At Close Range (6 page)

But his sudden, complete stillness told her that she had, indeed.

She climbed to her feet, stripped off her gloves and faced him. Blood tingled in her cheeks. “Sorry. That was uncalled for, especially after I lectured you about treating me like a cop. Let’s forget I said that. Let’s forget I even thought it.”

But when Varitek stood and faced her, his expression was intent and wholly focused on her. “You want to know why I reached the crime scene before you yesterday?

Because I was already in town. I’d driven down here for no real reason except to drop in on you and see…” He twisted his lips with more self-deprecation than humor.

“Hell, I don’t know why. Because I couldn’t get you out of my head, I suppose.”

Blood skimmed through her body, just below her skin, warming her, worrying her.

She blew out a breath and said, “Look, Varitek—”

“You should probably call me Seth at this point, don’t you think?”

“Look,” she said, and skipped the name entirely, “this is a really, really bad idea. We can barely hold a civil conversation, and I’m not in the market for a…whatever.”

She’d been uncomfortable talking about her emotions ever since her relationship with Lee, who had been a master of taking those emotions and turning them back on her until she wasn’t sure where her opinion left off and his began. Besides, she wasn’t about to name the things that flitted through her mind, like…lover.

Boyfriend. Husband. Soul mate.

“I’m not in the market for a whatever, either.” A dark, introspective smile touched his lips. “I think maybe that’s why I came down. So I could remind myself that we’d be wrong together.”

“We’d be terrible,” she said, as much to herself as to him. “I’m cranky and territorial. You’re controlling and overprotective. Hell, we don’t even work well together.” Although they had excavated the grave shoulder-to-shoulder and it hadn’t been as awful as she’d feared. Indeed, it had been almost…solid. Good. She felt the hard bump of the class ring folded in its plastic envelope and knew they’d made progress.

But she’d let physical attraction override common sense once before and it had been a disaster. Hell, it’d nearly ruined her career. No way she was letting that happen again.

She was older and smarter now.

Wasn’t she?

HOURS LATER, after they’d attended the task force meeting and logged in the evidence from the old grave site, Cassie finally signed out and headed home. With her truck impounded as evidence—wasn’t that ironic?—she had no wheels, so she didn’t even bother with a token protest when Varitek offered to drive her home.

She bristled when he walked her to the door.

Key in hand, she faced him on the front porch. “I’m not asking you in.”

The corners of his mouth twitched. “I didn’t expect you to. I’ll stay out here while you check the house.”

“Go.” She waved him off with a shooing motion, too tired to deal with him. “I’ll be fine.” When he didn’t budge, she said, “Come on, give me a break here. I’m tired, I’m hungry, and I’m armed. Just go. I’ll see you in the morning.”

After a momentary stand off, Varitek scowled. “Fine. See you tomorrow.” He stalked away, leaving her feeling like she’d been childish and surly.

Which she had been.

“Oh, fine,” she muttered under her breath, stabbing her key into the lock. “I’ll apologize to him tomorrow.” She twisted the knob and pushed through the front door as Varitek’s truck pulled away.

Two steps inside her door, someone grabbed her. She screamed and tried to spin, but he yanked her arm up behind her back. The sharp pain of a needle flared in her shoulder, followed by cool, burning numbness.

Then nothing.

SETH MADE IT ALL THE WAY to his hotel before he turned back. He told himself not to bother, that they could talk it out in the morning when one—or both of them—was in a better frame of mind. But something compelled him to spin the truck around and head back to her yellow house on the outskirts of town.

When he got there, he saw that the other half of the side-by-side two-family was lit. A shadow skimmed past a curtained window as he watched. The neighbors were still up. In contrast, all of the lights on Cassie’s side of the house were off—not just the outside light that had been burning when he’d left, but the room lights, as well. It was as though she’d never come home.

She’s asleep, he told himself, though it wasn’t much past eight o’clock. She skipped dinner and headed straight to bed.

Then he saw the barest hint of motion at the corner of the house, near Cassie’s side window. It could’ve been a small animal in search of scraps.

It could’ve been an intruder.

Seth slapped the truck into Park, radioed an alert to the Bear Claw dispatcher, grabbed his flashlight and service revolver and hastened across the muddy lawn. He didn’t even think about chasing the shadow. He needed to get to Cassie first, needed to know she was okay.

And if that meant he was ruled by his past, then so be it.

He crossed the porch in three echoing strides and pounded on the door. “Cassie?

Cassie, open up or I’m coming through.”

He paused, counted to five, and when there wasn’t a hint of sound or motion from inside, he stepped back two paces and turned his shoulder toward the door.

But before he could launch himself, the porch light snapped on, the neighboring door opened and a long shotgun barrel poked through. “Hold it right there,” a man’s voice said. “Drop the weapon and don’t move. I’m calling the police.”

Seth froze in his tracks and hissed a curse between his teeth. “I’ve already called them. I’m an FBI agent and I believe Officer Dumont is in trouble.”

“Sorry, but I’m not letting you bust into Cassie’s place without a look at your badge, mister.” The door opened fully, revealing that the shotgun owner was young, probably early twenties and baby-faced with it. But he held his pump action with the ease of familiarity, and an infant’s fretful cry emerged from inside, followed by a woman’s soothing tones.

Seth could have the guy down in two seconds flat, but a new father with a gun? He didn’t want to go there. So he said, “I’m going to go for my ID, real easy, okay? I don’t want any trouble.”

It took him under a minute to pull his ID and convince Cassie’s neighbor he was legit, but those seconds beat beneath Seth’s skin like the echo of a faltering heartbeat.

Finally, the guy lowered his shotgun. “Sorry. I just needed to be sure, what with Cassie being a cop and all.” He rubbed his temples as though he had a headache, but focused his slightly bleary eyes on Seth. “What’s wrong? Has something happened to her? Do you want me to go in with you?”

Untrained backup could be worse than no backup, so Seth shook his head. “No. Get inside with your family and lock up.”

Then Seth took two running steps and slammed into the door. Pain sang through his body, but the heavy wood held. He cursed and tried again, wishing this crap was as easy as it looked on TV.

The door gave on his third try, splintering around a sturdy dead bolt. He kicked it the rest of the way in, convinced now that there was something wrong. There was no way Cassie could have missed hearing that racket.

He took a step inside her place. And smelled gas.

Her half of the house was full of it.

“Out! Get out!” Adrenaline sizzled through Seth’s body. He raced back onto the porch and hammered on the neighbors’ door. “There’s a gas leak! Get your family out and warn the neighbors.”

Then he ran back inside Cassie’s home and swept the main room with his flashlight, barely noting the accents she’d added since his last visit, unexpectedly feminine touches of chintz and softness. “Cassie?”

No answer.

Knowing the gas leak was no accident, he turned for the kitchen, hoping it would be that simple. No such luck. The stove and oven were both electric.

Damn it. The gas was coming from the basement. The bastard must have rigged a furnace line to fill her side but not the adjoining half of the house.

Seth took a guess and yanked open a door off the kitchen, hoping she had basement access. He was rewarded with a flight of stairs stretching downward beyond the flashlight beam. He eased down, moving fast but testing each step for a tripwire or pressure pad.

The smell was less intense in the cellar, suggesting that the gas line had been looped into one of the forced hot air vents.

When Seth reached the bottom, he shined his light over the dusty space, picking out a neat stack of cardboard boxes, a discarded bicycle, a hot water heater, and finally the furnace.

He froze and cursed at the sight of a wire-laden device duct taped to the tank. As he watched, the red numbers of the digital display ticked from twenty-one to twenty.

Then nineteen.

He spun and ran for the stairs. No time. There was no time to disarm the device, even if he had the knowledge. Once that thing blew, the spark would follow the gas trail up into the house. He had to get Cassie out of there, fast.

Seventeen. Sixteen.

He pounded up the stairs to the kitchen while the numbers counted down in his head. His flashlight beam carved through the darkness ahead of him as he bolted up to the second floor and shined the light into a short hallway, a bathroom, a bedroom.

No Cassie.

Fifteen. Fourteen. Thirteen.

Damn it. Where was she?

He reversed direction and charged down the stairs, heart pounding in time with the seconds left on the digital timer.

Twelve. Eleven. Ten.

He skidded back into the living room, aware that the slightest spark, the smallest flame, and it was all over. His head spun with the foul air. Desperation pounded in his veins, along with the sudden, all-consuming fear that this had been a setup, that she’d been taken, that both of them would be presumed dead in the blast and nobody would know to look for her.

Then he heard it.

The faint moan came from behind an overstuffed sofa. He staggered when he turned toward it, and a foggy piece of his brain told him that wasn’t a good sign.

“Ca-Cah-shee?” Hell, he was slurring like a drunk.

Got to get out of here, he thought as he circled the couch and shone his light down.

He saw Cassie lying motionless on the floor behind the sofa.

Five. Four.

He dragged her up. His muscles felt like putty and his coordination was off. He nearly fell, but forced himself to lift her, to stagger toward the door.

Got. To. Get. Out. Of. Here. The words hammered in his brain, strengthening his legs and arms. He could hear sirens in the far distance, agitated shouts closer by, but the inside of the house was deadly silent.

Three. Two.

He ran for the broken-open door, putting one foot in front of the other by sheer willpower as the seconds ticked down in his brain.

One. Zero.

Boom.

Only the explosion didn’t come.

Seth staggered out onto the porch and into blessed, clean air. He sucked in a huge lungful and pushed himself down the front stairs on rubber legs.

Cassie’s neighbor broke free from the knot of people milling in the street and charged across the muddy lawn. “Let me help. Come on, we’ve got to hurry. The house could blow flat any minute.”

“I can…walk,” Cassie said, and struggled weakly.

Seth set her on her feet. “Don’t walk. Run. There’s a bomb in the basement.”

But the countdown in his head was at minus five seconds.

The three of them bolted across the front lawn just as two BCCPD cruisers and the chief’s four-by-four screeched to a halt nearby.

Seth pushed a dazed Cassie toward her neighbor and told the guy, “Make her sit down. As soon as the ambulance gets here, have the paramedics check her over.”

He didn’t like how disoriented she seemed. Maybe it was because she’d inhaled way more of the gas than he had. Or maybe there was something else. Had she been hit? Drugged? Anger surged through him. He’d find out soon enough, and then there’d be hell to pay.

She went with her neighbor rather than arguing, confirming that she felt terrible.

If she’d had even an iota of her natural temper, she never would have let him order her around. That knowledge, that vulnerability tugged at him.

But instead of following and standing over her until the paramedics arrived, he forced himself to meet the chief halfway across the street, which was rapidly filling with neighbors. “Everyone’s out of the house. Cassie’s rooms are full of gas and she was inside, unconscious. I’m betting she was either knocked out or drugged.” He took a deep breath of clean, cold air and felt his stomach pitch with the aftereffects. “There’s a detonator in the basement, but it didn’t go off.

Must’ve been a dud.”

Even saying the word made his head spin. He’d been so sure of the explosion. So certain of death as those numbers had ticked down in his brain.

The chief barked orders as new sirens joined the melee. Sawyer and his bomb squad arrived on the heels of the ambulance, while the Bear Claw cops ushered the crowd back and cleared out the surrounding houses, just in case the structure blew.

Seth stood aside and looked over to where the paramedics worked on Cassie. In the flashing lights of the rescue vehicles, her skin carried the waxy blue cast of a corpse.

If he had gone upstairs to his hotel room instead of turning back around, she would have died. The knowledge fisted in his chest with a pressure unlike anything he’d felt in a long, long time.

Knowing it, hating the emotion and fearing it at the same time, he gritted his teeth, turned away and stalked to where the chief was conferring with Sawyer at the back of the bomb squad van.