Rapid Fire
Jessica Andersen

MILLS & BOON

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Contents

Cast of Characters

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Epilogue

Coming Next Month

CAST OF CHARACTERS

Maya Cooper —Suspended from the Bear Claw Crime Lab, the psych specialist is alone in believing that a local philanthropist is responsible for the crime wave currently terrorizing Bear Claw City. Her only ally is a dangerous man from her past.

Thorne Coleridge —Some cops say he has “powers.” Others think he’s a brilliantly intuitive profiler. Thorne himself knows two things about the current case: one, Maya is the only woman who can save him from himself, and two, loving him could mean her death.

Wexton Henkes —The local legend stands accused of heinous crimes. How far will he go to protect himself?

Alissa Wyatt & Cassie Dumont —The other members of the Bear Claw Crime Lab try to protect Maya by shutting her out of the investigation.

Detectives Piedmont & Montoya —The partners have been openly hostile to the three women of the new crime lab.

Nevada Barnes —The museum murderer tries to cut a deal from prison. Can he be trusted?

Chief Parry —Bear Claw’s police chief is under huge pressure to catch the criminal mastermind. When a suspended cop becomes the fiend’s next target, will he bow to pressure and use her as bait?

Drew Wilson —When two police sketches help identify him as a suspect, he will do anything to avoid capture.

Prologue

He stood on a bluff overlooking green summer pastures and raised a pair of binoculars to his eyes as the morning sun climbed above the opposite ridgetop.

The target lay in the valley below, a jumble of Hollywood-false Western buildings and swirling bison herds. It would be so easy this time.

Almost too easy.

At the beginning, when he’d first conceived his revenge, he’d thought of himself as the planner. The cops had christened him the Mastermind, because he’d so carefully organized his strategy and found men to do his bidding. Bradford Croft had been pliable, with a fondness for young girls that had made him easy to direct. Nevada Barnes had been less malleable. More angry. More dangerous. But he, too, had his weaknesses.

Croft was dead now and Barnes was in jail, but the plan lived on. Divide and conquer.

Revenge. Retribution.

The Mastermind tightened his fingers on the binoculars as a school bus lumbered into view below, passing beneath a swinging sign that promised authentic Wild West entertainment.

Children spilled from the bus and their shrill, excited voices filtered up to his vantage point. Then the adults emerged, moving more slowly, thinking themselves safe. The Canyon Kidnapper was dead and the Museum Murderer—an epithet he blamed solely on the media—was in jail. The citizens of Bear Claw, Colorado, thought the danger was past.

They had no idea it was just beginning.

Chapter One

Wearing jeans and a fitted blue T-shirt on her lean, five-foot-nothing frame, with her dark hair tucked beneath a straw hat and a canvas bag slung over her shoulder, Maya Cooper looked every inch the tourist she’d intended to portray. But inside, she was all cop as she scanned the swept-clean brick roadway that ran down the center of the faux ghost town outside Bear Claw City.

Her training as a criminal profiler told her she was reaching, but her gut told her she was on to something.

She was positive the Chuckwagon Ranch was connected to the sick bastard who’d planned two separate violent crime sprees over the past six months.

Wexton Henkes, part owner of the theme park, was a Bear Claw legend. Born in the city and raised up through the school system, he’d taken his father’s one-room electronic repair shop and built it into an empire. Once he’d made his first million—or ten—he’d started giving back to the city that had brought him his success. He’d funded everything from civic projects and art revivals to nature conservation and the local sports teams. In short, he was a prince.

On the outside, at least. Inside, Maya was convinced he was something else entirely. He’d broken his own son’s arm three months earlier—nobody could tell her different—and he was poised to duck the abuse charges because he had money, power and influence.

Enough influence to get her in serious trouble the last time she’d gone after him.

“But not this time,” she said aloud, earning herself strange looks from the passing tourists.

The June morning was warm and bright, perfect for a family trip. The Wild West theme park was cut down the middle by Main Street, a wide brick causeway flanked with false-fronted buildings that had been painted to look like a saloon, a general store and a livery. Tourists streamed into and out of the buildings in a chaos of movement and sound that made it almost impossible to pick out individuals. On either side of the buildings, bison-dotted pastures stretched for miles, taking up most of the shallow, hill-bounded bowl of land.

Maya scanned the low ridgetops that flanked the road and saw nothing. A faint feeling of wrongness prickled at the nape of her neck, a familiar sense of being watched. Of being alone.

But damn it, she was alone. She’d been suspended from the Bear Claw Police Department pending an inquiry into the incident at the Henkes mansion three months earlier.

Anxiety pressed at her, echoing her heartbeat in the low-grade headache that had plagued her ever since she’d awoken in the Hawthorne Hospital with a knot on the back of her head and no memory of attacking Henkes in his own home.

But that was what she’d done. Or so they said.

What if they kicked her off the force? Maya’s throat closed at the thought. She was already on the outside of the Bear Claw City Police Department—BCCPD—looking in. Alissa Wyatt and Cassie Dumont, her best friends and coworkers within the start-up Forensics Department, had tried to include her in the gossip, but they were run ragged shouldering her work as well as their own.

The new three-woman forensics team was struggling to gain acceptance within the Bear Claw PD as it was. What if—

No, Maya told herself, she wouldn’t dwell on that. The previous night she’d finally decided it was time to stop with the futile attempts at self-hypnosis, the painful efforts to force some remembrance of that night at the Henkes mansion. It was no use. The memories were gone, and she had an ugly feeling she knew why.

She touched a hand to her throat, where her charm necklace held five bangles. There should have been six more, but she’d lost them to a mistake. To temptation.

Would she lose the remaining five charms as well?

What if she had to start over again?

“No,” she said aloud. “I’m stronger than that, and I’m damn well going to prove it. Starting now.”

As though on cue, her cell phone rang, a digital bleat that cracked through the background hum of tourism. Not expecting a call, Maya slapped open the unit and checked the number, but the ID was blocked.

Annoyed, she flipped the phone shut and dropped it in the front pocket of her canvas bag. These days most of her calls came from media hounds looking for quotes on the dismissal of the Henkes child-abuse trial, or supporters of Wexton Henkes himself calling to threaten her, somehow still believing the bastard had a solid shot at the upcoming Congressional election. She didn’t need to talk to either group.

Focused on her own special way of doing the job—more organic than straight detecting, more regimented than pure profiling—she followed the flow of tourists toward the livery building, which held a petting zoo.

She wanted to get a feel for the theme park and the man who’d bankrolled it.

Inside the building, rough-hewn boards and crooked center beams gave the sense of an old, rundown barn, though a closer look showed her that everything was neat and new, and painted to look old. The place was packed with excited children, along with adults wearing expressions that ranged from enthusiasm to exhaustion. Small goats and lambs wandered a straw-bedded center pen, begging for handfuls of pellets that could be bought from quarter-operated machines on the wall. Box stalls on either side were set up to hold larger animals, though only one was occupied, holding a shaggy bison that looked close to five feet tall at the shoulder and probably weighed in well over a thousand pounds. Its short, curved horns were dulled at the ends, but that did little to blunt the physical impact of the creature as it snorted and stomped in its enclosure.

Maya noted the people and animals, then turned her attention to the building. She wasn’t even sure what she was looking for. A sense of the place, maybe, or insight into the man who had financial ties not only to the ranch, but also to the state park where Alissa had found the kidnapped girls during the first crime wave, and to the Bear Claw Natural History Museum where Cassie had nearly lost her life in the second.

During her terrifying ordeal in the museum, Cassie had heard the computer-altered voice of a third man, one who called himself the planner.

He had promised more violence to come.

The members of the special BCCPD task force assembled to deal with the crimes had vowed to find the Mastermind before he could strike again, but their leads had fizzled out in the months since. They needed an accurate psychological profile of the criminal, but their quarry was too many things and none of them all at once. It was nearly impossible to separate his ego from the works of the men he’d coerced into executing the actual crimes, but Maya was damn sure going to try.

So what if she was off the case, off the force entirely? That didn’t stop her from being a cop. Didn’t stop her from wanting to prove that she wasn’t—

The phone rang again, startling her. Though the ID was still blocked, she stepped outside the petting zoo and answered it, planning to give the persistent journalist an earful. “Maya Cooper speaking. Who is this?”

“You don’t know me,” said an eerie, mechanized voice.

A jolt slapped through her. The distorted sound matched Cassie’s description of the Mastermind’s voice.

She swallowed and said, “Hello, Wexton. How’s the arm?”

She was sure of her suspect. She just had to convince the rest of the BCCPD.

Dead silence echoed over the digital airwaves. For a moment she thought he’d hung up. Then the mechanized voice returned. “You think you’re so smart, don’t you? Well, I’ve got a surprise for you.”

Maya’s fingers tightened on the cell phone. “What kind of surprise?”

The voice held a hint of metallic amusement when it said, “There’s a bomb hidden somewhere in the Chuckwagon Ranch. You have ten minutes to evacuate.”

“YOU WANT ME TO DO WHAT?” Thorne Coleridge stopped pacing the small office and stared at Bear Claw City’s Police Chief.

William Parry, grizzled and bulldogesque with his jowly face and sad eyes, leaned back in his desk chair. “Do you want the job or not?”

Thorne jammed his hands in the pockets of the navy wool slacks he’d worn as a concession to the interview. He’d gotten a quick trim of his short, sandy hair and donned a white oxford-cloth shirt, but had skipped the tie, figuring he should begin as he meant to go on.

The question echoed in his brain. Did he want the job? Did he want to get in at the ground level of a start-up forensics department? Hell, yes. Did he want to get out of the Wagon Ridge PD, where conversations stopped the moment he entered the room and the whispers began the moment he left? Hell, yes. That was why he’d jumped at the chance when his bosses in Wagon Ridge had asked if he would drive down to Bear Claw and help with an ongoing case. He needed a fresh start.

But he wasn’t sure he wanted to make that start at the expense of a colleague.

He resumed his pacing before he said, “Nobody told me I’d be replacing another psych specialist. I thought you were looking to fill a vacancy.”

“It can become a vacancy if you do your job. Hell, I’ll probably have to replace her either way.” But Parry’s frown drooped lower, cutting deeper lines in his sagging face. “The three women came with glowing references and wanted to work together. I was looking to upgrade my forensics team. It seemed like a match.”

“I take it things haven’t gone smoothly?”

Parry snorted. “You could say that. If it isn’t one thing with those three, it’s another. At first, they couldn’t manage to get along with the rest of the PD. They did their jobs well enough, but it was tense as hell. Then once all this trouble started, my crime scene expert and my evidence tech wound up snuggling with my best detective and my FBI liaison.” His expression darkened. “Hell, they wound up being targeted by the damn killer!”

“You can’t blame them for the criminal mind,” Thorne said, avoiding the touchy issue of interdepartmental romance. He didn’t need to go there. Not now.

Not ever again.

“True, but whether it’s their fault or not, things have been unsettled in the PD since they came on board.” The chief shifted in his chair. “Then add on this business with Wexton Henkes…” He trailed off, but his sour expression left no doubt that he’d had it with his crack team of investigators. “My so-called psych specialist accused Bear Claw’s biggest philanthropist of child abuse—against the sworn testimony of his wife and son, mind you—and then attacked him in his own home before she collapsed and remained unconscious for nearly three days.” Parry muttered a curse. “I just don’t think she’s an asset to the PD at this point. I’d like to replace her with someone more stable. More qualified.”

Thorne grimaced. Surely the rumors had traveled down to Bear Claw, stories of how he’d gone up into the mountains after cult leader Mason Falk, and how he’d been a changed man afterwards.

But maybe the chief figured that was a long time ago, and knew he’d proven himself since.

God knows he’d tried to.

He thought of the opportunity he was being offered. A fresh start, away from—

Well, just away.

Interest piqued, Thorne withdrew his hands from his pockets and sat in the padded chair facing the chief’s desk. He gestured toward the glass wall separating the chief’s office from the bulk of the Bear Claw PD, where cops worked in their cubes or hustled out on calls. “What about the others? Won’t they see me as just as much of an intruder? Hell, what about the women? They’re going to hate me if I break up their cozy little unit.”

“They’ll deal,” the chief said bluntly, though Thorne caught a flicker of doubt in his eyes. “Alissa Wyatt is the crime scene analyst. Does sketches, too. She’s engaged to Detective Tucker McDermott, Homicide. Make friends with Tucker and she’ll tolerate you. Cassie Dumont is our evidence tech. She paired off with Seth Varitek, an FBI evidence specialist out of the Boulder office. She’ll be tougher, and won’t care whether you make nice with Seth or not. If I were you, I’d just stay out of her way while you work this case.” The chief leaned forward in his chair and pinned Thorne with a no-nonsense look. “Here’s the deal. I’m putting you on the Mastermind task force. We need a solid profile and a new direction, and we need it yesterday, before this bastard attacks my city again. Consider this case your job interview. You fit in here and help us catch the Mastermind, and the job’s yours.”

Thorne nodded as a stir of anticipation drowned out most of his doubts. “I’ll need copies of the case files, all the notes your investigators have amassed on the Canyon Kidnappings and the Museum Murders, everything that pertains to the Mastermind.”

“The computer files and hard copies are waiting for you downstairs in the forensics department offices. You’ll have to share with Alissa and Cassie, I’m afraid, but maybe that’s for the best. It’ll let you three get used to each other.” The chief stood and extended his hand, indicating that the interview—such as it had been—was over. “I expect interesting things from you, Coleridge. Don’t let me down.”

As Thorne stood and shook with the man who would be—at least temporarily—his new superior, he saw the knowledge in Parry’s eyes and heard the emphasis on the word interesting. That was enough to tell him that the chief had heard the rumors about his so-called talents, after all. Maybe that explained why he’d called Wagon Ridge and asked for Thorne personally.

Yeah, that was it, he decided. The chief was hoping he’d provide a miracle.

Too bad he’d have to disappoint.

“I’ll do my best police work,” he said carefully.

The chief paused, then nodded. “You do that.”

It wasn’t until Thorne turned for the door that he saw the commotion outside, heard the muted shouts in the bullpen. Adrenaline spurted. “What the hell?”

A woman yanked open the door before he could reach for it. Medium height with honey-blond hair pulled into a ponytail beneath a BCCPD ball cap, she had deep blue eyes that were wide with stress, though she kept her voice professionally level when she said, “He’s back. We just had a bomb threat phoned in to that bison park outside the city. Computerized voice and all.”

“The Mastermind phoned here?” the chief demanded, already shrugging into his jacket.

The woman shook her head. “Worse. He called Maya’s cell.”

The chief repeated the name like a curse, but the word froze Thorne to his core.

“Maya?” he said, and something must have leaked into his voice because the woman and Chief Parry both turned to him.

“Maya Cooper,” the chief said. “The psych specialist that you’re re—that you’re subbing for while she’s on suspension.”

The sudden darkening of the woman’s eyes told Thorne the chief’s slip hadn’t gone unnoticed. She glared at Parry, then at Thorne, but said only, “I’m out of here. We’ve got a bomb to find and a scene to process. Everything else will have to wait.”

She slammed the door behind her, making the glass shudder.

The chief paused with his hand on the knob and turned to Thorne. “That was Alissa, the friendlier of your two new coworkers. Sounds like you’re going to have problems.”

“I can handle it,” Thorne said carefully, but the chief had no idea how right he was in predicting a problem.

It wasn’t Alissa he was worried about, though.

It was Maya.

Chapter Two

“Everybody stay calm. It’s all under control.” Though her heart pounded in her chest, Maya pitched her voice low as the crowd of tourists she’d collected in the parking lot outside the ranch edged toward panic. “The police will be here soon to check on the possibility,” she stressed the last word, though in her mind there was no doubt the Mastermind had been deadly serious, “that there’s a problem.”

The tourists and ranch employees milled in a bare area beyond the parking lot, shifting restlessly as though they had ceased to be single individuals and become a combined entity, a spooky, nervous mob that could stampede at any moment.

Maya strained to hear the sound of approaching sirens even as she raised her hands. “Please stay calm. It’ll just be a few more minutes.”

A few minutes until the Bear Claw cops arrived. A few minutes until the bomb detonated, minutes that ticked down on the digital display of her wristwatch.

The explosive could be in any one of the buildings. Or it could be in one of the cars. Even in the big yellow school bus parked in the corner of the lot, Maya thought with a faint shudder as the numbers clicked down from five minutes to four.

“Let’s get in the cars and get out of here,” a man’s voice called, and others shouted agreement.

“I’m sorry, that’s not an option.” Maya glanced to her right and left, where two terrified-looking ranch employees were helping her keep the group in check now that the initial rush to get people the hell out of the ranch had passed. The three of them were holding the line, but the crowd could turn at a moment’s notice.

Maya had studied mob mentality. She’d been in situations like this before.

But back then, she’d had a badge and a weapon, and street cops backing her up.

“Why not?” shouted the same voice, irritated now. “And who put you in charge?”

She glared in the direction of the heckler. “I’m a member of the Bear Claw Creek Police Department, which puts me in charge.”

She didn’t give her name, because it had already been splashed too loudly in the media, and she didn’t give her rank or show her badge, because she’d been stripped of both until Internal Affairs finished looking into the Henkes incident, a process that had been stalled several times by red tape she could only assume came from Henkes’s supporters within the force.

Three minutes, thirty seconds.

She tried not to think about her first impressions of the theme park, how a sniper could sit up on the low ridge of hills nearby and fire down into the crowd she had assembled in a too-convenient knot. But what other choice did she have? She’d needed to get them the hell out of the park, and the vehicles weren’t an option.

Three minutes.

Then she heard sirens in the distance, approaching rapidly.

“Thank God,” Maya whispered to herself, knowing she couldn’t say it aloud, couldn’t let the crowd know she was worried.

They needed her to be strong, to keep the peace.

Precious seconds ticked by as the Bear Claw cops pulled in, led by Alissa and Cassie, riding with Tucker in his he-man truck. The chief’s car followed moments later. The sight of her friends loosened the tight band around Maya’s heart, even as the suspicious looks she got from the other arriving officers made her feel worse.

Uniforms ranged out around the rapidly quieting crowd. As the tension subsided a degree, a youngish cop jogged over to Maya and said, “We’ll take it from here, ma’am. The chief would like a word with you.”

She tried not to wince at the “ma’am,” which served only to underscore her status as not-quite-a-cop. But there wasn’t time for regrets, not while her wristwatch clicked down past two minutes thirty seconds.

She hastened to the knot of cops gathered near the chief’s car just as two vans and a box truck arrived in a cloud of dust, bearing John Sawyer, the leader of the Bear Claw Bomb Squad, along with his team of experts.

“He said I had ten minutes,” she told the group. “We’ve got two-thirty left, give or take. The park is cleared of people, but there’s a petting zoo in the livery building and close to three hundred head of bison pastured right behind the buildings.”

“Not much we can do about that now,” Chief Parry said pragmatically, but his grizzled, careworn face settled into deeper lines at the prospect of bloodshed, human or otherwise. When Sawyer joined the group, the chief quickly updated him. The two put their heads together to rough out a plan, which gave Maya a moment to glance at the others.

Alissa’s honey-blond hair was tied back in a ponytail and stuffed under a navy BCCPD ball cap, while Cassie’s straight, nearly white-blond hair was shorter now, cut near her shoulders. Tucker stood just behind Alissa and off to one side, shoulders stiff and protective. A wolf guarding his mate. Knowing that the task force had remained active even after the capture of Nevada Barnes three months earlier, Maya was faintly surprised by the absence of Special Agent Seth Varitek. Cassie’s nemesis-turned-lover had been loaned to the task force for help with the evidence work, but perhaps he was off on another case.

In Varitek’s place, a stranger stood at the edge of the group, part of the conversation but apart from the center of it. He was maybe a shade over six feet tall, lean but muscular. He wore navy pants and a crisp white shirt at odds with the heavy boots on his feet. His close-cropped sandy hair was standard military, as was his stiff-backed posture, and she sensed him studying her from behind his dark sunglasses.

She felt a shimmer of familiarity. A cold crawl moved across her shoulders and up her neck to gather at the base of her skull.

Who was this guy?

Her watch beeped to indicate sixty seconds left in the countdown. Thirty.

In silent accord, the cops turned toward the Chuckwagon Ranch as the seconds bled away. There was no way they could search the entire place in time. They didn’t even know where to begin.

As the final few seconds ran down on the digital display, Chief Parry nodded to Maya. “Good work getting everyone out. They’re safe, thanks to you.”

It was the first time he’d spoken to her since he’d taken her badge. The recognition warmed her, but she said, “I was just doing my job.”

Then the time ran out. Her watch beeped the end of the promised ten minutes. They braced for an explosion.

Nothing happened.

Seconds ticked by. Then minutes. Still nothing.

Maya’s brain sped up. Her thoughts quickened to a blur, but it was Sawyer who said, “Think it’s another dud?”

During the Museum Murder investigation, Cassie’s house had been rigged with a gas leak and a detonator that hadn’t triggered. Sawyer later determined that it had never been intended to blow. It’d been a fake, designed to confuse them. Scare them.

Could this be the same?

“It would fit with the Mastermind’s pattern,” Maya said quietly. “Hell, there might not even be a device. He probably got off on phoning in a threat and watching us scramble.”

She told herself not to be ashamed by the false alarm. There was no way she could have known, no way she could have chanced ignoring the call.

But still, she squirmed at the sidelong glances of her former coworkers and the stranger in the dark glasses.

Sawyer gestured to his team. “We’ll suit up and search the property to make sure. It’ll take a few hours.”

“With all due respect,” Maya said, “I’d suggest you check the vehicles first. The tourists are pretty edgy to leave.”

“With all due respect,” the chief said, “you should go with them. The media will be here any minute. If they catch wind that you’re involved with this bomb scare, the next thing we know, it’ll be splashed across the six o’clock news. Suspended cop receives bomb tip. Film at eleven. Hell, they’ll want to know why you received the call. Is it because you’re the last Forensics Department cop to be targeted? Or maybe it’s completely unrelated. Maybe this is about the Henkes trial next week. Lord knows, you’ve ticked off more than a few people with that.”

His words dug at Maya’s suspicions, at the places she hadn’t yet managed to armor. “That would make it completely related,” she snapped. “Why do you think I was here in the first place? Henkes is—”

“He’s right,” Alissa interrupted, though her voice was laced with apology when she said, “You should go. Leave your cell phone with us for analysis. Tucker and I will swing by your place later to get a full statement.”

Ouch. Maya fought the wince, crossed her arms and nodded tightly. “Of course. I’m sorry.” She forced the words through a throat gone tight with resentment.

Was this what she’d been reduced to? Waiting at home for her friends to drop by with a crumb of information?

When nobody argued, she swallowed the anger and pushed through the group. Her path brought her between Alissa and the stranger.

Alissa touched Maya’s arm and mouthed, “I’m sorry. We’ll talk later.”

The stranger just looked down at her through his shaded lenses with an intensity that set off warning bells.

Maya had the wild, uncharacteristic urge to reach up and pull those glasses down so she could see his eyes. But wild urges were self-destructive. She knew that much from experience. So she sniffed and pushed past him, bumping his arm with hers to let him know she wasn’t intimidated.

Damned if he didn’t flinch.

THE FLASH CAME THE MOMENT she touched him.

Blood. Death. Violence. Heat. Thorne held himself rigid and weathered the sensations, which were part memory, part anticipation. He gritted his teeth and forced himself not to show the whiplash of mental flame, of pain.

Hell, he thought when she was gone and the images faded, what was that?

It was a stupid question. He knew precisely what it had been. But why here? Why now? It had been years since his last vision, years since the doctors had assured him the flashes were nothing more than random synapse firings, courtesy of the drugs he’d been given during his captivity on Mason Falk’s mountain.

Years since he’d blocked the images, which had often come too close to prescience for his comfort.

He rubbed the place on his arm that she’d touched, where the contact had arced through the fabric of his shirt and punched him in the gut with the flash.

Or had that been nothing more than memory of their brief history?

She hadn’t recognized him. He shouldn’t have been surprised, given how much he’d changed since his brief stint teaching at the High Top Bluff Police Academy. His hair had been long then, and he’d been weak from the aftereffects of his captivity. Twitchy from the post-traumatic stress. He’d taken his first drink at ten each morning, and spaced five more whiskeys out through the day, staying sober enough to teach his classes, buzzed enough to avoid the memories. The visions.

He didn’t remember much about the half year after his captivity, but he remembered her. The moment he’d heard her name again after all these years, an image of her face had sprung into his mind full-blown.

Now, seeing her in person, he realized that she hadn’t changed a bit. She was still tiny, with every piece of her perfectly proportioned, just as she’d been when she’d taken his Advanced Criminal Psych class. Her dark hair was styled differently, hanging to her shoulders now in soft waves, but the face below was the same as he’d remembered, making him wonder whether the image in his mind had been memory or something born of another power, one he’d fought to block for nearly five years now.

He shoved his hands in his pockets and turned to watch her make her way down to the parking lot, shoulders tense beneath her blue short-sleeved shirt.

How could she still look the same when he was so different?

A phone rang, startling him with its strident digital peal.

“You take it.” The chief tossed him Maya’s cell.

Thorne caught it on the fly as it rang a second time. He struggled to refocus, to bring his wayward brain back from places it had no business being. His voice was gruff when he said, “Wouldn’t it be better to have one of the women answer and pretend to be Dr. Cooper?”

Parry shook his head. “He’ll know. During the other cases, he spliced a line into the PD security cameras so he could watch us at headquarters. Same thing at the museum when Barnes was captured. He’ll be watching somehow. You can bet on it.”

Accepting that, Thorne flipped open the phone and punched it to speaker before he said, “Hello?”

There was a pause—a long, thin stretch of silence with absolutely nothing on the other end.

“Hello?” Thorne prompted again, aware of the others watching him.

There was still no answer. Moments later, the call was disconnected.

Thorne muttered a curse. “Nothing.” He shook his head and returned the phone to Chief Parry, who had his own cell in his hand, perhaps to call in reinforcements at any hint of a break in the case.

Parry held Thorne’s eyes. “Nothing at all?”

Knowing what the chief was asking, Thorne shoved his hands in his pockets. “I’m a cop, not a magician.”

Before the chief could respond, Sawyer’s voice crackled from a nearby radio. “We’ve done a quick scan and we haven’t found a thing.”

“There’s no bomb?” the chief said quickly.

Sawyer’s transmitted voice responded, “I can’t be entirely certain until we’ve done a more thorough search. With explosives technology being what it is, a charge could be hidden anywhere. But the other devices this guy used were all pretty standard—none of the molded polymers or really high-power stuff. If he’s sticking with the pattern, I’d expect to find a fairly traditional device. But we’ve got nothing here. Nada.”

“Keep looking.” But when the chief lowered the radio, his expression was pensive. He glanced over at Thorne. “With what you know of him so far, would the Mastermind go to a more advanced explosive?”

“In my opinion?” Thorne stressed the last word, trying to remind the Bear Claw chief that he didn’t specialize in parlor tricks. “I don’t think so. Granted, part of his pattern is that he has very little pattern, but I’d say he has an ego. He wants to be feared, wants to be seen as the best. If he had more advanced technological abilities, I think he would’ve used them already. That leaves us three possibilities.”

The tall blond bombshell who’d been introduced to him as the evidence specialist, Cassie Dumont, raised her eyebrows. “Which are?”

Her prickly tone indicated that she had no intention of liking him.

Thorne answered, “Well, the first option is that our mastermind is playing with us again, that he phoned in a false threat just to watch us scramble. If so, we need to address the question of why he phoned Officer Cooper.” It felt odd to use her title, but it would be equally awkward to use her name for the first time in five years, for the first time since he’d woken up and found her gone after their one strange, disjointed night together.

They’d 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, Maya thought with a clarity born of terror.

The goats and sheep inside the petting zoo galloped in circles, becoming a bleating, milling mix of hooves and bodies. The lone bison in the far corner stomped, shook his head and reared partway up, as though he might jump out of his enclosure at any moment.

Maya’s heart rabbited in her chest. “Come on!” She scooped the girl up and ran for the entrance, staggering beneath the weight of the child.

They were twenty feet from the door when a splintering crash sounded over the mind-blowing rumble that went on and on and on. Maya risked a look back, and nearly tripped and fell at what she saw.

Bison. Five, maybe ten of them, had broken through the back wall of the livery and were bearing down on her at a full-out gallop. Their small eyes were wide and scared, their nostrils flared with deep, sucking breaths, and their stubby horns cut the air as they charged. The penned animal bellowed and crashed through his fenced enclosure to join the others.

Maya turned and ran for her life.

Hannah’s arms were wrapped around her neck in a chokehold that nearly cut off her breath, but Maya didn’t care. She had to get the girl to safety. Had to get herself to safety.

But where was safe?

She burst through the petting zoo doors and skidded onto the main road. Thinking that the bison would follow the path of least resistance, she bolted for the ticketing area, hoping the buildings and the turnstiles would deflect them. She could jump over while the bison turned, like some mad reenactment of the running of the bulls.

She heard shouts and gunshots, saw figures running along the ridges on either side of the ranch, and felt the growing hoofbeats in the trembling of the ground.

But the noise wasn’t coming from behind her anymore. It was in front of her.

Suddenly, dust gouted from beyond the snack bar, which was the last building in line before the ticketing area. The noise increased to unbelievable proportions, as though Maya was caught in a tunnel with trains bearing down on her from either side.

She ran for the turnstiles, legs weak, lungs burning, too aware of the dozen bison bearing down on her from behind.

Then the dust in front of her thickened to shadows. Legs. Horns. Mad, panicked eyes. Twenty bison burst around the corner and turned down Main Street. Forty more followed them. A hundred. A full, panicked stampede of thousand-pound animals galloping hell-bent—

Directly at Maya and the little girl.

Chapter Three

Heart pounding a panicked rhythm in her ears, Maya bolted across the street, toward the snack bar, which had an ice cream booth on the flat-topped roof. She tightened her grip on Hannah and fixed her eyes on the stairs leading up to the snack area. Up. If she could just get up, she would be—

A heavy, hairy weight slammed into her from behind, driving her to her knees. Hooves struck her in the side and she curled her body around Hannah in a futile effort to protect the girl.

Then the pain and the blows were gone. Too quick, Maya thought. That couldn’t have been the whole herd.

It wasn’t, she realized moments later when she uncurled and looked around. She’d been struck by the offshoot group, the dozen animals who had burst through the livery after her. They had turned and galloped down Main Street.

The ground shook as the main herd bore down on her, no more than a city block away. The noise increased by the moment, hoofbeats overlaid with snorts and bellows and the sound of gunfire.

Maya saw white-rimmed eyes, red-flared nostrils and pounding, pulverizing hooves coming closer. Too close.

Knowing she was too late, that there was no way she was going to make it, Maya dragged herself to her feet, hauled the girl onto her hip and took two stumbling steps toward the stairs, toward safety. Her knee sang with pain. Her legs folded beneath her—

And strong arms grabbed her, lifted her and half carried her across the road as the air thickened with dust and fear.

Rough hands shoved her toward the stairs and a man’s voice shouted, “Climb, damn it!”

Disbelieving, heart pounding, Maya climbed, aware of being crowded, being hustled, being shielded as her feet hit the stairs. She stumbled, needing both arms to hold the girl, and felt strong hands grab her waist and boost her upwards.

The leading edge of the stampede hit them. A big male bison demolished the lower stairs, blasting through the two-by-four construction as though it was made of matchsticks.

With nothing holding them off the ground, the upper stairs sagged and began to fall.

“Go!” Maya’s rescuer shouted. He nearly threw her up over the edge, onto the low roof of the building. Wood splintered and Maya screamed as the stairs peeled away from the building to fall into the sea of hairy bodies below.

Carrying the man with them.

She pulled Hannah’s arms from around her neck, set the girl on a safe spot well back from the edge and yelled, “Don’t move!” Then she scrambled back to the place where the stairs had been, lay flat on her belly and poked her head over the precipice.

She saw a hand. A forearm. The top of a man’s head. Her rescuer was clinging to the edge of the building as the herd passed below in a deadly thunder of hooves and horns.

“Hang on!” Maya lunged forward and grabbed his arms, his shirt, anything she could get hold of to help him up and over.

His muscles were hard beneath her hands, his body powerful as he dragged himself over the edge and flopped down beside her, breathing heavily, one forearm thrown across his eyes.

“You okay?” he asked, voice ragged.

She took stock. Her body sang with the ache of bruises but not breaks, and when she glanced at Hannah, she saw that the girl was crying softly but appeared otherwise unhurt.

As the rumble of the stampede faded and human shouts and whistles took over, Maya cleared her throat of the hot, choking dust and the knowledge that without his help, she would have died. She swallowed hard and said, “We’re okay. I can’t thank you enough…” She trailed off, wanting a name for the stranger.

“Don’t thank me. Let’s just say this makes us even, okay?” He dragged his arm off his face, sat up and turned toward her.

Without the sunglasses, his eyes were two different shades of hazel, one so light as to border on amber, the other darkening to green, giving his face a skewness that should have been lopsided but instead was arresting. Interesting.

Familiar.

“Thorne!” she gasped, voice sharp with shock and memory.

For an instant, she was back in the High Top Bluff Police Academy. She’d seen him across the cafeteria, where he’d stood out from the others because he’d kept his long, sandy hair tied back in a ponytail, and wore a burnished gold, almost auburn five o’clock shadow at ten in the morning. He’d carried a casual air that was part poet, part surfer dude, and was the center of a growing throng. Maya later learned that people flocked to him, wanting to be included in the friendly, whiskey-laced charm that hid deeper things.

Darker things.

A murmur had run through the room, quick snatches of whispered rumor. He was out in the field…undercover with Mason Falk’s mountain men…captured…tortured…the drugs made him a little nuts…he’s teaching psych while he heals…

Uncomfortable with the sudden buzz, with the intimacy of knowing things about a complete stranger, Maya had gathered her things to leave, but when she passed the growing group, she’d glanced over at the man and found him watching her, found him nearer than she’d expected.

She had paused a moment, struck by the strangeness of his eyes, by the pull of him, by the click of recognition. No, she had never met him before, but she’d immediately recognized something about him. Something inside him, something deeper than the faint tang of alcohol that laced the air between them, though that, too, was a connection.

With the bruises of her marriage still fresh on her soul, Maya had pushed past the man, and had hidden in the back of his criminal psych class. He’d taught with an uncomfortable sort of detachment, as though he didn’t want to be there, couldn’t be anywhere else. More whispers had buzzed about him, rumors that he’d once identified a murderer by touching the victim’s hand, that he had visions.

That he drank to keep the visions away.

Maya had stayed away from him, wary of the reputation and the alcohol, but every now and then, when they had come face to face in the halls, or on the jog paths, or in the cafeteria, he would look at her, and those strange, knowing eyes would linger in her mind for days.

That had been the only contact between them, the only connection until that one stupid, stupid night, when Maya had given in to the temptation.

As much as she’d told herself, then and now, that it was her fault more than his, that mistakes happened, that sometimes even the strongest person stumbled off the path, she’d lost something that night, something more than the six charms she’d plucked off her necklace the next morning, and flushed down the toilet.

She’d lost a piece of herself.

She felt the same strength drain from her as quickly as the blood drained from her face when she saw those eyes, when his features realigned themselves into those of the man she had known. His beard was gone and his hair cut short, and he was leaner now, fitter.

But he was still Thorne.

She thought she caught a whiff of alcohol on the air between them, though that could have been a scent memory, kicked up by the shock of seeing him again, the shock of the bison stampede that had nearly killed her.

His face creased into a wry smile. “We don’t need to pretend this is a happy reunion. We don’t need to rehash why you took off before I even woke up that morning, and why you transferred all the way out of the academy to avoid me afterward. Frankly, I don’t think I care anymore. Just suffice it to say I owed you a good deed. Now we’re even. Okay?”

He rose gracefully to his feet and extended a hand to her, though she wasn’t sure whether he intended the gesture as a peace offering or a challenge.

Hell, she wasn’t even sure which was appropriate.

What would he do if she admitted she didn’t remember anything about that night? That everything after finding the dead battery on her car was a blur, culminating in her waking up the next morning in his bed, with his arm thrown across her waist and his breath in her ear?

“Fine.” She stood on her own, strangely reluctant to touch him when her fingers still buzzed with the feel of his body as she’d helped pull him to safety. “We’re even.”

But her stomach twisted at the look in his eyes, which implied an uncomfortable intimacy. For years she’d tried to block the memory of her single ignominious one-night stand, tried to tell herself that nothing had happened, that he’d been gentleman enough not to take advantage. His expression now told her she’d been lying to herself about him, about them.

They’d gotten drunk, they’d had sex, and then she’d run away.

Emotions she’d fought off five years earlier rose up to swamp her, to slap at her with feelings of failure, of humiliation, of disappointment—not with him, but with herself.

She drew breath to say something breezy, something that belied the turmoil within, but before she could speak, a small voice said, “I want my mommy.”

Startled back to the moment, to the case, Maya looked over at Hannah, who sat nearby with tears drying on her face.

Thorne crouched down near the girl. “And who is this?”

“She’s Hannah,” Maya answered. She bent down, picked up the girl—thankful that she was small for her age—and balanced the child on her hip, needing the contact perhaps more than Hannah did. “And she’ll need to spend some time with Alissa.”

Thorne’s strange eyes sharpened. “Why?”

Maya took a breath and tried to figure out how to summarize the situation without upsetting the traumatized girl further. “Let’s just say she wasn’t in the petting zoo by accident. She had help getting there, and my guess is that she was intended to draw more cops into the park before the stampede.” She paused and fussed with Hannah’s shirt so she wouldn’t have to look at Thorne. “I assume you’re on loan for the Master—” She broke off as the obvious conclusion clicked in her brain.

Oh, hell.

She spun and glared at him, as anger, frustration and a strange sort of betrayal flooded her system. “Tell me you’re not my replacement.”

BUT HE DIDN’T TELL HER that. He couldn’t. Instead, Thorne looked away, down to where a half dozen mounted ranch hands were driving the exhausted bison into a far pasture, while cops crawled over a section of downed fence, no doubt looking for clues that the stampede had been rigged.

When he spoke, his voice was low. “It’s only a temporary thing.”

She narrowed her eyes, making him wonder what she saw in him, what she was thinking. But she merely said, “Seriously? You’re just here to fill in until Internal Affairs clears me to get my badge back?”

“I’m here to help bring down the bastard who set you up today,” Thorne said. He hadn’t answered her question, but the chief had urged him to keep quiet about the possibility of taking over the psych specialist’s role in the Bear Claw Forensics Department. The evasion burned, letting him know that even though he’d saved her life, he still owed her.

Because the irony was that she’d saved his life five years earlier, and she didn’t even know it.

He jammed his hands in his pockets. “Look, Maya. I—”

“You two okay up there?” a voice shouted from below. The top rungs of an aluminum extension ladder banged against the lip of the roof, and shook with ascending footsteps.

“We’re fine,” Thorne yelled back, louder than he’d meant to. He glanced at Maya. “Let’s talk about it later.”

Her eyes grew wary, her expression shuttered. “There’s no need.”

Maya’s friends were the first two up the ladder. Alissa and Cassie shot Thorne nearly identical looks of distrust, then rushed to assure themselves that Maya was fine. Homicide detective Tucker McDermott was next to gain the roof. After speaking with Maya for a moment, he took Hannah and carried her down the ladder.

Moments later, the sounds of a tearful mother-daughter reunion rose up from below.

“The chief wants to see you back at the PD,” Cassie told Maya. She had her back to Thorne, but her words carried.

Aware that their conversation remained unfinished, that their reunion had none of the joyful ring of Hannah’s return to her mother, Thorne stepped forward. “I’ll drive her. We have things to discuss.”

Maya didn’t make eye contact when she said, “I’ve got my own wheels. I’ll drive myself.”

Realizing that he was the one without the wheels, Thorne grimaced. “Then I’ll ride with you. I came in with the chief.”

“Then you can leave with him, too,” Cassie said. She stepped forward, leading with her chin as though daring him to throw a punch. “Isn’t it enough that you’re using her desk and you’ve got all her notes on the Mastermind case?”

Maya surprised him by stepping forward and laying a hand on her friend’s arm. “I’ve got it.” She gestured toward the ladder. “You two head down. I’ll be there in a minute.”

When Thorne and Maya were alone again on the roof, she turned to face him, arms folded across her chest. As though remembering his old lectures on open versus closed body language, she uncrossed her arms and hooked her thumbs in the waistband of her jeans, where a narrow green belt glittered with a faint gold pattern. “Look,” she began, “I don’t know how much Chief Parry told you about what’s going on, but I’ll be back on the job as soon as IA clears me.”

“Of course,” Thorne agreed, though he noticed that she was still avoiding eye contact, and her fingers worked restlessly at her sides. She wasn’t as confident as she seemed. He felt a slash of empathy as he remembered his own down time following his escape from Mason Falk’s compound. He’d been on medical leave for nearly six months, and sent to teach at the Academy in High Top Bluff for a year after that.

He’d worked his way back into active duty. Maya would do the same, if she wanted it enough. But based on what the chief had told him, it didn’t seem likely that she would return to the Bear Claw PD. If that was a given, was there really any harm in him angling for her job?

Thorne wasn’t sure yet. He hadn’t fully processed the fact that this was Maya Cooper. Pretty, shy Maya Cooper from the back row of his psych class, who never raised her hand, but who aced all the quizzes and papers.

Pretty Maya Cooper who had cried in his arms over the whiskey he’d urged on her, making him step back and realize what he was becoming.

What he had already become.

He might not have changed his life because of her, but he’d damn well changed it because of what she’d shown him about himself. That meant he owed her, but how much?

“Let me ride with you,” he urged, not completely sure why he wanted to spend time with her. “Even if it’s only temporary, I’m here to work the Mastermind case. I’d appreciate your insights.”

She looked at him for a long moment, as though judging his motives, or maybe his sincerity. Apparently she found one or both lacking, because she shook her head. “Read my notes. They’re organized and complete, such as they are. You want a hint? Have Hannah describe the guy who grabbed her, and let Alissa develop a sketch.” She shrugged. “Beyond that, you’re on your own.”

“Come on, Maya.” He took a step closer to her, then paused at the unfamiliar rev that sped through his body. Acknowledging the danger signal, he cleared his throat and said, “Help me out, here. We’re on the same team.”

“Funny that you should mention teams,” she said, expression closed. “I seem to remember that you were a player and a partier. Unfortunately for you, I’m not either of those things anymore.” A measure of tension left her shoulders, as though she’d needed to say that aloud. “Look,” she said in a less brittle tone, “if I thought I knew anything that isn’t in my notes, I’d tell you. But it’s all there, everything right up until I was suspended.”

“And what about since then?” he asked quietly. “I’ll bet you’ve done some snooping on your own.”

“Why do you care?” she snapped. “You don’t need me on this case. There’s no reason for us to spend time together.” She pursed her lips, which were fuller than he remembered. “You’re not thinking that you and I are going to take up where we left off, are you?”

“No,” he said too quickly. “God, no!” He held up a hand. “No offense or anything, but I just got out of a relationship,” such as it was, “and it didn’t end well. She was a coworker, and—” And he was talking too much. Maya didn’t need to know the sordid details of Detective Tabitha Stock and her personal agenda. He frowned and ended with, “Let’s just say we can put the past in the past and keep it there. I’m not looking for anything more than your take on the Mastermind case.”

“Then read my notes.” She turned away and slipped over the side of the building, down the ladder and was gone, leaving Thorne alone on the roof.

But her presence lingered in the air, in the hum of blood through his body, the buzz that said she was prettier than he remembered, spunkier than he remembered. But beneath that buzz was a wariness, a recognition that she’d grown into a dedicated, driven cop, the kind of cop who’d do anything to protect her territory, to ensure her job and move her career forward. Just like Tabitha.

Maya wasn’t his problem. She didn’t want his help or company, and he’d made things square by pulling her away from the stampeding bison. He could move on from here, without giving her another thought.

Moments later, he cursed, climbed down the ladder and set off after her. The bomb threat and the Mastermind’s previous pattern of going after women in the Forensics Department suggested she was a target, which made her his problem.

What better way to find the Mastermind than to stick close to his next victim?

THE MASTERMIND WATCHED THE cops disperse to their vehicles and hid a smirk at the thought that everything was going according to plan. They were stirred up now, anxious and ready to jump at the smallest shadow.

He would wait a day, maybe longer, until the anticipation had built to a fever pitch. Then he would make his next move.

He picked out the slight figure of a dark-haired woman, identifying her by the aggressive wiggle of her hips as she walked to her car. The taller, stronger figure of a man followed at a distance.

“Right on schedule,” he murmured. He was particularly proud of this facet of his plan.

Though the ability to manipulate people wasn’t one he’d intentionally cultivated, it had served him well. With a few minor—and fixable—hiccups, everything was moving smoothly. The Bear Claw cops were formidable adversaries, but that would only make his inevitable victory that much sweeter when it came.

Smiling now, he turned away and headed toward his vehicle. He had a few matters to attend to, new preparations for the next stage of events.

Then he had a phone call to make.

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