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.

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.

Also by Rachel Lee

Conard County RevengeUndercover in Conard CountyConard County MarineA Conard County SpyA Secret in Conard CountyConard County WitnessPlaying with FireUndercover HunterSnowstorm ConfessionsDeadly Hunter

Discover more at millsandboon.co.uk

Conard County Revenge

Rachel Lee

www.millsandboon.co.uk

ISBN: 978-1-474-07871-9

CONARD COUNTY REVENGE

© 2018 Susan Civil Brown

Published in Great Britain 2018

by Mills & Boon, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers 1 London Bridge Street, London, SE1 9GF

All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. This edition is published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, locations and incidents are purely fictional and bear no relationship to any real life individuals, living or dead, or to any actual places, business establishments, locations, events or incidents. Any resemblance is entirely coincidental.

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Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

About the Author

Booklist

Title Page

Copyright

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Extract

Extract

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.”

“Cool,” Darcy answered, though was wasn’t sure she thought so. Then Alex. “You used to be FBI?”

“Behavioral Science Unit.”

Well, that could be useful, she decided. Her latte arrived in a tall foam cup and she wrapped her hands around it. Her fingers felt chilled and she hoped enough heat would escape to warm them.

“And you?” Alex asked bluntly.

“Ten years with ATF as an investigator. Right across the spectrum.”

All right, then, with creds established among them they fell silent as their sandwiches were slammed in front of them. No one seemed surprised by the loud clatter.

Darcy hadn’t expected to be working alone—that would have been ridiculous—but she wasn’t sure how Alex fitted in unless someone thought he could profile a perp. She knew better than that. The idea that anyone could pull a suspect out of their hats was for the movies. A so-called profiler could use evidence to piece together a behavioral picture of a perp, but there was no magic to it. Just skill and a lot of ugliness, from what she understood.

She finished her first bite of sandwich and forgave Maude for all current and future rudeness. When their eating began to slow, she focused on Alex. “What brought you to be a shop teacher?”

“I enjoy working with my hands.” He paused. “And frankly, I’d had enough of the underbelly of humanity. It’s peaceful here, and I enjoy my students. Creating something is a great source of healing.”

His forthrightness surprised her. She sat looking at him—well, admiring his appearance if she was to be honest—but astonished by how much he had just revealed with a few brief words. So the BSU had left him emotionally scarred in some way. She understood the job could be really dreadful, but she hadn’t ever pondered how it might personally affect those who did it. No reason to. Her own job could get horrible enough at times.

She looked from Alex to Wayne. “This bombing must be...shocking to the town.” And to them, though she didn’t say it.

“It’s not something that happens here,” Wayne said. “Although most everything else has at one time or another. It’s not like evil never touches us. But this is a new one.”

She looked down at her sandwich. “I hope it was an accident. But...”

Wayne nodded. “I did some research on ANFO bombs. They don’t happen by accident. Usually.”

“Not unless we’re talking about a fertilizer plant. So nobody uses anhydrous ammonia around here?”

“Not that I know of,” Wayne replied. “Alex?”

“Me neither. But I don’t need to tell you how hard it would be to know for sure. Once those tanks are delivered, all identifying information is removed so no one should know it’s there. Basic safety precaution. Heck, even when it gets to construction sites where it’s in heavy use, they take all identifiers off it. It should be recorded somewhere safe but...” He paused and shook his head, smiling faintly. “I’m preaching to the choir. I’m sure you know better than I do. You guys write a lot of the rules.”

“Interstate Commerce does mostly. Hazardous cargo. But I read you.” Liquid anhydrous ammonia made it much easier to build a bomb, so its presence was concealed as much as possible. All labeling was reserved for when it was being transported. On farms all over this country, tanks full of it resided without even a single marking to identify it as hazardous. “Where would it be recorded if someone had it?” She knew what the answer should be, but she wanted to know the procedure here.

“With the fire department,” Wayne answered promptly. “We’d be the first responders in case of a breach. I have my assistant looking back through logs for the last ten years. Lots of stuff comes into this county that we track in case, but so far no anhydrous ammonia.”

Very professional, keeping the record of hazardous materials with the first responders. She felt a prickle of annoyance with herself that somewhere inside she must have expected something different. What did she anticipate? Moth-eaten records in some damp, moldy basement? “Well, the storage tanks can be distinctive,” she remarked. “They have to endure such high pressures, you can sometimes pick them out if you know what you’re looking for. But say this guy didn’t have access to the liquefied stuff.”

Two men exchanged looks. “Then we’re in trouble,” Alex said. “Hundreds and hundreds of square miles out there where fertilizer could be stashed. But, Darcy, you know it’s close to impossible to use ammonium nitrate fertilizer for an explosive.”

“Close to, but not impossible. Oklahoma City.”

The words fell into a dead silence among them. After a few moments, Darcy spoke again. “Nothing’s impossible, gentlemen, when it comes to explosives. Some of it is just more difficult. Using bags of ammonium nitrate fertilizer has worked, as we all saw. As a result, these days we keep a record of large purchases, but you don’t need enough to blow up a big building to make a bomb. Or you can acquire smaller quantities over time that wouldn’t draw any attention.”

* * *

Alex watched Darcy eat with a healthy appetite. Clearly she wasn’t a rabbit-food-only woman. He liked that. Judging by her nice build, at least as much of it as he could see through her gray suit, she kept in great shape. So naturally, she had to eat decently.

She was also pretty, but he wasn’t exactly prepared to notice that, not her bright green eyes or dark auburn hair caught in a businesslike knot on the back of her head. She was a Fed. He’d been a Fed. He wanted nothing to do with that world ever again.

Although the bombing early Sunday morning at the school had kind of dragged him back in. He was sure the first suspects would be his students, especially given the location of the blast, but he was equally certain none of them would have put a bomb in the school. Some were adventurous enough to try it out in the barren areas around here, he supposed, but none of them were the kind of stupid that would put it in the school in an area that would draw attention their way.

There was going to be some push and pull here, he thought, bending his gaze once again to his sandwich. Skills he had tried to bury were already springing to life. He wanted to protect the students in his shop classes. He wanted to get the real bomber. And he was quite sure he didn’t want to fight with this Darcy Eccles all the way.

“The timing creates a problem,” he said a while later. “Two in the morning on a Sunday? Nobody in the building, not even a janitor? Property damage only? No point to it unless you hate band saws.”

He was pleased to see a smile tug at the corner of Darcy’s mouth. Okay, then, she wasn’t that uptight.

She answered, “It does seem like an extreme way to drop a class.”

While he and Wayne both smiled, Alex felt his innards coiling. She could joke about it, but he was quite sure every single one of his students was going to be put on trial in this woman’s mind.

Fairly, he acknowledged that was part of her job, to regard everyone who might be involved as a potential suspect. But he’d left that world behind and he had come to understand since the bombing just how protective he felt of his students. They were the bright and shiny future he’d once sought only to lose it in the bowels of criminal minds. Especially that last case. He closed his eyes momentarily and shoved the memories aside.

Anyway, because of those students he had a bright and shiny present, and he wanted to keep it that way, mostly for them. The microscope of suspicion could cause a lot of damage, and by the nature of her job, Darcy brought suspicion. Much as he didn’t want to get involved with the work again, it appeared he would have to. Who else could ride herd on her? Or even guide her to a reasonable list of suspects? Therein lay a great deal of his training.

It wasn’t as if he would start rustling up his training now that she arrived, though. Hell, no. He’d begun gathering evidence from the moment he learned what had happened. Some things never turned off.

But that didn’t mean he wanted to dive in full strength.

Wayne’s elbow brushed his. “About ready?”

Alex looked down at his plate. Two mouthfuls remaining. “When are we meeting Charity?”

“Twenty minutes.”

“Then give me a minute to finish. I can’t bear to waste any of this sandwich.”

Wayne laughed. “Have at it.” Across the table, Darcy had stopped eating. Slightly more than half her sandwich was gone. “Need a container?”

“Please.”

Wayne waved and moments later Maude stomped over with a foam container. “More coffee?” she asked as she put the container down on the table.

“The latte was great,” Darcy said pleasantly. “I’ll be back for another later.”

Alex took the last bite of sandwich because it was a great way to stifle his grin as Darcy watched Maude stomp away without the merest acknowledgment of the compliment. Darcy shook her head a little and put her sandwich in the container. “My truck’s just outside the sheriff’s office. I can follow you.”

“It’s not that far,” Alex said. “Down the street out there toward the north of town. No turns. You can’t miss it.”

She nodded and rose, lifting her box. “I’ll meet you at the school then.”

Alex watched her walk over to the register and pay for her lunch. Per diem, he thought. She’d come with cash to cover her expenses, maybe a credit card for the motel, and she wouldn’t allow anyone to pick up her tab. He was familiar with the protocol.

Wayne stood a moment later. “You coming?”

“Of course.” His gaze followed Darcy through the door.

Wayne laughed, drawing his attention. “Watch it, man. I was a fool to fall for Charity when I thought she’d be leaving in a week or two. But I was lucky.”

Alex gave him a crooked grin. “I’m that obvious?”

“I’d be looking, too, if I weren’t happily married. She’s a stunner, all right.”

“As long as she doesn’t catch me drooling, we’ll be fine.”

Wayne laughed again as they went over to the register. “I thought you were done with the Feebs.”

“I sure thought so.”

“Funny how circumstances can change things.”

Chapter 2

As promised, Darcy had no difficulty finding the high school. It kind of hit her in the face at the north end of the street. It also looked sadly deserted except for some people working inside a police-taped area toward the rear corner, under a large canopy. Yellow evidence markers covered the ground, looking like a field of out-of-control dandelions.

She sat studying the destruction from the parking lot, taking it in, estimating the explosive force involved. Pure guesswork at this point, but the damage to that corner of the school was extensive. A fertilizer bomb. She’d encountered them before during her years with ATF, but quite a few of them had been duds. Seriously, it wasn’t easy. Timothy McVeigh had had a lot of time to experiment beforehand. Yeah, he’d thrown the final bomb together at the last minute in the back of a rental truck, but he’d had plenty of experience and experimentation to back up that effort. Plus, a great detonation system.

Detonators weren’t exactly easy to come by, either. They had to be signed for. Permits were required. Plenty of people had legitimate reasons to get them, but they left a paper trail. Possible, of course, to make a detonator if you knew what you were doing. She was looking forward to finding out if they’d recovered any remains of the ignition device. Given the hour of the night when the bomb had exploded, a timer had to be involved. A timer or a cell phone. Curiosity began whetting her appetite for this job.

Athletic fields spread out from the school building, large and spacious because this county had the room. Some trees lined the north and west ends of the fields, most likely as a windbreak. In the winter it was probably very stark, but now, in the late spring, it was simply relaxing and beautiful.

Until she trained her gaze again on the scarred building. Annoyed as she had been to be pulled off the other case, that was forgotten as she looked at the new challenge. Build a case. Find a perp. Ascertain every part of the bomb that had been used here and try to trace it to someone. Excitement began to rise in her. A whole new case, entirely her own, unless she needed to send for assistance. A lot of trust from her superiors. For the first time it struck her that she’d had a kind of promotion by being sent out here to do the job herself. She’d never headed up a task force, but she was doing that now, even without the accompanying manpower here.

Resources would be at her disposal back at the field office. Other agents would be assisting her. A new level of responsibility. She was determined not to fail.

Both Wayne and Alex had parked nearby, and she realized they were waiting for her to exit her vehicle. Time to start earning her spurs.

She climbed out, carrying her notebook computer and a legal pad on which to scrawl notes to herself. The computer would make taking photos easy, but she’d never mastered the art of holding the tablet in one hand and typing with the other. A few key identifiers, yes, but actual notes? She preferred to write them on paper and organize them later on the tablet.

She also retrieved some evidence bags and some rubber gloves, stuffing her pockets with them. Best to be prepared, although right now it appeared that the local authorities had matters well in hand.

She switched the computer on as she approached the two men, and was glad to see she was getting a wireless signal. She’d discovered quite a few dead zones on her way to Conard City. Apparently that wasn’t a problem in town.

Summoning a smile, she reached the two men.

“That’s my wife, Charity,” Wayne said, pointing.

Darcy picked out a blonde woman who was probably stunning when she wasn’t wearing suspendered fireman’s pants and boots and heavy gloves. Good clothing choice for the job. Darcy’s fresh-from-the-office outfit was going to hinder her until she could change. At least she’d worn sensible black flats.

Charity waved at them and strode toward them. “Hi,” she said, accepting a quick kiss from Wayne. “You must be Darcy Eccles.” She waved her glove, stained with soot. “I’ll shake your hand later.”

Darcy liked her immediately. “That can wait. How’s your investigation going?”

“Like most investigations. The cause is obvious. Finding all the pieces is a bit more difficult. We did find some slivers of PVC pipe, but at this point we can’t be sure it didn’t come from the building and not the bomb. As you can see, it was a decent blast, but not huge.”

“Any sign of the ignition source?”

Charity shook her head. “Agent, I’m going to let you go through all the pieces. I’ve never dealt with a bomb and I couldn’t recognize a lot of items that might be significant. We’re mapping our finds on a grid, taking photos, bagging stuff we don’t want to leave out in the elements. Mainly, we’re trying not to disturb anything. Is that good?”

Darcy was surprised that she was being asked, then wondered why. Bombs were her area of expertise, not the arson investigator’s.

“That’s great. I’m going to need someplace where I can lay things out and look at them. And if you don’t mind, I’d like to take a few pictures right now if I won’t get in your way.”

Charity lifted the yellow tape. “Have at it. I’ve been waiting impatiently to turn this over to you. I wouldn’t have touched anything at all except the wind moves things and covers them with dust and dirt, and what if it rained?”

Darcy smiled at her. “It sounds like you’ve done an excellent job of protecting the evidence.”

“I hope,” said Charity. “Anything you need from me, let me know.”

As Darcy approached the blast area, she saw that the damaged side of the building gaped open like a devouring mouth. “Any chance we can get tarps over the side of the building? After I have a chance to get up top and make sure they wouldn’t conceal anything. But not tacked to the side of the building until we’ve examined it.”

Charity turned toward the two men. “Think so?”

“I’m sure,” said Alex. “We have a storage room at the school still full of roofing tarps from a tornado that went through a few years ago.”

“FEMA roofs,” Darcy said.

Alex laughed. “I’ve heard them called that.”

“Thanks for the tarps,” Darcy said. “We need to make sure any evidence inside is protected as well as you’ve done outside.”

Standing near the edge of what appeared to be the blast circle, Darcy took in the damage to the cinder block wall, and the spread of debris, many of the larger pieces lying on the ground still, but carefully tucked into clear evidence bags for protection.

“I’m glad you didn’t start gathering it up yet,” she said to Charity. “I’ll get a very clear picture this way. I’m going to walk around the perimeter and take some photos.”

Charity nodded. “Do what you need to. Jeff and Randy and I will get back to scouring the area. We started at one edge and have been working our way slowly and carefully across so as to disturb as little as possible.”

Darcy nodded, both impressed and pleased. Of course, as an investigator, Charity had plenty of knowledge of how to protect evidence.

She started walking around the edge of the yellow tape, aware that Alex stayed nearby, but not concerned about it. With every step she took, she studied the ground in case something had blown farther out than the gridded area that the fire people had laid out. While they appeared to have properly designated the blast area, she’d long ago learned that some things flew a much greater distance than you’d expect. Some things that might appear innocuous when removed from all the surrounding evidence. Like a shiny building nail she’d found forty feet from the blast radius two cases ago.

She stopped and took another photo toward the center of the blast. “Do you suppose,” she asked Alex absently, “we could organize a search of the area farther out?”

“I would think so. I could probably get a bunch of my students...”

She shook her head. “Sorry.”

He sighed. “Yeah.”

She faced him then, her heart skipping a surprised beat as she was struck again by his attractive features. “I shouldn’t have to explain to you.”

“You don’t. But I don’t have to like it. My students are all good people, but I understand you have to figure that out for yourself. The problem is, Darcy, how are you going to form a search party if you don’t know who to trust?”

“Uniforms,” she said shortly, then stopped. A young man stood at the edge of the no-man’s land, his hands in his pockets, his gaze intent on the work around the bombed area.

“Who’s that?” she asked sharply.

Alex swiveled his head. “Jackson Castor. Jack. He’s in my cabinetry class. Great guy.”

“Hmm.” Darcy said no more but continued to slowly follow her circumnavigation while studying the ground far beyond the area where the firemen worked. When the opportunity arrived, she included Jackson Castor in a couple of shots.

Perps often showed a great deal of interest in the crime scene. She knew of numerous cases where a bomber had returned to watch the investigation while admiring his handiwork. Before she said anything about it, however, she was going to find out more about this Castor person.

She suspected Alex knew what had crossed her mind but she’d already sensed how protective he was of his students. A broody mother hen, she thought with amusement, but still one who had been an FBI agent and therefore probably knew how often the perpetrators showed up at the crime scene. Nope, better not to say a word. Maybe let him think the young man’s presence had just slid right by her because of her focus on the ground.

The grasses were beginning to green with the spring, which didn’t make her search any easier. What was the likelihood there’d been any metal in that bomb? Nobody had mentioned a pipe bomb or nails, so they surely hadn’t discovered any nails and not enough debris to know the type of bomb.

Then she spied something odd. A green blade of grass had a hole in it. Squatting, she looked more closely. The edge of the hole was blackened. Something awfully hot had passed through it.

She set her tablet beside her, and pulled on a pair of gloves so she could comb through the grass. Something had to be here unless it was nothing but a cinder. She couldn’t take that chance.

She sensed Alex squat beside her, but he didn’t say anything. Gently she moved blades of grass, drawing a line in her mind. The blast had come from over there. Anything flying from it would have come from the same general direction. That told her where to concentrate her efforts.

Then she spied it: a three-inch piece of slender wire. A little melted at one end, but otherwise surprisingly unaffected. It might be nothing, or it might be a part of the triggering device. Certainly not to be left behind. She took a photo of it and the blade of grass.

Then she tugged out an evidence bag, used a pen from her pocket to write on it, then carefully sealed the wire in the bag. Looking up, she tried to decide if it would be safe to leave it here or if she should mark the spot and take it.

Take it, she decided. This area hadn’t been cordoned off. “I need some evidence markers from the back of my truck, or from the fire department.”

Alex straightened. “I’ll get you some from them. Might as well keep the numbering the same.”

“Thanks.” She quickly scrawled the GPS coordinates on her pad and waited for Alex to return with the plastic tent-style markers. When he did, she placed the numbered yellow piece and took another photo before adding the number to her description on the pad.

Painstaking work. Every bit of it.

“Any thoughts on what it could be?” Alex asked. He didn’t sound as if he expected an answer.

“Too soon,” she said anyway. All she knew for certain was that it had been blown out here by the explosion.

She straightened up and looked around. “I need to change into some decent work clothes. And ask Charity to widen her cordon considerably. How’s the motel?”

“It’s clean but it’s old,” he said. “Wish we had something better to offer.”

“Clean is good enough. How do I find it?”

* * *

Alex watched her talk to Charity, who agreed to bring the cordon out another thirty or forty feet. He wondered if she ever softened or if she was always so businesslike.

Then he saw her walking toward Jack Castor. Immediately he jogged over. He knew Jack well and was absolutely certain he wasn’t capable of doing something like this. Yeah, he understood why Darcy was probably looking askance at the youth, but...

He caught himself. He’d learned a long time ago not to make those assumptions about anyone. Your own mother could be the murderer. Living with that kind of knowledge, borne out in his work, had driven him to a more peaceful life. Reality could be ugly. Oddly, he found himself recalling a quip he heard from reporters: if your mother says she loves you, check it out.

Darcy was doing her job. Ugliness had penetrated his new life, and he needed to squash urges that could hinder this investigation. Whoever had done this might move to larger bombs, bombs that could take a life. No time to be overprotective.

He reached Darcy and Jack in time to hear her say pleasantly, “Alex says you’re in his cabinetry class. So this bombing interests you?”

Jack grinned. “A whole lot. I never told anybody because I’m just a ranch kid and might not be able to go to college, but I always wanted to work for ATF.”

“Yeah?” Darcy smiled. “It’s fascinating work. What draws you to it?”

Jack’s smile faded. “I have a friend... Well, his grandfather was killed in the Oklahoma City bombing. He wasn’t even born yet, but his mom talked about it a lot for years and I heard about it, and every time she did I just wanted to do something useful about it. I know that’s over and done with, but it wasn’t the last bomb.”

“No, it wasn’t.” She turned and indicated the school. “You have any ideas about this?”

“Who’d do this, you mean?”

Darcy simply waited.

“No.” Jack looked almost crestfallen. “I wish I did. I mean, I can listen around and see if I hear anything, but I haven’t yet.” He looked down, then back at Darcy. “That’s the weird part.”

“What is?”

“You’d think someone would brag about it.”

“Why do you think that?”

“Well...” Jack shifted from one foot to the other. “If it was some kid at the school...he’d tell someone. Most of us can’t keep a secret that exciting.”

Alex was surprised when Darcy laughed. “You make a good point, Jack.”

Jack’s smile returned. “Anyway, whoever did it would probably want to tell at least one person, someone he trusted, right? But that person would probably spill the beans to someone else...” He shrugged. “Or not. I guess some people must be really good at keeping secrets.”

“Some are,” Darcy agreed. “But your thinking is good. Keep it up. You’re going to have to move back soon. We’re extending the perimeter.”

“Can I help with anything?” Jack asked eagerly.

Darcy shook her head. “Officials only.”

“Okay, I’ll stay out of the way.”

“You do that.”

Then she continued toward her truck. Alex followed, still concerned. “What are you thinking?” he asked as she opened her truck door.

“You mean about Jack?”

“Of course about Jack.”

“Nothing yet,” she said with a shrug. “Keep your pants on, Alex. It’s early days.”

He watched her drive away and half wished he could shake her out of her detachment. Then he remembered what had happened when he’d lost his. Divorce. Nightmares. End of career.

Aw, screw it, he thought and headed for the undamaged part of the school to check on those tarps. Let the agent do her job. He’d stay as far away as he could because he didn’t want the nightmares to come back. And he sure as hell didn’t need any new ones.

* * *

At the motel, which was clean albeit seriously outdated, Darcy showered away the travel grime, then changed into her gray working overalls and black boots. On her way back out to the site, she stopped long enough to grab another latte to stave off the fatigue from the long drive and added more tall cups of black coffee for the firefighters working out there.

She was surprised when she pulled into the parking lot to see that a small crowd of onlookers had appeared. Either word had got out that the ATF was here, or the firemen had found something exciting.

If they were curious because of her, they were in for a serious disappointment, she thought wryly. One agent in overalls was hardly the show they’d be hoping for. And they’d be right. Most explosions drew a bigger response, but at the moment too many cases had investigators pretty tied up. If she needed some backup, she would get it, but right now hands were tied.

She pulled in between two dusty pickup trucks, then retrieved her laptop and evidence case from the back of her truck.

Almost at once Jackson Castor appeared. “Let me at least carry the coffee,” he said eagerly.

So he was still here, still interested in the goings-on. Might be a flag, might not be. So far nothing was setting off her internal warnings except his presence.

“Thanks. Make sure everyone working gets a cup,” she said. Relieved of the extra coffees, she could handle the other items better. “Is Alex still around?”

“Yeah. He’s been inside the school a lot. I guess you wanted some tarps?”

And just how did he know that? Was Alex talking to him? And what if all these people were here because something important had been found? The ATF preferred to keep evidence to themselves until they had the most complete picture possible. Dribbling news out to the public could only create problems and possibly false expectations or, worse, appear to accuse innocent people.

Not that her organization was completely without stains and mistakes. Like any organization, it was made up of people and people weren’t perfect.

The cordon had been extended as she had asked, creating a much-wider area for investigation. She asked Jack to remain at the edge of the yellow tape and told him she’d tell everyone he was holding coffee for them. He seemed pleased by his job, however humble.

Well, she thought, it was possible he was just a kid who was interested in a career. It didn’t have to mean anything that he was hanging around so eagerly. She discovered she was honestly hoping he was as innocent as Alex believed him to be.

The crowd, such as it was, showed a lot of interest in her, but she could feel their repressed disappointment that she was just one small woman and she didn’t have a brawny team marching with her.

Not a very impressive display for the ATF, she thought with grim humor.

As she approached the most obviously blackened area, she caught up with Charity Camden. “Jack Castor. You know him?”

“The high school kid? Sort of. I seem to remember him from a talk I gave at the school about arson last fall. Eager and full of questions. Good questions.”

How interesting, Darcy thought but kept the thought to herself. “I left him at the cordon holding coffee for you and your guys, and anyone else working on this. Maybe you’re used to it, but it feels chilly to me out here.”

Charity smiled. “Coffee’s always welcome. Thanks.”

“What brought the crowd? Did you find something?”

Charity laughed. “Not what, but who. They heard ATF was here. Enjoy your celebrity, if you can. I experienced a bit of it after I married Wayne. Good people, but curious as hell.”

She called to her two helpers, telling them Jack had coffee for them. That cleared the zone briefly for Darcy, who set her equipment down, pulled on her gloves, made sure her loupe was in her pocket along with some evidence bags and started to walk through the grid laid out by the firefighters.

She squatted often, examining the contents of a bag more closely and checking the ground beneath it. Once, she lifted her head and sniffed the air. It still contained the faintest tang of fuel oil after nearly two days. It must have soaked the ground.

She added that tidbit to her increasing list of tidbits. She needed to find out what kind of fuel it was, because she needed to know its burn characteristics but also because she needed to know why she could still smell it. Fuel oil evaporated quickly if it didn’t burn. It was the benzenes and xylenes that made up the gasoline that created most of the familiar smell. Those evaporated relatively quickly, so a lot must have leaked out of that bomb without burning at any point.

That brought her head up. Still squatting, she thought about it. That much fuel oil? In a closed container, why add the fertilizer? You could just make a great Molotov cocktail.

She looked toward the building. But it wouldn’t have caused that kind of damage. She closed her eyes again, sniffing and thinking about it. Apparently the bomber hadn’t perfected his method. He’d left far too much gasoline residue behind. Way too much.

Had this been a practice bomb? The notion chilled her deeply. One accident might well become a string of bombs if this had been a trial run.

Good God!

“Can I join you?”

Darcy turned her head a little in response to Charity’s voice. “Yeah. Don’t disturb anything.” She almost winced as she heard herself. Charity certainly didn’t need that warning.

Soon Charity was squatting beside her, saying, “I figured once we move everything we can see out of here we’ll need to look again.”

“Yeah, with a rake. It’s hard to be sure we haven’t stomped something into the dirt.” Then she pointed toward where she’d found the wire. “We have all that to cover, too.”

“You’re sure the wire came from the explosion?”

“Unless someone was soldering out there, yeah.”

Charity sighed. “I’ve seen some bad fires, Darcy, but nothing like this. You’ll have to tell me what to do.”

“I don’t seem to have a problem with that, huh?” Darcy’s voice was dry.

Charity chuckled quietly. “That’s okay. There can never be too many reminders. By the way, Alex said you needed a place to spread all this out. He’s talking the principal into turning the gymnasium over to you. I don’t get why that would be a problem. We haven’t even been able to determine if the rest of the building is structurally sound yet. We have an engineer coming from Gillette on Thursday. Meantime, no school. And thanks again for the coffee.” She raised her foam cup as if in toast, then sipped.

“Darcy?”

“Yeah?”

“You’ve been squatting here an awfully long time. Is something bothering you or do you need help getting up now?”

It was such a relief to just laugh. Darcy let it out, along with a lot of tension. “I was thinking. You’re the arson person. Do you still smell fuel oil?”

“Yeah, I do. Some didn’t burn off. The ground must be soaked. It’s driving my guys crazy because I won’t let them smoke anywhere around here.”

Darcy turned her head. “Your guys smoke?”

Charity shrugged with a half smile. “The chief, my husband, hates it, but it’s as if these guys just can’t get enough smoke. They’re not allowed to do it in public, but it’s no secret, really.”

“Criminy,” Darcy remarked.

“Yeah. You’d think they never saw the results of careless smoking. Anyway, fuel oil. I gather it’s bothering you, too.”

“If the bomb was precisely made, the residue of the fuel oil, the volatile chemicals in it, should be pretty much gone by now. The fact that I can smell it here in the open air after all this time...” She shook her head a little.

“You’re thinking this guy didn’t know what he was doing?”

“I’m thinking he knows what he’s doing but hasn’t quite got it right.”

Charity drew a sharp breath. “I don’t like what that might mean.”

“Me neither. Say, you know Alex, right?”

“Fairly well, I guess. He’s a friend of Wayne’s.”

“Well, he worked for BSU, but from what he said I gather he left some demons behind. Do you think I’d disturb him if I asked him for an evaluation?”

At that moment, Darcy’s knees decided to raise an objection. She straightened and Charity was right beside her. The two of them stood sipping their coffees while Darcy shook her legs a bit and waited for Charity’s answer.

“I honestly don’t know what his instinctive reaction would be,” Charity answered finally, drawing the words out as if she were still pondering. “I know this school matters a lot to him, and his students even more. He’s the kind of teacher we’d all have liked, you know? He takes a personal interest and, from what I hear, is amazingly even-tempered even when provoked by some teen. You know how teens are. Or you can remember.”

“Smart mouths.”

“Yeah. And they push each other into stupidity sometimes. But he’s never criticized one of them in a way that anybody complains about. Gifted with dealing with testosterone, I guess. But for the rest?” She looked at Darcy. “I’ve never talked with him much about his FBI days. Wayne’s given me the sense that Alex would prefer to forget them. But given that his school has been struck by a bomb...and more specifically his shop facilities...” She trailed off. “I dunno, Darcy. He’s a grown man. He knows how to say no. My guess is that he’d like to do something constructive about this mess, but I can’t guarantee anything.”

“I’m not asking for a guarantee. I just want to avoid hitting a raw nerve, but I’m not trying to put you on the spot or deprive him of the right to speak for himself.”

She was good at figuring out the mechanics of the bomb. Good at tracking evidence back to its source. Not so good at trying to evaluate the psychology of a bomber. Other than that they were usually cowards, she didn’t know a whole lot. Once she’d amassed enough evidence, the FBI would probably assist in this investigation. They often did, having their own skill sets and people. But she didn’t want to wait that long. She wanted to know if her nose was misleading her. Literally.

“Have you been inside the building?” she asked Charity.

“Sure. Fortunately, the blast didn’t escape the shop rooms in there. Stopped dead at the corridor wall.”

“More cinder block?”

“I believe so. I’m sure we have all that info back at the department. The paint is blackened but I was mostly looking at the containment. You can probably tell a lot more. Let’s walk around to the door, though. I don’t want to disturb the ground out here any more than necessary.”

“Agreed,” Darcy answered, surprised at how glad she was to have Charity as a teammate in this. Someone to show her around, someone who could answer questions because she knew the area and the people. Alex could do as much and in some instances more, if he was willing. She wished she knew what had happened to him in the BSU. She had no difficulty imagining the ugly minutiae he must have dealt with in that job, but something had pushed him to a breaking point. One that had cost him a whole lot.

She walked with Charity, ignoring the twenty-five or thirty people who’d gathered, nodding briefly at Jackson Castor, who still held the bag of cooling coffees that hadn’t been claimed by the workmen.

“Have a coffee, Jack,” she said. “No point letting it all cool down.”

He grinned and nodded.

And if she were him, she’d probably have wandered away in boredom by now. He was what, seventeen or eighteen? Most people that age wouldn’t want to stand around being bored, because sure as heck nothing exciting was happening right now.

Which caused a quiet ping on her internal radar.

Just as they rounded a corner of the building to face large steel doors with small windows, one of the doors opened and the Viking appeared. Well, it was Alex, but he still reminded her of a beardless Viking, one that reminded her she was still very much a woman. She wondered if that reaction would wear off. She hoped so because she’d spent a lot of effort developing a cool, professional persona in a career field dominated by men. Now that she was leading an investigation, it would be a bad time to mess that up by giving in to a sexual attraction.

Alex greeted her with a nod and a pleasant smile, and eyes that slipped over her body like a caress. “All set. You can use the gymnasium as long as we spread some of those tarps on the floor. I can get some help doing that for you. Gotta protect that finish, you know.”

Darcy smiled. “I get it. That gloss on a basketball floor is expensive and essential.”

“Oh, yeah.” His smile widened a shade. “Going to look around inside?”

“Charity’s showing me.”

“I’ll come along. I promise not to touch.”

He said it humorously. She was quite sure he knew all about preserving evidence. Still, he was offering friendliness. He was also sending signals that he didn’t want to be left out of this. Good. She didn’t need him to take over, but she was sure his brain might be worth picking. A complete 180 from her initial reaction. She just hoped it wasn’t hormone-driven.

The shop rooms were at the back of the school, in what appeared to be a separate wing. As they turned into the corridor leading to them, she stopped. From this vantage point, it appeared that farther down, near some doors on the right, the wall had bulged outward.

“What?” Alex asked.

She pointed. “Look down the right wall. What do you see?”

Alex drew a breath. Charity muttered something. “It’s bulging,” Alex said. “Good God. What kind of force would be needed to do that?”

“I need to do some calculations,” Darcy answered. Her gaze swept down along the wall, then to the ceiling overhead. A drop ceiling, it should have showed some sign if it had been affected, but it appeared to be perfectly all right. She’d need some measurements to be sure, but her eyes were telling her it was still square.

Then she looked at the bulge again. “The bomb was fairly low. Right now I’d guess it was outside of the building when it detonated. Look what it did to the exterior wall. If it had been inside I think we’d see more than some bowing on that wall.”

Alex nodded. “I think you’re right.”

“I still need to see inside the rooms. I’m just guessing.” But a picture was beginning to build, and it didn’t include access to the school when it was locked up overnight. Another piece to the puzzle perhaps.

They continued down the corridor and Alex pulled out a key ring. “This seems ridiculous now,” he said as he slipped a key into the lock on the nearest door. It turned easily. “Well, I didn’t expect that,” he remarked. “I thought it would be busted.”

It turned out, however, that the door was out of line and didn’t want to open easily. “I imagine,” he said, “that you don’t want to take an ax to this.”

“I’d rather see the original damage. Then I want to measure that bulge and how far it is from the bomb opening.” She glanced at Charity. “Can I get a surveyor out here?”

“I’m sure you can get anything you want.”

Alex spoke. “I know just the guy. He’ll be able to tell how deformed the wall is.” He leaned into the door while holding the latch open and pushed. It moved just a little. “Okay...” He gave another shove, harder, a grunt escaping him this time, but the door opened four inches.

“We’re on our way,” Charity remarked. “Should I get a pry bar from the truck?”

“Let me give it one more try. It feels like something is behind it.”

He leaned backward into the door, this time using his entire body for leverage, and slowly, scraping every inch of the way, it opened wide enough that Darcy could slip inside.

There the story was very different. Not only were shop machines and tables twisted and tossed everywhere, but the ceiling had also burned and collapsed, leaving exposed wires dangling. “Circuit breakers off?” she asked.

“Absolutely,” Alex said, easing his way in beside her.

“Surprise,” Darcy muttered. “It looks like a bomb went off.”

“No kidding,” he answered. “Do you know what I’m seeing?”

She turned her head toward him, curious. “What?”

“A lot of opportunity smashed. A lot of really good projects my students were working on, destroyed. We might be able to get this shop up and running by next fall, but there are a lot of seniors who had some really fine stuff underway here, and it’s gone. Son of a...” He stopped himself, but while his face remained emotionless, she could feel anger seething in him. Then he looked at her. “They don’t get their dreams back. Their excitement over all they were achieving.”

“No.” Her answer might have been flat, but she felt her heart squeeze. He’d hit on the part she tried to avoid thinking about. “Collateral damage.” There was always collateral damage.

“Yeah,” he agreed. “Collateral. Such a cold word.”

No point standing here and grieving. Tucking her hands into one of the many pockets on her overalls, she passed him some disposable booties, then donned a pair over her work boots. “Less contamination,” she remarked out of habit. God, was she becoming one of those people who persisted in telling others what they probably already knew? But Alex didn’t take it amiss.

“I’ll stay out here,” Charity said. “God knows what’s on my boots and you don’t have any of those that’ll go over these things.”

It was true. Darcy tossed her a smile, pulled a couple of high-intensity penlights out of another of her pockets and began to scan what she could see without moving from top to bottom. Alex took the other flashlight and followed suit. “Anything unusual?” he asked.

“Anything. Just point it out to me if it catches your eye.”

“Got it.”

“Charity? I don’t smell the fuel oil in here. It’s all outside. It wouldn’t dissipate in here, not as fast, so...”

“I read you. Excessive fuel oil was used, so there ought to be some scent in here. Definitely seems like the explosion was just outside.”

Darcy nodded. “I suspect that what we’ll find in here will mainly be blast debris, not much from the device itself. But we still have to look.”

And what a job it was going to be, she thought as she looked around. She’d seen plenty of scenes like this; she had no illusion about the painstaking work facing her. No illusion, either, about the fact that she’d get on-site help only if some were freed up elsewhere. Conard City, Wyoming, was kind of off the map and radar with so many other important things happening. Unless she found some kind of indicator signifying militants or terrorists in the area, she was pretty much on her own. A vanguard without follow-up.

“Damn,” Alex said emphatically.

“What?” Darcy immediately followed the beam of his flashlight. He wiggled it over some blackened heap that seemed to have at least one thick leg attached.

“Chuck Ingram was working on that. A butcher-block island for his mother. She’d wanted one for years, but they were out of reach, so he saved up money for the last two years from his part-time job to buy the best, hardest wood. Glued the wood together, braced it, tooled the legs... He was going to give it to his mom for Mother’s Day. He was almost done.”

Darcy stared at what was now a charred lump and felt a growing flame of anger deep inside. This was about a lot more than a bomb, how it was built and who built it. This was about lives, hopes, dreams. “Hell.” She usually avoided swearing, but that word seemed mild right now.

“There are other projects like that in here,” Alex said grimly. “We gotta get this guy. That’s the only way I can help these kids now.”

With that, he passed back the flashlight and eased out of the room. Darcy saw Charity watching him as he left the building.

Then Charity leaned her head through the door. “It’s probably too late to clean up this mess,” she said. “I mean, we could get more wood for Chuck, but we can’t give him back the hours he spent on that. Even if we could arrange for him to work in the shop at the college.”

“No.” Darcy scanned the room some more. “Okay, I’m going to need to take a lot of photos before I even start looking around. Then the tarps.”

“My guys can help you on the roof, when you’re ready to check it.”

“Thanks. I’m definitely going to need some help with this.”

She eased back out of the room and pulled off her booties, folding them inside out in case they’d picked up something that might prove useful.

“I’m surprised you’re alone,” Charity said.

“I wouldn’t ordinarily be. Bad time. The bureau is overtaxed right now. Hopefully that’ll change soon. Either that, or I find a lead to the bomber. Meantime, preserve the evidence.” The endless mantra. Preserve the evidence.

And try not to think too hard about all the students who’d just had their work blown up by some jackass.

Chapter 3

Two days later, all the debris that had been bagged and tagged had been moved into the gymnasium, laid out in a duplicate of the grid outside, preserving positions. Off-duty firefighters and cops had volunteered to comb the ground outside, many of them on their hands and knees, gently raking over soil that had been trampled. A tarp covered the hole in the building. Surprisingly little had been found on the steel roof, arguing that the bomb had indeed been placed low.

With Alex’s help, Darcy had taken measurements of everything: the size of the hole in the building, the blast radius, the area of damage in the shop. A surveyor had accurately measured the bulge in the interior cinder block wall.

Diagrams had begun to sprout on her computer—vectors of force running outward until she was fairly certain she’d localized the center of the explosion. All of this she’d sent back to the field office for analysis along with carefully preserved samples of the ground, the burned wood, the soot. Soon they’d be able to tell her more about the bomb’s force and content.

But the smell of fuel oil outside still bothered her. A couple of evenings later, Alex asked her to join him at the diner for supper and she agreed, even though she knew she should feel wary of the attraction she felt for him. Boy, it was getting bad, so bad that she couldn’t even think of him without tingling in her most feminine places. She couldn’t remember the last time any man had made her feel that way just by virtue of existing.

She desperately turned her thoughts back to business and ordered her body to shut up.

Maybe she’d get the opportunity to talk to him in a more speculative way than she could allow at the scene. There she had to be the ultimate science expert, relying on proof, on actual evidence. That would be Alex’s trained inclination as well, which is why she trusted him not to misunderstand if she discussed her thoughts tentatively. Brainstorming was something you could do with a colleague.

But Alex’s thoughts were headed in a different direction, so she let him lead the conversation. Her opening would come and maybe she’d stop trying to imagine that spark she saw in his blue eyes reciprocated her growing desires.

“So how’d you get into the ATF?” he asked as they ate a delicious beef stew accompanied by fresh crusty bread.

“Probably the same way you got into the FBI,” she said humorously. “A recruiter came to my college.”

He laughed. “Uh, yeah. Same here. Except they didn’t want to snap me up right away. I had a double major in criminology and psychology. They suggested that there’d be a job waiting for me if I did well in civilian police work.”

“I guess you did.”

“So it would seem. Three years into my work with Miami PD, they came knocking again. I thought they’d forgotten me.”

She shook her head. “Now you know they never forget.”

He laughed again. “You?”

“I majored in chemistry and physics, and the way they explained the work intrigued me, made me feel I could do some actual good. They snapped me up just before I graduated and sent me for intensive training. They wanted a scientist more than a law enforcement officer. I’ve been working with explosives ever since.”

He slipped his fork back into his bowl. “Do you ever wonder how they settled on you to begin with? I wasn’t the only double major in criminology and psychology.”

“And I wasn’t the only one majoring in chemistry and physics. I don’t know about you, but I poked my head up. They had an interviewer on campus and I was just curious, so I went. I walked into their field of attention. But you didn’t?”

He shook his head. “I still don’t know why I was approached, and I doubt anyone could even tell me now. It was a while ago. Then, like you, I went through a whole lot of training and testing and wound up in the BSU.”

“Not a good thing, I gather?”

He shook his head a little. “You know, it’s ugly. That kind of work is always ugly. But for a long time I was able to live with it because we were helping take some horrible people off the streets. It seemed like a fair trade-off. I was proud every time we could provide information that helped narrow the search and bring a creep to justice. For a while that was enough.”

She hesitated, eating a bit more stew before taking a dangerous step. “Then it wasn’t.”

He pressed his lips together before speaking again. “No. It wasn’t.” He forgot all about his meal and stared into space, seeming to be lost in memory. Then he shook his head. “You hear of the bicycle killer case?”

Oh, she had. She drew a sharp breath. Even the bits she’d heard had been sickening. Little girls, a murderous serial pedophile, torture. “Alex, I’m sorry.”

“Anyway, that was my last case. I had a daughter that age.”

He didn’t need to say more. He probably saw his own child in every victim profile that crossed his desk, in every bit of suffering and torture. She didn’t even want to try to imagine it. She was sure he’d learned to keep a certain level of detachment, just as she had, but having a daughter the same age as the victims? Her own detachment would have shattered in the face of that, too.

He probably carried scars and nightmares that would never go away.

“Your daughter?” she asked presently.

“She lives with her mother. I tipped off the rails for a while. Anger, not sleeping, nightmares... I wasn’t good for either of them. Hell, I wasn’t good for myself. But I don’t want to get into that.”

“Of course not.” But she couldn’t quash the ache in her heart for him. God, she hoped none of her jobs ever brought her to that precipice. She lowered her head, giving him privacy, appreciating the honesty he’d just shared with her. He needn’t have been so frank with her, a woman who was nearly a complete stranger. What did they have in common, after all, except a background as federal employees?

Eating halted conversation for a while and then Alex spoke again. “You probably don’t want me in the middle of things, since I’m so protective of my students.”

She hesitated again, putting down her fork and dabbing her mouth with a paper napkin. “Depends on how you want to help.”

He raised his head a bit from his intense study of the bowl in front of him and smiled faintly. “I know next to nothing about your technical end of it. I couldn’t intervene or interfere in any way. But I know quite a bit about human psychology.”

She didn’t doubt it. Aberrant psychology mostly, but still useful. “Well...I was disturbed by something. I wanted to mention it to you, if you don’t mind.”

“Sure, go ahead.”

“When I arrived, the smell of fuel oil was still evident. The smell, as you must know, comes from the volatiles in the fuel—benzenes and xylenes for the most part. The fact that the odor was still apparent outdoors two days after the bombing means an awful lot of fuel soaked into the ground, rather than burning, and too much to evaporate quickly. Today the smell was gone, but I wouldn’t have expected it to be there as long as it was.”

“Meaning?”

“Too much was used. It never burned. It soaked the ground so that it evaporated more slowly.”

“So an inexperienced bomber.”

“Maybe.” She pushed her bowl to the side and lowered her voice. “Maybe an experimental bomb. Maybe a test run.”

His face hardened into expressionless stone. “Let’s get out of here. We can talk privately at my house.”

She thought that was a pretty good idea.

The sun had long since disappeared behind the western mountains, making the light flat though it was far from dark yet. Nothing cast much of a shadow if it cast one at all.

She drove behind Alex to his house, a small two-story near the high school with a well-tended yard. When she stepped inside, she knew what he did with his spare time, and to work out the demons. The place gleamed with loving care, the woodwork was amazing and classic. The oak floor beneath her feet in the entry didn’t creak even a little bit.

“Did you do all this?” she asked as he closed the door behind her.

“I bought it for a song and gutted it. It was bad, but the basic bones were sound.”

“Beautiful work,” she remarked, touching the handrail on the staircase, then turning to admire the fine-looking wainscoting in white oak.

“Let’s go to the kitchen. I didn’t get my usual coffee from Maude and I can make you a latte if you want.”

The kitchen was as up-to-date as any she’d seen. “Let me guess, you made the cabinets, too.”

He nodded while he tossed his jacket over a chair and turned to the coffee maker. “Old houses didn’t have a lot of cabinetry. I built more than I need, but I enjoy the work so I just kept going.”

“Well, it’s gorgeous,” she told him frankly. Then she spied the kitchen table and pointed to it. “You made that, too?”

“Yeah,” he said offhandedly.

“You sure keep busy, and you do wonderful work.”

He smiled as he switched the coffee maker on and faced her. “It’s nice to be able to do what I love. Grab a seat. Did you want that latte?”

“Regular will be fine. Thanks for the offer.”

He leaned back against the counter, folding his arms and studied her. “You’ve got an uneasy feeling with little to pin it on.”

“Very good, Dr. Freud.”

A snort escaped him. “I don’t think that way. No Oedipus complexes for me. No, it was pretty obvious from what you said. No kudos for me. So tell me.”

“That’s the thing,” she admitted. “I want to pick your brain about the psychology of the bomber, because that’s not my area. How the bomb was built, yes. That’s what I do. But since I don’t have a whole team out here, what with everyone so busy on other cases...” She paused. “I don’t know if you’ve been paying attention since you left the bureau, but violence is on the rise. The kind of violence ATF deals with. Guns. Bombs. I don’t know whether it’s just a growing population or a genuine change going on.”

“Change,” he said succinctly. “People are getting bolder about expressing themselves in deadly ways. Just as hate crimes are on the rise. I’d like to be able to point to one thing as the causative agent, but I think it’s a whole bunch of things, so I’m not going to trot out the list. It is what it is, and it’s getting worse. That’s all we need to know right now.”

“Bad enough that’s it’s happening,” she agreed. “There are probably a whole lot of different motives anyway. Not one size fits all.”

“No.” He turned and pulled out two mugs from a cupboard. “Black, milk, sugar?”

“Black’s fine, thanks.”

He put the mugs on the table and joined her. Facing each other once again as they had at the diner. “So the excess gasoline is bothering you?”

“Yes, it is,” she acknowledged. “Of course, the spill could have been a deliberate attempt to spread any fire in the hopes that evidence would be destroyed.”

“Maybe.” He frowned, leaning back and cradling his mug in both hands.

“The thing is, the concussive force of a bomb often snuffs any fire in its immediate vicinity, like blowing out a candle. You need debris that’s hot enough to start a fire when the concussion passes or it lands somewhere. Now it happens all the time, but not every time, that we get extensive fire away from the blast. Anyway, the smell of that gasoline was obviously too close. It didn’t burn.”

“Or too far away, which doesn’t seem likely given the hole in the side of the building. So you’re thinking this was a mistake of some kind?”

“Possibly.” She sipped coffee, running bits and pieces through her mind, trying to fit them together. She’d know more tomorrow or the next day as she examined the debris and received evaluations from the field office. “Our bomber could always stop with this one. Maybe it said all he wanted to say. On the other hand, what if this was a trial run? He’d be learning nearly as much as I am.”

Then she leaned forward, her full attention on him. “Ponder something for me, Alex. What would make that corner of the school a better target than any other? Assuming it wasn’t just someone with a—what did you call it?—a hatred of band saws.”

He set his mug on the table and his gaze grew distant as he thought. She let him be. He was coming at this from a totally different perspective than she could: the psychology.

“Not easy to see back there at night from the street. Pretty secluded, actually.”

“No security lights?”

“We’ve never needed them. Some in the front of the school near the entrance, but back there it’s not a good place to break in regardless.”

“No garage doors?”

“You saw the only two. They’re on the shop wing, facing the street. The auto shop is up there on that end of the building. The back...that’s all wood and metalworking. If we need to bring in something large, it’s delivered out front to the garage doors. Access between the work areas is good, but...” He shook his head. “If I wanted to break in to steal something, that would be the place, except that the risk of being spied by a patrol is high. But bombing? The back, definitely.”

She nodded. She’d already seen what he meant. It was a wonder the damage hadn’t spread farther. “Okay. Why not someplace else?”

“Almost anyplace else would get you a classroom. The interior doors are all fire doors and locked. So if you want to get into the building, a classroom wouldn’t be the best route. If all you want to do is destroy something, you’d get thirty desks and a whiteboard.” He paused.

“The administrative offices are in the center. Hard to get to except from inside. The gym...well, you saw for yourself. It would have made a good target on the back side, but there are fire doors back there. I don’t know if they’d cause a problem. Reasons this guy would pick my corner? No really good ones other than what I’ve said.”

Now he rubbed his chin. “There had to be a reason other than not being spotted if all you want to do is bomb something. Why not blow out a classroom? Or try the gym...” He paused. “Unless my corner of the school resembled another target...”

Their eyes locked. Darcy’s heart began to race like a horse in a steeplechase. “I was afraid that you might say something like that,” she murmured.

“Yeah,” he said after a moment. “I was trying to avoid that idea.”

For a long time, neither of them said a word, lost in their own lines of thought. Alex rose once to freshen their coffee, and part of Darcy’s mind once again noted how much he looked like a Viking, except that he wasn’t shaggy at all. He ought to grow his hair out.

Her mind snapped back. She had to cut this out. Mooning over the shop teacher was well outside the parameters of anything she was here to do.

She was looking at what might be the first act of a serial bomber. No rhyme or reason, evidently, but a person who’d successfully created an ANFO bomb could not be ignored, even if he’d messed up and spilled fuel oil at the site.

“You need a break,” he said, surprising her. “I learned the hard way that thinking about something else for a while not only refreshed me, but allowed my subconscious to churn things. Have you thought about anything but this bomb since you got here?”

You. But she wasn’t going to admit that. “Yeah, a bit. I pay attention to other things but it keeps pulling me back. Your young friend Jack has been hanging around, too.”

His face darkened. “Darcy...”

“You know the profile, Alex. Do you really need me to remind you? Excessive interest in the scene along with a desire to join the bureau. Those two things together... Well, you tell me how else Jackson Castor could get to watch ATF in action. He also said he didn’t think he’d get to college, so any federal agency is going to remain a pipe dream for him. He’s walking around wearing warning flags.”

Alex’s expression remained grim, but he didn’t argue with her. Like it or not, he knew as well as she that Jack’s behavior was putting him in the crosshairs. He wouldn’t be convicted based on it, but he had to be watched and even investigated.

But what could you investigate with a kid that age? His whereabouts early on a Sunday morning? Whether he had the tools at home to put something like this together? An extraordinary interest in chemistry, maybe?

Darcy pushed her coffee away. “Sorry I’m upsetting you.”

“No, you’re being honest.” Some of the stoniness left his face. “I don’t like it, but I’m not dismissing it, okay?”

“Fair enough. You being his teacher and all, you can probably clear him easier than I could.”

Finally, the stone chipped away and he smiled again. “Yes, I could. And you don’t have to look so unhappy for mentioning it. It’s a legitimate point, and much as I like that young man, I’ve been aware of the same flags you mentioned. I’m not going to overlook them.”

She returned his smile then, inexplicably relieved. She hardly knew the man, so why care what he thought of her? “And we still have the issue of whether this was a trial run.”

He nodded. “That we do. Unfortunately we can’t know unless there’s another one.”

“I hope there’s not,” she said honestly. “It might make it easier to find the perp, but I’d rather not see it happen. Not at all.”

Just then Darcy’s cell phone began to vibrate in the breast pocket of her overalls. She pulled it out and answered the call.

“Agent Eccles, this is the sheriff’s office. We’ve picked up an intruder in the school gymnasium. Do you want us to keep him here or take him in for questioning?”

Her gaze leaped to Alex’s face. “Intruder,” she said. “Any ID?” she asked the deputy.

“Jackson Castor.”

* * *

Alex rode along with her in her black truck. He kept drumming his fingers on the window ledge, and his tension was almost palpable. He didn’t say anything, but Darcy had a good idea what he was thinking. Jackson. The kid he’d defended. What the hell was he doing poking around the evidence they had sequestered in the gym?

She was wondering exactly the same thing herself. Could they have really caught the bomber this easily? Experience had taught her that it wasn’t always difficult, and dealing with a kid Jackson’s age might make it a whole lot easier.

But strangely enough she didn’t want it to be Jack, even though she’d refused to let herself or Alex give the young man a pass. Warning flags. He was wearing them all.

She drove into the parking lot near the gymnasium end of the school. Several police cars were there now, lights swirling. “Jackson got himself into a mess,” she remarked as she parked and turned off the ignition.

“Sadly” was all Alex said. She glanced at him. Night had begun to deepen but the glow from the dashboard illuminated his face. His game face, she thought. Hard as granite. She wouldn’t have wanted to sit across an interrogation table from him right then.

They climbed out. Automatically Darcy carried her small evidence kit, which contained a digital recorder, among other smaller tools of investigation. She discovered she was hoping Jackson Castor had a really good explanation for this trespass.

She displayed her credentials to a deputy she didn’t know and was waved on through. Inside, two deputies sat on the bleachers to either side of a very chastened-looking Jack.

“Hey, Beau,” Alex said. “Hi, Cadell.”

The middle-aged deputy whose name tag said he was Sergeant Beauregard stood. “Lots of excuses, no real answers,” he said. “Jackson Castor. Age seventeen. But I guess you know him, Alex.”

“That I do. Is it all right if Agent Eccles and I question him ourselves?”

Beau nodded. “That’s why I called before I took him in. Hate to mess up a young idiot’s life unnecessarily.” He nodded to Darcy. “Agent. You need anything, let me know.”

“I certainly will, Sergeant Beauregard.”

“Just Beau. Nobody calls me anything else except my wife.”

“What does she call you?”

He flashed a grin. “Mostly nice things.” He and the other deputy, Cadell Marcus, moved around the edge of the gym.

Which left Darcy and Alex with a shamefaced Jack.

“Well?” Alex asked.

Darcy let him take the lead willingly at this point. Since he knew Jack, he might get further. Right now her insides felt as tight as an overwound spring.

Jack looked down. “I was curious. I saw all the stuff being moved, and I wanted to see how it was all laid out. How it works. I should have known there’d be a guard.”

Well, thought Darcy, that sounded naive enough to be believable. “How’d you get in?”

“I work as a trainer for the basketball team. I have keys.”

That caught her attention instantly. Forgetting that she wanted to look intimidating, she sat down beside Jack. “Keys, huh?”

“Yeah.”

“Why are you the trainer?”

“’Cause I’m not good enough to be on the team, but being the trainer gets me to all the away games for free.” He shrugged. “I was stupid, huh?”

“You could say that,” Alex replied, still standing, still looking intimidating.

“I just wanted to know.” Jack looked up. “I’ll never get to do this for real. Nobody will talk to me because I’m just a civilian. This’ll probably be my only chance to get up close to the ATF.” He flushed. “Darn, I sound like a girl with a crush.”

A remarkably astute observation, Darcy thought. She sighed. “How much do you know about what I do, Jack?”

“What I can read online.”

“Okay. Have you ever read what we look for around the scene in terms of people?”

“Profiles, you mean?” He glanced up at Alex as if seeking confirmation. “Oh, man. It’s me, isn’t it?”

“You how?” Darcy asked.

“Hanging around, showing too much interest, wanting to be in ATF and then this.” The young man jumped up. “But I didn’t do it!”

“I’m afraid,” said Alex heavily, “that Agent Eccles is now going to have to check you out. Thoroughly. Sorry, Jack, but even I can’t explain this away.”

Jack paced a few steps, then clenched his fists and closed his eyes. “Damn, I didn’t even think about that. I was just curious.”

“Maybe so,” said Darcy. “Did you notice anyone else who was interested?”

Jack’s eyes popped open. “I wasn’t paying attention to anyone else. Oh, man...”

Darcy wished he’d had a different answer. “Do I need to get a warrant to check out where you live?”

Jack shook his head. “Not for me. Come look. I’ll just tell my parents, I don’t think they’ll object because they won’t want me to be under suspicion. You can look at anything you want. When?”

“Now,” said Darcy, standing. “Sergeant Beauregard?”

“Yes, ma’am?” He came striding over.

“We’re going to need a few deputies to help us out. We need to investigate the Castor homestead.”

“How many?”

Darcy looked at Alex. “Are you familiar with the Castor place?”

“Been there several times.”

“Big?”

“I’d bring at least six deputies.”

She nodded and looked at Beauregard. “Six, maybe a couple more.”

“You got it. It might take an hour to pull it together.”

“That’s fine.” She returned her attention to Jack. “You sit right here, young man. Turn your phone over to Deputy Marcus. No calls until I say so.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“One more thing.” A small flicker of anger was trying to get started. “Did you touch anything in here?”

Jack shook his head. “I wouldn’t have anyway, but the deputies were already in here.”

She looked at Marcus. “He’s yours. I need to step outside.”

Marcus nodded and pressed Jack back down onto the bench.

* * *

Alex decided to accompany Darcy outside. She’d been very controlled with Jack, which he appreciated professionally, but he wondered what she was thinking. He knew what he was thinking: Jack was up to his neck in trouble now, although he still didn’t honestly believe his student had a role in the bombing. But it sure didn’t look good, and it couldn’t be ignored.

Outside, Darcy thrust her hands into the side pockets of her overalls. “Keys?” She repeated. “He had keys? He could have got into anything. Why didn’t everyone have to turn them in as soon as the bombing happened? I never thought just anyone had access to that building.” She kicked the earth. “Damn, I should have verified that.”

“It didn’t occur to me, either,” he said reassuringly. “I just assumed that would have been one of the first things the police did when sealing the scene.”

“I guess they never thought the entire building could be the scene.”

“I need to find out who was the scene commander. Someone needs a talking-to.”

“Probably a simple oversight,” she said grimly. “Otherwise everyone did a spectacular job. I shouldn’t be so angry. Besides, they clearly had a good guard set on the gymnasium, and there are still guys watching the blast area both inside and outside. Sorry.” Then again, she said disbelievingly, “Keys?”

“Sometimes the small oversights can really get to you.”

“And cause huge problems.”

He waited, admiring her restraint. He wouldn’t have blamed her for giving in to at least a small explosion of ire. She was right, the entire school should have been locked down, but he wasn’t accustomed to actually working crime scenes of any kind, and it had never crossed his mind that maybe it wasn’t a good thing that administrators were still able to get to their offices. After all, he’d gone in and asked for use of the tarps and the gym.

Darcy had probably thought he’d passed some kind of gatekeeper to do that. Instead he’d walked in as easily as if he were going to teach a class. Admittedly, there’d been a deputy at the door, but he hadn’t been restricted.

But maybe that’s because the deputies keeping watch pretty much knew everyone who should be able to access the school. Maybe they figured that going to talk to someone in administration was a necessary access.

It had been, but it shouldn’t have been so easy.

“I wonder how contaminated the scene is now,” Darcy said quietly. “My fault. I should have noticed when you led me inside to show me the wall of the shop. It should have occurred to me that I needed to check if there was a lockdown on the building.”

“Why would you imagine there wasn’t? First, that end of the building was locked down. Remember? Tape and two deputies. It’s not like the inside of the building was crawling with gawkers. Besides, we were really concerned about the structural integrity. We didn’t want anyone in there unnecessarily. So the lockdown wasn’t perfect, but it was good enough.”

“Until tonight.”

Well, yeah, he thought. Until tonight.

She faced him. “You need to know something. I’ve worked on a number of these cases but I’ve never been the lead on one. Now I’m out here on my own and I just made a potentially critical error. I wonder how many others I’ll make.”

Man, that must have been hard for her to say. She hardly knew him. He hesitated, wishing he dared to clasp her shoulder reassuringly but concerned about his roiled up feelings. Touching this woman might remind him of just how desirable he found her. Some lines were better not crossed.

He spoke, determined to keep this professional. “I don’t think you’ve made a critical error. Part of what you’re dealing with here is that darn near everyone knows everyone else. Maybe we aren’t being as careful as we should be since everyone is familiar, but we ought to be more cautious. Anyway, I don’t think you made any unjustified assumptions. I think we were a little more lax than you imagined. And I doubt there was a critical error, certainly not on your part.”

“I guess we’ll find out.” She looked out over the area away from the school.

“I did want to ask you, though. No criticism intended. But does the ATF usually send only one agent?”

“Depends on what’s going on, what local resources are available and how many we have tied up. We don’t have any slack right now. I was pulled off another case to come here. I guess everyone was thinking it was probably some kind of accident.”

“Is ANFO ever an accident?”

She surprised him. “Believe it or not, it does happen. It’s like anything else. A bomb is next to impossible to make deliberately, then a factory worker inadvertently spills something while smoking an illicit cigarette and kaboom.” She sighed. “You’ve read about it in the papers. Usually involving a chemical plant. So yeah, it happens, and that’s kind of what I was expecting to find here, but I’m not going to make that assumption without proof. And now that I’m here, I’m pretty sure this was deliberate, however sloppy.”

He nodded. “Tonight I wish I hadn’t quit smoking.”

That brought her face around to eye him. “You used to smoke?”

“Yeah, in college. I quit, obviously, but right now I wish I hadn’t.”

“I get you.” Then she shrugged. “Okay, so we go out to the Castor place, upset his family, going over every square inch inside and out, and hopefully by tomorrow night we’ve cleared him. I’m going to take one extended look out there, turn it over to the locals, then come back here. I need to go into that gym and start looking for any sign of a detonator. That might be our only clue to the perp. Everything else is off-the-shelf. Your sheriff hasn’t found record of a detonator being sold?”

“I’m sure he has. We’ve got all kinds of uses for them in this state. Checking them out is going to take time, especially when we don’t know exactly what we’re looking for. But if he finds anything suspicious, you’ll be the first to know. Not me.”

“Yeah.” She rubbed her eyes. “Okay. I need to make a quick sweep through the Castor homestead. Look for things that could have been used to make this bomb.”

“You’ll find them. Bags of fertilizer. Fuel for tractors. Pieces of pipe for repairs.”

She eyed him again. “Just about any ranch around here, right?”

He nodded, hating how tired she suddenly looked.

“Well, we’ve got to keep our eyes out for any indication that he might have been able to measure quantities carefully. That’ll be the important thing. He might have the ingredients, but putting them together takes real care to make a bomb.”

Alex agreed. “Unless it’s a chemical plant.”

He was happy to hear a small laugh escape her. “Yeah,” she said. “But this was a reasonably controlled and directed blast. Not an accident. Sorry, Alex.”

That surprised him. “I didn’t think it was an accident. I just don’t think it’s one of my students.”

She nodded. “And we’re about to eliminate one of them. I hope.”

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