by Rachel Lee
Explosive secrets threaten everything an agent holds dear...
A heart-racing Conard County story
When a bomb threat lures ATF agent Darcy Eccles to Wyoming, she isn’t expecting to stumble across an antigovernment plot—or for handsome teacher Alex Jansen to be the key to stopping a madman. Enigmatic Alex’s past is better left forgotten, but every tick of the clock will bring both of them closer to their nightmares, and to losing one another.
The tremors woke both Darcy and Alex from sleep. They met in the hallway, he wearing boxer shorts, she wrapped in a robe.
“Explosion?” they both said at once.
Darcy added, “It felt like an earthquake.”
“We have them from time to time but not often and not very strong. That must have rattled the whole town.”
Darcy bit her lip. “How can we find out?”
She’d barely spoken when sirens began to howl in town. Fire truck. Police. She looked at Alex, spared a wish they had time for her to enjoy the sight of him so scantily clad, then without a word she turned back into her bedroom. “Let’s go.”
She dressed swiftly in her overalls and work boots, and grabbed her gloves. Back out in the hall she met Alex once again.
Neither of them said another word. Darcy felt her heart beating nervously, and all she could think was that if she were better at her job, this might not have occurred. What if someone had died? What if she still couldn’t find the perp?
* * *
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Dear Reader,
Sometimes life deals us hard blows that are difficult to live with. Not everyone can cope with what has happened to them by continuing in their old paths. In this story a Vietnam vet has never recovered from his injuries in the war, and he’s become embittered because he feels like he was part of a cover-up. We also have a former FBI profiler who quit his job to escape the nightmares. And then we have a young man who gets himself entangled in the wrong side of the investigation because he wants to join the ATF but doesn’t think he ever will. Bad things happen to him, too.
But bad things are a part of life, some worse than others. Like it or not, we have to carry on. In the center of this storm we have an ATF agent who is on her first solo assignment, wanting to do well to prove herself but needing some help anyway.
It’s all about helping each other. When those bad things happen, we need our friends and family. Going it alone is a dangerous road.
Enjoy!
Rachel Lee
CONARD COUNTY REVENGE
Rachel Lee
Rachel Lee was hooked on writing by the age of twelve and practiced her craft as she moved from place to place all over the United States. This New York Times bestselling author now resides in Florida and has the joy of writing full-time.
Books by Rachel Lee
Harlequin Romantic Suspense
Conard County: The Next Generation
Conard County Revenge
Undercover in Conard County
Conard County Marine
A Conard County Spy
A Secret in Conard County
Conard County Witness
Playing with Fire
Undercover Hunter
Snowstorm Confessions
Deadly Hunter
Killer’s Prey
Rocky Mountain Lawman
What She Saw
Rancher’s Deadly Risk
The Widow’s Protector
Guardian in Disguise
Harlequin Intrigue
Conard County: The Next Generation
Cornered in Conard County
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Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Excerpt from Killer Secrets by Marilyn Pappano
Excerpt from Fatal Chaos by Marie Force
Chapter 1
ATF Agent Darcy Eccles wondered what the hell she was doing driving into a small one-horse town that might as well have been named Nowhere, Wyoming, instead of Conard City. City? The name was ironic, if not a downright joke. Someone had once cherished grandiose dreams for this place.
Aw, heck. She wasn’t the snob her thoughts made her sound like. Small towns were wonderful places. The fact that her adult life had largely been lived in bigger cities didn’t change the fact that a bomber had struck here, and like it or not, her job required her to investigate.
She only wondered where to stop first. The sheriff’s office had called for ATF’s help, but the fire department might have more information on the bombing. All of which would have been shared with the sheriff, of course. Or should have been.
Unfortunately, she’d run into territorial political bailiwicks before. She wondered if she’d find them here. There didn’t appear to be a lot of anything to fight over, but people were the same everywhere. Too many wanted to be the biggest frog in even the smallest pond.
Sheriff’s office, she decided as her GPS guided her along a relatively straight route.
No, her whole problem in being here was that she’d been pulled off a large case of suspected terror bombing. The work had been challenging, finding all the bits even more so, and supporting the conclusion... Well, they’d been getting closer.
Now here she was, a solo flight to find out why an explosion had happened in one corner of a high school shop. And the main reason she was here was the sheriff’s request had included the acronym ANFO.
Before she even started asking questions, she suspected she’d find out the whole thing had been accidental, some high schooler’s experiment gone awry. Kids were wont to try things out to see if they worked.
But she had to admit, building an ANFO bomb wasn’t easy. More of them failed than succeeded unless you had pure anhydrous ammonia and the best measuring equipment. Lots of terrorists and soldiers tried to make them on the fly. Many never exploded.
But someone in this out-of-the-way place had succeeded. Not good for anyone, least of all the perp if they found him. Mercifully, from her understanding, no one had been killed.
Picking up her cell phone, she found she had a signal again. She pulled over on the shoulder and checked the GPS. Her satellite phone was in the trunk, but she hadn’t exactly needed it until she found herself in a cell dead zone. Then she didn’t need it because she rode the state highway all the way to town.
She punched in the number of the sheriff’s office and spoke to the dispatcher. “Special Agent Eccles, ATF,” she announced. “Please let the sheriff know that I’m twenty minutes out. He should be expecting me.”
“He is,” a croaky voice answered. “We’ll get the fire chief over here, too.”
“Thank you.”
She sat for a moment while her engine idled, trying to shift mental gears. Part of her was still very absorbed in the investigation she had left behind.
Now she needed all her attention on the school bombing, like it or not. It would be easy to write it off, but that was not her ethic, nor the ethic of the ATF. There was a job to be done, and she’d give it her best.
The sides of the state highway began to sprout houses, and as the next miles passed, the density grew until there was no longer any question that she was reaching Conard City.
There was a loop that could take her around town, but she drove straight in, toward the city center. The trees grew leafy with the light green of spring, the houses gracious despite their ages. A lot of history here, she imagined. Families with deep roots. Deceptively calm, she supposed. Although she doubted they had many bombs exploding around here.
At the first, and only, traffic light she encountered, she found the sheriff’s office on the southwest corner of Main and Front. Several angled parking spaces remained open, none of them labeled, so she pulled into one.
Pretty courthouse square, she thought, looking around as she climbed out and stretched her legs from the long drive. It looked as if it had been transplanted from New England, the courthouse an edifice of red brick and tall white columns with an imposing staircase. It even had a dome atop it.
The square itself contained the obligatory statue honoring war heroes, but she wasn’t interested in that. Stone tables and benches were scattered along flower-lined walkways, and at some of them older men sat playing chess or checkers. Bucolic.
Then she turned and faced the sheriff’s office. A storefront, it boasted institutional green paint on the wood framing the windows, looking as if it needed a touch-up. Gold lettering in large windows. The door right on the corner.
She stepped through the door and was greeted by rows of desks, mostly unoccupied, and a dispatcher sitting at a console that looked as if it had been around for a while.
“Hi. I’m Agent Eccles.”
The wizened woman at the dispatcher’s desk nodded. She sat beneath a no-smoking sign, convicted by an overflowing ashtray to one side. Darcy felt a moment of amusement.
“Just head straight on back,” the woman said, pointing to a hallway. Her voice rasped, probably from all those cigarettes. “First door on the left. They’re waiting for you.”
Despite the fact that it was late spring, even the air in the office seemed chilly and Darcy was glad she’d decided to wear pants.
The office couldn’t be missed. The door was wide-open, but she could see the black lettering on frosted glass: Sheriff Gage Dalton.
Two men were inside and rose to their feet as she entered. Immediately she found both men striking, but for different reasons. The tall man behind the desk wore a khaki sheriff’s uniform and seven-pointed badge. He had burn scars on one side of his face, and experience screamed at her that he’d been the victim of a bomb. The other man was attractive and big, wearing the blue daily uniform of a firefighter with a captain’s insignia embroidered on the shoulders and the familiar fire department four-leafed badge embroidered on his chest. He could have posed for one of those fund-raising calendars. A whisper of a smile ghosted across her mouth.
“Gage Dalton,” the scarred man said, extending his hand and wincing as he did so. So, more than burns affected him. “This is our fire chief, Wayne Camden.”
She shook Camden’s hand as well and pulled out her credential wallet to show them. “Darcy Eccles. You have an ANFO bomb?”
“Had,” said Dalton drily as he eased back into his seat and waved her to the remaining chair. “Wayne’s chemical sniffers detected the ammonium... Wayne?”
“Ammonia. Gasoline. Not a clean burn.”
She nodded. That meant inexperience, which was good. “Anything else?”
“You need to come out and see it,” Wayne said. “Judge for yourself. It might have been an accident.”
She nodded, then caught something in his tone. “You don’t think so?”
Wayne shook his head. “Plenty of space out here if you want to play with bombs. You don’t need to do it at the school. If someone had been using lab equipment...” He shrugged. “We should have found a body. But it happened at 2:00 a.m. on a Sunday morning. Nobody was in that school.”
“Theoretically,” she said.
“Theoretically,” he agreed.
Gage Dalton leaned forward, placing his elbows on his desk. “We’re questioning everyone with any association with the school, but that’s damn near everyone in the county. Agent...”
“Darcy, please.”
“Darcy.” He nodded. “I realize you ATF people have bigger things on your plate. I get it. I used to be DEA. But the thing is, what if there are more? What if it happens again in a building that isn’t empty? We don’t have your expertise in learning things from the bomb that might help us locate the perp. And the mere fact that Wayne here sniffed ANFO chemicals doesn’t mean that was just an ANFO bomb. Something else could be involved.”
“I agree, especially given how difficult it is to make a successful ANFO bomb. Far easier to set off a few sticks of dynamite. The purpose of ANFO is to build a bomb without leaving the kind of trail a dynamite purchase would leave. But it needs to be in an enclosed space, unlike dynamite.”
Gage nodded slowly. “So you’re saying it had to be inside the building.”
“Or in a pipe. Some enclosure.” She looked at Camden. “Anything?”
“Not yet. We’re still scouring the site.”
She nodded. “Okay, then. I’ve been driving since the wee hours. If I can grab a bite and some coffee, I’d appreciate it. Then we can go look over the site. Have you checked if anyone around here has received a tank of anhydrous ammonia for fertilizer?”
“Running it now,” Gage said, “but I haven’t heard of any, at least not in a while. We’re not intensive farming country for the most part. We rely mostly on ranching, sheep and cattle, and I hear there’s plenty of manure compost.”
“Bags of dry fertilizer can be used, too,” she remarked. “It’s just harder. Thank you, gentlemen.” She rose. “Point me to someplace where I can eat and I’ll be back here in a half hour or so.”
“I’ll show you,” Wayne said, rising. “Maude takes a little getting used to.”
Darcy wondered what in the world he meant by that. They hadn’t exited the front office, however, before a tall, well-built man with blond hair and blue eyes arrived. A beardless Viking. He looked at Wayne. “This is her?”
Darcy halted, surprised.
“Yeah,” said Wayne. “Darcy Eccles, ATF, meet Alex Jansen, our shop teacher. Also former FBI.”
Oh, boy, Darcy thought as she shook his hand. Former FBI? Helpful maybe. Trouble maybe. Hunk, definitely.
“Yeah, the explosion was in my part of the building,” Alex said. “I’m naturally...involved.”
Yep. Great. She forced a smile. “I was on my way to lunch.”
“I’ll join you,” Alex said without hesitation.
Double great.
“It’s just a half block from here,” Wayne said as they stepped out onto the quiet street. “Afterward, we’ll meet my wife out at the school. She’s our arson investigator.”
How interesting, Darcy thought. In her world, such a relationship would have resulted in reassignment. Out here, it probably never made any difference. The chief and his wife most likely shared the same goals and interests.
But in a criminal investigation? Well, that depended, didn’t it? She almost sighed.
Alex spoke. “Maude, the diner’s owner, is a law unto herself, Agent. So are her daughters. Just ignore the rudeness. The food and coffee more than make up for it.”
Well, there didn’t seem to be any other place to eat along the street. She was sure she could handle a little rudeness. Must be a little beyond average, though, if both of these guys thought she had needed a warning.
The diner showed its age. Colored duct tape had sealed cracks on some of
the red benches and chairs, but aged or not, the interior appeared spotless. Alex guided them to a table as far from other patrons as they could get, which wasn’t far. The restaurant wasn’t huge, and a number of people were scattered around in booths, all of them engaged in conversations that stopped the minute they saw Darcy.
Hers was a new face, something interesting around here. She smothered another sigh and joined Wayne and Alex at the table. Almost instantly menus were emphatically slapped down in front of them. Conversation resumed around them.
Darcy looked up into the face of the gorgon, sour and unfriendly. “Coffee?” the woman demanded.
Alex spoke. “You want a latte, Darcy? Or just regular leaded?”
A latte? Why should that surprise her, but it did. It certainly wasn’t on the menu. “Latte, please.”
The men chose black coffee, then turned their attention to the menus. Darcy scanned hers with a vague surprise that it didn’t feel sticky. Cleanliness around here evidently went past the floor and tables. It wasn’t a long menu, but all the offerings, except the salads, appeared to be rib-sticking food. No one with a cholesterol problem ought to eat here, she decided, allowing herself another moment of amusement.
Why not be amused? She was in the middle of nowhere on an assignment she didn’t want, and she felt like Alice slipping down the rabbit hole. This was so far from her usual environment she had to be careful she didn’t offend needlessly with an absentminded comment.
She hadn’t eaten since last night, so she passed on the salads and asked about the steak sandwich.
“It’s the reason most people love to eat here,” Wayne told her. “But it’s huge. You might need a doggie bag.”
“That’s fine. I need to eat tonight, too.”
After the woman, whose name tag identified her as Maude, took their orders, Darcy looked at her two companions. “So your wife is the arson investigator?” she asked Wayne.
He nodded. “She was an investigator for insurance companies until we married a couple of years ago. Now she’s with the department as both an investigator and a firefighter.”