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“No!” the man on the ground gasped before he could stop himself.
Cody froze, then turned and stared down at Danvers in sudden comprehension. Before he could say anything, Callahan put his forearm across the man’s throat...and pressed. “That’s my home, you bastard,” he said in a deadly voice. “If there’s something you want to tell me, you’ve got ten seconds to speak. Otherwise, we’ll tie you up, carry you inside and leave you there...alone.”
Cody remembered the firebombs that had almost taken the lives of Mandy and Callahan six years ago, the firebombs that had destroyed Mandy’s house, this very house that Callahan had rebuilt himself for Mandy and their children. If Cody and Keira hadn’t returned when they had, if they hadn’t accidentally prevented this man’s escape, Keira would have been inside...
Rage, burning hot and icy cold, flooded his body again, the same way it had when he’d seen Danvers with a gun to Keira’s head. “Don’t wait,” he told Callahan, matching his deadly tone. “Just do it.”
Callahan nodded and said, “There’s a rope in the back of my four-by-four, Walker.” Cody took two steps.
“No!” the man croaked from fear and the pressure across his throat, but managed to add, “Bomb! Beneath the house.”
Cody heard Keira’s quickly indrawn breath. Callahan rose, and stood looking down at the man, a cold and deadly expression on his face that Cody understood and agreed with completely. Before Callahan could do or say anything, Cody jerked the man to his feet in one powerful motion. “In that case, you’re going to crawl under there and pull it out.”
Terrified, his left arm hanging almost useless, Danvers looked from Cody to Callahan to McKinnon. All three faces wore the same implacable expression. The man swallowed hard, then glanced at Keira.
“I’ll get the rope,” she told Cody, heading for the four-by-four.
“No!” The hoarse cry stopped Keira in her tracks, but she didn’t turn around. “I’ll do it,” Danvers said. “Just let me go,” he told Cody desperately. “There’s not much time left.”
Cody drew his Glock. No way in hell was this man getting away...no matter what he had to do. “Don’t even think about running.”
Chapter 20
Three hours later they still didn’t have any answers. The ambulance had arrived shortly after the bomb had been removed from beneath Callahan’s house by Danvers and disarmed by McKinnon. Cody had been surprised at first.
“No big deal,” McKinnon had said, shrugging it off. “Piece of shit bomb like this is nothing compared to some I dealt with in Afghanistan.”
The siren sound of the ambulance had split the silence then, and Callahan had hurried around the side of the house, directing the ambulance toward the back. And the ambulance had been followed by two sedans of FBI agents.
The FBI had stepped in, Agent Holmes asserting jurisdiction over the attempted bombing, leaving Cody, Keira and McKinnon little choice but to back off...for now. The questions Cody had been burning to ask Danvers would have to wait. The FBI had taken official custody as well, taking over guard duties of the suspect on his way to the hospital in Sheridan, and one car of FBI agents had silently followed the ambulance.
Cody and Keira had been hard-pressed to avoid being taken in for questioning themselves, and Cody suspected Agent Holmes would have loved to do just that on whatever pretext he could find if Callahan hadn’t been there in his official capacity as Black Rock’s sheriff. While the FBI could stretch a point in trying to tie the latest bombing attempt to the killings on the East Coast, Cody’s attack on Danvers was clearly in Callahan’s jurisdiction. And it was also clearly a case of self-defense.
That didn’t mean the FBI had just let it go. Agent Holmes had insisted on being present as Callahan extensively and thoroughly questioned Cody and Keira separately. But their stories matched almost exactly, and nothing could shake them. So eventually the FBI had no choice but to leave, taking the disarmed bomb with them as evidence.
But Callahan had been adamant about not letting them take the stranger’s gun or wallet, which was evidence in the assault on Keira and Cody. And neither Cody nor Keira had mentioned the computer sitting on the kitchen table inside Callahan’s house. Callahan, after one meaningful glance from Cody, had refused to take the interrogation indoors. Callahan waited until Agent Holmes finally drove away, then asked Cody, “You want to tell me what really happened?”
