meant nothing to each other, yet she’d changed his life. A better man would thank her for it.
Instead, Thorne was lined up to take her job.
“He’s targeted her because she’s a woman,” said the lean, rangy cop who’d identified himself as Detective Tucker McDermott, Homicide, “and because she’s a member of the Forensics Department.”
“Maybe,” Thorne said. “Or maybe there’s something else going on here. Option number two is that—regardless of the mechanized voice, which seems to indicate the Mastermind—this could be about a different case entirely.”
Cassie scowled. “Henkes.”
“Right,” Thorne said. The chief had brought him up to speed on the case during the ride to the ranch. “What if one of his supporters is trying to discredit her?”
“Then they’re a bunch of idiots,” Cassie snapped. “Maya’s reputation is impeccable.”
Except for the part where she was suspended for accosting a suspect without proper procedure or backup, Thorne thought, but didn’t say it aloud because the psych specialist’s friends were going to like his third possibility even less.
The chief must have sensed his reluctance, because he said, “And the third possibility?”
Thorne tried not to feel a beat of empathy when he said, “Maybe there was no bomb threat in the first place.”
He’d expected Cassie to blast him, and was mildly surprised when it was Alissa who got in his face in a single smooth, nearly deadly move. She didn’t raise her voice, but her tone was chilly when she said, “What, precisely, are you implying? Are you saying that Maya—logical, grounded, patient Maya—phoned in a fake bomb threat?”
He glanced down toward the parking area. Sawyer’s men must have cleared the vehicles to leave, because he saw a gaggle of kids being herded back onto a school bus. Unerringly, his eyes were drawn to the dainty, dark-haired figure of a woman standing near another woman, apparently deep in conversation.
“Nobody knows precisely what happened that night. All we know for sure is that Henkes was shot with Officer Cooper’s weapon,” he said, more to himself than to the others. “What if…”
He trailed off as he saw her peel away from the others down in the parking lot and head toward the main park entrance.
“What if?” the chief prompted.
“Never mind. I’ll be right back.” Without waiting for the chief’s okay, Thorne picked his way down to the main parking lot. He wasn’t sure what prompted him to follow her—curiosity, maybe, or the memory of the strange flash he’d experienced when she’d brushed past him. But as he hopped over the turnstile and tried to figure out which way she’d turned on the deserted main street, he felt an unfamiliar, unwanted prickling in his brain.
Danger.
“HANNAH?” SEEING NO SIGNS of the little girl who had slipped away from her mother out in the parking lot, Maya cursed under her breath and turned down a cross street toward the pony rides.
She’d promised to find the child, wanting to keep the mother outside, where it was supposedly safe.
Now she wondered whether she should have passed off the request to one of the uniforms, someone with a gun and backup, just in case.
She heard the bellows of agitated bison from the other side of the buildings. According to the ranch hands, the police sirens and unusual activity in the park had upset the animals, leaving them tense and edgy.
She was thankful that the creatures were safe behind the wood-and-electric-wire fencing.
The bomb techs were working somewhere in the park, sweeping each building for explosives, but Maya was alone when she reached the pony ride area and shouted, “Hannah! Hannah, are you in here?”
Smothering the unease, she scanned the scene. Eight shaggy, child-sized ponies were tied to a railing near the entrance to a small sand-covered riding ring. Their eyes rolled white at the edges and their feet moved quickly, tapping up clouds of restive dust. She heard a low rumbling noise, like a plane flying overhead, though there was no sign of a contrail in the blue sky.
“Hannah?” she called again. “Your mother sent me to get you. Come on out, honey!”
But there was no sign of the child. Check the pony rides, the girl’s mother had said, she loves animals.
Well, that hadn’t panned out.
Maya reversed her direction and headed back toward Main Street. The girl couldn’t have gone far. Maybe she’d wandered into the livery building to see the baby goats.
Or else she didn’t wander at all, instinct whispered. The Mastermind had kidnapped children before and used them to draw Bear Claw officers into danger. The entire bomb squad was in the theme park. The chief and the others were nearby.
A big detonation would wipe out a big chunk of the task force.
Maya nearly spun and ran, nearly shouted for Sawyer to get his people out of the park. The only thing stopping her was the look she’d seen in the eyes of the other cops when her watch had run down and nothing happened. The look of disbelief.
They thought she’d called in a false alarm, just as they thought she was wrong about Henkes. If she evacuated the park again and nothing happened, her credibility would be shot once and for all. Did she dare run that risk?
Did she dare chance the alternative?
Maya swallowed hard and called, “Hannah?” one last time, thinking it futile.
Then she heard a small voice call, “Mommy?”
Relief spiked and Maya zeroed in on the livery building. The airplane noise increased as she bolted into the building and stumbled to a halt at the sight of a small girl, maybe six or seven years old, strapped upright to one of the leaning columns.
The dark-haired child was wearing a pink shirt and denim shorts, with sandals on her feet and tears streaming down her face. Her lips trembled when she saw Maya and she quavered, “I want my mommy!”
She struggled against her bonds, flailing with her feet and head, but making no progress against the thick leather strap that had been lashed across her chest and buckled on the other side of the pillar.
“Hold on, Hannah, I’ve got you!” Heart pounding, Maya crouched down beside the girl and went to work on her bonds, cursing the bastard who used innocents in his sick games. “Are you hurt?”
“N-no.” The girl’s voice cracked on the word and fresh tears streamed. “The ranch man told me—”
“We’ll talk about it later,” Maya said as she yanked the buckle free and hurled the leather strap to one side. She wanted to hear about this “ranch man,” wanted to know if he looked like Henkes or one of his associates, but first things were first. “Come on, we’ve got to get out of there.”
The airplane noise increased to a ground-shaking roar, only it didn’t sound like an airplane anymore. It sounded more like…
Hoofbeats,
