The Hunk Next Door(52)

“Great. Now we back it up. There has to be something that shows us a bit more,” she said, praying it was true.

“This gives us a timeline,” he replied, pointing at the date and time in the corner of the video. “The car and Mrs. Wilks had to have been staged before this point.”

Abby nodded. As leads went, she’d seen stronger, but it was a starting point. “And that looks like a blatant attempt to implicate Ri—Mr. O’Brien or one of his coworkers.”

“Yeah,” Gadsden agreed. “Good bet the scarf was planted rather than an accident. Who would’ve guessed you’d be his alibi.”

She pointedly ignored that comment. “See if there are other views or angles around the docks in this time frame.” She wanted the second assailant. Her hands fisted at her sides. “I want faces. No one should feel that comfortable causing havoc in this town.”

“You know, it’s possible Mr. O’Brien knew what to do with those bombs because he is involved.”

“Show me more evidence and we’ll follow it,” she said. Just because Gadsden was right didn’t mean she had to like it. During the crisis, she’d led by example as they’d followed and eliminated the evidence already planted against Riley. She would continue to do her job, no matter how sticky or uncomfortable things got.

Gadsden was right, however. Riley had shown awareness and expertise that only came from training and experience. He owed her answers. Now she just had to smother her feelings and find the objectivity and courage to ask the right questions.

The calm professionalism that had earned her this post was crumbling to pieces inside her, though she refused to let it show. She wanted to slam doors. Throw things. Shoot something. Declare a police emergency and conduct a door-to-door search. She nearly laughed, thinking about how the mayor would spin that.

Their best lead had blown himself up, a fanatic so dedicated he preferred suicide over capture. It wasn’t a good sign of things to come. And yet, to the best of her knowledge no one in Belclare was missing.

The other caches of explosives along the shoreline had blown within a minute of the sniper. That detail alone strongly indicated a supervisor with an impatient trigger finger. Her instincts wouldn’t let her chalk it up to blind luck. It was a miracle no one on the search teams had been seriously injured. Only Riley’s quick work and the note he’d salvaged had saved no telling how many lives.

Was his finding that note part of the plan, too?

She shook off the thought and looked around the station. The men and women who served the Belclare police department were top-notch, but there simply weren’t enough of them to patrol every high-risk area every hour of the day. The docks were a valuable target. Main Street, packed with tourists, would certainly make the news if something bad happened. She forced herself to imagine the worst-case scenario if this cell launched an attack when the park was full of families.

She’d appealed to the community to keep watch and report anything suspicious, praising the dock workers and giving them much of the credit for today’s rescue operation. Without that kind of vigilance and action, she’d said, Mrs. Wilks might have died.

“We’ll track ’em down, Chief.”

Gadsden’s assurance snapped her from her thoughts, but it would be a long time before she relaxed. “Yes,” she agreed. “We will track down every last one of them.”

Returning to her temporary desk, she noticed a new email in-box alert flashing on her screen. Sinking into the chair, anticipating the worst, she clicked on it.





Congratulations, Chief Jensen. You win today’s skirmish but this war isn’t over.





There was an attachment. Against her better judgment, she opened it. A three-panel cartoon strip filled the screen. First a caricature of the bandstand in the park, then that picture overlaid with animated flames. The last panel was a sad little pile of ash topped with an oversize police shield sporting her badge number.

They’d do it. She felt it in her gut. This opening weekend or not, they had the will and resources to make her worst nightmare come true.

“Cowards,” she whispered to herself. “Bring it on.” She sent the file up the line to the federal agencies that were supposedly doing something helpful behind the scenes to break up the sleeper cell they had suspected from the beginning was in Belclare. While she was grateful the federal teams were taking care of all the bomb evidence out by the water, anytime they wanted to step in with some real, boots-on-the-ground help, that would be fine by her.

She leaned back, the springs on the worn-out chair squeaking in protest. Her department was crammed into half of their normal working space. Filmore had protected the building’s facade but wreaked havoc inside. Her officers were tired and more than a little edgy with all of the reacting they’d been doing.