had said, she loves animals.
Well, that hadn’t panned out.
Maya reversed her direction and headed back toward Main Street. The girl couldn’t have gone far. Maybe she’d wandered into the livery building to see the baby goats.
Or else she didn’t wander at all, instinct whispered. The Mastermind had kidnapped children before and used them to draw Bear Claw officers into danger. The entire bomb squad was in the theme park. The chief and the others were nearby.
A big detonation would wipe out a big chunk of the task force.
Maya nearly spun and ran, nearly shouted for Sawyer to get his people out of the park. The only thing stopping her was the look she’d seen in the eyes of the other cops when her watch had run down and nothing happened. The look of disbelief.
They thought she’d called in a false alarm, just as they thought she was wrong about Henkes. If she evacuated the park again and nothing happened, her credibility would be shot once and for all. Did she dare run that risk?
Did she dare chance the alternative?
Maya swallowed hard and called, “Hannah?” one last time, thinking it futile.
Then she heard a small voice call, “Mommy?”
Relief spiked and Maya zeroed in on the livery building. The airplane noise increased as she bolted into the building and stumbled to a halt at the sight of a small girl, maybe six or seven years old, strapped upright to one of the leaning columns.
The dark-haired child was wearing a pink shirt and denim shorts, with sandals on her feet and tears streaming down her face. Her lips trembled when she saw Maya and she quavered, “I want my mommy!”
She struggled against her bonds, flailing with her feet and head, but making no progress against the thick leather strap that had been lashed across her chest and buckled on the other side of the pillar.
“Hold on, Hannah, I’ve got you!” Heart pounding, Maya crouched down beside the girl and went to work on her bonds, cursing the bastard who used innocents in his sick games. “Are you hurt?”
“N-no.” The girl’s voice cracked on the word and fresh tears streamed. “The ranch man told me—”
“We’ll talk about it later,” Maya said as she yanked the buckle free and hurled the leather strap to one side. She wanted to hear about this “ranch man,” wanted to know if he looked like Henkes or one of his associates, but first things were first. “Come on, we’ve got to get out of there.”
The airplane noise increased to a ground-shaking roar, only it didn’t sound like an airplane anymore. It sounded more like…
Hoofbeats, Maya thought with a clarity born of terror.
The goats and sheep inside the petting zoo galloped in circles, becoming a bleating, milling mix of hooves and bodies. The lone bison in the far corner stomped, shook his head and reared partway up, as though he might jump out of his enclosure at any moment.
Maya’s heart rabbited in her chest. “Come on!” She scooped the girl up and ran for the entrance, staggering beneath the weight of the child.
They were twenty feet from the door when a splintering crash sounded over the mind-blowing rumble that went on and on and on. Maya risked a look back, and nearly tripped and fell at what she saw.
Bison. Five, maybe ten of them, had broken through the back wall of the livery and were bearing down on her at a full-out gallop. Their small eyes were wide and scared, their nostrils flared with deep, sucking breaths, and their stubby horns cut the air as they charged. The penned animal bellowed and crashed through his fenced enclosure to join the others.
Maya turned and ran for her life.
Hannah’s arms were wrapped around her neck in a chokehold that nearly cut off her breath, but Maya didn’t care. She had to get the girl to safety. Had to get herself to safety.
But where was safe?
She burst through the petting zoo doors and skidded onto the main road. Thinking that the bison would follow the path of least resistance, she bolted for the ticketing area, hoping the buildings and the turnstiles would deflect them. She could jump over while the bison turned, like some mad reenactment of the running of the bulls.
She heard shouts and gunshots, saw figures running along the ridges on either side of the ranch, and felt the growing hoofbeats in the trembling of the ground.
But the noise wasn’t coming from behind her anymore. It was in front of her.
Suddenly, dust gouted from beyond the snack bar, which was the last building in line before the ticketing area. The noise increased to unbelievable proportions, as though Maya was caught in a tunnel with trains bearing down on her from either side.
She ran for the turnstiles, legs weak, lungs burning, too aware of the dozen bison bearing down on her from behind.
Then the dust in front of her thickened to shadows. Legs. Horns. Mad, panicked eyes. Twenty bison burst around the corner and turned down Main Street. Forty more followed them. A hundred. A full, panicked stampede of thousand-pound animals galloping hell-bent—
Directly at Maya and the little girl.
Chapter Three
Heart pounding a panicked rhythm in her ears, Maya bolted across the street, toward the snack bar, which had an ice cream booth on the flat-topped roof. She tightened her grip on Hannah and fixed her eyes on the stairs leading up to the snack area. Up. If she could just get up, she would be—
A heavy, hairy weight slammed into her from behind, driving her to her knees. Hooves struck her in the side and she curled her body around Hannah in a futile effort to protect the girl.
Then the pain and the blows were gone. Too quick, Maya thought. That couldn’t have been the whole herd.
It wasn’t, she realized moments later when she uncurled and looked around. She’d been struck by the offshoot group, the dozen animals who had burst through the livery after her. They had turned and galloped down Main Street.
The ground shook as the main herd bore down on her, no more than a city block away. The noise increased by the moment, hoofbeats overlaid with snorts and bellows and the sound of gunfire.
Maya saw white-rimmed eyes, red-flared nostrils and pounding, pulverizing hooves coming closer. Too close.
Knowing she was too late, that there was no way she was going to make it, Maya dragged herself to her feet, hauled the girl onto her hip and took two stumbling steps toward the stairs, toward safety. Her knee sang with pain. Her legs folded beneath her—
And strong arms grabbed her, lifted her and half carried her across the road as the air thickened with dust and fear.
Rough hands shoved her toward the stairs and a man’s voice shouted, “Climb, damn it!”
Disbelieving, heart pounding, Maya climbed, aware of being crowded, being hustled, being shielded as her feet hit the stairs. She stumbled, needing both arms to hold the girl, and felt strong hands grab her waist and boost her upwards.
The leading edge of the stampede hit them. A big male bison demolished the lower stairs, blasting through the two-by-four construction as though it was made of matchsticks.
With nothing holding them off the ground, the upper stairs sagged and began to fall.
“Go!” Maya’s rescuer shouted. He nearly threw her up over the edge, onto the low roof of the building. Wood splintered and Maya screamed as the stairs peeled away from the building to fall into the sea of hairy bodies below.
Carrying the man with them.
She pulled Hannah’s arms from around her neck, set the girl on a safe spot well back from the edge and yelled, “Don’t move!” Then she scrambled back to the place where the stairs had been, lay flat on her belly and poked her head over the precipice.
She saw a hand. A forearm. The top of a man’s head. Her rescuer was clinging to the edge of the building as the herd passed below in a deadly thunder of hooves and horns.
“Hang on!” Maya lunged forward and grabbed his arms, his shirt, anything she could get hold of to help him up and over.
His muscles were hard beneath her hands, his body powerful as he dragged himself over the edge and flopped down beside her, breathing heavily, one forearm thrown across his eyes.
“You okay?” he asked, voice ragged.
She took stock. Her body sang with the ache of bruises but not breaks, and when she glanced at Hannah, she saw that the girl was crying softly but appeared otherwise unhurt.
As the rumble of the stampede faded and human shouts and whistles took over, Maya cleared her throat of the hot, choking dust and the knowledge that without his help, she would have died. She swallowed hard and said, “We’re okay. I can’t thank you enough…” She trailed off, wanting a name for the stranger.
“Don’t thank me. Let’s just say this makes us even, okay?” He dragged his arm off his face, sat up and turned toward her.
Without the sunglasses, his eyes were two different shades of hazel, one so light as to border on amber, the other darkening to green, giving his face a skewness that should have been lopsided but instead was arresting. Interesting.
Familiar.
“Thorne!” she gasped, voice sharp with shock and memory.
For an instant, she was back in the High Top Bluff Police Academy. She’d seen him across the cafeteria, where he’d stood out from the others because he’d kept his long, sandy hair tied back in a ponytail, and wore a burnished gold, almost auburn five o’clock shadow at ten in the morning. He’d carried a casual air that was part poet, part surfer dude, and was the center of a growing throng. Maya later learned that people flocked to him, wanting to be included in the friendly, whiskey-laced charm that hid deeper things.
Darker things.
A murmur had run through the room, quick snatches of whispered rumor. He was out in the field…undercover with Mason Falk’s mountain men…captured…tortured…the drugs made him a little nuts…he’s teaching psych while he heals…
Uncomfortable with the sudden buzz, with the intimacy of knowing things about a complete stranger, Maya had gathered her things to leave, but when she passed the growing group, she’d glanced over at the man and found him watching her, found him nearer than she’d expected.
She had paused a moment, struck by the strangeness of his eyes, by the pull of him, by the click of recognition. No, she had never met him before, but she’d immediately recognized something about him. Something inside him, something deeper than the faint tang of alcohol that laced the air between them, though that, too, was a connection.
With the bruises of her marriage still fresh on her soul, Maya had pushed past the man, and had hidden in the back of his criminal psych class. He’d taught with an uncomfortable sort of detachment, as though he didn’t want to be there, couldn’t be anywhere else. More whispers had buzzed about him, rumors that he’d once identified a murderer by touching the victim’s hand, that he had visions.
That he drank to keep the visions away.
Maya had stayed away from him, wary of the reputation and the alcohol, but every now and then, when they had come face to face in the halls, or on the jog paths, or in the cafeteria, he would look at her, and those strange, knowing eyes would linger in her mind for days.
That had been the only contact between them, the only connection until that one stupid, stupid night, when Maya had given in to the temptation.
As much as she’d told herself, then and now, that it was her fault more than his, that mistakes happened, that sometimes even the strongest person stumbled off the path, she’d lost something that night, something more than the six charms she’d plucked off her necklace the next morning, and flushed down the toilet.
She’d lost a piece of herself.
She felt the same strength drain from her as quickly as the blood drained from her face when she saw those eyes, when his features realigned themselves into those of the man she had known. His beard was gone and his hair cut short, and he was leaner now, fitter.
But he was still Thorne.
She thought she caught a whiff of alcohol on the air between them, though that could have been a scent memory, kicked up by the shock of seeing him again, the shock of the bison stampede that had nearly killed her.
His face creased into a wry smile. “We don’t need to pretend this is a happy reunion. We don’t need to rehash why you took off before I even woke up that morning, and why you transferred all the way out of the academy to avoid me afterward. Frankly, I don’t think I care anymore. Just suffice it to say I owed you a good deed. Now we’re even. Okay?”
He rose gracefully to his feet and extended a hand to her, though she wasn’t sure whether he intended the gesture as a peace offering or a challenge.
Hell, she wasn’t even sure which was appropriate.
What would he do if she admitted she didn’t remember anything about that night? That everything after finding the dead battery on her car was a blur, culminating in her waking up the next morning in his bed, with his arm thrown across her waist and his breath in her ear?
“Fine.” She stood on her own, strangely reluctant to touch him when her fingers still buzzed with the feel of his body as she’d helped pull him to safety. “We’re even.”
But her stomach twisted at the look in his eyes, which implied an uncomfortable intimacy. For years she’d tried to block the memory of her single ignominious one-night stand, tried to tell herself that nothing had happened, that he’d been gentleman enough not to take advantage. His expression now told her she’d been lying to herself about him, about them.
They’d gotten drunk, they’d had sex, and then she’d run away.
Emotions she’d fought off five years earlier rose up to swamp her, to slap at her with feelings of failure, of humiliation, of disappointment—not with him, but with herself.
She drew breath to say something breezy, something that belied the turmoil within, but before she could speak, a small voice said, “I want my mommy.”
Startled back to the moment, to the case, Maya looked over at Hannah, who sat nearby with tears drying on her face.
Thorne crouched down near the girl. “And who is this?”
“She’s Hannah,” Maya answered. She bent down, picked up the girl—thankful that she was small for her age—and balanced the child on her hip, needing the contact perhaps more than Hannah did. “And she’ll need to spend some time with Alissa.”
Thorne’s strange eyes sharpened. “Why?”
Maya took a breath and tried to figure out how to summarize the situation without upsetting the traumatized girl further. “Let’s just say she wasn’t in the petting zoo by accident. She had help getting there, and my guess is that she was intended to draw more cops into the park before the stampede.” She paused and fussed with Hannah’s shirt so she wouldn’t have to look at Thorne. “I assume you’re on loan for the Master—” She broke off as the obvious conclusion clicked in her brain.
Oh, hell.
She spun and glared at him, as anger, frustration and a strange sort of betrayal flooded her system. “Tell me you’re not my replacement.”
BUT HE DIDN’T TELL HER that. He couldn’t. Instead, Thorne looked away, down to where a half dozen mounted ranch hands were driving the exhausted bison into a far pasture, while cops crawled over a section of downed fence, no doubt looking for clues that the stampede had been rigged.
When he spoke, his voice was low. “It’s only a temporary thing.”
She narrowed her eyes, making him wonder what she saw in him, what she was thinking. But she merely said, “Seriously? You’re just here to fill in until Internal Affairs clears me to get my badge back?”
“I’m here to help bring down the bastard who set you up today,” Thorne said. He hadn’t answered her question, but the chief had urged him to keep quiet about the possibility of taking over the psych specialist’s role in the Bear Claw Forensics Department. The evasion burned, letting him know that even though he’d saved her life, he still owed her.
Because the irony was that she’d saved his life five years earlier, and she didn’t even know it.
He jammed his hands in his pockets. “Look, Maya. I—”
“You two okay up there?” a voice shouted from below. The top rungs of an aluminum extension ladder banged against the lip of the roof, and shook with ascending footsteps.
“We’re fine,” Thorne yelled back, louder than he’d meant to. He glanced at Maya. “Let’s talk about it later.”
Her eyes grew wary, her expression shuttered. “There’s no need.”
Maya’s friends were the first two up the ladder. Alissa and Cassie shot Thorne nearly identical looks of distrust, then rushed to assure themselves that Maya was fine. Homicide detective Tucker McDermott was next to gain the roof. After speaking with Maya for a moment, he took Hannah and carried her down the ladder.
Moments later, the sounds of a tearful mother-daughter reunion rose up from below.
“The chief wants to see you back at the PD,” Cassie told Maya. She had her back to Thorne, but her words carried.
Aware that their conversation remained unfinished, that their reunion had none of the joyful ring of Hannah’s return to her mother, Thorne stepped forward. “I’ll drive her. We have things to discuss.”
Maya didn’t make eye contact when she said, “I’ve got my own wheels. I’ll drive myself.”
Realizing that he was the one without the wheels, Thorne grimaced. “Then I’ll ride with you. I came in with the chief.”
“Then you can leave with him, too,” Cassie said. She stepped forward, leading with her chin as though daring him to throw a punch. “Isn’t it enough that you’re using her desk and you’ve got all her notes on the Mastermind case?”
Maya surprised him by stepping forward and laying a hand on her friend’s arm. “I’ve got it.” She gestured toward the ladder. “You two head down. I’ll be there in a minute.”
When Thorne and Maya were alone again on the roof, she turned to face him, arms folded across her chest. As though remembering his old lectures on open versus closed body language, she uncrossed her arms and hooked her thumbs in the waistband of her jeans, where a narrow green belt glittered with a faint gold pattern. “Look,” she began, “I don’t know how much Chief Parry told you about what’s going on, but I’ll be back on the job as soon as IA clears me.”
“Of course,” Thorne agreed, though he noticed that she was still avoiding eye contact, and her fingers worked restlessly at her sides. She wasn’t as confident as she seemed. He felt a slash of empathy as he remembered his own down time following his escape from Mason Falk’s compound. He’d been on medical leave for nearly six months, and sent to teach at the Academy in High Top Bluff for a year after that.
He’d worked his way back into active duty. Maya would do the same, if she wanted it enough. But based on what the chief had told him, it didn’t seem likely that she would return to the Bear Claw PD. If that was a given, was there really any harm in him angling for her job?
Thorne wasn’t sure yet. He hadn’t fully processed the fact that this was Maya Cooper. Pretty, shy Maya Cooper from the back row of his psych class, who never raised her hand, but who aced all the quizzes and papers.
Pretty Maya Cooper who had cried in his arms over the whiskey he’d urged on her, making him step back and realize what he was becoming.
What he had already become.
He might not have changed his life because of her, but he’d damn well changed it because of what she’d shown him about himself. That meant he owed her, but how much?
“Let me ride with you,” he urged, not completely sure why he wanted to spend time with her. “Even if it’s only temporary, I’m here to work the Mastermind case. I’d appreciate your insights.”
She looked at him for a long moment, as though judging his motives, or maybe his sincerity. Apparently she found one or both lacking, because she shook her head. “Read my notes. They’re organized and complete, such as they are. You want a hint? Have Hannah describe the guy who grabbed her, and let Alissa develop a sketch.” She shrugged. “Beyond that, you’re on your own.”
“Come on, Maya.” He took a step closer to her, then paused at the unfamiliar rev that sped through his body. Acknowledging the danger signal, he cleared his throat and said, “Help me out, here. We’re on the same team.”
“Funny that you should mention teams,” she said, expression closed. “I seem to remember that you were a player and a partier. Unfortunately for you, I’m not either of those things anymore.” A measure of tension left her shoulders, as though she’d needed to say that aloud. “Look,” she said in a less brittle tone, “if I thought I knew anything that isn’t in my notes, I’d tell you. But it’s all there, everything right up until I was suspended.”
“And what about since then?” he asked quietly. “I’ll bet you’ve done some snooping on your own.”
“Why do you care?” she snapped. “You don’t need me on this case. There’s no reason for us to spend time together.” She pursed her lips, which were fuller than he remembered. “You’re not thinking that you and I are going to take up where we left off, are you?”
“No,” he said too quickly. “God, no!” He held up a hand. “No offense or anything, but I just got out of a relationship,” such as it was, “and it didn’t end well. She was a coworker, and—” And he was talking too much. Maya didn’t need to know the sordid details of Detective Tabitha Stock and her personal agenda. He frowned and ended with, “Let’s just say we can put the past in the past and keep it there. I’m not looking for anything more than your take on the Mastermind case.”
