Page 62 of Little Girls Sleeping
For the first time, Katie realized that the bomb that had exploded was their car. Questions flooded her mind.
When was the bomb set?
Before they’d arrived at the Haven farm? While they were in the barn?
When?
She took out her cell phone and dialed. “This is Detective Katherine Scott, badge number 3692. Explosion. Barn on fire. Two officers down at the Haven farm, Rio and Apple Road. Send fire, ambulance, and police. Unknown assailant could still be at location. Repeat, unknown assailant could still be at property.”
She ended the call.
McGaven sat next to her, leaning up against the shed wall and surveying the yard outside.
Katie gently squeezed his arm. “Backup is on its way. We can hold our position until they get here.”
Thirty-Three
He stomped his work boots on a dilapidated rubber mat before entering the back door of his house. Smelling of smoke, he hurried inside the sanctuary of his home. Dirt and debris scattered along the wooden floors with his footsteps. He was still angry at what she had made him do. Many people despised her but were afraid to say anything because she had fought in Afghanistan. She was a soldier, a veteran. And now she was a detective in the sheriff’s office.
Who cares?
It was the ones who respected her—even liked her—who provoked him to violence, who had him fuming. He would burn down the entire town to get those lost souls to listen to reason or face the consequences.
After quickly changing his clothes for clean ones from the laundry basket sitting on the sofa, the man returned to the kitchen and paused, unsure what to do next.
He was alone.
He only had a few minutes before he needed to get back to work so that someone wouldn’t notice he was gone. Grabbing a drinking glass from the cupboard, he watched as his hand shook with anger slowly turning to rage.
Trying not to participate in the emotional baggage that most people struggled with, he filled the glass with tap water. As he concentrated on the swirling of the liquid and the tiny bubbles vying for the surface and then dissipating into the clear, perfect drink, he felt his pulse return to normal. He drank the entire ten ounces in one breath.
He couldn’t stop thinking about the search—it was what fed him physically and mentally.
It was what he loved.
He knew he needed to maintain his focus and keep his emotions in check to sustain his work—not his autopilot day job, but his calling. If he wasn’t careful, someone would find out his secret; someone would know.
Breathing in deeply, he exhaled the frustrations of the day. With each inhale and exhale, the triumphant soldier resurfaced again.
He carefully rinsed the glass and set it in the drying rack.
Glancing to a small table, he opened a drawer where a photograph of a smiling thirteen-year-old girl lay in a special silver frame. Memories flooded back to him. Sometimes those memories were followed by the exact feelings he had had when he received the phone call. It was nearly fifteen years ago now, but it still felt like yesterday. There had been no warning, and no doubt of the horror. His baby girl had simply been in the wrong place at the wrong time.
He would never forget her lying in the morgue, brutally beaten, stabbed, and raped. The image would never leave his memory.
No one knew about his daughter. She was gone. He would make sure that no little girl would ever have to suffer the horrors his daughter had.
Never.
It was time to complete the next step; to perform his special check.
He walked to a narrow door in the kitchen, gripped the handle, and turned the knob, looking at the wooden stairs leading down into the basement. It was often used as a fruit cellar to store things that required a stable temperature between fifty-five and sixty-five degrees. It was a place hidden from most. Sounds didn’t carry. Most of all, it made him feel good being there.
Descending the stairs, he heard the third step make the familiar creak, and then down, down to the bottom. The cool temperature leveled his rage and steadied his pulse. The familiar musty odor caught his senses, and forced him to remember one of the cold nights his father had made him stay in the basement until he was sorry for what he had done. He had said he was sorry, but he wasn’t. He was never sorry for anything he did.
As he stood in the darkness, he knew that nothing and no one could ever again make him say he was sorry.
Focus.
