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Interesting.
He came back to her gaze with a smirk. Like she should fall at his feet to his offer of coffee.
“What are you doing here?” she asked, not showing a hoot of interest in the coffee.
They were working off site from the crime scene lab, in a warehouse they sometimes used to process and catalog all the evidence.
Silas and other crime scene techs were sorting evidence bags—clothing, pieces of the store, items that looked like bomb casings.
His smirk vanished. “I need your help. What can you tell me?”
She raised an eyebrow at his sudden honesty and took the coffee. “We’re just getting started. If we can isolate the bomb casing in the next forty-eight hours, it’ll be a miracle. The best I can do for you is to focus on the makeup of the explosive residue, see if I can get a signature mix. Bomb makers are artists, and they tend to have a signature.”
She took a sip of the coffee. Shoot, that was good—a hint of raspberry? And vanilla? “What’s in this?”
“Mocha. Raspberry. Vanilla. Told you that you’d like it.”
He had a nice smile. It lit up his eyes, added a dangerous charm to them. So there were at least two layers to Mr. Rembrandt Stone—smolder on his book cover, charming in real life. Interesting.
“Listen,” she said. “We’ll find it—but it’ll take time.”
“Which we don’t have. I think the bomber was in the crowd today.”
She put the coffee down. “What makes you say that?”
“Just…a hunch. But I also think this isn’t the last bomb.”
His words put a fist in her. “What are you saying?”
“I think he’s going to do it again. And soon. Very soon.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know…” He looked away, then back to her. “It’s just…a gut feeling. I think he’s trying to make a point, and it’s not
quite made yet.” His lips tightened into a grim line.
Layer number three. The guy really cared.
Unfortunately, “I don’t know how I can help you.”
“The shots you took today—are they developed yet?”
She’d filled up three rolls of her 35mm film taking shots of the crowd, then the scene. She’d handed off her camera to one of the techs and they’d continued shooting every piece of evidence. “I think we have about fifteen rolls of film.”
“I just need the crowd shots.”
“Because you think you can spot him—or her, although bombers tend to be male—in the photos? How will you know who you’re looking for?”
He lifted a shoulder.
“Wait, please don’t say it’s a gut feeling.”
He smiled. “Okay.”
She sighed, glancing over at Silas and the crew. He was watching her, his pale green eyes not missing a thing.
She turned back to Rembrandt. “This isn’t the order we do things in, Inspector. You don’t even know what you’re looking for.”
