Rapid Fire (2 page)

So what if
she was off the case, off the force entirely? That didn’t stop her from being a
cop. Didn’t stop her from wanting to prove that she wasn’t—

The phone
rang again, startling her. Though the ID was still blocked, she stepped outside
the petting zoo and answered it, planning to give the persistent journalist an
earful. “Maya Cooper speaking. Who is this?”

“You
don’t know me,” said an eerie, mechanized voice.

A jolt
slapped through her. The distorted sound matched Cassie’s description of the
Mastermind’s voice.

She
swallowed and said, “Hello, Wexton. How’s the arm?”

She was
sure of her suspect. She just had to convince the rest of the BCCPD.

Dead
silence echoed over the digital airwaves. For a moment she thought he’d hung
up. Then the mechanized voice returned. “You think you’re so smart, don’t you?
Well, I’ve got a surprise for you.”

Maya’s
fingers tightened on the cell phone. “What kind of surprise?”

The voice
held a hint of metallic amusement when it said, “There’s a bomb hidden
somewhere in the Chuckwagon Ranch. You have ten minutes to evacuate.”

“YOU WANT
ME TO DO WHAT?” Thorne Coleridge stopped pacing the small office and stared at
Bear Claw City’s Police Chief.

William
Parry, grizzled and bulldogesque with his jowly face and sad eyes, leaned back
in his desk chair. “Do you want the job or not?”

Thorne
jammed his hands in the pockets of the navy wool slacks he’d worn as a
concession to the interview. He’d gotten a quick trim of his short, sandy hair
and donned a white oxford-cloth shirt, but had skipped the tie, figuring he
should begin as he meant to go on.

The
question echoed in his brain. Did he want the job? Did he want to get in at the
ground level of a start-up forensics department? Hell, yes. Did he want to get
out of the Wagon Ridge PD, where conversations stopped the moment he entered
the room and the whispers began the moment he left? Hell, yes. That was why
he’d jumped at the chance when his bosses in Wagon Ridge had asked if he would
drive down to Bear Claw and help with an ongoing case. He needed a fresh start.

But he
wasn’t sure he wanted to make that start at the expense of a colleague.

He
resumed his pacing before he said, “Nobody told me I’d be replacing another
psych specialist. I thought you were looking to fill a vacancy.”

“It can
become a vacancy if you do your job. Hell, I’ll probably have to replace her
either way.” But Parry’s frown drooped lower, cutting deeper lines in his
sagging face. “The three women came with glowing references and wanted to work
together. I was looking to upgrade my forensics team. It seemed like a match.”

“I take
it things haven’t gone smoothly?”

Parry
snorted. “You could say that. If it isn’t one thing with those three, it’s
another. At first, they couldn’t manage to get along with the rest of the PD.
They did their jobs well enough, but it was tense as hell. Then once all this
trouble started, my crime scene expert and my evidence tech wound up snuggling
with my best detective and my FBI liaison.” His expression darkened. “Hell,
they wound up being targeted by the damn killer!”

“You
can’t blame them for the criminal mind,” Thorne said, avoiding the touchy issue
of interdepartmental romance. He didn’t need to go there. Not now.

Not ever
again.

“True,
but whether it’s their fault or not, things have been unsettled in the PD since
they came on board.” The chief shifted in his chair. “Then add on this business
with Wexton Henkes…” He trailed off, but his sour expression left no doubt that
he’d had it with his crack team of investigators. “My so-called psych
specialist accused Bear Claw’s biggest philanthropist of child abuse—against
the sworn testimony of his wife and son, mind you—and then attacked him in his
own home before she collapsed and remained unconscious for nearly three days.”
Parry muttered a curse. “I just don’t think she’s an asset to the PD at this
point. I’d like to replace her with someone more stable. More qualified.”

Thorne
grimaced. Surely the rumors had traveled down to Bear Claw, stories of how he’d
gone up into the mountains after cult leader Mason Falk, and how he’d been a
changed man afterwards.

But maybe
the chief figured that was a long time ago, and knew he’d proven himself since.

God knows
he’d tried to.

He
thought of the opportunity he was being offered. A fresh start, away from—

Well,
just away.

Interest
piqued, Thorne withdrew his hands from his pockets and sat in the padded chair
facing the chief’s desk. He gestured toward the glass wall separating the
chief’s office from the bulk of the Bear Claw PD, where cops worked in their
cubes or hustled out on calls. “What about the others? Won’t they see me as
just as much of an intruder? Hell, what about the women? They’re going to hate
me if I break up their cozy little unit.”

“They’ll
deal,” the chief said bluntly, though Thorne caught a flicker of doubt in his
eyes. “Alissa Wyatt is the crime scene analyst. Does sketches, too. She’s
engaged to Detective Tucker McDermott, Homicide. Make friends with Tucker and
she’ll tolerate you. Cassie Dumont is our evidence tech. She paired off with
Seth Varitek, an FBI evidence specialist out of the Boulder office. She’ll be
tougher, and won’t care whether you make nice with Seth or not. If I were you,
I’d just stay out of her way while you work this case.” The chief leaned forward
in his chair and pinned Thorne with a no-nonsense look. “Here’s the deal. I’m
putting you on the Mastermind task force. We need a solid profile and a new
direction, and we need it yesterday, before this bastard attacks my city again.
Consider this case your job interview. You fit in here and help us catch the
Mastermind, and the job’s yours.”

Thorne
nodded as a stir of anticipation drowned out most of his doubts. “I’ll need
copies of the case files, all the notes your investigators have amassed on the
Canyon Kidnappings and the Museum Murders, everything that pertains to the
Mastermind.”

“The
computer files and hard copies are waiting for you downstairs in the forensics
department offices. You’ll have to share with Alissa and Cassie, I’m afraid,
but maybe that’s for the best. It’ll let you three get used to each other.” The
chief stood and extended his hand, indicating that the interview—such as it had
been—was over. “I expect interesting things from you, Coleridge. Don’t let me
down.”

As Thorne
stood and shook with the man who would be—at least temporarily—his new
superior, he saw the knowledge in Parry’s eyes and heard the emphasis on the
word interesting. That was enough to tell him that the chief had heard the
rumors about his so-called talents, after all. Maybe that explained why he’d
called Wagon Ridge and asked for Thorne personally.

Yeah,
that was it, he decided. The chief was hoping he’d provide a miracle.

Too bad
he’d have to disappoint.

“I’ll do
my best police work,” he said carefully.

The chief
paused, then nodded. “You do that.”

It wasn’t
until Thorne turned for the door that he saw the commotion outside, heard the
muted shouts in the bullpen. Adrenaline spurted. “What the hell?”

A woman
yanked open the door before he could reach for it. Medium height with
honey-blond hair pulled into a ponytail beneath a BCCPD ball cap, she had deep
blue eyes that were wide with stress, though she kept her voice professionally
level when she said, “He’s back. We just had a bomb threat phoned in to that bison
park outside the city. Computerized voice and all.”

“The
Mastermind phoned here?” the chief demanded, already shrugging into his jacket.

The woman
shook her head. “Worse. He called Maya’s cell.”

The chief
repeated the name like a curse, but the word froze Thorne to his core.

“Maya?”
he said, and something must have leaked into his voice because the woman and
Chief Parry both turned to him.

“Maya
Cooper,” the chief said. “The psych specialist that you’re re—that you’re
subbing for while she’s on suspension.”

The
sudden darkening of the woman’s eyes told Thorne the chief’s slip hadn’t gone
unnoticed. She glared at Parry, then at Thorne, but said only, “I’m out of
here. We’ve got a bomb to find and a scene to process. Everything else will
have to wait.”

She
slammed the door behind her, making the glass shudder.

The chief
paused with his hand on the knob and turned to Thorne. “That was Alissa, the
friendlier of your two new coworkers. Sounds like you’re going to have
problems.”

“I can
handle it,” Thorne said carefully, but the chief had no idea how right he was
in predicting a problem.

It wasn’t
Alissa he was worried about, though.

It was
Maya.

Chapter
Two

“Everybody
stay calm. It’s all under control.” Though her heart pounded in her chest, Maya
pitched her voice low as the crowd of tourists she’d collected in the parking
lot outside the ranch edged toward panic. “The police will be here soon to
check on the possibility,” she stressed the last word, though in her mind there
was no doubt the Mastermind had been deadly serious, “that there’s a problem.”

The
tourists and ranch employees milled in a bare area beyond the parking lot,
shifting restlessly as though they had ceased to be single individuals and
become a combined entity, a spooky, nervous mob that could stampede at any
moment.

Maya
strained to hear the sound of approaching sirens even as she raised her hands.
“Please stay calm. It’ll just be a few more minutes.”

A few
minutes until the Bear Claw cops arrived. A few minutes until the bomb detonated,
minutes that ticked down on the digital display of her wristwatch.

The
explosive could be in any one of the buildings. Or it could be in one of the
cars. Even in the big yellow school bus parked in the corner of the lot, Maya
thought with a faint shudder as the numbers clicked down from five minutes to
four.

“Let’s
get in the cars and get out of here,” a man’s voice called, and others shouted
agreement.

“I’m
sorry, that’s not an option.” Maya glanced to her right and left, where two
terrified-looking ranch employees were helping her keep the group in check now
that the initial rush to get people the hell out of the ranch had passed. The
three of them were holding the line, but the crowd could turn at a moment’s
notice.

Maya had
studied mob mentality. She’d been in situations like this before.

But back
then, she’d had a badge and a weapon, and street cops backing her up.

“Why
not?” shouted the same voice, irritated now. “And who put you in charge?”

She
glared in the direction of the heckler. “I’m a member of the Bear Claw Creek
Police Department, which puts me in charge.”

She
didn’t give her name, because it had already been splashed too loudly in the
media, and she didn’t give her rank or show her badge, because she’d been
stripped of both until Internal Affairs finished looking into the Henkes
incident, a process that had been stalled several times by red tape she could
only assume came from Henkes’s supporters within the force.