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Bree made another of those sounds that meant exactly squat and started walking toward her cruiser. Rafe followed, and he didn’t even launch into an argument as to why he should be here.
But he wasn’t sure he should be.
Wade had called him in and wanted him on scene. However, Rafe had learned the hard way—thereallyhard way—that a personal involvement with the victim meant zero objectivity. Lack of objectivity was a good way to screw things up and get people killed.
Yeah, lesson learned about that.
“Before today, did you know that Tessa was dead?” Bree asked him the moment they were out of earshot of the others.
“No. And I didn’t kill her,” he tacked onto that.
Bree’s head whipped up, her gaze spearing his, and something flitted across her face. Hurt, maybe? “I know that,” she muttered. She paused and then repeated it while she shook her head.
A heavy silence settled between them for a couple of moments before he saw the shift in Bree’s posture. She was the cop again now, and this was her crime scene. One she could handle if she could put aside the personal history between Tessa and her. After all, Bree wasn’t a rookie. She’d been a police officer for eighteen years, first as a deputy and then as the sheriff when her father had retired from the position.
“Who called this in?” she asked. Definitely all cop now. “Which one found the body?”
“Gavin McCray,” Rafe provided, thumbing back through the mental notes that he’d made from his phone call with Wade and his brief conversations with Ollie and the deputies. “He’s not local so you probably won’t know him. He’s with a work crew from San Antonio.”
Rafe glanced through the group so he could point to the beefy backhoe operator who’d been wearing a hard hat and muddy overalls. But he wasn’t there. Rafe was about to expand his visual search to the area near the portable toilet and the other equipment.
When the explosion ripped through the air.
And all hell broke loose.
----- ??? -----
Chapter Two
Bree heard the deafening blast and had the sensation of all the air being sucked out of her lungs.
Right before she went airborne.
Her back slammed against the cruiser door. Hard. So hard that she stood no chance of gathering her breath any time soon. And the pain shot through her. A bone-jarring pain that she could feel in every part of her body.
God, what had happened?
She slid from the cruiser to the ground, automatically reaching for her Glock 19 in her shoulder holster to try to fight whatever threat was happening. Bree managed to draw the gun, too, and from the corner of her eye, she saw that Rafe had pulled out his weapon as well. A Sig-Sauer that he must have had in a concealed holster.
“Explosion,” he said.
Bree’s ears were ringing so she couldn’t actually hear the word, but she saw it form on his lips. Lips that were bleeding. Rafe had a cut on the side of his mouth. Another on his forehead, and he looked as if he had also been slammed against the cruiser.
“Explosion,” she repeated, hoping by saying it, it would help her make sense of things.
It didn’t. But glancing around clarified a whole lot.
Oh, shit.
Her deputies were down on the ground. So were Ollie, Wade, the CSIs, and the worker she’d seen when she had first driven up. They were all moving though and probably making the same moaning sounds of pain that she was.
Leaning against the cruiser for support, Bree managed to get to her feet. Not easily. And beside her, Rafe was struggling to do that as well. Struggling some more to take out his phone, and she saw he was calling 911, requesting an ambulance. Something she would have thought to do if she’d had just another second or two to gather her thoughts.
Gulping in some much needed air, she fired glances around while she began to make her way to the wounded. Each step was a challenge, and while she didn’t think anything was broken, she’d have bruises and plenty of aches from being tossed through the air like a ragdoll.
Somehow, Rafe got ahead of her, moving straight to the two CSIs who’d been right by the grave the last time she’d looked. Bree aimed for her deputies who’d been further to the right of it. Carson Mendoza was already on his feet and had similar injuries to Rafe. Alice, however, was still on the ground.
Both Carson and Bree converged on Alice, easing her over onto her back so Bree could check for a pulse. She was alive, thank heaven, but she had a lot more blood on her than Carson and Rafe. Than Ollie and Wade, too, who’d been even further away from the grave than the deputies. The two of them were already standing as well and looking shellshocked at the carnage in front of them.
