Page 69 of Counter Attack

“We’ll find out in a minute—they’re meeting me in my office.”

Neither of them spoke as they walked down the hall to the administrative offices. “Go ahead,” she said when they reached the outer office. Then she turned to her secretary. “Any messages?”

“A call from Todd Madden.” Marge handed her a Post-it.

“Thank you. Would you call and tell him that I’ll be in touch as soon as this meeting is over?” Marge nodded and Alex placed her keys on the desk. “My car is in the sally port. Would you find someone to park it out front?”

Marge picked up the keys. “After what happened earlier, that was wise.”

“I suppose.” Alex did not like being hovered over, and that’s what Nathan’s concern felt like. “It’s a lot of trouble, though.”

“No supposing—just using the good sense God gave you.And getting your SUV moved is a small price to pay for your safety.”

“You sound like my grandmother,” Alex said with a grin. “I’ll be in my office.”

She closed the door and scanned the room. A board covered the window, and someone, probably Marge, had swept up the glass. Alex’s stomach tightened. Only seconds before the shot was fired, she and Nathan had been standing in front of the window. She pushed the thought away and nodded at Mark. “What did you find?” she asked

“Pretty sure we found the fork in a small tree where the shooter rested his gun,” Dylan said.

“Any shell casings?”

“No. We’re going to take a metal detector out there and go over the ground again,” Mark said as Gem stood and paced the floor by his handler’s chair.

Alex had noticed that the dog seemed restless since she entered the room. Now she sniffed the air and trotted to the door and put her nose to the floor then stuck it in the air. “Gem?” Mark said.

The dog barked and pawed the door. “She’s alerting to something.” Mark opened the door and let Gem out, following her as she bounded to the outer office door and scratched.

Alex had read the reports on Gem. The German shepherd was trained to find people and alert to drugs, like she had at the Martin murder scene. She’d also been trained to detect bombs. But which one was she alerting to now? They followed the dog down the hall to a storage room where Gem lay down beside a box.

“That could be a bomb! I’ll clear the building.” Nathan ran to the nearest fire alarm and pulled it.

Alex sent Mark and Gem to search the wings holding the prisoners while she called the Chattanooga PD and requestedtheir bomb squad. The dog had cleared the buildings by the time the bomb squad unit arrived.

“Are you going to evacuate the prisoner wings?” Nathan asked as the robot rolled out of the bomb squad van and the operator guided it to the front door of the jail.

“I asked the commander of the bomb squad if we should, and he said to wait. He’ll let me know if we should evacuate as soon as the robot x-rays the box.”

“You work with him before?”

She nodded as sweat dripped down the side of her face. “He’s good.”

The minutes ticked off with her mouth getting drier by the second. First the murders and now a bomb threat on her first week as chief deputy. Was it all connected?

“You okay?” Nathan asked.

“About as good as anyone expecting a bomb to explode.” She managed a wry grin, then she sobered.

“Most cops never work a bomb investigation.” He glanced toward the jail. “Does it seem strange that you’ve been involved in two cases that deal with bombs?”

Nathan had nailed the thoughts running through her mind. “I’ve been thinking about that. The newspaper clipping about Phillip Denton connects him with the murders—”

“And he was responsible for the bomb at the mall in Chattanooga. Is there any chance he had a partner?”

“Madden hasn’t found any relatives, much less a partner.”

Nathan rested his hand on his Glock. “Someone has to know something about him.”

“Maybe tomorrow we can check out his neighbors—I never interviewed them, Madden did, and sometimes his attitude can turn people off.”

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