Chapter 12
Eli tore through the front door and down the sidewalk toward his Jeep. He dove behind his Renegade for protection. From behind his vehicle and with a mental clock counting four, three, two, he rose only enough to see if Asher was behind him.
Asher appeared in the front door just as Eli’s mental clock hit one.
Ducking low again and raising his arms around his head, Eli braced, prayed.
The explosion shook the ground, thundered in his ears and echoed in his chest. Bits of building material rained down on him as the small house was blown to bits.
When his ears quit ringing, the sound that reached Eli first was a guttural cry of anguish.
Asher.
Pulse racing, Eli ran back toward the house and found his partner lying among the blasted debris and burning detritus of Scott’s house. “Asher!”
He knelt beside his friend, who, while in one piece, had clearly caught a considerable amount of the building-supply shrapnel. Glass shards, splintered wood, bent metal and tattered roofing tiles lay in a mosaic of destruction, with Asher in the middle. Bleeding. Groaning. But alive.
“Where were you hit worst?” Eli asked, hearing the note of panic in his voice. Stay calm. You can’t freak out. Manage the situation.
“Hard to say,” Asher rasped, his face pinched in pain.
Eli did a quick survey of Asher’s limbs, head and torso, checking for any critical injuries.
He yanked off his coat and draped it over Asher, hoping to stave off shock.
Next he stripped down to his undershirt, pulling the T-shirt off to soak up blood as he applied pressure to his partner’s injured leg.
“Can you hold this while I call for an ambulance and some uniforms to secure the scene?”
After pulling his top shirt back on, Eli called for help, his gaze taking in the rubble.
Clearly Scott had no intention of returning, was in full fugitive mode now. If there had been any evidence in the house to support or refute Scott’s involvement in the Fiancée Killer case, it was now either burning or scattered, shredded and tossed to the four winds.
Eli gritted his teeth, frustration and adrenaline tap dancing along his nerves.
He hated that Scott’s duplicity had been right under his nose, and he’d missed it.
He refused to let the bastard win. Whatever his part in the Fiancée Killer murders, whether perpetrator or accomplice, Eli swore that he would make Scott Montgomery pay.
Noelle read the data that her latest calculations had spit out and frowned. She’d spent the entire night and morning gathering information, statistics and expert opinions from both forensic specialists and data analysts to double- and triple-check her results.
But the more information she got, the more certain she was that Scott Montgomery was either the sloppiest scientist and most negligent medical examiner in history or one of the smartest to have so neatly altered the crime scene data and forensic data to yield the results that served him best. And gotten away with it. Until now.
She didn’t want to believe Scott was guilty of anything nefarious, largely for Eli’s sake. Being betrayed by someone he worked with and trusted had to be a painful blow. Like the sucker punch you dealt him when you walked away.
She shook her head and shoved the guilty thought aside. She could reexamine her past with Eli once the pressing issues related to this murder investigation were resolved.
She was scanning the table integrating meteorologic history, entomological findings, environmental conditions and decomposition studies with everything the investigation had yielded when her phone rang.
Her pulse skipped seeing Eli’s number on her screen. “Hi, did you talk to Scott? What did you learn?”
“No and a lot. In a sense. I—” He sounded odd. His voice quavered a bit, which was highly unusual for the man with the courage and constitution to investigate gruesome serial murders and manage the roughest of criminals.
“Eli? What’s wrong?”
“I’m at the hospital.”
“What!” she cried, not caring how much her reaction gave away about her feelings for him.
“I’m fine. But Asher’s pretty banged up.
” She heard him exhale heavily. Wearily.
“We’re both lucky to be alive. Montgomery had rigged his place with a bomb that was triggered when we entered his house.
Clearly he had something to hide and wanted to both destroy the evidence and take out the people who were onto him. He accomplished one of the two goals.”
Noelle sank onto a nearby chair. Her mind spun as she rattled off questions. “How bad are Asher’s injuries? Is there anything I can do? Where is Scott?”
“Asher will live, but he’s going to be in the hospital for a few days, recovering. He’s in radiology now for CT scans, checking for internal injuries.”
“But how—” She cut herself off. “Never mind. I’ll get the whole story when I get there. Which hospital?”
“The only one in town.” He forced a note of humor to his tone. “We’re lucky we weren’t farther out in the mountains. He was bleeding pretty heavily.”
“And you promise you’re all right?” she asked, a lump knotting her throat at the idea of anything happening to Eli.
“Minor cuts and scrapes. I’ll be fine. You really don’t have to come to the hospital.”
“Of course I’m coming,” she said, already gathering her purse and coat and keys to the replacement rental car. “Your partner was injured, and I want to be there for you.”
And my findings are the reason you were at Scott’s house to begin with. She clenched her jaw as guilt tripped through her.
Eli didn’t reply, and for a moment she thought she’d lost her connection.
“Hello? Eli?”
“Thanks, Noelle,” he said, his voice thick. “I’d appreciate the company. I’m in the ER waiting room at the moment, but they’ll be moving Asher to a room soon.”
She paused at the hostel door, glancing back at her laptop and the files spread out. On an impulse, she went back inside and packed her laptop into her messenger bag.
Noelle made it to the hospital in record time, but when she arrived, Asher was already settled in a private room.
Eli sat in a chair by the side of Asher’s bed, but Noelle’s focus was entirely on Eli, until she’d assured herself he was as whole and unharmed as he claimed.
She gave him a fierce hug and clung to him for several long moments, betraying the depth of her concern and relief that he was safe.
Her fingers combed through his hair, and he kissed the top of her head.
“What’s this?” Asher said from the bed, his voice slurring slightly, likely because of pain medication. “Judging from…that steamy hug, she’s more than…just a consultant.” His lips twitched in a groggy grin.
They were spared from replying when the sound of quick footsteps preceded Kansas’s appearance at the door. Her face was pale, her expression distressed, and her gaze flew to the bed immediately.
“Asher! Oh my God! What… Are you…?” Her boots clattered on the linoleum floor as she crossed to the side of Asher’s bed and took in his battered and bandaged appearance. “Are you okay? Really?” When Kansas’s gaze flew to Eli, a note of reproach hovered in her glare. “How did this happen?”
“Long story.” Eli motioned for Noelle to take his seat, then returned a wry look to his cousin. “I’m fine, by the way. Thanks for asking.”
His cousin’s eyes widened. “You were there, too? At the explosion site?”
“I was. We both very nearly bought the farm. I only spotted the bomb with a few seconds to spare. Scott clearly wanted to take us out along with any evidence in his house.”
Both of Kansas’s hands flew up, palms toward Eli. “Hold on. Back up. Scott who? Not our Scott?”
“Our Scott,” Asher said, though his eyes were closed, “isn’t our Scott, after all.”
“What?” Kansas said, dividing a stunned look between her cousin and Asher.
Eli moved to the corner of the room to drag another chair close to Asher’s bedside. “Have a seat. I’ll give you the lowdown after I get another chair from the hall.”
Noelle gave Kansas a quick smile of greeting when the confused woman glanced at her.
“Noelle, hi.” Kansas blinked as if surprised to see her there. “Were you with them, too?”
“No. I’m just here…for support.”
Clearly Kansas heard the hesitation in her voice, since she gave Noelle a curious look.
“And why are you here?” Eli asked his cousin when he stepped back into the room with another chair. “You and Rafferty are always sniping at each other. I wouldn’t have thought after you knew he survived that you’d be so worried about his sorry hide.”
Kansas sat taller in the chair and cast an inscrutable look to Asher before glancing back at her oldest cousin. “Let’s just say things aren’t always what they seem.”
Eli’s brow snapped into a deep V. “What?”
Kansas ignored her cousin’s confused frown. “Answer my question first. What did you mean about Scott? How is he connected to the explosion?”
“His house,” Asher said.
Kansas gasped. “Was Scott hurt? Was he—”
“He wasn’t there,” Eli said quickly. “He’s likely the one who set the bomb, with the intention of killing me and anyone who came with me to his house.”
Kansas was clearly having a hard time taking in the truths Eli was laying out. Recognizing this, Noelle stepped in with more background.
“I volunteered to help Eli analyze the case with some data software I work with,” she explained, “and it turned up inconsistencies with the forensic data. Based on the patterns of irregular information the program revealed, we think Scott Montgomery has been deliberately sabotaging the Fiancée Killer investigation.”
Kansas glanced to her cousin, then to Asher for confirmation.
Eli nodded, and Noelle expounded on the information from the files she’d input, the resources she’d used as backup, the cross-references, the charts she’d double-checked and the patterns of misinformation her analysis had uncovered.