She turned off the water, then grabbed a towel from the hook and wrapped it around herself.
“Jake said he’d do a quick check of the DCO ammunition inventory system, then call us back.” Trevor sighed. “I pray you’re right and that I’m seeing stuff that’s not really there.”
Alina hoped so, too.
She finished up and was drying her hair when Trevor’s phone rang. Her partner had already showered and dressed and was waiting with phone in hand.
“What do you have?” he asked Jake.
Trevor listened, jaw clenched. Finally, he hung up with barely a grunt of acknowledgment. For a minute, she was sure he was going to sling his phone across the room.
“Well?” she prompted, setting the dryer on the vanity.
He took a deep breath. “The ammo inventory system is a complete train wreck now that so many people have left, but Jake was able to confirm that there’s a box of electric blasting caps and a case of C-4 missing. It looks like the stuff disappeared early Sunday morning of the weekend before the bombing. It’s not like Ed signed for the crap, but his passcode was used to turn off the alarm in the bunker, so it’s pretty damn evident.”
Crap on a stick.
Trevor shook his head. “Fuck, he really did it. Ed stole the explosives and gave them to the bomber. Then he brought the damn thing on the complex and put it in John’s office. No wonder he left. He knew we’d figure out his code had been used to get into the storage bunker at some point.”
“What do we do now?” she asked softly.
“We go after him,” Trevor said, his voice as soft and low as hers.
“You know where Ed is?”
“I don’t, but Jake does,” Trevor said. “Turns out he’s talked to him a couple of times in the past few weeks. He didn’t tell me, because I always seemed so pissed at the way Ed left. Ed’s been working private security under a fake name at an industrial place outside Gainesville, Virginia.”
Alina twirled her hair up in a twist, then hurried into the bedroom to put on some clothes.
“Are we going to arrest Ed…or something else?” she asked as she pulled on her jeans.
Trevor didn’t flinch. “That all depends on him.”
Chapter 15
“If Ed was so worried about the DCO figuring out he was behind the bombing, why hang around the area and get a job?” Alina asked. “Why not flee the country?”
Trevor shrugged as he and Alina approached the address Jake had given him earlier, momentarily distracted as he realized the place was a decrepit-looking hazardous material storage site. Of all the jobs he could imagine his former teammate taking, security guard at a hazmat site wasn’t one of them. The operation was nothing more than a large collection of mismatched metal warehouses surrounded by endless piles of beat-up drums and long sections of rusted chain-link fence. Not only that, but it stunk to high heaven. Trevor’s nose was already burning, and they hadn’t even gotten inside yet.
“Ed and I worked espionage cases for a long time together, digging out sleeper agents and moles who had been hiding in plain sight for years,” Trevor said as he slowed the SUV. “Maybe Ed thought changing his name and blending into a sea of humanity was the best way to disappear. He’s seen it work in the past.”
“Okay. But then why contact Jake?”
Trevor didn’t have a good answer for that. “No clue. Unless he thought Jake might be willing to clue him in when trouble was on the way.”
Trevor pulled up to the gate of the hazmat complex, expecting to see guards there—maybe even Ed—but there was no one around. Just a wide-open gate and an empty guard shack. The hair on the back of his neck stood up, and his senses began to tingle. This place was like a ghost town. Something didn’t feel right.
“Are you sure this is the address Jake gave you?” Alina murmured as he drove through the gate. She took in the discarded, rusty drums stacked up against a few of the buildings. “It doesn’t look like there’s anyone here.”
Trevor was thinking the same thing. “It’s Sunday, so maybe the place is closed.”
Alina made a face, clearly not buying that idea. “More likely the EPA shut everything down, and everyone who used to run the place is in jail. Maybe Ed is watching this place until the feds send someone in to clean it up.”
Considering that his eyes were practically tearing up from all the strange chemical odors, Trevor could believe that.
He stopped in front of a building that looked like it was the main office and climbed out of their vehicle. Alina did the same. They were confronted with rows of squat, metal buildings marked with various hazmat signs, warning the structures contained everything from flammable liquids and gases to poisons, corrosives, and explosives. He could see why they needed guards in a place like this. It wasn’t exactly the kind of facility you’d want people wandering around in. Which begged the question, why had the gate been left open? And if there were guards around, why hadn’t anyone challenged them yet?
