Nancy Warren - Aftershocks

“It’s important.”

“Yes. Of course,” she said. “Seven o’clock?”

He rubbed his jaw. “Make it eight. I’ve barely seen my kids in the last week.”

She nodded, hearing the bleakness in his voice and doing her best to offer comfort. “At least you let them call you at work when they need you. A lot of fathers wouldn’t do that.”

He made a sound of irritation in his throat. “A lot of fathers would see their kids more than an hour a day, too. If it weren’t for our housekeeper, I don’t know what I’d do.”

“Isn’t there anyone else who could help out? Family?”

“My family do their best, but they’re all busy, too. My wife’s parents retired to Florida. We see them a couple of times a year, but they’re not close enough to be much help.” He forced a smile. “We do okay. Once things settle down around Courage Bay, my job will be a lot easier.”

With a soundless sigh, she went back to her own desk, picked up her phone and started calling the councilors. Because he was on her mind, she called her uncle, Cecil Thomson, first.

When his secretary at the bank answered, she was put right through. “Yes, Briana,” her uncle replied. “What can I do for you?”

“The mayor has called an emergency council meeting tonight at 8:00 p.m.”

“I see. What’s this all about?”

Briana knew her uncle’s secretary must be in the room, or he would have grilled her further. “I’ll be faxing out an agenda later this afternoon.”

“Well…” She knew her uncle wanted to refuse, not only because he hated the mayor but because he’d have phoned Aunt Irene immediately to let her know Briana was coming for dinner.

“I’m sorry to hear that. I had dinner plans, but I guess I’ll have to cancel them…?”

“I think that would be best,” she agreed, knowing she’d be busy putting together info packets and preparing for the council meeting. She’d be lucky to get dinner at all.

Briana was on the phone with Councilor Gwendolyn Clark a short time later, when Patrick strode out of the office, pulling on his jacket as he went. He waved goodbye, and she raised her hand back at him, then watched hungrily as he left, trying not to remember what that tall, athletic body had felt like last night.

Please, let him be innocent so I can love him. The direction of her thoughts almost caused her to fall out of her office chair. Love? What was wrong with her? Patrick was a nice man and a wonderful lover. But who said anything about love?

PATRICK WALKED down the main stairs at city hall deep in thought. He’d gone over the city budget again this morning. He bet he knew that complex document as well as the city treasurer did. There was money available. Courage Bay wasn’t bankrupt. They had a couple of million in secured savings. There was no specific purpose for the money; it existed so that Courage Bay would never go bankrupt, and to cover any extraordinary expenses.

Well, if bumping up the emergency forces after the year they’d had wasn’t an extraordinary need, Patrick didn’t know what was. The money was set up as a trust, designed to be pilfer-proof and wisely spent. A one hundred percent yes vote by council was required before any expenditure could be approved. In order to draw more than half a million dollars from the fund in any one year, a city plebiscite was required, a referendum whereby the citizens of Courage Bay could decide how they wanted their money spent.

He intended to try one more time at tonight’s meeting to get the full vote of council to free up some of those funds for the emergency teams.

The noise of a power drill reminded him that the elevator repairs were under way. He headed over for a second to see how they were going. Bert was there and obviously knew one of the two men at work. “Here’s the man who spent several hours in your fine elevator last night,” Bert joked as Patrick came closer.

He nodded to both men. The one who’d been chatting with Bert said, “Well, you were never in any danger. We’ve checked the elevator out thoroughly. Should have it back in operation within the hour.”

Bert crossed the foyer to speak to a passing file clerk and Patrick thanked the two men for their quick response time. “No problem,” said Bert’s acquaintance, turning back to his drill.

The second man emerged from inside the elevator and said, “Did Bert say you were the guy stuck in here last night?”

“That’s right,” Patrick confirmed.

“This must be yours, then,” the worker said, holding out a small silver tape recorder.

“Yes it is.” Patrick recognized the small recorder. “It must have fallen out of my briefcase.”

The elevator repairman handed the tape recorder over and Patrick dropped it into his case. With a final thanks to the two men and a wave to Bert, he headed out for his meeting with Dan Egan.

Since he fully believed that part of his job was to be a leader in times of crisis, Patrick stowed his grim mood as he pulled up in front of the Jefferson Avenue firehouse and got out of his car.

“Hey, Patrick!” he was hailed by Louis Alvarez, an engineer with squad two.

After joking for a few minutes with Louis and his squad members, Patrick said, “Came to see the chief.”

“He’s in his office.”

That was unusual. Dan Egan was more of a man’s man than a paper-pusher, and whenever possible, he preferred to be out with his men and away from his desk. As Patrick looked around at the faces of the firefighters, he saw how fatigued they all appeared and was determined to get the funding that would lighten their load.

“Where’s my kid sister?” he said, already having noted that Shannon wasn’t out front.

“I saw her with Bud Patchett a couple minutes ago.”

He nodded. If she’d been trapped by the garrulous firehouse mechanic, it could be days before anyone saw her. For a second Patrick missed the camaraderie and hard physical work of the firehouse. The blazes these guys fought were real smoke-and-flame jobs, not the insidious political fires that wasted so much of Patrick’s time and energy.

Shaking off the momentary nostalgia, he made his way back to his former office, which looked almost exactly as it had in his day, except the pictures of Janie and the kids were gone, and it was a different guy behind the desk.

At the moment, though, Dan Egan wasn’t behind his desk. He was standing with Sam Prophet and both men looked grim.

“What’s up?” Patrick asked as he entered the room.

Chief Egan, a Texan with a big smile and a hearty laugh, didn’t offer a hand to shake or an easy word, merely an unsmiling nod.

Sam Prophet, the arson investigator, didn’t look any happier.

Patrick got a bad feeling in his gut. Taking his cue from the heavy atmosphere in the room, he closed the office door behind him.

“You said you had something important to discuss?” Patrick asked.

“That’s right,” Chief Egan said. “Show him, Sam.”

Prophet reached onto the desk for a plastic evidence box and handed it to Patrick.

He looked inside, careful not even to breathe on the twisted and charred scraps of plastic inside. A bit of charred wire also sat in the box.

“The remains of a cell phone,” Prophet said in a clipped tone. “I found it this morning when I went through the basement suite that burned down last night. This is what caused the fire that killed Patty Reese. Someone packed the phone with explosives, and then dialed the number, setting off the device.”

“Have you confirmed traces of explosives?” Patrick asked.

“I haven’t sent this into the lab yet, but I’d bet my pension on it. We’ve seen this M.O. before. Dan and I have named the bastard The Trigger.”

“We’re going to get that bastard. I swear to you, Patrick, that we are going to get him.” Dan’s slow Texas drawl was filled with disgust.