Rapid Fire (4 page)

“There’s
no bomb?” the chief said quickly.

Sawyer’s
transmitted voice responded, “I can’t be entirely certain until we’ve done a
more thorough search. With explosives technology being what it is, a charge
could be hidden anywhere. But the other devices this guy used were all pretty
standard—none of the molded polymers or really high-power stuff. If he’s
sticking with the pattern, I’d expect to find a fairly traditional device. But
we’ve got nothing here. Nada.”

“Keep
looking.” But when the chief lowered the radio, his expression was pensive. He
glanced over at Thorne. “With what you know of him so far, would the Mastermind
go to a more advanced explosive?”

“In my
opinion?” Thorne stressed the last word, trying to remind the Bear Claw chief
that he didn’t specialize in parlor tricks. “I don’t think so. Granted, part of
his pattern is that he has very little pattern, but I’d say he has an ego. He
wants to be feared, wants to be seen as the best. If he had more advanced
technological abilities, I think he would’ve used them already. That leaves us
three possibilities.”

The tall
blond bombshell who’d been introduced to him as the evidence specialist, Cassie
Dumont, raised her eyebrows. “Which are?”

Her
prickly tone indicated that she had no intention of liking him.

Thorne
answered, “Well, the first option is that our mastermind is playing with us
again, that he phoned in a false threat just to watch us scramble. If so, we
need to address the question of why he phoned Officer Cooper.” It felt odd to
use her title, but it would be equally awkward to use her name for the first
time in five years, for the first time since he’d woken up and found her gone
after their one strange, disjointed night together.

They’d
meant nothing to each other, yet she’d changed his life. A better man would
thank her for it.

Instead,
Thorne was lined up to take her job.

“He’s
targeted her because she’s a woman,” said the lean, rangy cop who’d identified
himself as Detective Tucker McDermott, Homicide, “and because she’s a member of
the Forensics Department.”

“Maybe,”
Thorne said. “Or maybe there’s something else going on here. Option number two
is that—regardless of the mechanized voice, which seems to indicate the
Mastermind—this could be about a different case entirely.”

Cassie
scowled. “Henkes.”

“Right,”
Thorne said. The chief had brought him up to speed on the case during the ride
to the ranch. “What if one of his supporters is trying to discredit her?”

“Then
they’re a bunch of idiots,” Cassie snapped. “Maya’s reputation is impeccable.”

Except
for the part where she was suspended for accosting a suspect without proper
procedure or backup, Thorne thought, but didn’t say it aloud because the psych
specialist’s friends were going to like his third possibility even less.

The chief
must have sensed his reluctance, because he said, “And the third possibility?”

Thorne
tried not to feel a beat of empathy when he said, “Maybe there was no bomb
threat in the first place.”

He’d
expected Cassie to blast him, and was mildly surprised when it was Alissa who
got in his face in a single smooth, nearly deadly move. She didn’t raise her
voice, but her tone was chilly when she said, “What, precisely, are you
implying? Are you saying that Maya—logical, grounded, patient Maya—phoned in a
fake bomb threat?”

He
glanced down toward the parking area. Sawyer’s men must have cleared the
vehicles to leave, because he saw a gaggle of kids being herded back onto a
school bus. Unerringly, his eyes were drawn to the dainty, dark-haired figure
of a woman standing near another woman, apparently deep in conversation.

“Nobody
knows precisely what happened that night. All we know for sure is that Henkes
was shot with Officer Cooper’s weapon,” he said, more to himself than to the
others. “What if…”

He
trailed off as he saw her peel away from the others down in the parking lot and
head toward the main park entrance.

“What
if?” the chief prompted.

“Never
mind. I’ll be right back.” Without waiting for the chief’s okay, Thorne picked
his way down to the main parking lot. He wasn’t sure what prompted him to
follow her—curiosity, maybe, or the memory of the strange flash he’d
experienced when she’d brushed past him. But as he hopped over the turnstile
and tried to figure out which way she’d turned on the deserted main street, he
felt an unfamiliar, unwanted prickling in his brain.

Danger.

“HANNAH?”
SEEING NO SIGNS of the little girl who had slipped away from her mother out in
the parking lot, Maya cursed under her breath and turned down a cross street
toward the pony rides.

She’d
promised to find the child, wanting to keep the mother outside, where it was
supposedly safe.

Now she
wondered whether she should have passed off the request to one of the uniforms,
someone with a gun and backup, just in case.

She heard
the bellows of agitated bison from the other side of the buildings. According
to the ranch hands, the police sirens and unusual activity in the park had
upset the animals, leaving them tense and edgy.

She was
thankful that the creatures were safe behind the wood-and-electric-wire fencing.

The bomb
techs were working somewhere in the park, sweeping each building for
explosives, but Maya was alone when she reached the pony ride area and shouted,
“Hannah! Hannah, are you in here?”

Smothering
the unease, she scanned the scene. Eight shaggy, child-sized ponies were tied
to a railing near the entrance to a small sand-covered riding ring. Their eyes
rolled white at the edges and their feet moved quickly, tapping up clouds of
restive dust. She heard a low rumbling noise, like a plane flying overhead,
though there was no sign of a contrail in the blue sky.

“Hannah?”
she called again. “Your mother sent me to get you. Come on out, honey!”

But there
was no sign of the child. Check the pony rides, the girl’s mother had said, she
loves animals.

Well,
that hadn’t panned out.

Maya
reversed her direction and headed back toward Main Street. The girl couldn’t
have gone far. Maybe she’d wandered into the livery building to see the baby
goats.

Or else
she didn’t wander at all, instinct whispered. The Mastermind had kidnapped
children before and used them to draw Bear Claw officers into danger. The
entire bomb squad was in the theme park. The chief and the others were nearby.

A big
detonation would wipe out a big chunk of the task force.

Maya
nearly spun and ran, nearly shouted for Sawyer to get his people out of the
park. The only thing stopping her was the look she’d seen in the eyes of the
other cops when her watch had run down and nothing happened. The look of
disbelief.

They
thought she’d called in a false alarm, just as they thought she was wrong about
Henkes. If she evacuated the park again and nothing happened, her credibility
would be shot once and for all. Did she dare run that risk?

Did she
dare chance the alternative?

Maya
swallowed hard and called, “Hannah?” one last time, thinking it futile.

Then she
heard a small voice call, “Mommy?”

Relief
spiked and Maya zeroed in on the livery building. The airplane noise increased
as she bolted into the building and stumbled to a halt at the sight of a small
girl, maybe six or seven years old, strapped upright to one of the leaning
columns.

The
dark-haired child was wearing a pink shirt and denim shorts, with sandals on
her feet and tears streaming down her face. Her lips trembled when she saw Maya
and she quavered, “I want my mommy!”

She
struggled against her bonds, flailing with her feet and head, but making no
progress against the thick leather strap that had been lashed across her chest
and buckled on the other side of the pillar.

“Hold on,
Hannah, I’ve got you!” Heart pounding, Maya crouched down beside the girl and
went to work on her bonds, cursing the bastard who used innocents in his sick
games. “Are you hurt?”

“N-no.”
The girl’s voice cracked on the word and fresh tears streamed. “The ranch man
told me—”

“We’ll
talk about it later,” Maya said as she yanked the buckle free and hurled the
leather strap to one side. She wanted to hear about this “ranch man,” wanted to
know if he looked like Henkes or one of his associates, but first things were
first. “Come on, we’ve got to get out of there.”

The
airplane noise increased to a ground-shaking roar, only it didn’t sound like an
airplane anymore. It sounded more like…

Hoofbeats,
Maya thought with a clarity born of terror.

The goats
and sheep inside the petting zoo galloped in circles, becoming a bleating,
milling mix of hooves and bodies. The lone bison in the far corner stomped,
shook his head and reared partway up, as though he might jump out of his
enclosure at any moment.

Maya’s
heart rabbited in her chest. “Come on!” She scooped the girl up and ran for the
entrance, staggering beneath the weight of the child.

They were
twenty feet from the door when a splintering crash sounded over the
mind-blowing rumble that went on and on and on. Maya risked a look back, and
nearly tripped and fell at what she saw.

Bison.
Five, maybe ten of them, had broken through the back wall of the livery and
were bearing down on her at a full-out gallop. Their small eyes were wide and
scared, their nostrils flared with deep, sucking breaths, and their stubby
horns cut the air as they charged. The penned animal bellowed and crashed
through his fenced enclosure to join the others.

Maya
turned and ran for her life.

Hannah’s
arms were wrapped around her neck in a chokehold that nearly cut off her
breath, but Maya didn’t care. She had to get the girl to safety. Had to get
herself to safety.

But where
was safe?

She burst
through the petting zoo doors and skidded onto the main road. Thinking that the
bison would follow the path of least resistance, she bolted for the ticketing
area, hoping the buildings and the turnstiles would deflect them. She could
jump over while the bison turned, like some mad reenactment of the running of
the bulls.

She heard
shouts and gunshots, saw figures running along the ridges on either side of the
ranch, and felt the growing hoofbeats in the trembling of the ground.

But the
noise wasn’t coming from behind her anymore. It was in front of her.

Suddenly,
dust gouted from beyond the snack bar, which was the last building in line
before the ticketing area. The noise increased to unbelievable proportions, as
though Maya was caught in a tunnel with trains bearing down on her from either
side.

She ran
for the turnstiles, legs weak, lungs burning, too aware of the dozen bison
bearing down on her from behind.

Then the
dust in front of her thickened to shadows. Legs. Horns. Mad, panicked eyes.
Twenty bison burst around the corner and turned down Main Street. Forty more
followed them. A hundred. A full, panicked stampede of thousand-pound animals
galloping hell-bent—