have to sign a release form,” the guy on her left informed her. He placed a metal clipboard in her lap and handed her a pen. “Sign here,” he instructed. “This means you can’t come after us if you suffer a massive head bleed later.”
She sensed he was trying to scare her with that comment, so she ignored it, signed her name and handed the clipboard back to him.
“Do you have another ice pack in there? This one is already getting warm,” Declan said. “I’d like to try to keep the swelling down.”
“Sure.” The EMT took a prefilled ice pack out of his kit and gave it to him. Once again, Declan applied it to the lump on the back of her head.
She was tempted to tell him to use the ice pack on himself, but held her tongue. No sense in antagonizing Declan now, not until they’d picked up Bobby from school.
And by then, she’d be glad to see the last of Declan Shaw for a while.
* * *
“Hey, Deck, you need to come over here and see this.”
Declan glanced over at Caleb and nodded. “Sure. Nate, will you keep an eye on Tess for a few minutes?”
“I don’t need a babysitter,” Tess muttered.
“No problem,” the other man said.
Declan wished there was a way to force Tess to go to the hospital, but since she signed herself out of the EMTs’ care, he didn’t think there was much more he could do. Her stubbornness might have been cute if it wasn’t so annoying.
He headed over to where Caleb waited. Together they canvassed the scene of the explosion. The fire had been doused by the members of his team, but the burned-out area looked awful, especially with the maple tree being uprooted by the force of the blast.
“I think the center of the explosion was in this area here,” Caleb said, pointing to the blackened area. “The perp must have covered it with leaves and branches or we would have seen it.”
Declan nodded thoughtfully, agreeing with Caleb’s assessment. “We went right past this area to chase the guy with the green baseball cap.”
“I know. It’s possible he set the bomb and then took off running,” Caleb mused. “But he took a chance...what if we had caught him and brought him back this way? He risked blowing himself up at that point.”
“I know, but we still need to find that guy, which would be much easier to do if we had a face shot.”
“Nate is going to work on enhancing the image, so maybe we’ll at least be able to get a hair color as an identifier.”
Declan scowled. Knowing the guy’s hair color wouldn’t help them much. “All right. Anything else here that might give us a clue?”
Caleb shook his head. “Not yet. We’ll keep looking, but right now it’s appearing to be more of a crime of opportunity than a planned attack.”
“Putting the bomb under Tess’s desk seems to have been a definite plan, but I’m not so sure that the custard stand or the minimart bombings were thought out the same way. Who is this creep and why does he like setting off bombs?”
“I don’t know, but we’ll find him.” Caleb’s tone radiated confidence.
Declan wished he could say the same. Oh, he knew they’d find the guy eventually, but how many other casualties would there be before that happened?
“I’m going to drive Tess over to the high school to pick up her brother,” he told Caleb. “I’ll be in touch later.”
“Sounds good.”
Declan crossed over to his boss and arranged for a different vehicle to use for a couple of hours. Griff handed over a set of keys and he took them gratefully before heading back over to Tess, happy to see she was standing up under her own power.
“Are you finally ready to go?” she asked.
“Yeah, the boss gave us his wheels to use. Right over here,” he said, heading toward one of the other SUVs on the scene.
“How on earth do you tell them apart?” she asked when he opened the door for her.
“No big secret, we go by the license plate numbers.” He closed the passenger door and then went around and slid into the driver’s seat. “We’ll pick up your brother and get you both settled into a hotel, okay?”
“Okay.” Tess seemed resigned to spending the next hour or so in his company, and if he was interested in some sort of relationship, his ego might have been bruised by her lack of enthusiasm.
But he had no intention of getting personally involved, especially not with a woman like Tess Collins. She was the type who would want a family, and that wasn’t for him. His father had been an angry drunk, lashing out with his fists if Declan didn’t move fast enough. He knew exactly what genes were in his DNA, and he wasn’t about to tempt fate.
Besides, ten years ago, after he’d rescued her from that jerk of a prom date, all he could think of was kissing her, but instead she’d told him she’d pray for him. Really? Not that he didn’t appreciate her intent, but still, what did he know about church and prayer?
Not one thing.
And he really had no interest in finding out. Caleb might have joined the church thanks to his wife Noelle’s influence, but Declan wasn’t about to follow along.
Tess didn’t say much as he drove into the parking lot of Greenland High, but he noticed she scanned the cars as if looking for someone. “What kind of car does Bobby drive?” he asked as he parked in the visitor lot.
“A used blue GMC truck. It’s about ten years old.”
Declan filed that information away for future reference. They walked up to the front entrance and stepped inside the school. Tess headed for the office and he followed, thinking about all the time he’d spent in the principal’s office back when he was a student. Not some of his fonder memories, that’s for sure.
“Hi, Mrs. Beckstrom, I need to see Bobby Collins,” Tess said.
“There’s a bit of a family emergency,” he added, when Mrs. Beckstrom frowned, obviously put out at taking a student out of class in the middle of the day.
The secretary took one look at his uniform and nodded her agreement. “Of course. I’ll see if I can find him.”
But when the secretary returned a few minutes later, she wasn’t smiling. “I’m sorry but Bobby isn’t in the cafeteria. He must have left the campus for lunch. I’m afraid you’ll have to wait until he returns.”
“All right, what time does his next class start?” Tess asked.
“Twelve-fifteen. He has the early lunch period.”
“Would you please call my cell number if he returns before we get back?” Declan asked. He took out one of his cards and handed it to her.
“All right,” the secretary agreed.
