by Em Petrova
Vivian was accustomed to horrible hours. The job called for it. But she could think of a million things she’d rather do than wake up at four in the morning and worry about her appearance.
She made sure every single stray hair was in place before she pulled the mass back into a ponytail because she refused to give Broshears a single excuse to touch her hair again. When she secured the length with an elastic band and eyed herself in the mirror, she wondered why she couldn’t be one of those women who woke with a dewy glow. She had to look like a stray possum that climbed from a dumpster rather than the plush memory foam and spring coil mattress she slept on, didn’t she?
After she dressed and reached for her shoes, she slipped one on…as a blast sounded outside. Her windows shook in their frames, and she ran to one to peer out into the early morning darkness.
She jammed her other shoe on and ran into the kitchen where Zack slept. He sat at alert, ears up, ready to work.
“Ready to go, Zack?” She grabbed her coat and Zack’s leash and headed straight for the back door that led to the street. An eerie silence entombed the neighborhood, and the hairs on her neck prickled.
Using her sense of directional hearing, she followed the noise she’d heard to the next street. Through the darkness and illuminated by a shaft of light from a streetlamp, she saw fog rising from ground.
She urged Zack forward, and they took off running. As she drew closer, she realized the fog was actually dust—dust from the house that just exploded.
Her stomach leaped into her throat as it clicked that she was the first responder on the scene. The rest of the neighborhood still slumbered through the blast, but how? This was too surreal. The blare of sirens from rescue vehicles never came.
She had her dog, and together they could find any victims in the demolished home. Throwing caution to the wind, she ran to the structure. “Hello! Do you hear me? Is anybody there?”
Exactly the same as the house the previous day, the front had been blasted open like a yawning mouth. She jumped into the ruin.
“Find him!” she commanded Zack, and let him off the leash. He rushed forward, head low, sniffing everything to find the human scent she commanded him to, while Vivian pulled out her phone and used the flashlight to scan the dark wreckage.
A blender lay at her feet, and some wires snapped with shorting electricity. She tread carefully, picking through the rubble after Zack, who stood in place, barking.
His alert that he’d found someone.
She tossed aside caution as she ran to him. He signaled, and she saw underneath a fallen ceiling beam lay a man.
Her heart gave a painful twist as that night her father died flooded back to her. He too had been trapped and lay bleeding, the same as this man.
Smoke and dust enveloped her, seeming to also fill her mind as the past trauma hit.
Clear your head, Valentine. You have to act.
She could do nothing to help her father, but today she might be able to save a life.
She called 9-1-1 and yelled out an address even as she pocketed the device and dropped to her knees. Zack stopped barking and sat beside the victim as Vivian leaned over the man.
“Can you hear me?”
He groaned.
“I’m here to help. My name’s Viv. Can you tell me yours?” First engage the victim. Assess the level of consciousness.
He groaned again, and she hovered closer to the wood beam to try to make out the sound. When she searched what was left of the floorboards, something sticky and wet met her fingers. The scent of iron filled her nostrils.
She worked search and rescue enough to know blood.
So much blood.
Her father had bled out too…after he took his K-9 into a building and the upper floor collapsed on top of him. Trapped and bleeding, he’d taken his last breath, and she’d sat at his side to hear it.
A wave of dizziness struck her, and she reeled for a moment, battling her way back slowly through the haze of despair from that day to the here and now. This man needed her, and she must give him her full attention.
“What is your name, sir? Stay with me? Help’s on the way.” She continued to talk until the sirens sounded in the distance, drawing closer and closer until the whole block filled with flashing lights and whoops of sirens. She trailed her fingers through the sticky blood on the floor until she located flesh.
His hand was unearthly cold, and she knew he was being crushed as her father had been.
Oh God, don’t let him die in front of me. Let me help him.
“Fire department! We’re here to help!”
“Here! He’s trapped—hurry!”
The next few minutes blurred together. The firemen forced her and Zack outside, and she set her hand on the dog’s head. Truth be told, Zack was the only thing holding her upright. Her knees wanted to buckle.
“Fuck. Valentine, what the hell are you doing here?”
She whipped around at the deep voice that seemed to be following her everywhere these days. She couldn’t escape Alix Broshears.
He ducked to look into her eyes and suddenly reached out and clasped her by the shoulders. “You look like you’re about to pass out. Come with me.”
She shook him off. “No. I have to be here.”
He remained close to her side, watching the progress of the firemen cutting a wooden support beam in pieces in order to rescue the man.
“What the hell happened here?” Alix’s voice came out as a hot whisper.
She tried not to crumple in tears. “I-I don’t know. An explosion.”
“How did you get here first?”
“I live a street over.” She dug her fingers into her hair, ruining all her efforts of smoothing it out.
“Jesus, so you found him.”
“Zack did.”
He looked down at the dog, let him sniff his hand and then rubbed his ears.
The sky lightened, bringing the situation all too much into focus—the devastation of the house and the firemen emerging from the depths carrying the victim on a board. A sheet covered his face.
With a cry choking her, she twisted from the sight and everything inside her shut down as she realized how much this event mirrored the one that night her father died.
“Vivian!” Broshears grabbed her arm. She swayed on her feet. He dragged her from the scene to the street. She shook her head when he pointed to his vehicle, leashed Zack and started toward her own house.
Everything in her screamed to crawl between her covers and shut out the world. But that couldn’t happen. She was the first person on the scene and someone would expect a recounting of what she discovered. She’d go home and get ready for when that happened.
A black SUV buzzed toward her, and she realized Penn sat at the wheel—the Xtreme Ops team on their way to the explosion.
“Vivian!” Broshears called from behind her.
She continued walking. Zack quickened his pace to keep up, but she couldn’t outrun the memories of the day her father died any more than she could ignore her questions about the handwriting she saw on that package.
Two people had died now, and today’s loss interwove in her mind with her father’s, even if unrelated. The one thing she knew with total conviction was she had to help find this bomber—and stop him.
Or her.
Chapter Three
Night number two of sitting in the lab leafing through notes in her father’s old forensic magazines alongside data searches, and all Vivian had was a stiff neck.
She straightened from her hunched position over the keyboard and stretched. Tilting her head left and right helped ease enough strain to go on with her research. Something about that letter M on the bomb package bothered her—a lot.
She’d done a sweep of a thousand examples of the letter in handwriting, and found that Ms such as the one she saw on the package wasn’t all that common. After wracking her brain since the moment she saw it, she still couldn’t place why it stuck out to her in such a familiar way
.
At first she thought she’d seen the M constructed of three sevens in one of her colleague’s signatures. There were plenty of handlers she came in contact with, as well as police, search and rescue teams and even the Xtreme Ops. Locating all their signatures in the forensic database ticked many off the list.
Her energy flagged, and she reached for her paper cup of coffee.
“That’s gotta be cold.”
She looked up at the familiar voice and smiled at her fellow K-9 handler Hunt Cason, even as heat crept into her face at the thought of studying his handwriting earlier in the evening. He didn’t need to know that, though.
Setting down her coffee again, she said, “It is pretty cold.”
He leaned against her table, much the same way Broshears had the previous night, but Hunt never crossed boundaries. After working with the handler for several years, she knew what an honorable and genuine man he was. He treated his dogs with all the care and respect necessary of a good handler, and his dogs loved him in return.
“Why don’t you let me take you out for a fresh cup?” Hunt’s eyes sparkled, and not for the first time she recognized what a good-looking man he was. Tall and muscled but in a lean fashion rather than the bulk Broshears carried.
She leaned back in her seat and scrubbed her hands over her face. “Maybe I could use a break.”
“What have you been working on? Mind if I take a look?” He raised a thick brow, drawing her attention to his eyes again. He really had nice eyes too. A warm hazel with short but thick brown lashes.
She could trust him with her research.
“I’d actually welcome your input.”
At that, he smiled and circled the table. He braced a hand on the edge as he leaned in to peer at her screen. “Handwriting,” he said with some surprise.
“Yes.” She chewed her lip.
“Is this because of the package bombs?” When he focused on her, so up close, she got the full impact of his intense gaze. She and Hunt got along. He asked her to dinner once in a while, and she always accepted, but the nights always ended in them driving home in separate vehicles and without so much as a hint of more.
But that might be due to their close working relationship. Members of the K-9 team weren’t supposed to date each other.
She nodded to his question about her studying handwriting, but he ignored the screen to stare at her.
“Vivian.” His tone sounded as gentle as the stroke of a teddy bear’s paw. “I heard what happened this morning.”
She swallowed hard.
“I know how that must have felt, seeing that man…that way.”
The image crashed into her mind again, and she dragged in a deep breath.
Hunt compressed his lips. He’d been first to show up when her dad died. He’d seen what she did, and neither of them had ever spoken of it until this moment.
He searched her face. “If you need to talk…”
“I don’t,” she responded too quick to be true. But what good would talking with Hunt do when months of therapy hadn’t helped her erase the memory?
She offered him a small smile. “Thank you, Hunt.”
He opened his mouth to say more, when the door opened at the back of the lab. They both swung their gazes toward the man striding in as if he was the king coming to grace his subjects with his royal presence.
Alix Broshears flicked his stare from her to Hunt and back again. While his face blanked into that mask she saw many men she worked with don to keep from giving anything away, she could guess by the hard bracket at Broshears’ lips that he disliked seeing her and Hunt together. The dimple was nowhere in sight.
Hunt straightened to his full height as Broshears approached. The men exchanged a nod of greeting.
She wasn’t answering the special operative’s questions where her research was concerned, so she clicked out of the screen before standing. Both men towered over her short stature.
Broshears settled his stare on her. “You should stand up so we can see you better, Valentine. Oh—you are standing.”
She groaned. “Why don’t you try a joke I never heard before? It’d make you more memorable, Broshears.”
Hunt edged a step closer to her. She noticed, and Broshears sure as hell noticed, if that twitch in the crease of his jaw revealed anything.
With an overload of testosterone being bounced between these men, she reached for her bag and started packing her belongings.
“You leaving, Valentine?” Broshears asked.
“Yes. I’m finished for the night.”
Alix closed in on her. “Why don’t you let me walk you to your car?”
“We were about to grab a coffee,” Hunt said.
Oh God, were they fighting over her attention? The lesser of the two evils was friendly, unassuming Hunt, and she didn’t have the energy to face Broshears today.
His hot gaze rooted her to the floor.
Pinned her in place.
Her heart started to hammer for no good reason.
“Were you?” He kept his tone conversational, but his expression asked more of her.
“Yes,” she said, too breathlessly. “We were. I’ll see you tomorrow at our next assignment, Broshears.” They were hitting another postal facility.
Skirting him, she took off toward the exit, aware that Hunt hadn’t yet moved. She had a feeling if she looked over her shoulder, she’d see the men facing off like dogs over a bone.
She wasn’t sticking around for these childish games.
“Valentine,” Broshears called out, stopping her.
She paused. Why did he have to give her that look? The one that had melted her panties right off her body back in the airport?
“Cappuccino?” he asked her.
Hunt joined her at the door. Slicing a glance at Broshears, Hunt said, “Two creams, one sugar. Right, Vivian?”
She nodded, her tongue suddenly thick and heavy. She pulled her gaze from the glue holding her attention to Broshears and followed Hunt outside.
What the hell just happened? They’d had a dick-measuring contest with her coffee choice at the center of it. And why did she feel so bad that Broshears had been wrong?
Hunt threw her a smile and waved toward his Jeep. “Want to ride with me? I’ll bring you back to your truck.”
“Uh… Actually, I’m tired and getting a headache. I think coffee will make it worse.”
He paused, hands in his pockets and concern knitting his brows. “Maybe a nightcap then? Roadies Bar is a few blocks from here.”
“Thanks, but I’m going to head home. Some other time, okay?”
Hunt gave her a smile and nod, and the anchor in her chest lifted. They were still friends, and she couldn’t be more grateful.
She threw a wave. “See you later.”
“Bye, Vivian.” He turned and walked to his Jeep, hands still in his pockets.
On the way to her truck, she caught sight of Broshears jogging across the lot to her. She turned his direction, heart suddenly pounding. His long legs ate up the distance, and he stopped before her.
“You forgot this.” He handed her one of the magazines with more about handwriting forensics than the others she’d lugged to the lab the previous night.
She accepted it. “Thanks.”
Hunt’s Jeep engine purred as he very slowly rolled past them, staring.
Broshears grunted.
Her irritation level, always riding just below the surface when he came within a hundred yards of her, popped out of her skin like spiky armor. “Why were you challenging him?”
He leveled her in his stare. “Why are you researching handwriting?”
“You tell me first.”
“Not until you share with me.”
At a standoff, she huffed out a breath. “I was hoping to help find a clue about the writing on that package.”
He eyed her. “Pretty sure that’s out of your wheelhouse, unless your dog can scent handwriting.”
“Maybe it interests me is
all.” All at once, like a meteor hitting her brain, it struck her—why that M bothered her so much.
She had seen a similarly formed letter, and not among her colleagues.
In a Christmas card she’d received.
A second passed where she connected the sender of the card, a woman she called Aunt Geri who wasn’t her aunt at all. She was actually the life partner of a man who wasn’t her “uncle” either, but a long-time friend of her father’s.
Geri’s inked letters across the bottom of the annual Christmas card the pair sent her every year since she was a child flashed in her brain.
Merry Christmas, Vivian. You’re in our thoughts and hearts this season.
Geri and Billy
The M on her Christmas card matched the one on the package.
It might be a coincidence. Surely, a lot of people formed their Ms that way.
But a thousand instances hadn’t shown such a thing.
The lettering wasn’t as common as she originally thought—and now wished it were.
Geri couldn’t be behind the bombings.
But…could Billy?
He was a dear friend of her father’s. Countless fishing trips and Fourth of July barbecues with the man proved Vivian knew him. Except…Billy shocked them all when he was convicted for threats made to two heads of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline where he worked his entire life.
No. No way—Billy can’t be behind this.
Broshears still stared at her, and she struggled to remember what they were talking about before her epiphany. Unease wriggled through her. She wasn’t ready to share any of this with the special operative, because she wasn’t so sure she wasn’t reading more into the situation. After all, she’d struggled most of the day with flashbacks of her father’s death after the explosion. At the moment, everything felt personal on some level.
Billy was not a monster. A jury convicted him of plotting with intent to kill, but he hadn’t made a move to harm those men who stripped him of his livelihood. And who could blame him, when the money went to Geri’s costly treatments for multiple sclerosis?