When the shower slowed to a light mist of grit, we looked around the corner of the cargo container. The warehouse hadn’t been completely leveled, but it was close. Only the back wall remained standing, a break room table still in position, the chairs all upright. Everything else was tossed, charred, or gone in the blast.
“Everybody okay?” Gwen asked.
“Okay here,” Theo said, and Hansen’s voice echoed the same somewhere farther back.
“Need an ambulance,” someone called out.
We emerged from our shelter, crunching angels underfoot, and found a CPD officer pressing down on a wound on an employee’s arm.
I looked back. The ambulances already called by Gwen’s team to deal with the victims were close and looked only a bit dented, but their access was blocked by the piles of thrown rubble.
“I need some strong arms over here,” I said, then picked a spot and started clearing a path.
“Little thing like you is definitely going to need help,” Hansen began, and then shut up when I lifted a sheet of corrugated metal, tossed it out of the way.
I looked back at him. “Help or get lost.” That must have clicked, because he started lifting, shoving.
It might have been easier with gloves, and I knew my hands would be scraped and sliced by the time we were done, but we didn’t have time to wait. We pushed and pulled debris until a couple of EMTs could bring a gurney through. And then the wounded man was placed onto it, wheeled back to the ambulance.
I glanced back, found Hansen watching me. And when I got his nod, knew I had passed his “test.” He wasn’t the first to require it, wouldn’t be the last. So I made no response, went back to the others.
Theo offered me bottles of water and blood.
“I added a mini fridge to the Ombud van,” he said. “It’s stocked.”
“You’re a damn good partner,” I said. And looked around, wondering if it was better to drink now and replenish my strength, or wait until I wasn’t around humans.
“Drink it,” Gwen said, drawing my gaze. “They’re going to think what they think. And if they aren’t comfortable because you eat something different, screw them.”
I grinned, drank the entire thing.
* * *
Another team was called in to secure the scene, analyze the bomb fragments, and learn what they could forensically. Gwen offered up the pictures she’d taken, and then we regrouped.
“Two human victims,” Theo said, “with evidence of multiple wounds. Left in a visible spot, but attached to a bomb to blow the whole thing up if and when someone tried to move them.”
“Grim,” Gwen said with the flat expression of a cop who had seen plenty of unpleasantness. “Torture is usually for information. And displays like that are usually to send a message.”
“There was a delay on the timer,” I said. “The killer could have set the bodies to blow as soon as they were moved.”
“Instead, the killer gave the humans a chance to evacuate,”Theo said, turning his gaze back to the building. “But he did not allow time for the building to be saved. Or its contents.”
“So it’s a business thing?” I wondered. “Some animosity about the warehouse company or what was stored inside it?”
Gwen frowned. “What kind of demon cares about a business dispute?”
“A demon who is capable of prior planning,” I said, “and detail work.”
“Or a human who’s got a demon employee,” Theo said, “if that’s a thing.”
“It’s a terrifying thing,” Gwen said. “I think I prefer fighting trees.”
“Did you know trees can explosively molt their leaves?” Theo asked, and we both looked at him. He just held up his hands. “Sorry. Petra’s been studying forJeopardy!again.”
“She’d be good at that,” Gwen said.
“How did the employees not see this?” I wondered. “If it happened in the middle of the day, how did they miss the deaths, the placement of the bodies, the wiring of a bomb?”
