Chapter 3
I took a deep breath and asked quietly, “You don’t think someone tried to hurt my grandmother, do you?”
“No.” Aiden’s reply was short, his voice low and certain. His hands stayed steady on the wheel, knuckles pale in the dashboard glow. “I think they wanted to destroy the shop, though.”
I pushed my damp hair out of my face and tried to shake off the chill.
The heat blasted against my boots, and for the first time in hours, I felt almost safe.
Drowsiness crept in with the sound of the wipers.
“Do you think maybe someone spiked the pie as a diversion so they could steal the nugget boxes?”
He reached over and turned up the heat. “It’s a thought. But then why set off the dynamite? That brought attention to the scene right away.”
“That’s true.” My gaze drifted toward the side window, where the rain blurred the forest into smudges of silver and black. “I can’t figure out how anybody got into the refrigerator at the Elks—or into Nana’s place.”
“I don’t know.” His tone hardened. “The alarm at your grandmother’s shop was still set.”
“That’s weird, right?”
His jaw tightened. “Yes. That’s weird. How much do you think those boxes are worth?”
“I don’t know,” I said slowly. “They were made of real silver, and they’re big enough to hold decent-sized nuggets. There’s still a little gold dust in them.” I rubbed my palms against my jeans. “They latch together to make this really pretty design, and there’s a painting on the bottom.”
“Yeah, but that’s just family lore,” he said. “There’s no buried treasure.”
Wouldn’t that be fun, though? “That’s true.” I stifled a yawn. “But hypothetically, I assume at one point those boxes held nuggets.”
Aiden gave me a sidelong glance. “Your great-something great-grandmother painted a map on the bottom of them?”
“Right. Supposedly, she did it so someone could find the nuggets someday. The story was that they hid them around Shanty’s Peak near Storm Mountain during the old mining days. Made sense, back then.”
He frowned. “So the nuggets would’ve been how large?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Around a pound each—about fourteen and a half troy ounces.” I’d grown up in a mining town and was fully confident with the mining lingo.
He gave a low whistle. “That’d be worth about thirty grand. A nugget.”
“Yeah,” I said, smiling faintly. “Family rumor is that only the seven nicest nuggets were kept in the boxes and that there were a whole bunch more hidden somewhere.” I looked over at him. “It’s not true, Aiden. It’s just something fun. We used to go treasure hunting all the time as kids.”
“I don’t blame you.”
I studied his face in the dim light, amusement tugging at me. “Please tell me you don’t want to go on a treasure hunt.”
Aiden grinned, teeth flashing white in the dark. “Every kid wants to go on a treasure hunt. I bet you guys had a lot of fun.”
I sobered a little. “We really did.”
Aiden had grown up in Ireland. He’d lost his mom young, and his dad was, by all accounts, not a great guy.
Aiden had moved over to Silverville to live with his grandparents when he was a teenager.
He’d been in high school when I was in junior high, and I remembered how tough, and somehow lonely, he’d looked.
His grandparents had both passed on, and now he didn’t have any family. Well, except mine.
“You don’t talk about your childhood much,” I murmured.
He glanced at me, then back to the road. “There’s not a lot to talk about. My mom died young. My dad was a prick.”
“You never said what happened to him.”
“He just took off. I think he probably died, though.” Aiden’s voice stayed even, almost too much so. “I never heard from him again, and that’s when I came over to live with my grams and gramps.”
I reached across the console and slid my hand into his, my smaller one fitting easily against his calloused palm. “I’m sorry.”
“I loved them,” he said quietly. “They gave me a good childhood—or what was left of it.”
He didn’t look at me, just kept his eyes on the rain-slick highway.
His thumb brushed over my fingers once before he let go to shift gears.
Typical Aiden. Steady, controlled, always driving, both literally and metaphorically.
And I had to admit, I liked that about him.
Maybe too much. There was something safe about the way he handled a truck the same way he handled chaos: calm, precise, and with a little bit of bossiness.
He’d gotten in trouble after high school and had to leave town before joining the service, before eventually landing with the ATF.
He’d saved my life when I’d been briefly kidnapped as a kid, and I’d had a crush on him ever since.
It was hard to believe we were grown now, sitting here like this, the past woven between us like a quiet thread.
Sometimes I wondered if he’d stay—if he’d ever stop thinking five steps ahead and just let himself belong.
“Stop thinking so hard,” he murmured.
I blinked at him. “How do you always know what I’m thinking?”
He smiled slightly but didn’t answer.
I cleared my throat. “So, the bomb squad out of Spokane had to blow up the dynamite?”
“Yeah.” He kept his tone even. “I sifted through what was left, and any evidence was collected and bagged.”
I yawned, my mind lagging. “So who has jurisdiction? You or the bomb squad out of Spokane?”
“I do now.” His gaze stayed on the road. “The EDU set off the dynamite and rendered it safe. Now the ATF investigates.”
“Oh.” I woke up a little. “I’m surprised you didn’t talk to Nana.”
He sighed. “I didn’t get done until late and didn’t want to wake her. The sheriff already spoke with her and filled me in. I’ll interview her again tomorrow. The local techs will send the remains of the dynamite off to our lab.”
I perked up. “Really? Will you be able to find anything?”
“It’s possible. I’ve got a few metal fragments and some microscopic particulates. There’s enough that they might isolate nitrogenous residues or breakdown products, figure out where it came from.”
That was fascinating to me. “You said the sticks looked old.”
“They did.” His mouth flattened. “I wouldn’t be surprised if the dynamite came out of an abandoned mine. We find this kind of thing once in a while outside Silverville.”
“I’ve heard that,” I murmured. “So your working theory right now is that somebody stole the boxes from Nana’s store and set off the dynamite to cover the theft?”
He glared at a truck coming at us on the other side of I-90 with its bright lights on. “Right.”
I cocked my head. “If they thought they were going to blow up the entire shop and destroy any evidence of the theft, they probably weren’t that careful when they were inside.”
“I’m well aware,” he murmured. “I have the Spokane forensic unit handling your grandmother’s shop, looking for any trace evidence.”
I blinked. “You went with Washington State instead of Idaho?”
“Well, yeah. Boise’s a lot farther away than Spokane. We often work with Spokane locally.”
Oh. I didn’t actually know that. I tried to picture strangers moving through Nana’s cozy shop, handling everything she cared about. “So then what?”
“They’ll process any prints and DNA,” he said, his tone businesslike, “but any explosive fragments or chemical signatures will go to our lab in Maryland.”
I slumped back against the seat. This was so out of my experience. “Where do you think they got the dynamite?”
“I don’t know. I’m hoping we can find some kind of signature, but I’m not counting on it.”
I sighed. “Do you think we’ll be able to find the nugget boxes?”
“I don’t know, angel,” he said softly. “I have Sheriff Franco going through all the CCTV footage in the area tomorrow. We should know more soon. I’m bringing my team in, and I promise we’ll do our best.”
I held my hands out to the blissful heat. “But your focus is on the explosives.”
“Of course,” he murmured. “But if we find who planted the explosives, we’ll discover who took your Nana’s nugget boxes.”
He wasn’t wrong. “We have to find them. How do you think they got in?”
“I have no idea,” he admitted. “I couldn’t find a broken window or any sign of forced entry. I talked to Rory, and the alarm system was top-of-the-line. It doesn’t make sense unless she left the door open or let someone in.”
“She didn’t.”
His gaze flicked toward me, then back to the road. “I know that, and you know that. But there’s going to be an insurance claim, and an adjuster’s going to want answers. Right now, we don’t have any.”
He turned off I-90 and drove through Timber City, the streets shining under the rain. The wipers clicked slower now as the lights of town faded behind us. “I’m glad you’re back home. Is your case concluded?”
“Not even close.”
Terrific. “Can you talk about any of it?”
“Yeah. It’s a dirty little crossover that’ll involve several agencies,” he said.
“Basically, someone stored a bunch off-the-shelf health supplements in a warehouse that burned down in Portland last week. Lab folks found volatile residue on the packaging, nothing I can sell in court, but enough to make the fire behave like it had a tailwind. That kind of language pulls ATF into origin-and-cause work, so now I’m running manifests, subpoenas, and keeping an eye on a few PO boxes that trace back to small retailers.
It’s a joint task force with the FDA, TTB, FBI, and right now the local PD in Portland.
Too many people.” He shrugged and gave a half-smile that didn’t reach his eyes. “Welcome to my Tuesday.”
I frowned. “Health supplements?”
“Yeah, and most aren’t regulated. There’s a huge pipeline of iffy shit being sold as health supplements, in everything from vitamins to micro-dosed mushrooms.”