Chapter 9
“Blowing up anyplace like this is bold,” Tiago murmured as he navigated the streets with Rowan.
“Yeah.” And Rowan had a feeling that they’d stepped into something even worse than they’d imagined because bombing was right up there with arson. Not to mention this guy had shot who he thought was Fleur at point-blank range. Then walked away without a care.
Rowan didn’t understand people like that and didn’t want to. He simply wanted to stop him from hurting anyone else. Because it took a certain kind of cold-bloodedness to kill a civilian up close like that. Someone who wasn’t doing anything to hurt anyone.
“I’m going to park here. We’re only a few blocks out and I don’t think we’ll be able to get any closer once they start roping off everything.” Tiago maneuvered the truck they’d rented into a spot in front of a bookstore.
Rowan scanned the street on instinct, looking for anyone out of place. But this was New Orleans in the middle of Mardi Gras. There was no normal here. As soon as he stepped out, the noises and scents engulfed him.
The scent of chocolate and so much laughter lifted on the air. On the sidewalk, he fell in step with Tiago, noted the candy shop that proclaimed they made their own product right on-site.
“That place is incredible. After this mess, why don’t you grab some stuff for your girl?” Tiago murmured, nodding at the mint green and white striped awning.
He frowned at Tiago, wondering what his friend was talking about. “I’m not dating anyone.”
Tiago just slid his sunglasses on as they reached an intersection and didn’t respond otherwise. As they crossed the street, Rowan saw wafts of smoke billowing up behind a Scottish Rite temple. Way more people were heading toward them instead of toward the smoke, which made sense.
He subtly put his earpiece in, called Gage. It was weird to be contacting him and not Hailey, but she was with Jesse setting up a backup safe house.
“We’re almost on-site,” he murmured as a rowdy bunch of college-aged guys wearing rainbow-colored tutus split and walked around Tiago and him. The good thing about being big was that people tended to give him space—and the offset of that was that people often remembered him. Or at least his size, if not his face specifically.
“I’m listening into the local PD,” Gage said. “They’ve called in the bomb squad and are trying to determine if there are any more devices.”
Unfortunately that made sense. Bombers occasionally set off one, then waited for first responders to arrive before setting off more.
The temple they walked alongside took up the entire block, but the closer they got to the end of it, he saw the flashing lights, multiple fire trucks and a whole lot of cop cars. There were already barricades up and only about a dozen people standing and taking pictures or filming.
For the most part the cops ignored the onlookers except to tell one or two to get back onto the sidewalk across the street as they redirected traffic.
Rowan pulled his own phone up, scanned everyone he could get a good view of. “Might get the asshole watching his handiwork.” But even as he panned his phone, filming, he glanced up at the various windows of the buildings surrounding the smoking church—which somehow hadn’t been completely destroyed.
The front was mostly intact, but he could see destruction farther back—and the cops had cordoned those areas off completely. It looked as if a giant monster had taken a bite out of the back of the building.
If someone was going to go to the effort to plant this bomb, they’d want to watch their handiwork, look for Adalyn if she showed up.
“Sit tight,” Tiago murmured before jogging across the blocked-off street to get closer to the barricades.
“Come on,” he muttered.
“What is it?” Gage asked.
“Tiago is going to get himself arrested.” But then he realized that Tiago knew the fireman he was waving at when the guy shifted the barricade to the side and pulled him into a hug. “Never mind, apparently our boy knows one of the firefighters. Or maybe inspector.” He kept his voice pitched low as he walked down the sidewalk behind the spectators.
“Fire inspector is a man named Kayce Laurent. Just took over for the guy who retired and…” Gage snorted softly. “He attended the same high school as Tiago in Biloxi.”
“I swear that man knows someone everywhere we go.” Rowan sucked in a sharp breath as he saw a face from his past.
Sergeant Curtis Miller. Blond hair, blue-eyed All-American type. Stood out in a crowd.
But he was dead. Rowan knew it, had claimed the body. Had seen the explosion that had taken his life from a dry, hot tent miles away from the bombing.
The man turned away.
“What’s wrong?”
“You got eyes on this street?”
“Yeah, sort of. I’ve hacked into a few security cameras from the hotel across the street and the parking garage, but I don’t have as much of a visual as I’d like.”
Rowan had started back the way he’d come, the compulsion to see the man up close riding him hard, when a loud horn blasted.
He turned, his hand instinctively moving for his weapon, but immediately he dropped it. It was just a fire truck telling someone to get out of the road. When he turned back, the man was gone and Tiago was jogging across the street back toward him.
“Can you search for a man about six feet, blond hair, wearing a blue shirt and jeans?” Rowan told him which street names to focus his search on.
“Sure. Who is he?” Gage asked.
“I don’t know. Potentially no one,” he said on a sigh. Because this had happened before. He’d see the faces of the dead in crowds. In his sleep. Behind him in the mirror. They haunted him, blamed him for their deaths.
And for a long time he’d blamed himself as well as Adalyn. Maybe he still did blame himself. “So what’s the deal?” Rowan asked as Tiago fell in step with him.
“We’re having dinner with the fire inspector in four hours. Name’s—”
“Kayce Laurent and you went to school with him.”
Tiago blinked, then half grinned. “Gage?”
“The one and only.”
“That’s right,” Gage said into his ear.
“Come on, let’s get out of here,” Tiago murmured. “We got more than we came for.”
Yeah, a dinner with the fire inspector was a lot more than Rowan had expected. “She’s going to insist on coming.” And he didn’t need to say Adalyn’s name to specify who.
Tiago clapped him once on the shoulder. “I know. And you get to tell her no.”
Just great.As if she didn’t already hate him enough.