Rapid Fire (21 page)

She
jerked her head toward the doors. “I need to get in there.”

Thorne
nodded. “Wait here. I’ll make sure the scene is secure.”

When he
was gone, Maya moved off to the side of the lobby and leaned on the wall near
an intersecting hallway that led to the equipment shop. Her brain vibrated with
the noise, a combination of young and old voices, sirens and sobs.

The
reality of it echoed through her. She could have stopped this. She should have
stopped it.

She
should have shot Henkes dead that night. Deep down inside, she knew that truth.
Nobody else might believe her, but the proof would have been there for all to
see.

In the
wake of his death, the attacks would have stopped.

Surely,
that would have been proof enough?

“Hssst!”

Maya’s
head snapped up at the whisper. She turned toward the hallway, but could make
out little in the dimness. “Who’s there?”

“I need
to talk to you, but they can’t see.” The voice was young and male, and cracked
with stress. “Come on. Over here!”

Adrenaline
was a quick punch in her gut when she recognized the voice. “Kiernan?”

“Quick,
before they see us talking!”

Maya
hesitated and glanced from the main door, where Thorne stood talking to the
chief, to the deserted hallway, which was lit only by dim emergency lights. She
saw the silhouette of a young man leaning on a single crutch.

Wexton’s
son. The boy whose injuries had never been adequately explained, but who
insisted his father hadn’t knocked him around.

Making a
quick decision, she stepped through the open arch into the darkened hallway.
“What are you doing here?”

The
figure backed away, further into the shadows, sending a skitter of nerves along
her skin. She reached behind her back to loosen the strap on her mid-back
holster, only to find the weapon gone.

It, like
her badge, rested on a locked shelf in the chief’s office.

Defenseless,
she held her hands away from her sides and kept her weight balanced on the
balls of her feet as she advanced down the hallway, poised to fight or flee as
necessary.

“You said
you had something to tell me.” She pitched her voice low and soothing, though a
sense of danger pulsed along her nerve endings like fire. “Is it about your
father?”

She was
close enough now to see Kiernan’s wide eyes and the nervous way his fingers
picked at the foam rubber covering the hand grip of his single crutch. The last
time she remembered seeing the twelve-year-old boy in person, he’d been in the
hospital, unconscious from the “accident” that had left him with a badly broken
leg and a large knot on the back of his head.

She
remembered looking down at him and feeling the crushing weight of failure. It
had been her decision to return the boy to his family after he’d insisted that
the bone bruise on his wrist had been an accident, that he’d fallen down
playing, nothing more. It had been her decision to give in to the chief’s
pressure not to prosecute Wexton Henkes.

Now, she
looked at the boy, at the hint of desperation in his eyes and the way his leg
stuck out awkwardly to one side in its brace, and felt her heart clutch in her
chest.

Her decision.
Her failure.

“I know
I’m not supposed to talk to you.” His eyes darted from her to the lobby and
back. “But my mom’s not here and I…” He blew out a breath and tried again.
“Before, in the hospital, you asked me what happened. You know, how I broke my
leg.”

Maya
nodded but remained silent. Often, the longer she waited, the more a child
would say.

Kiernan
fidgeted, then spoke quickly. “I’m serious. I don’t remember. That whole day is
just…blank. The doctor says it’s because I hit my head.”

“That’s
possible,” Maya said, thinking it was equally possible that the boy’s brain had
blocked the memory because it was too painful, because the betrayal was too
great when one family member hurt another.

But even
as she thought that, she felt a quiver of connection. What he had described
suddenly seemed all too familiar. She took a step nearer the boy. “You’ve lost
the entire day?”

“Most of
it, anyway.” His mouth twisted. “I’m not lying, honest. I don’t remember what
happened. But whatever it was, it couldn’t have been my dad. I know what you
think, but it wasn’t him. He doesn’t hit. He and my mom don’t believe in it.”
Kiernan blew out a breath. “They lecture, sure. They’ve grounded me once or
twice, and they’ve taken away my Internet and my cell phone. But they don’t
hit.”

His voice
rang with sincerity, but Maya’s brain had jammed on the similarity between his
description and her own experience. “If you can’t remember anything, you don’t
know for sure.”

His
expression clouded. “My dad doesn’t hit. You have to believe me. You have to—”

“Kiernan?”
a woman’s voice called from the lobby. The tone scaled up an octave and cracked
with stress. “Kiernan? Where are you?” Ilona Henkes’s voice dropped, as though
she was speaking aside to another adult, maybe one of the cops in the lobby.
“He’s not even supposed to be here because he can’t skate yet. I told him to
stay home. And now this!” Ilona raised her voice again and practically
screamed, “Kiernan!”

The boy’s
face twisted with indecision before he called, “I’m over here, Ma!” Then he
turned to Maya, expression etched with urgency. “Hide. She’ll be pissed if she
sees me talking to you.”

Maya
nodded and quickly moved off, deeper into the darkened hallway, more because
she wanted an opportunity to overhear the reunion than because she wanted to
spare Kiernan his mother’s wrath. Her mind spun with what he’d told her. The
information was nothing new, but she couldn’t ignore the parallels between his
experience and hers.

A bump on
the head. Lost time.

What the
hell had happened that day?

“There
you are! I was so worried about you!” Ilona’s voice broke on tears. “What are
you doing here? I told you to stay home!” Without waiting for her son’s
response, she barreled on, “Are you okay? Were you near the explosion? You weren’t
hurt, were you?”

The
voices moved away, but Maya heard the boy answer that he was fine, heard
renewed admonishments from Ilona, who sounded exactly like the worried,
well-balanced mother she had appeared throughout the investigation.

Kiernan
seemed convinced his father hadn’t hurt him. Ilona had been staunch in her
husband’s defense. Wexton, though too smug, hadn’t shaken under interrogation.

For the
first time in weeks, Maya allowed herself to wonder whether she’d been wrong
about Henkes.

But no, she
thought, glancing around the deserted hallway and through the door to the
hastily evacuated skate shop, that didn’t make any sense, either. Who but
Henkes would be likely to target his properties? A competitor? An enemy?

But why?
What possible motive could there be?

She
didn’t know, and she wasn’t going to figure it out standing in the hallway by
herself. Now that Kiernan and his mother were gone, the coast was clear for her
to return to the lobby, and from there to head to the bomb site.

And
Thorne. She swallowed an unprofessional heart-thump at the thought of his name.
At the thought of what they’d done. The heat of a faint blush washed across her
face. She pressed both palms to her face and fought to calm her suddenly racing
heart.

“Deal
with it,” she told herself sternly, the words echoing in the dim emptiness.
“This isn’t about you and Thorne. It’s about catching this bastard before he
kills again.”

She
expected an echo as her answer.

She got a
masculine chuckle and a stealthy footstep.

“Who’s there?”
Heart pounding into her throat, she spun toward the sound, tripped and went
down hard, sprawling on the polished floor.

A heavy
weight landed atop her, pressing her flat, holding her still. An arm wrapped
itself around her face and a hand grappled for her mouth. Something tightened
around her ankle, digging into the flesh bared beneath her dress.

Panicked,
she jabbed back with her elbows, twisted away and screamed, “Help! Help me!
He’s here! He’s—”

“Quiet!”
a voice hissed. She heard something rip, and a strip of sticky tape was slapped
across her mouth. The pressure mashed her lips against her teeth and she
screamed as best she through her nose.

The noise
seemed pitiful in comparison to the rising din she could hear from the lobby.
Something else had happened. They weren’t paying any attention to her.

Nobody
was looking for her.

Desperation
exploded in Maya’s chest, in her mind, and she thrashed against the heavy
weight that pinned her to the floor. She squirmed, flailed, fought to get free.

Then she
was free. The weight disappeared. She scrambled upright, turned to run—

And her
right foot was yanked out from underneath her, sending her crashing to the
floor. “I don’t think so,” growled the shadow of a man standing over her.

Head
spinning, Maya fought to focus on him, fought to identify her attacker. But a
wide hand blotted out the dim light, and another piece of tape was slapped over
her eyes, hard enough to make her eardrums ring.

Bastard!
She screamed in the sudden darkness, but her fury came out in a pitiful mewling
and her struggles made no headway against the rope he’d tied around her ankle.
She made it halfway to her feet, only to be yanked back again. She crashed to
the floor, choking, screaming, panicking, fighting for air, for sight, for the
freedom to run back to the lobby, back to Thorne.

Her
captor taped her hands together behind her back.

Thorne!
She screamed his name in her mind, in her taped-shut mouth. But there was no
sign of Thorne—her lover, if only for a brief interlude. No sound of pursuit,
no shout of discovery, only the low hiss of her captor’s labored breathing, the
squeak of a shoe and the rustle of her clothing against the polished floor as
he pulled on the rope and dragged her down the hallway by her ankle.

THORNE
WAITED UNTIL THE coroner’s assistant had bagged and transported the dead
woman’s body, as much for his own sake as Maya’s. The corpse had looked too
much like her for comfort. The women could have been sisters.

Had that
been a coincidence, or another part of the plan?

When the
still, black-bagged figure was wheeled out, Thorne returned to the lobby. He
didn’t see Maya in the open space, but what he did see gave him pause.

Ilona and
Kiernan Henkes.

A surge
of instinct sent him toward the pair, but Ilona saw him coming and hustled her
son through the doors. Thorne took a single step after them—

And an
image buffeted him. Consumed him.

Darkness.
Suffocation. Fear.

“Maya!”
He couldn’t have said how he knew, but he did.