She didn’t want to know what he’d thought when he’d seen that, but his expression alone had burned through to the core of her.
Trying to forget the peculiar things Nitro made her feel, she turned toward the decimated compound.
The fire service had been and gone. She could see signs of their obviously successful efforts to put out the fire, but she was glad no one was there to question her. The FBI, and probably the ATF too, were probably already on their way, but she hoped she and Nitro would get out of there before the authorities arrived. There would come a reckoning, but she would avoid it as long as she could.
She started toward the wreckage, her senses on full alert. Of its own volition, her hand reached out to touch a piece of charred wood, and her mind went to that place it did when she focused on a bomb, trying to feel its composition.
Daniel watched Josie go into her woo-woo mode, and damned if it didn’t turn him on.
Everything about her excited him, and it made him mad. He didn’t like being out of control, and when he was around Josie McCall, his hard-won control was under a constant state of siege. Bent over, her sweet little bottom was outlined by the fatigues she wore, and she touched the burned debris with the sensual caress of a lover. He wanted that caress on his body.
Get your mind on the task at hand, boy-o. You don’t have time to focus on that heart-shaped ass right now or the way she touches some burned-up piece of wood.
With a grimace of self-disgust, he obeyed his inner urgings to focus on the destroyed compound.
Whatever had been used, it had been effective. No walls were left standing, and the fire had destroyed pretty much everything before the fire service had been able to contain it. At least the woods surrounding the compound had not been affected. The fifty-foot expanse of dirt around the perimeter had made an effective fire barrier.
Tyler McCall was a man who prepared for every eventuality. Even someone trying to blow him up apparently. He’d been sleeping in a secret bedroom that students and faculty alike knew nothing about.
Daniel understood that kind of caution. All soldiers for hire did. Few men could be trusted in a world where money bought a soldier’s allegiance. He’d been damn lucky to hook up with Wolf and Hotwire, but they were getting out of the business, setting up some kind of security consultant firm. He wasn’t ready for that kind of stability yet. Maybe he never would be.
He picked his way across the wreckage to where partially destroyed file cabinets indicated her dad’s office had been. What had once been a computer was a melted mass of metal to one side, and the file cabinets he knew to be fire retardant had nevertheless been unable to completely withstand the temperatures of the blaze.
They were almost completely destroyed, too, but something interested him about them. The files, or whatever might have been left of them, were gone. No charred bits of paper or manila folders remained.
“It was a standard weapon of mass destruction augmented by cylinders of a highly volatile substance, probably petroleum based.” Josie’s voice came from right behind him.
He turned to face her, not even tempted to question her verdict. “Whoever did this was serious about getting rid of the compound as well as your father.”
“Yes.”
Maybe the bomb had been about the school after all, but Josie’s instincts had said not, and even in the face of evidence to the contrary, his agreed.
“They’ve been back.”
She stared at him, her expression not registering understanding. She had to be exhausted.
“Since the blast…They came and emptied out whatever was left of your dad’s file cabinets.”
Josie’s moss green eyes widened, and she spun to look at where he pointed.
“But we didn’t see anyone on the road.”
“They could have hiked in.”
“Then they would have left a trail hiking out.”
“If they were moving too fast for caution, yes.”
They found the trail and followed it, after Daniel saw that they were both armed with weapons he kept in his car at all times. The trail ended at a logging road, and fresh tracks indicated a four-wheel drive had been there recently. The width of the tires indicated a truck, but their tread was too common to get anything else from the tracks.
“Darn it.” Josie sank to the ground, letting her head rest against her knees. “The tracks are too fresh for them to be very long gone, but we can’t follow on foot with any hope of catching them.”
He said something pithy and unpleasant.
She looked up at him. “That’s one way of putting it, but I think you’ve got some verb confusion going on.”
He was in no mood to appreciate her subtle humor. “If I’d gotten to the hospital sooner, or come by here first, I could have caught their sorry asses.”
She shook her head.
“You doubt it?”
“I doubt your culpability in timing that they obviously took a lot of effort making sure was right.”
“I’d like to see whatever it is they wanted from your dad’s files.” But that was about as likely as Tyler McCall showing up to allay Josie’s fears.
“No problem.”
“What do you mean?”
“I just finished computerizing dad’s files. I’ve got a backup of the data on the hard drive in my apartment.”
“I don’t like computers much.”
“Hotwire told me. Don’t worry. I’ll do all the interfacing with the computer.” She yawned.
“You need to sleep before doing anything else.”
“First, we’ve got to hike back. Then we have to see if Dad’s journal survived. Then I can sleep.”
When she stood up, she wobbled, but like the trouper she was, she started marching back toward the charred buildings.
He shook his head, caught up with her, then bent down and lifted her over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry before she had time to figure out what he planned and stage a major protest. He started double-timing it back to the compound.
“What do you think you are doing?” Her words came out funny, like hiccups, because her diaphragm was hitting his shoulder.
“You’re too tired to hike back.”
“I am not.”
He didn’t bother to argue, but she wasn’t so sanguine.
“Listen here, Neanderthal man, I’m a trained soldier. A mile hike is nothing for me.”
“You’ve been awake for twenty-four hours or more, inhaled smoke, saved your dad from a burning building and tracked perps at a running jog.”
“So? I’m not a wimp.”
“No, but you are a termagant.”
“What’s that?”
He smiled as he told her.
“I do not nag and I am not a shrew!”
“But you are overbearing on occasion.”
“You can say that when you’re the one carrying me against my will?” she asked furiously. “If anyone’s a termagant here, it’s you.”
“Men can’t be termagants.”
“You use pretty