Chapter Fifteen
Cassie picked her way through the crowd to the top of the slope. From this vantage point she could easily spot anyone approaching.
Cop habits never die.
She sat and stretched her legs in front of her, searching the crowd below for a friendly face. Rose and Sue were nowhere to be seen. Ginny and Leo were probably picking up the ice cream to bring to the Nest as they’d promised. She’d be watching the fireworks alone. In a crowd of several thousand.
Police officers took up positions around the perimeter of the large rectangular fireworks platform. In the dim light, she could just make out Mike and Jimmy inside the roped-off area.
Movement to her left caught Cassie’s attention. About a hundred feet away a man stood, motionless. Something about his stance made her think he was watching her. He wore blue jeans and a white T-shirt with something written on the front she couldn’t read. Someone walked in front of him, so she couldn’t get a clear view of his face, but he was dark-skinned and had a—
Goatee.
The same general description my neighbors gave Gray of the man looking for me after the hit order surfaced.
The chicken she’d eaten for lunch rolled in her stomach. Warning tentacles crept up her spine, the same way they had this morning when she’d been sure someone had been outside her house, and again in the parking lot.
Cassie jumped to her feet, but when she looked for the guy again, he was gone. Her mouth went dry.
Please, please, be a figment of my paranoia.
But she wasn’t paranoid, never had been. Instinct had always been one of her best weapons. Too many things were happening all at once.
Her picture in the newspaper.
The feeling of being watched, twice in one day.
Now this man.
Could be coincidence, but when someone was trying to kill you…
The park was filled with people. Innocent people.
I’ve waited too long.
Cassie grabbed her bag and took off for the parking lot. She zigzagged through the crowd, glancing continually over her shoulders, searching for a man with a goatee and a white T-shirt.
She’d made a mistake, gotten too comfortable playing chef, making new friends. And falling in love. How could she have let it happen right in the middle of all this?
A man suddenly stood and blocked her path. Cassie clenched her hands into fists.
Not the guy she’d seen.
She blew out a breath and skirted around him, nearly tumbling over his lawn chair. After mumbling a hasty apology she resumed course for the parking lot.
Don’t panic.
A quick trip to the house for Raven and some of her things, and she’d be gone. She could call Mike from the road and explain everything. Maybe when this was all over she could come back and—
An explosion blasted the air. The reverberation was so fierce Cassie felt it beneath her feet.
Flames shot from a vehicle on the grass adjacent to the parking lot. Pieces of glowing, burning debris spewed skyward before falling to the ground.
In the distance a woman screamed. Others around Cassie gasped.
She bolted down the slope, dodging onlookers who’d risen to their feet. Her handbag banged against her hip as she ran toward the accident.
Accident?
Cassie ran harder. Police sense warned her there was a chance whatever had happened wasn’t accidental.
She knocked several people aside as she sped past, jarring her shoulder against a heavyset man. A loud curse came to her ears. Below and to her right, she saw Mike charging at a dead run to the parking lot with Jimmy and the rest of his men not far behind. At the bottom of the slope, she tore across the paved lot and onto the grass.
A secondary explosion shook the ground.
Cassie kept running.
Sirens shrilled as the ambulance and fire truck she’d seen earlier made their way across the lot. The fire truck screeched to a stop ahead of her. Men shouted orders. Cassie sucked in air as she ran. Smells of burning fuel and oil nearly choked her. Black smoke flecked with glowing embers billowed against the raging flames.
Cassie raced between the rows and rows of cars. Gnawing fear grew inside her. The closer she got to the shooting flames, the worse it became.
She was on a direct path to her Trail Blazer.
Over the din of the sirens, she heard a woman sobbing and screaming. A horrible gut feeling wrenched her.
Not the Trail Blazer. That would mean—Leo! Ginny!
Cassie rounded the last car blocking her view and came to an abrupt stop, gasping for air. Terror ripped through her. She wrapped her arms around her waist and almost threw up.
A few feet in front of her, Mike knelt on the ground near Ginny, who was also on her knees, rocking back and forth. Lying between them was the bloody, prostrate form of a man.
Leo.
Night had set in and lighting was poor in the shadow of the parked cars. Only the car fire illuminated the scene, but there was no mistaking the blood trickling from a gash on Leo’s forehead. Or the front of Leo’s shirt—drenched in it.
He’s dead.
Cassie could barely breathe. She stared with her mouth open, gripping the strap of her bag in her fist.
Flames crackled and popped from the engine compartment of the Trail Blazer.
Mike pressed two fingers to Leo’s neck. “Leo!” he shouted. “Leo, can you hear me?”
Leo didn’t move, his body as pale and rigid as carved marble.
All those coincidences hadn’t been coincidences. The hit man was here—in Hopewell Springs.
The explosion had been meant for her.
She should be running for cover in case he was still out there, but all Cassie could think about was Leo. She couldn’t leave him. Her life meant nothing if someone died because of her. She covered her mouth with her hand to keep from crying. Or screaming.
That should be me lying on the ground. Not a young man with his whole life ahead of him.
Ginny held Leo’s bloody hand to her chest and her cries became louder. Flecks of blood spotted the young woman’s pale face and arms, but no deep cuts. About twenty feet away, her SUV—or what was left of it—roared like an inferno. Heat and the smell of burning fuel rolled through the parking lot.
Drag marks in the grass indicated Mike must have pulled Leo farther away from the truck. She should do something to help, but her legs wouldn’t move.
My fault. Dear God, I should have told Mike sooner.
Cassie held her hand to her mouth. A small sob escaped her throat.
Mike looked up, and his brows drew together. He glanced at the smoking Trail Blazer, then back to her. Relief showed on his face, replaced by a questioning expression. Then conflict.
The play of emotions on his face split Cassie’s already aching heart in two. Mike was a cop with a cop’s finely tuned intuition. He was sending her a silent message that he knew something had been bothering her earlier—and now this.
He yanked off his shirt and pressed it to the wound on Leo’s abdomen. It had to be deep considering how quickly Mike’s shirt soaked with blood. A stream of blood trickled down Mike’s chest. Somehow he’d been hit by flying debris.
The secondary explosion.
He must have gotten hurt while dragging Leo and Ginny away from the Trail Blazer. Cassie’s stomach clenched at the realization Mike could have been killed, too.
Red and blue lights flashed from emergency crews pouring in. More sirens screamed in the distance. Firemen shouted as they dragged in hoses and opened them full blast on the burning SUV.
“Paramedics! Over here!” Mike yelled. To one of his officers, he shouted, “Get some lights.”
Leo groaned.
He’s not dead.
She took the few steps to reach Ginny and knelt beside her, wrapping her arm around the shaking girl’s shoulders. “He’ll be all right, Ginny. He has to be.”
Please, let that be true.
Mike stared at her over Leo’s wounded body. The once white polo shirt he pressed to Leo’s abdomen had become saturated with blood, turning the fabric bright red. Cassie squeezed her eyes shut for a second, partly to stem her tears and partly because she couldn’t take the budding accusation on Mike’s face.
He knows. He knows this was meant for me.
The lump in her throat was so big she almost couldn’t breathe.
Two uniformed paramedics materialized and immediately set to work. A fireman held a large heavy-duty flashlight over Leo so the medics could see what they were doing. Voices called over the handheld radios carried by all the emergency personnel rushing in. Amidst the chaos, one thing was clear. Leo was dying.
“Keep applying pressure to the wound, Chief.” One of the paramedics unbuckled a large plastic two-tiered medical kit and yanked out a BP cuff that he wrapped around Leo’s upper arm. The rubber ball made puffing sounds as the medic pumped up the cuff.
The other paramedic unlocked another case and tore open bags of sterile gauze and bandages that he quickly applied to the injuries on Leo’s abdomen and the gash on his head. The shirt Mike had been using lay in a bloody heap beside them on the ground.
“BP ninety over sixty and dropping. Pulse one-ten and thready.” The paramedic pushed Leo’s eyelids open and flicked on a penlight. “Pupils are responsive. Respiration twenty-four. Start an IV, Ringer’s lactate. He’s going into shock.”
Leo’s body went lax. His eyelids fluttered.
The medic wrapped a tourniquet around Leo’s upper arm and tapped two fingers to feel for a vein, then inserted an IV needle.
“We have to get him to County. Fast.” The other medic taped a second clean bandage over the one covering Leo’s abdominal wound. “He’s losing a lot of blood. Looks like a piece of metal embedded in his gut. Internal injury likely.”
Ginny whimpered and tears streamed down her cheeks. “I d–don’t know what happened,” she cried. “All we did was start the engine. P–please, Leo, don’t die.”
It didn’t take a doctor to tell Cassie that Leo hadn’t been inside the SUV when it blew up, nor had Ginny. If they had been, they’d both be dead. Leo must have pressed the remote start button on the key fob when they’d still been outside the vehicle.
Paramedics placed an immobilizing Aspen collar around Leo’s neck and eased a backboard beneath him. He grunted, clearly in pain, and Ginny’s shoulders stiffened beneath Cassie’s arm.
Mike stood to help the other officers with crowd control as onlookers pressed closer. “Give us room to work here,” he shouted, extending his arms to push the crowd farther back. Blood continued trickling from his chest wound down the deep ridges of his abdomen.
She stayed with Ginny, comforting her as the paramedics continued to stabilize Leo before transporting him to the hospital. The girl’s body trembled and her breaths came in little sobs as she held fast to Leo’s hand. A third paramedic dabbed at the shallow abrasions on Ginny’s arms and face.
“Will he be all right?” Ginny looked up at her from teary, red-rimmed eyes.
“I hope so. God, I hope so.” Cassie stared at Leo’s bloody face contorted in pain, praying it was a positive sign he was conscious enough to feel anything at all. “The doctors will take good care of him. I promise you that.” Cassie stroked the girl’s hair, swallowing hard as she took in all the bloody bandages littering the grass.
“I want to go in the ambulance with him.” Ginny’s voice was choked, as if she could barely speak.
“Sorry, ma’am,” one of the paramedics said, “only family in the ambulance with the victim.”
“I’m sure you can make an exception this one time.” Mike had come to stand behind them, his deep, authoritative tone brooking no argument.
The paramedic paused, then nodded. “Right, Chief. And we’ll look at your chest wound,” he added as he and the other medics lifted Leo onto a gurney.
Cassie turned to see Mike’s chest smeared with blood.
“Forget it.” Mike helped Ginny to stand. “Take care of Leo and Ginny,” he ordered the paramedic.
The man shook his head and yelled to his partner, “Look at the chief’s injury.”
Only now Cassie realized the severity of Mike’s wound warranted closer examination. An inch to the left and that shrapnel would have been buried in his heart. The sick feeling in her gut quadrupled.
A paramedic tried to stop Mike, but Mike shook him off. “It’s just a scratch,” he growled as he followed the gurney. “I’ll go to the hospital later.”
Paramedics loaded Leo into the ambulance and settled Ginny beside him on a bench. Mike shut the ambulance doors and pounded twice on the outside, signaling the driver to take off.
Cassie wrapped her arms tightly around her shoulders, watching the ambulance roll through the parking lot, lights flashing as it turned onto the main road and picked up speed. The image of Leo and Ginny together only hours ago, so happy and in love, made her heart tighten. Again, she fought the urge to throw up.
The crowd surged forward around them, and it occurred to her one of them could be the hit man. He could stick her with a knife and she’d never see it coming. Or he might be watching from the ridge, aiming a high-powered infrared scope at her at this very moment.
She didn’t care. She deserved it.
“What happened, Chief?” a man asked.
He turned to Cassie, accusation shooting from his darkened blue eyes. “I don’t know. But I will find out.”
The guilt was overwhelming. She should run, but there were questions to be answered. A full-scale investigation would be initiated.
Radios squawked all around her. Firemen and police were everywhere, yet Cassie had never felt more alone in her life. Or more miserable.
As much as she wanted to go to the hospital with Ginny and Leo, her priority was the safety of everyone else around her. The park brimmed with people. She’d catch hell for it later, but getting out of town was the best course of action. For everyone. But the acrid smell of burned fuel and oil reminded her she had no vehicle.
I’ll hitchhike if it’s the only way to put space between me and the people I love.
She started across the lot, when a strong hand spun her.
“Where do you think you’re going?” Mike’s steely voice demanded. Sweat glistened on his forehead and his bare chest. The injury near his heart continued oozing blood.
“I have to leave.” Cassie tried backing out of his grip, but he held fast. “Let me go,” she cried.
“You’re not going anywhere until you tell me what the hell is going on.” He held her firmly by both arms. “This explosion was meant for you, wasn’t it?”
She pressed her lips together and nodded. “I–I think so.”
Mike narrowed his eyes. “Who did this, your ex-boyfriend? Husband?”
“No, I’m not married, and I don’t have a boyfriend.” Cassie was shocked by the fury in his stare. It seared her like a blow torch.
“Then who, dammit? Tell me who I’m looking for!”
“I don’t know who it is,” she shouted.
“Bullshit.” Mike dragged her to where Jimmy stood beside a police cruiser. He grabbed the radio from Jimmy’s belt. “Give me a name, a description.”
“I swear to you I don’t know his name.” She shook her head at the angry disbelief on Mike’s face as she rattled off a description. “Five-eleven, one-eighty, dark complexion, short dark hair, hook-shaped nose, and a goatee. He’s wearing jeans and a white T-shirt with writing on the front.”
Mike held the radio to his mouth and repeated her description to all units with a warning to approach with extreme caution. “And clear everyone out of here. The fireworks are canceled, and the park is closed until further notice. Call in all units and set up a two-man security checkpoint at every exit.” To Jimmy, he ordered, “Get on the phone. We need State Police backup and call in the county bomb squad.”
Cassie knew the routine. Soon the entire park would be crawling with bomb squad cops, bomb dogs, and federal agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms.
A crack of thunder rent the air, much like another explosion. She tilted her head upward and a drop of rain splashed onto her cheek. In the distance, the sky lit up with flash after flash of lightning.
Jimmy grabbed his cell phone, pausing as he noticed the gash on Mike’s chest. “You should get that looked at.”
“Later.” He hauled Cassie to the passenger door of the cruiser and opened it. “Get in.”
“Mike, please.”
“Please what?” He shoved her roughly inside the car and got into her face. “For someone who doesn’t know the name of the guy trying to kill her, you gave a pretty detailed description.”
“I know you have questions, and I’ll answer them all later,” she said. “Right now I have to get out of here. Can’t you understand that?”
“What I understand,” Mike said, his words coming out in a menacing growl, “is that you’ve been hiding things from me since the day you got here, and now those things got somebody in my town critically injured. You’re not going anywhere without me. Before the night is over you will answer my questions. All of them.”
Mike gripped the edge of the car door and shut his eyes. In the dim light, his face paled. Cassie got her first close-up look at the wound on his chest. It was worse than she’d realized, deep into his flesh and still bleeding.
“Stay here.” He slammed the door shut and stalked off to where Jimmy guarded the twisted metal that used to be her Trail Blazer. He kept her in his line of sight, his body language saying far more than words ever could.
He blamed her, but no more than she blamed herself. She was as responsible as the lowlife criminal who’d planted the bomb.
Over the cruiser’s engine, Cassie heard the announcement on the P.A. system that the fireworks had been canceled and the park was closed. People hustled to their cars, and within minutes the roads leading out of the park were jammed bumper to bumper.
Bolt after bolt of lightning split the horizon, followed by cracks of thunder. Even inside the car, the reverberations rocked through Cassie’s head and chest. A massive electrical storm was moving in fast. Even deadlier was the storm that had followed her to Hopewell Springs.
“I know you’re here,” she whispered, peering through the cruiser’s windows. She didn’t think the hit man would try anything with all the police canvassing the park, but he would be watching from a distance.
To confirm his kill.
Bastard. You’ll pay for what you’ve done. Along with whoever is footing the bill for your services.
Cassie fished inside her bag for her cell phone. She waited for the screen to light up. It didn’t. She’d forgotten to charge it and now it was out of juice. She flung the phone back into her bag, stifling the urge to scream.
The trunk of the cruiser popped open, and a moment later Mike opened the driver’s side door and sat heavily onto the seat. When he pulled the door shut, he grunted in pain. He’d put on a clean white polo shirt with a police badge embroidered on the front, identical to the one he’d used to soak up Leo’s blood. Mike wiped the sweat from his brow. In seconds, fresh blood spotted the white shirt where it covered his wound.
A tear trickled down Cassie’s cheek. She’d done this to him.
Mike flicked on the cruiser’s strobe lights. The cruiser lurched when he jumped the curb and took a shortcut on the grass to get around the long line of cars.
Cassie glanced at his hardened profile. “Where are we going?”
“To the hospital before I damn well pass out. I need to interview Leo if he’s conscious, then Ginny. Maybe they can tell me more about what happened. After that, I’m taking you to the police station for your own safety.” He shot her a sideways look. “And official interrogation.”