Chapter Two #2
But Cassidy Walker wasn’t a terrorist. At least, the Cassidy Walker he’d once known wasn’t. She’d been the most upright, no-nonsense woman he’d ever met. Stubborn, too. And brave.
Brave enough to keep wriggling her way into holding an incendiary device so everyone around her could go free.
“Hey, Cass,” he said, coming to a stop a few inches behind the bench. He ignored Max’s warning whine but could feel the dog beside him tense with anticipation. “Remember me?”
* * *
Everything Inside Cassidy stilled at the sound of his voice. She wet her dry lips and lowered her chin to her chest, her mind racing as she tried to come to grips with her circumstances.
Her hair blew into her eyes. She swept it away, thinking about how smug she’d felt about everything earlier. The good hair day. A picture-perfect October sky.
The bombs planted around her fairgrounds.
How had it all gone so wrong?
“Cass?”
He called her name again. He was here. The man calling to her was not a figment of her overwrought imagination. He was as real as the backpack she’d willingly strapped to her back. Screwing her eyes shut, she wondered if maybe she was dead.
Maybe the jerk who’d sent those text messages had detonated a bomb.
Someone touched her shoulder, but she didn’t turn to look. She didn’t need to. She wasn’t dead and this wasn’t all some kind of daytime nightmare. It was actually happening.
“Jake.” She croaked his name. It was neither greeting nor warning. Simply a whisper carried off on one of the endless circuits.
“Cass, what is happening?”
“My day isn’t going as planned.”
She tried to inject her words with a light, mocking tone, but it fell short.
No matter. She focused on keeping her eyes fixed on the chipping green paint on the bench across from her.
After more than a half hour whirling in circles, she’d given up on looking at anything more than a couple feet in front of her.
“I saw you take that backpack.” The statement contained a gentle chide. She felt a surge of hot indignation spark deep in her belly, but she shut it down. Losing control could mean disaster. She swallowed hard then spoke in a slow, measured tone.
“Well, I wasn’t going to leave Darien holding the bag.” She eyed him warily. “What brings you here?”
Sensing a movement to her right, she blinked slowly. When she opened her eyes, she was shocked to find a pair of amber ones staring back at her rather than Jake’s sea-blues.
The dog’s nose twitched and then he bared his teeth with a growl. But there was no menace in the tone. It was simply a warning. Was he warning her? Or warning Jake about her?
“Oh. Hi…” she blurted.
“Max,” Jake disclosed, stepping into her line of vision behind the dog.
He murmured something in a soothing tone and the dog settled onto its haunches, a soft wuffling noise escaping with each impatient exhale.
“Hey, Max,” she said in a trembling voice.
“He’s not a fan of your new backpack,” Jake said in a quiet, confidential tone. He sat on the bench directly across from her. “What were you thinking, Cass?”
“Cassidy.” The correction was automatic. No one called her Cass anymore. Only Jake Donovan had ever called her Cass. “And I figured better me than a seven-year-old boy.”
“Noble,” he said, lifting a single eyebrow.
The familiarity of look both comforted her and set her blood simmering. “Yep. I’m the queen of self-sacrifice,” she shot back, her tone drenched in sarcasm. She took in his tactical gear and the vest on the dog seated between them. “I see you got your dream job.”
He didn’t ask her to clarify. There was no need. Jake’s sights had been firmly set on joining the Arkansas State Police since one of the troopers who lived in their town had made an appearance at the seventh-grade career fair.
“This isn’t how I pictured running into you again,” he said with a wry twist of a smile. His gaze dropped and he nodded to her lap. “Is the phone you received the messages on?”
Jerking slightly at the change in topic, she looked down to where she practically strangled the device she held with both hands. A hot blush crept up her neck. Of course he wanted to see the phone. He hadn’t come here looking for her. “Oh. Yeah. Yes.”
He leaned in closer and extended his hand. “May I?”
She thrust the phone at him. “Here.”
He took it from her. “Do you know how Darien got the backpack?”
“He said a guy gave it to him at one of the midway games. Told him there was a game console in there, but he shouldn’t open it or the big kids would take it away.”
Jake grunted, then frowned at the phone screen. “Security code?”
“It’s 888927,” she recited.
This time, both eyebrows flew up. The heat in her cheeks intensified as she realized he recognized the repurposing of her parents’ old phone number.
“My mom told me your folks moved to Florida,” he said as he keyed in the sequence. The one he’d once kept programmed in his own phone.
“They did,” she confirmed.
“They like it down there?” He scanned the text bubbles. Each message came through to her phone from a different unknown contact.
“Jake, I don’t think this is a great time for a catch-up,” she said, her voice taut with tension.
He blew out a breath. “SMS messages. I don’t suppose you recognize any of the incoming phone numbers.”
She shook her head. “I figure they’re using a random number generator. I’ve been forwarding them to the guy in charge… Something Anson.”
“Aronson,” he said, supplying the name of the SWAT commander who’d summoned all available detection agents to the scene. “Colonel Aronson.”
Cassidy resisted the urge to roll her eyes like she would have when they were young. “Sorry. I was too busy trying to keep the governor, a gaggle of media types and a classroom of kids from getting blown sky-high to get all the details.”
“Gotcha.” He scanned the messages. “And the last one said…”
She nodded toward the device. “The top number. Something about being brave or stupid.” She played it off with a nonchalant wave of her hand, but she remembered the text word for word.
I don’t know if you’re incredibly brave or truly stupid, Lieutenant Walker.
Jake looked up, a furrow of concern digging a trench between his eyes. “Lieutenant Walker?”
“Second Lieutenant, US Air Force,” she intoned through numb lips.
“This is someone who knows you,” Jake concluded.
It wasn’t an accusation. She knew it wasn’t. Still, it felt like one. “Or knows of me,” she retorted stiffly. “My service record is mentioned in my public bio.”
“Where could someone find that bio?”
She shrugged. “It’s on the fair website. Social media.” She tried to shrug, but suddenly the pack on her back seemed to weigh a thousand pounds. “They hired me because they liked my military experience. Used to be based at Little Rock Air Force Base.”
“I see.” He looked back down at her phone. “Not giving us a lot of detail, are they?”
She shook her head then glanced at her watch.
It was almost noon. The food vendors expected to provide samples for the press.
Her second-in-command, a retired Little Rock police corporal named Bud Thompson, had said a handful of them hadn’t been terribly cooperative when he’d instructed everyone to go to the arena while they assessed the threat.
“Have you looked in there?” Jake tilted his head to glance meaningfully at the backpack.
Pressing her lips together, Cassidy could only shake her head. “Afraid to move it too much.”
“What does it feel like?”
She closed her eyes and concentrated on the weight pulling on her shoulders. “Hard casing. Probably plastic, judging by the weight. Five pounds, maybe? No more than ten,” she concluded, opening her eyes again.
“No sounds? No heat? No vibrations?”