Jessica Andersen - Rapid Fire

“They’ll deal,” the chief said bluntly, though Thorne caught a flicker of doubt in his eyes. “Alissa Wyatt is the crime scene analyst. Does sketches, too. She’s engaged to Detective Tucker McDermott, Homicide. Make friends with Tucker and she’ll tolerate you. Cassie Dumont is our evidence tech. She paired off with Seth Varitek, an FBI evidence specialist out of the Boulder office. She’ll be tougher, and won’t care whether you make nice with Seth or not. If I were you, I’d just stay out of her way while you work this case.” The chief leaned forward in his chair and pinned Thorne with a no-nonsense look. “Here’s the deal. I’m putting you on the Mastermind task force. We need a solid profile and a new direction, and we need it yesterday, before this bastard attacks my city again. Consider this case your job interview. You fit in here and help us catch the Mastermind, and the job’s yours.”

Thorne nodded as a stir of anticipation drowned out most of his doubts. “I’ll need copies of the case files, all the notes your investigators have amassed on the Canyon Kidnappings and the Museum Murders, everything that pertains to the Mastermind.”

“The computer files and hard copies are waiting for you downstairs in the forensics department offices. You’ll have to share with Alissa and Cassie, I’m afraid, but maybe that’s for the best. It’ll let you three get used to each other.” The chief stood and extended his hand, indicating that the interview—such as it had been—was over. “I expect interesting things from you, Coleridge. Don’t let me down.”

As Thorne stood and shook with the man who would be—at least temporarily—his new superior, he saw the knowledge in Parry’s eyes and heard the emphasis on the word interesting. That was enough to tell him that the chief had heard the rumors about his so-called talents, after all. Maybe that explained why he’d called Wagon Ridge and asked for Thorne personally.

Yeah, that was it, he decided. The chief was hoping he’d provide a miracle.

Too bad he’d have to disappoint.

“I’ll do my best police work,” he said carefully.

The chief paused, then nodded. “You do that.”

It wasn’t until Thorne turned for the door that he saw the commotion outside, heard the muted shouts in the bullpen. Adrenaline spurted. “What the hell?”

A woman yanked open the door before he could reach for it. Medium height with honey-blond hair pulled into a ponytail beneath a BCCPD ball cap, she had deep blue eyes that were wide with stress, though she kept her voice professionally level when she said, “He’s back. We just had a bomb threat phoned in to that bison park outside the city. Computerized voice and all.”

“The Mastermind phoned here?” the chief demanded, already shrugging into his jacket.

The woman shook her head. “Worse. He called Maya’s cell.”

The chief repeated the name like a curse, but the word froze Thorne to his core.

“Maya?” he said, and something must have leaked into his voice because the woman and Chief Parry both turned to him.

“Maya Cooper,” the chief said. “The psych specialist that you’re re—that you’re subbing for while she’s on suspension.”

The sudden darkening of the woman’s eyes told Thorne the chief’s slip hadn’t gone unnoticed. She glared at Parry, then at Thorne, but said only, “I’m out of here. We’ve got a bomb to find and a scene to process. Everything else will have to wait.”

She slammed the door behind her, making the glass shudder.

The chief paused with his hand on the knob and turned to Thorne. “That was Alissa, the friendlier of your two new coworkers. Sounds like you’re going to have problems.”

“I can handle it,” Thorne said carefully, but the chief had no idea how right he was in predicting a problem.

It wasn’t Alissa he was worried about, though.

It was Maya.

“Everybody stay calm. It’s all under control.” Though her heart pounded in her chest, Maya pitched her voice low as the crowd of tourists she’d collected in the parking lot outside the ranch edged toward panic. “The police will be here soon to check on the possibility,” she stressed the last word, though in her mind there was no doubt the Mastermind had been deadly serious, “that there’s a problem.”

The tourists and ranch employees milled in a bare area beyond the parking lot, shifting restlessly as though they had ceased to be single individuals and become a combined entity, a spooky, nervous mob that could stampede at any moment.

Maya strained to hear the sound of approaching sirens even as she raised her hands. “Please stay calm. It’ll just be a few more minutes.”

A few minutes until the Bear Claw cops arrived. A few minutes until the bomb detonated, minutes that ticked down on the digital display of her wristwatch.

The explosive could be in any one of the buildings. Or it could be in one of the cars. Even in the big yellow school bus parked in the corner of the lot, Maya thought with a faint shudder as the numbers clicked down from five minutes to four.

“Let’s get in the cars and get out of here,” a man’s voice called, and others shouted agreement.

“I’m sorry, that’s not an option.” Maya glanced to her right and left, where two terrified-looking ranch employees were helping her keep the group in check now that the initial rush to get people the hell out of the ranch had passed. The three of them were holding the line, but the crowd could turn at a moment’s notice.

Maya had studied mob mentality. She’d been in situations like this before.

But back then, she’d had a badge and a weapon, and street cops backing her up.

“Why not?” shouted the same voice, irritated now. “And who put you in charge?”

She glared in the direction of the heckler. “I’m a member of the Bear Claw Creek Police Department, which puts me in charge.”

She didn’t give her name, because it had already been splashed too loudly in the media, and she didn’t give her rank or show her badge, because she’d been stripped of both until Internal Affairs finished looking into the Henkes incident, a process that had been stalled several times by red tape she could only assume came from Henkes’s supporters within the force.

Three minutes, thirty seconds.

She tried not to think about her first impressions of the theme park, how a sniper could sit up on the low ridge of hills nearby and fire down into the crowd she had assembled in a too-convenient knot. But what other choice did she have? She’d needed to get them the hell out of the park, and the vehicles weren’t an option.

Three minutes.

Then she heard sirens in the distance, approaching rapidly.

“Thank God,” Maya whispered to herself, knowing she couldn’t say it aloud, couldn’t let the crowd know she was worried.

They needed her to be strong, to keep the peace.

Precious seconds ticked by as the Bear Claw cops pulled in, led by Alissa and Cassie, riding with Tucker in his he-man truck. The chief’s car followed moments later. The sight of her friends loosened the tight band around Maya’s heart, even as the suspicious looks she got from the other arriving officers made her feel worse.

Uniforms ranged out around the rapidly quieting crowd. As the tension subsided a degree, a youngish cop jogged over to Maya and said, “We’ll take it from here, ma’am. The chief would like a word with you.”

She tried not to wince at the “ma’am,” which served only to underscore her status as not-quite-a-cop. But there wasn’t time for regrets, not while her wristwatch clicked down past two minutes thirty seconds.

She hastened to the knot of cops gathered near the chief’s car just as two vans and a box truck arrived in a cloud of dust, bearing John Sawyer, the leader of the Bear Claw Bomb Squad, along with his team of experts.