This was all her fault.
Cassidy blinked at Jake. The darkened phone still balanced on his open palm, her disbelief reflected in his eyes. Then his jaw tightened and he tossed the phone into her lap. He grappled with his radio, yanking the clip with a force that made her flinch.
“Command?” he barked into the radio. “Command, come in.”
The urgency in the request sent a ripple down her spine. Her toes tingled and her fingers twitched as she came back to her senses. Someone had tried to blow up Special Agent Emma Parker. Someone had blown up Agent Parker’s car. With her in it?
Jake’s phone rang and he reached for it. “It’s Aronson.”
“Oh no.” The words slipped out on a moan. Colonel Aronson would not be calling Jake unless there was news he didn’t want relayed to the entire team. Emma Parker was dead. Cassidy’s vision shrank down to a pinpoint as horror pumped through her veins like adrenaline.
A woman she didn’t even know had been killed because someone wanted to kill her. How could a day that had started out so well go so unspeakably wrong?
Cassidy sat staring at her fingers twisted in her lap.
Baker.
Emma had gone to see Airman Baker.
A man discharged over a decade before because Cassidy had snagged him on a gate check. Had he waited all this time to get back at her? He’d been busted for possession. Sure, it had derailed his military career, but it wasn’t like the arrest had ruined the guy’s life. He’d barely been twenty-one. It wasn’t like he couldn’t start again after leaving the Air Force.
Something wasn’t adding up.
The timing was all off.
Timing.
Jake’s warm, broad hand landed on top of hers. A tidal wave of emotion rose inside her. Cassidy bit her lip hard, but she wasn’t sure she could outrun it.
While Jake spoke into his phone, she turned to look at the colorful booths as they whizzed past. The explosions had been timed. One per hour. And when they didn’t go off as planned, they were capable of being set off at will.
A quick glance down at the phone screen showed the four o’clock hour had come and gone without an explosion on the fairgrounds.
Was it Baker? Had the perpetrator been so busy fending off Emma Parker they hadn’t had time to stick to their own deadline? And they were watching her. Waiting for her to break. To try to run away.
Passing her tongue over her front teeth, Cassidy inhaled as she sat straighter. They’d miscalculated. She’d wear their bomb until they blew her sky-high. She’d never give up. Never back down.
“Parker is okay.” Jake leaned in closer and gave her clasped hands a gentle squeeze. “It was a stun grenade. They did break the window with a brick, but they tossed the flash-bang in after.”
“She bailed?” Cassidy’s voice was barely more than a croak.
“She did. Ended up with some bruises from where she hit the pavement. Her car is toast though.”
“But she’s okay,” Cassidy confirmed.
“She’s fine.”
“Did she see him? Was it Baker?”
“We’re getting details thirdhand at this point, but no.” Jake gave his head a shake, then shrugged. “They say she didn’t get a good look at whoever did the smash-and-blow, but she says she doesn’t believe it was Trevor Baker.”
“Awfully coincidental to not be him.”
Then she remembered the last few words Emma Parker had said before the explosion.
I don’t think this is the Baker we’re—
Cassidy frowned as she turned the words over in her mind. She couldn’t help feeling they’d been on the right track, but they were missing something crucial. Even if Baker had gone after Emma Parker the minute she turned away from the house, he would have had to gather his weapons before following her to her car. It didn’t seem probable, but something wouldn’t let her scratch Baker off her mental list of suspects entirely.
