Chapter Seven
Cassidy watched Jake Donovan walk away from her. Again.
The gnawing ache caused by his sudden absence in her life had abated over the years, yet seeing him again made it clear it had never gone away entirely. But she couldn’t let herself go there again. Not when there was so much at stake. Maybe not ever.
They were still kids when their lives veered off in different directions.
Jake had been determined to attend the university in Fayetteville once they graduated and was excited to live the full college experience.
But her family struggled to send her as far as Little Rock.
While he was going to football games and meeting people from all over, she was working at a sandwich shop every hour she wasn’t in class.
After a few months, the distance between campuses and the differences in their lifestyles proved to be too much.
When Jake had told her he thought they should call things off, she’d slumped into a mild depression.
Her mother was the one who’d talked her back to the land of the living.
She’d made Cassidy promise to visit the campus health center and speak to one of the counselors.
The counselor had, in turn, encouraged her to find her own purpose in life.
But the breakup left her reeling emotionally and struggling to focus in school.
She’d begun speaking to a young woman in her English Literature section who was a member of the ROTC. For the first time, Cass had considered doing something other than the expected four years of college.
She’d stayed in school but switched her major from Business Management to Criminal Justice. Then she’d joined an officer training program.
Until today, Cassidy always considered her service the best decision she’d ever made.
Now someone was making her question her choices.
She’d spoken to Bud and put a plan in motion, but now she had to make sure everyone was on the same page. Cassidy flagged down the fire trainee who’d been checking on her periodically. “Hey,” she shouted, cupping her hands around her mouth to make her voice carry. “Hey, T.B.?”
The guy looked up and she beckoned him to her. “Ma’am?”
Clinging to one of the poles at the edge of the platform, she spoke in short, clear sentences, pausing each time the ride circled around to the back of the midway.
“Would you ask Colonel Aronson to come see me? Tell him it’s important. I have information that might pertain to our bomber.”
“Yes, ma’am.” The firefighter gave a short sharp nod and turned away.
Cassidy watched as her messenger trotted up the hill toward the arena.
She was going to have to ask for help. Not something at the top of her skill set.
But if she could get what she wanted from the base, she would have a boatload of information to sift through.
Even if they could get a laptop or tablet to her, Cassidy didn’t think she could focus on a screen for more than a few seconds without getting sick.
And if she was going to make any sense of the data, she needed someone who could seek out patterns.
Feeling slightly dejected, she made her way over to the bench and sat heavily. The bulk of the pack forced her to bounce off the back of the seat. “Stupid backpack. Stupid Cassidy.”
But even as she chastised herself she knew she didn’t mean it.
The bomber was right. There was no way she would have let that big-eyed boy wear what might be an incendiary device on his shoulders.
She slanted her head back and stared at the carousel’s canopy.
The paint was flaking and peeling in spots.
She’d be sure to mention it to the manager of the attractions company they’d contracted.
Not that they’d care. She’d pointed out a few places where the facades of the games and rides had looked a little worse for wear when they’d done their safety inspection, but the man had always seemed to be in a hurry to be elsewhere.
She could almost hear him now saying nobody ever looked up when riding a carousel. And he was probably right under normal circumstances. She conceded the point in the argument with herself but didn’t mean proper maintenance could be skipped.
“Ms. Walker? You wanted to see me?”
She glanced over and saw Colonel Aronson approaching. He was a tall man with a well-worn face and a no-nonsense demeanor. The colonel stopped off to side of the carousel and planted himself with his feet spread wide and arms clasped behind his back.
Cassidy smiled when she realized he was standing in a Parade Rest stance. “Did you serve, Colonel?” she shouted as she whirled past.
Aronson didn’t answer right away, but the next time she came around, he gave a brief nod and said, “US Marine Corps, ma’am.”
“USAF,” she called back to him as she took a ride around the back once again.
“So I hear,” he replied. “What can I do for you?”
Cassidy quickly surmised that the site commander had no intention of hopping onto her merry-go-round of torture, so she came quickly to the point on her pass.
“I need to put a call in to the base at Jacksonville. I was in the Security Forces there when on active duty.” She completed another circuit, but the second he came into sight it again she began speaking.
“Some of the messages I’ve received make it clear whoever’s doing this knows about my service.
” She had to wait for another circuit to pass.
“They likely know my assigned duties. As you can imagine, Military Police aren’t terribly popular. ”
Aronson nodded some more. “Concur,” he said as she circled around again.
Cassidy swallowed her annoyance at the man’s taciturn conversational style. After all, he was the one up there trying to direct teams ready to defuse bombs when she was simply sitting on one.
“I’m going to need help sifting through the data. If I can get someone,” she amended. “Reading isn’t easy up here.”
“I can imagine. I’ll see what I can do.”
She winced as she forced the next part out. “I may also need some weight thrown behind my request.”
Aronson straightened. “I think you could ask the governor for about anything right now, ma’am.”
She gestured to her mobile phone and then tapped the magnetic battery pack attached to the back of it.
“We can only assume my phone is compromised. Bud Thompson is supposed to be bringing me another, but I’d like to get this moving as quickly as possible.
” She paused, looking for any sign of compliance.
When he continued to return her stare, she knew she would have to be more direct with her request. “Would you put the call in?”
The colonel frowned in confusion. “To the governor, or to the base?”
“Both. Either. I think the request would have more heft coming from you, sir.”
“I don’t know anything about how they run things at the base,” he told her.
“Listen, I know our best offense is a good defense, and all, but I believe we should take some action. We can’t sit here and wait for things to play out on this joker’s timeline.”
By the time she came around again, Aronson had moved closer to the ride.
“I agree with you. I’ll put in a call to the governor’s office and see if someone will reach out to the base commander.
I can also get somebody from our Cyber Crime Division to help look for patterns in whatever data you can get from the base. ”
“Thank you, sir.”
“You’re doing great, Ms. Walker.” Aronson began to back away, but before he cleared the security fencing, he turned. “Hey, since we’re asking favors… When you see Donovan next, would you remind him he reports to me and not you?”
Cassidy spluttered a laugh. “Yes, sir. I certainly will.”
He touched a finger to the edge of his helmet in a small salute. “We’ll get you out of this,” he assured her.
The moment he turned away, Cassidy stretched out on her side, facing the back of the bench, but she couldn’t maintain the position for long. Oddly enough, she found it harder to fight off the nausea when she couldn’t track where she was in the circuit.
Gripping the edge of the bench, she pushed up and twisted her body until she could take the same position but facing outward. She locked in on chip in the bench across from her and focused on sorting the possibilities.
Number one, if it was somebody from her Air Force days, it would somewhat certainly be someone who considered her more foe than friend.
Military Police or Security Forces—it didn’t matter what you called them—the people charged with the duty of keeping other people in line were never the most sought-after friends.
Sure, she’d made some good connections with colleagues.
More after she’d moved from patrol to training duties.
As a trainer, her fellow officers had viewed her more as a teacher than as a cop.
Regardless, she’d absolutely made more enemies in her years of service than pals. It was the nature of the beast.
That brought her to point number two. The supposition that whoever was doing this felt they had a score to settle with her.
It was clearly someone who thought they knew her well.
At least well enough to make assumptions.
She could probably eliminate servicemen and women she’d encountered in more mundane circumstances such as traffic checkpoints or dealing with identification issues.
Most of the day-to-day misdemeanors were unlikely as well.
Drunk and disorderly conduct arrests we’re a dime a dozen.
Plus, the people she’d busted in those cases were usually angrier with whoever had ratted them out than with her.
This was likely somebody she’d encountered under more serious circumstances.
She’d made numerous arrests in her career.
Many of them significant crimes. Was the person who was doing this the perpetrator of her twelfth arrest?
The twelfth overall, or that resulted in a felony conviction?
Was the “dozen” part significant, or was she overly fixated on the number twelve?