didn’t hit the alarm?”
“What alarm?” he asked, looking frustrated.
Yanking out of his grasp, she double-timed it to her desk and stuck her foot under it. “Under our desks. They probably didn’t install yours yet.”
Now someone tells him—after the emergency starts. Shamus grabbed his present from her so she would have her arms free to run and went to the door in the back that connected the receptionist’s office to theirs.
Opening it, he saw the adjoining office was clear. So was the bulletproof receiving window at the very front of the room that showed part of the hallway through which Tripp had exited. Shamus strode four feet to the exit door, yanked it open and surveyed the parking lot. No signs of anyone lurking in wait. He hoped he was right.
He turned to motion for Mallory.
She wasn’t there.
Shamus cursed and reached the inside door just as she got there, clasping the laughing Santa from Mosey Burnham’s desk. She paused in place when she saw the fury on his face. Did she have a death wish?
“The Santa belonged to Mosey’s daughter. She was killed in action,” she explained quickly. “It’s all he has left of her.”
“Items can be replaced—people can’t.”
“I know. I’m sorry. I guess my heart gets in the way of my thinking sometimes.”
She sounded so sincere that Shamus considered apologizing for his abruptness. No time. Turning without responding, he strode to the door and stepped out onto the welcome mat. He hoped he was wrong about Tripp’s leaving the bomb behind. Hoped they had all the time in the world to get out of the building. Hoped—
The air around him exploded.
TWO
The force slammed Shamus upward and away from the building, sucking the breath out of him. He hit the snowy asphalt a few feet away and lay there, stunned, as all the emotion he’d buried since his wife’s death tumbled back onto him along with the debris from the bomb. Emotion over another woman.
Mallory.
Did she make it? He pushed himself onto his knees. Swiveled around to face the building. His head spun. He made himself focus, but he didn’t see her. She had to still be inside.
Annoying, do-gooder Mallory, who just had to stay late to give him a present so he wouldn’t feel left out. Who couldn’t believe her client could actually hurt someone. Who wouldn’t leave him behind even though she’d had the chance…
He had to rescue her. He could not have another woman’s death on his conscience.
Finding his gun on the ice, he holstered it, then lunged toward the building. At least, his muddled mind thought he was lunging, but he was startled to find he was only limping slowly. No matter. He pushed onward, trying to move faster, his ears ringing and his head spinning when he tried to turn it.
Sucking in a deep breath of clean air, he plunged inside the doorway and found a dazed Mallory against the outer wall, clutching Mosey’s Santa. Fire licked at what was left of the wall near the receiving window. Smoke poured into the area. Get her out. He had to get her out.
Fighting the stars that threatened to push him into darkness, he lifted her into his arms and carried her outside into the parking lot and away from the swirling smoke and dust. She didn’t speak, not one word, and something inside him—he wasn’t going to call it his heart—clenched.
His wife hadn’t spoken when he’d found her, either. She was already dead.
When he was far enough from the building to be safe, he picked a dry spot on one of the cement parking blocks near an overhead light post and sank down on it, keeping her in his arms and ignoring the ache in his knee.
Sirens whined in the distance.
He looked down into her heart-shaped face. Her eyes were closed, but she still gripped the Christmas toy she’d considered worth her life.
“Mallory!” he called to urge her awake, loudly because he could hardly hear and figured she was at least as bad off. He had to make sure she’d be okay in case he passed out. “Mallory, open your eyes.”
She did. They were deep, sea-green eyes, he saw in the lamplight. He’d seen them before, of course, but he had purposely not noticed their color. Not noticed anything but how they smiled when she smiled. Didn’t want to notice now.
But he did.
“You saved me,” she said. She covered one ear and frowned. “I can’t hear.”
“What?” he asked her.
“You saved me,” she said again, louder, and coughed with the effort. Her lips lifted in a gentle smile that gifted him more than any present she could give him. She took a breath and said loudly, “I owe you.”
“No, you don’t,” he said just as loudly. He didn’t want anyone to owe him, especially not a woman like Mallory. “I saved you for a purely selfish reason. So you don’t owe me anything.”
“What reason?”
Oh, great. Now he had to hurt her again, because he wasn’t lying. Everything he did lately was for selfish reasons.
“I would have to take a bunch of your cases over if you ended up in the hospital, and I’m overworked as it is.”
The smile left her lips, and she shut her eyes again. Wonderful. That was why he didn’t get involved with people anymore. He just hurt them, and he couldn’t seem to stop.
The regret that he’d tried his best to bury burned once more in him. But if he made amends, she might get the idea he wanted to be friends. He didn’t. All he wanted was to be left alone.
Stop thinking, he told himself. Shut down. Observe. Watch for anyone who looked familiar, who might be behind the bombing. Protect Mallory from him. Since he’d spent years in the Shepherd Falls Police Department, being on guard was easy to do, and much better than actually feeling anything.
People gawked from the parking lot across the street, probably too afraid of another explosion to come closer and offer help. He searched their faces, hoping to see someone he’d arrested in the past who might want to kill him. But the growing darkness made it difficult to see into the shadows. Actually, he and Mallory were the ones in the light—from the overhead safety lamps the city had installed to keep the probation officers safe.
The irony of that didn’t escape him. He was a sitting duck.
Fire and rescue screeched around the corner as Shamus watched, followed by police cars, their flashing red-and-blue lights adding to the red-and-green Christmas ones decorating the Shepherd Falls business district.
“Help me stand up, Shamus,” Mallory said, jolting him. He’d thought she’d passed out. With some relief that she had survived the blast better off than he’d thought, he helped her to her feet. She was wobbly, but remained upright as the paramedics pulled up nearby.
“I’ll fill in the police.
