Кей Хупер - Blood Ties

Diana shook her head and said, “You’re all so calm about this.” She sounded decidedly tense.

Hollis murmured, “You’d think so, wouldn’t you?”

DeMarco looked down at her, a very slight frown pulling at his brows. “Hollis, what are you trying to do? I can feel the effort.”

“Yeah, it’s… hard. But electrical energy is electrical energy, right?” The strain in her voice was evident. “And explosives are… inherently unstable. Probably giving off waves of energy just being themselves. I’m trying to see if there’s an aura of some kind around… Huh. What do you know? I see a funny sort of shimmer above the second SUV. A kind of red haze. Nothing above the one in front.”

Miranda said, “Reese, do you still sense him out there?”

“Oh, yeah, he’s watching. I still can’t pinpoint a location, but I think he’s up high. Maybe a rooftop.”

“You think he’s using his scope or binoculars?”

“Binoculars. I don’t feel a gun. Not yet, anyway. But I am having a little more trouble than usual tuning him in.” He reached into a pocket and pulled out a handkerchief, handing it to Hollis. “Here.”

“What—” She felt the tickle underneath her nose and pressed the cloth there, adding a muttered, “Damn.”

“I told you I could feel the effort,” DeMarco said.

“It’s just a little nosebleed, that’s all.”

“Yeah, right.”

Miranda checked her cell, frowned, and muttered, “Damn, lost the signal.”

“What signal?” Quentin asked.

As if she hadn’t heard him, Miranda said, “A minute left. Hollis, when this is over, I want you to—”

That was when one of the SUVs exploded.

Dale McMurry both heard and saw the explosion. In fact, he was damn near knocked out of his chair—though that may have been more of a rather drastic flinch on his part than the force of the actual blast.

Like everybody else, he went running outside and toward the station, so shocked by the very notion of something exploding in this normally very peaceful place that he didn’t think it through.

Or consider possible consequences.

Gabriel had just reached the old theater’s projection room when he heard the explosion. And felt the vibration shudder through the old building.

Shit ,

“Goddammit, Rox, where the hell are the stairs to the roof?” Even though his eyes had adjusted and there was—inexplicably—what appeared to be a dirty skylight far above, he could see no sign of a door or another set of stairs upward.

Wait… Over there, behind those shelves sticking out into the room .

A couple of rusted and ancient film cans on one of the shelves mutely proclaimed the reason for its existence in the room, but Gabriel didn’t pause to think very much about it. He found the door right where Roxanne had indicated. It was unlocked, opened easily, and gave access to steep stairs leading up.

Climbing them swiftly and silently, he breathed, “Can you give me a sense of where he is?”

I’m still not sure. It feels… weird. Cold. Distant. I should understand what that means, I know I should, but I don’t .

At the top of the stairs was another door, and it, too, opened easily under his careful hand. No creaking hinges betrayed him, but he was too wary a hunter not to move with exquisite caution. He opened the door just a few inches at first, to give his eyes time to adjust to the late-morning brightness of the rooftop, then eased it farther open.

Be careful, Gabe .

“Copy that.” The whisper was automatic; all his attention was focused on the roof.

It was, for the most part, a flat, tarred roof, various exhaust vents and other pipes sticking up here and there. The stairs had ended on the roof in a kind of dormer, and in the heartbeats it took him to orient himself, Gabriel realized that the front part of the building was behind him.

And behind the dormer.

There’s nowhere else he can be, assuming he’s still up here. And he has to still be up here. Unless he’s a damn bird .

Gabriel would have copied that, but he was concentrating on every careful movement as he eased around the dormer to find the sniper’s vantage point. But the caution proved to be unnecessary.

“He’s not a bird,” Gabriel said out loud, relaxing and slowly holstering his weapon.

What the hell?

Yesterday’s sniper—if the very expensive rifle lying beside him was any indication—half-sat with his back against the four-foot parapet wall, where he had apparently crouched to watch the street below. His legs were splayed apart, his hands limp on either side of his hips. He looked rather like a hunter, wearing faded jeans, much-used hiking boots, and a camo jacket, with a backpack nearby.

In one limply open hand was a small black box with a simple toggle switch, apparently the detonator he had used to set off his bomb.

In the other hand was a silenced automatic.

The hole in his right temple hadn’t bled much, probably because of the gaping exit wound on the left side of his skull—which had. Blood and tissue were spattered all over the sand-colored bricks.

He was an ordinary-looking man, clean-shaven, with brown hair, and brown eyes that stared sightlessly into eternity.

Gabe, this doesn’t make sense .

“You’re telling me.” He kicked the pistol away from that limp hand just to be sure, then hunkered down and reached to check the pulse. As soon as his fingers touched the dead man’s skin, he had to fight not to jerk his hand away in an instinctive reaction.

“Christ.”

Gabe?

“He’s cold, Rox. And I mean really cold. There’s no way he detonated that bomb and then killed himself. This guy’s been dead for hours. Hell, maybe for days.”

But, what —

That was when they heard the craa-aack of a rifle.

From somewhere in the street below.

They didn’t decide to abandon the cover of the B&B’s shaded yard when the SUV blew, they simply ran toward the sheriff’s department, training and instinct guiding them. Because the explosion was bigger than it should have been, blowing out windows on both sides of the street for more than a block and sending hot chunks of metal and melted plastic in all directions.

It was impossible to even guess whether anyone had been hurt but easy to see that the damage to surrounding buildings was substantial. Still, human nature being what it was, the SCU team was only about halfway down the hill when townspeople began pouring out of buildings both damaged and whole.

Hollis heard both Miranda and DeMarco swear, presumably about the curious putting themselves in harm’s way, but she was focused on the flaming hulk that had been a gleaming black SUV.

The bomb had been of considerable size, if she was any judge. The SUV only vaguely resembled a vehicle, and pieces of it—or of whatever had been inside it, or of the bomb itself—were still raining down, on the streets and on the curious townsfolk who had rushed out to see what happened.

Hollis turned her attention from the fiery wreck, fighting to ignore the skip in her heartbeat when she saw that DeMarco had gone immediately to the SUV in front, the one that hadn’t exploded, and was moving it away from the burning one. So it wouldn’t blow up from the heat of the other one, she assumed.

Idiot’s going to get himself killed. Dammit, what if I’d been wrong about only one having a bomb?

She shoved that thought away and hurried to help the others try to move the people back and out of danger.

Dale McMurry stopped short yards away from the burning vehicle, staring at it in fascination. He was aware of other people around, of bewildered shouting and curses, of a few folks calling the names of others frantically, but all he could think was, Damn, what a show!