by Rachel Lee
No, she didn’t think this guy was done.
Every time that crossed her mind, her stomach plummeted. Next time the building might not be empty. Next time someone could get killed or maimed.
So did she want to sleep? No. Did she need to? If she wanted a brain to work with, she was going to need to grab at least six hours.
Damn.
At Alex’s house, however, she accepted the offer of coffee. She wasn’t by any means ready to unwind yet. She’d told the deputies at the school to let absolutely no one inside before checking with her. And make sure that every external access was being watched so that another Jack couldn’t enter through a door.
She believed they’d take extra care now, since none of them had appeared happy that someone had slipped inside.
So she had a building full of evidence, very little of which had told her anything useful. Anything that might take her beyond simply knowing the type of bomb and its size had either been destroyed or still hadn’t been found.
But she needed more time to review what they had. Tomorrow. Right now she’d probably skip over something without realizing it.
Alex brewed a fresh pot, saying very little while she sat at the table, her eyes closed as she considered how very little she knew about any of this. Sometimes it all came down to the smallest bits studied under a microscope in the lab. By their nature, bombs didn’t leave much behind unless the bomber wanted it or screwed up. A little shrapnel that survived, bits and pieces that might or might not be part of the bomb.
“Fuel oil,” she remarked slowly as she opened her eyes in time to see Alex join her with two mugs of coffee. “A lot of it has additives that might identify a source. But out here, probably everyone gets their diesel and gas from a limited number of places.”
Alex nodded. “Welcome to small towns. We have two gas stations. When the tanker truck arrives, it fills both. So much for brand identification. I thought it was amusing when I first moved here that the prices at each pump were different. Then we’ve got the dealer who fills propane tanks for household use and delivers diesel for heavy equipment. Plenty of fuel around, very few sources locally.”
“Okay, so that’s probably going to tell me nothing except our bomber is either inexperienced or messy.” She closed her eyes again. “How’d you wind up here? In this town, I mean.”
“I knew someone who came from here. So when I started looking for escape hatches, I applied here. They took a look at my portfolio and decided I’d be an adequate shop teacher.”
“So it was always your hobby?”
“I learned it at my father’s knee. He was a master carpenter and cabinetmaker.”
She smiled faintly. “You learned well.”
“Thanks. He had his own business. These days it’s not so easy with all the cheap ready-to-assemble furniture you can buy. So I teach, which I actually enjoy.”
She didn’t say anything, feeling an unusual twinge of envy for the life he had chosen. Of course, once she started really cracking this case, she’d probably feel a whole lot better about how she’d chosen to spend her life.
But she needed a breakthrough. Anything that would expose the bomber in some way. The first bread crumb that could turn into a trail. So far, she wasn’t sure she had a single thing.
On big cases being worked by multiple agents it was much easier to ignore the passage of time. It almost always took time to start unraveling the threads, but, being solo, she was acutely aware it was taking her longer. Of course it was. Didn’t mean she had to be happy about it.
“Don’t push yourself so hard,” Alex said unexpectedly.
“What do you mean? We’ve got to find this guy so he doesn’t do it again.”
“I get it, Darcy. BSU, remember? Do you have any idea how many cases I worked on where time was a pressure? Knowing that someone else could die if we didn’t pull together useful information for whatever agency we were assisting. But you can push too hard. You can lose your detachment. Your clarity. That helps no one.”
“Tell me about it,” she said slowly. “The way you worked.”
“Well, I didn’t spend time in the field the way you do. Imagine a bunch of people in small offices who occasionally get asked to develop a profile when some local LE agency can’t catch anyone. We get their report of all the evidence they have. Sometimes we interview the lead detectives on the case. Then we sit and think and spitball. Not very exciting. Not like TV or the movies. If we’re lucky, we might come up with something that’s sixty to eighty percent accurate. Then it’s up to local enforcement to decide what’s useful.”
“Sounds dull.”
“It could have been except we were trying to walk the corridors of some seriously sick minds. Sometimes. Occasionally they turned out to be garden-variety creeps, but...other times, not so much.”
“Like the bicycle killer.” As soon as she said it, she realized how tired she must be. He’d already let her know that case had affected him too deeply, that it had driven him from the bureau. “Sorry. I shouldn’t have mentioned that.”
“Why not? I told you I’d tell you about it.”
She shook her head quickly. “I already know that some cases can leave you with nightmares. I don’t want to stir up yours.”
“They started stirring the minute you arrived. I never thought I’d have anything to do with a Fed again.”
At that, she cracked a weary smile. “Sorry about that.”
“It’s okay. After all this time, I think I’ve managed to achieve some separation. But that leads me around to you. I couldn’t keep my detachment. I not only worked to get inside that bastard’s head, but I stayed there even when I wasn’t working. No breaks. I couldn’t afford them, or so I thought. I needed to know how his twisted mind was functioning before he snatched another little girl.”
She had to admit it. “That could mess you up.”
“It did. Sitting here listening to you, I’m concerned you might do the same thing. No one’s died yet, no one might die, but you’re pressuring yourself into thinking that only you can prevent a death. That’s not true, Darcy.”
Her eyes felt gritty and hot as she looked at her FBI Viking. Oh, yeah, she was tired. “Meaning?”
“Meaning that we’re not responsible for what others do. Yeah, it’s great when we can stop them, but if we do our best and they still act again before we can find them...it’s not our fault. We’re mortals, not gods. I had to face that finally. And another little girl died before that profile actually fleshed out enough to be useful.”
“Oh, my God,” she whispered.
“Yeah. That was it for me. I nailed his profile, over eighty percent accurate, with things the others hadn’t even thought of, and you know what? I couldn’t find one little bit of solace in that, especially after weeks of living in what I thought was that SOB’s head. Don’t do that to yourself. Don’t feel guilty. Don’t feel dirty. You’re not the perp and you never will be.”
Her mind recognized the justice of what he was saying, and he’d certainly know, but her gut had a rather different take.
Sighing, she closed her eyes again, realizing the coffee wasn’t going to help, either. She was dead.
* * *
Jack took quite a scolding from his parents. They hadn’t been happy about having their home searched because of him, and they sternly warned him away from anything else to do with the bomb.
Jack knew they were right. Standing at his bedroom window, he watched the lights in the barn as the deputies finished looking for any potential bomb-making apparatus. He knew they’d find nothing because he hadn’t even thought of making a bomb, let alone building one.
But it seemed to him from his online readings that ATF wasn’t taking this matter seriously enough. Only one agent? She seemed like a smart woman, probably an excellent agent, but how was she supposed to do this alone? From everyth
ing he’d read, the bureau sent out teams of agents. Usually. Maybe they considered a single small bombing in a small town in the middle of nowhere to be of no real importance unless critical information was discovered.
Of course, there were the local sheriffs to help her, but what did they know about bombs? Probably not a whole lot more than he did.
Frustration filled him, not for the first time in his life. Ranch life didn’t exactly hold his interest although it kept him busy. He dreamed of bigger things, and maybe he was a fool.
As his parents kept reminding him, he hadn’t even finished high school yet. He was young. He was too young to know what he really wanted. Sure, they’d let him take a few courses at the community college...
They weren’t trying to stop him. He was sure of that. They wanted the best for him. But they thought the best was right here, and now he’d gone and proved to them that he could still be a stupid kid.
Darcy was right. He might have concealed evidence just by being so obvious they didn’t notice anyone else who was watching the goings-on. Somebody with a lower profile, maybe hanging around in the distance.
Or not hanging around at all.
That was a possibility, of course. Darn near everybody with even a vague interest had come to look at the hole in the high school. How much would the bomber have needed to have seen? That the bomb had worked and a huge hole had resulted? He didn’t need to come back to see that if he wasn’t interested in the investigation.
But someone around here had decided to crack open the building and he couldn’t see any reason for it. Like he’d told Darcy Eccles, if some student had done it, they wouldn’t have been able to keep the secret this long. They’d have blabbed to someone they trusted.
So who did that leave? Someone not a student with a grudge against the school? Because obviously it hadn’t been an attempt to kill anyone.
He kept watching the men working around the barn, thinking as hard as if he were taking a math test. Who? And why?
But even as he tried to figure that out, another thought occurred to him. Maybe this had been a test.
Maybe there’d be another, bigger one.
He couldn’t just stand aside; he needed to do something useful. Without getting in the way.
So maybe he could listen around and ask a few innocent questions. Nobody would think he was a threat. Just a curious kid.
Now all he had to do was figure out how to manage it without alerting anyone to his doings.
Especially his parents. He figured by tomorrow morning they might be talking about grounding him.
And that would prevent him from doing anything at all to help.
Just then the cell phone in his pocket buzzed. Out here on the ranch it wasn’t always reliable, so sometimes he received messages that were hours old.
This one was from his sort of girlfriend, Abby Clark. He thought of her as sort of since they hadn’t been able to do much together yet, because of the restrictions of ranch life. He believed she’d meet someone else, someone who wasn’t all bound up by chores. He supposed he should consider himself lucky that his parents allowed him the time to work with the athletic department.
Abby had sent a text: What you up to, big man? I hear the cops are all over your place.
Oh, great, Jack thought. Now that would get all over the world and his parents would be even angrier. His dad worked hard to keep a reputation for being a solid, honest and reliable man, sometimes costing his family in the process. How many times had Jack heard the words “A man is only as good as his reputation.”
Jack could have argued with that, but he figured pulling out the lessons he’d learned in his logic class wouldn’t win him any points with his father.
He debated whether to answer Abby. He didn’t have a big investment in a relationship with her, and after this it would probably all blow away. Besides, Abby knew how unreliable his cell service was out here.
He looked from the phone out the window again. It seemed to him that the deputies were finishing up. They’d be gone in a half hour or so, unless he’d calculated wrong.
Then he looked past the barn into the endless Wyoming night, a night where the mountains hulked like dark sentinels, visible only because they blocked the stars. They’d lost their snowcaps early this year, a bad harbinger. Less water, for one thing. His dad was already fussing about it, wondering if the wells and livestock ponds would be enough. Jack looked at it and saw the coming of climate change. He figured they’d be worrying a whole lot more about water and grazing in a few years.
In his mind, he could see the havoc that was beginning to be wrought by the pine bark beetles. Trees were dying, trees that provided important food for bears. It wasn’t bad here yet, but without some really cold, extended winters, the destruction would grow.
He leaned his forehead against the glass, shoving his phone back into his pocket, Abby forgotten.
There were more than enough problems for a young man to be worrying about, but foremost in his mind right now was the bomber.
It seemed too stupid to be believed that someone had gone to all that trouble to put a hole in the side of a building. No, it had been a trial run.
And while Darcy Eccles was busy examining the detritus for a key to the bomber, he could put his ear to the ground. Better than she could, because no one knew her. Better than almost anybody, come to that, because he was just an invisible teen. Most adults hardly paid him any attention.
That was his advantage, one he could put to work for the ATF. To prove he wasn’t just a kid with outsize dreams. And it was something he could do without getting into any more trouble, even with his parents.
As long as they didn’t ground him. He sighed. For that knowledge he’d have to wait until morning. God, sometimes time moved just way too slow.
* * *
Fifteen miles away as the crow flew, a man sat in the back bedroom of his ramshackle farmhouse and soldered, liking the smell of the smoke. He’d always liked the smell of smoke, whether on a battlefield, a firing range or in his own small bedroom. He also liked the whoompf of an explosion, so different from gunfire. So much more powerful.
Sometimes when one of the medical helicopters flew over, he fell back in time. The Huey had a very distinctive rotor sound, one he would never forget. It had brought him into fights and carried him out of them. It had brought support when it was needed.
He was rather fond of the damn old birds. Last year he’d ventured out to one of those events where the emergency services opened up to the public, to let taxpayers see what they were paying for when it came to medical evacuations and mountain rescues. Very impressive. Also very tiring for him, sick as he was now.
But he’d been drawn to the Huey. It was roped off, kept in meticulous condition with huge red crosses painted on its sides and tail. Not that those had done much good in the war.
The door guns were gone, and even from behind the rope he could see the gleaming medical equipment, the Stokes basket, the winch. Ready for anything.
Then Billy Joe Yuma had wandered over. Both were vets, though they weren’t well acquainted. Yuma had flown medevacs during the Vietnam War. The man figured he probably had as many nightmares as the ground troops.
Yuma had noted him, then asked if he wanted to get closer. Next thing he knew, he was past the cordon and sitting in the wide-open side hatch of the chopper. Where the door gunner would have sat, hanging his legs out and maybe bracing against the skids.
“I can wind her up for you, if you want,” Yuma had offered. “Not too fast, though. We can’t fly right now.”
The man had nodded. “You hear those rotors in your dreams, too?”
“Yeah.” Simple answer. A look of understanding.
“Thanks for the offer, but I hear you when you fly over sometimes.” He’d slid to the ground and had begun to walk away.
“I didn
’t catch your name,” Yuma had called. “Hicks?”
The man hadn’t answered. He didn’t give a damn anymore whether anyone knew his name.
Later, no one would forget it, but for right now he was the invisible man. They’d made him invisible, and he had every intention of taking advantage of that.
Shaking his head a little, he bent again to his soldering. The Army had taught him a lot, and he remembered most of it. For example, he knew how to build a low-residue detonator.
That woman from the ATF could look until her eyes went blind, but she wasn’t going to find enough to tell her anything. All she’d ever know was that the trigger had been homemade, probably with a timer or a microwave signal to set it off. That wouldn’t tell her a whole lot.
It bothered him that he hadn’t got the fire he’d expected. He’d poured enough gas around that place that there should have been a great fire.
He wanted a fire. Bombs were destructive, but fire consumed a whole lot more over a larger area. It also consumed evidence.
Not that he was going to care for long. All he needed to do was complete his mission, strike his objectives. Then if they caught him...well, he was already a dead man walking.
Thanks to the good old US of A and its army.
Chapter 5
Darcy fell asleep right at Alex’s kitchen table. By that, he judged she’d been shorting her sleep since her arrival.
Shaking his head a little, wondering what drove this woman so hard, he rose. He couldn’t let her drive back to the motel if she could fall asleep sitting upright. She could have his couch. It would make a comfortable bed.
He tried to wake her, but she simply sighed and leaned into his hip, a nice sensation he tried to ignore. Okay, she was well past exhausted. Giving in to what he knew could be a dangerous move, he scooped her up off the wooden chair, one arm beneath her knees, the other around her shoulders.
Well, that got her attention. Sort of, he corrected with amusement.
Her eyelids fluttered. “Wha...?”
“Shh. I’m just putting you on the couch. You’re too sleepy.”