“Ma’am, his blood pressure bottomed out even before the accident, probably from trauma-induced internal bleeding. Even if we hadn’t been stopped here on the street, I doubt he would have made it to the hospital.”
She bit down on her lip until it turned white, but when Kyle tried to get closer to comfort her, she stepped away. “I’m fine,” she said, though her voice was shaking.
“Everyone here, including us, did everything possible to save him,” Kyle said. “Hold to that.” His voice was quiet and calm, a tone he’d learned people responded to, and it broke through to her now.
“We might as well go back to the warehouse. There’s nothing else we can do here now.”
She nodded, and walked back to the SUV with him. Her movements were slow and ponderous as she continued to struggle with what she’d just seen. “I should notify his brother...make funeral arrangements, or at least help with that. I...”
“That’ll wait. Right now you need a little time to process what’s happened and so do I,” he said.
As they climbed into his SUV, he saw her staring ahead, a glassy look in her eyes. Shock. “Seat belt,” he said, and she absently complied.
“What I saw today is going to haunt my nightmares for as long as I live,” she said after a moment.
Her words touched him. He knew all about things one could never unsee, and memories that refused to die.
“You’re right, some things can’t be forgotten,” he said, his voice nothing more than a deep rumble, “but you’ll learn to deal and, in time, the images will come less often.”
Kyle started the engine and called his brother on the phone. After a few minutes he ended the connection and glanced at her. “We’ll head back to Secure Construction. My brother will wait for us there and he’ll want a detailed account of everything that went down.”
Ten minutes later, they parked outside the now closed access gates of Secure Construction’s fenced compound and waited in the SUV. After several moments a uniformed Hartley police officer came to unlock the gate.
“Have you given any more thought to what these men may have wanted, Erin? You already ruled out cash, but do you keep anything that’s dangerous or of high value here, like maybe explosives?”
The person who’d encountered Hank overseas was said to be a bomb maker with ties to extremists. Firearms were easy to get in the U.S., but finding high explosives was a lot more difficult.
“We use explosives to test the construction of newly designed safe rooms, but we hire out those tests and pick up what’s needed en route to the test site. We never really store anything here. There’s no need.”
Kyle drove into the yard, then pulled up by the main office building, stopping in front of the yellow crime-scene tape. “Don’t think—just answer me. What’s here that someone would want to steal?”
She didn’t hesitate. “Nothing that’s worth people’s lives.” She got out of the SUV and strode to where Preston was standing, waiting for them.
Kyle hung back and watched Erin for a moment longer. She was the picture of courage, but little telltale signs, like the stiff way she was walking and the expressionless look in her eyes told him a different story. Overwhelmed on every level, the human body often adapted and became ultracalm—almost numb—in order to survive.
If Erin was truly an innocent caught in circumstances she didn’t understand, she had his sympathy. This was just the beginning.
* * *
ERIN FELT SICK to her stomach. She wanted to curl up into a ball and hide where no one would see her fall apart. Yet the look on Detective Bowman’s face told her she had to hold it together for a little bit longer. “You have questions for me, so why don’t we go into my office and talk there?” she asked.
“My people are still processing the building so we’ll have to talk out here,” he said.
“It’s okay. I have another smaller office in the warehouse,” she said, desperately needing a place to sit down before her knees buckled. “How about we talk in there?”
“Lead the way,” Preston said.
She walked to her second office, a cubbyhole on the lower level of the warehouse, near the entrance doors. Detective Bowman and Kyle Goodluck were half a step behind her.
“Detective, Agent Goodluck, please sit down,” she said, dropping down into her seat unceremoniously. “Ask me whatever you want, and I’ll do my best to answer you, or track down the answers you need.”
“How did this whole thing start? Did the three men just burst into the office?” Preston asked.
“I wasn’t there when they arrived, I was in here checking out our newest model safe room. We display them with simple furnishings, emergency gear, and supplies to show prospective clients,” she said. “After I finished, I went back and saw three men talking to Hank in his office. It all looked like business as usual, so it never occurred to me to ask Joe to stick around a while longer.”
“Joe?” Preston asked. “The same guy at the work site? The one I sent a deputy to cover?”
“Yes, Joe Pacheco is our senior construction foreman. You may know him. He’s a former police officer.”
Preston nodded. “I know Joe. When, exactly, did he and the crew leave?”
“Joe was behind the wheel of one of our big pickups, and pulled out onto the street a few minutes after I sat down at my desk in the main office.”
“Who else was on site here at the time?” Preston asked. “Anyone in the warehouse or working in the yard?”
“No, after Joe and the crew left, it was just Hank and me.”
“When did you first realize there was trouble?” Kyle asked her.
“After a few minutes, I heard Hank yell at one of the men. I’m better with difficult prospective clients, which is what I figured they were, so I went in to see if I could help calm the situation. That’s when I realized all three men were armed.”
She took a breath and tried to hold it together. Both men were watching her, but it was Kyle’s intense, hooded gaze that got to her. There was something hard and dangerous there. Yet he’d saved her life.... Maybe he was only dangerous to the wrong people.
“What were they arguing about?” Kyle asked.
“They claimed that Hank had double-crossed them. Then one of them pointed his gun at Hank and told him to keep his end of the deal or get ready to die.” She shuddered. “I heard that last part just as I walked into the room.”
“Describe the men you saw,” Preston said.
“The tallest one standing next to Hank was tanned and had a beard. I’d say he stood about six foot one, and was rail thin. The other faces were a blur. I was so scared all I could see were their guns.”
“The man who shot himself in the street, was he one of them?” Kyle asked.
“No, I’m pretty sure of that,” she answered. “His face was distinctive, even before the...bullet.”
“Okay, so there are—were at least four of them. Getting back to earlier now. What happened next?” Preston asked.
“They told us to leave our cell phones, and ordered us outside. They held on to us with one hand, their pistols jammed against our backs,” Erin said. “I was sure they intended to kill us, so when I saw you drive into the yard, I elbowed the one behind me in the gut and yelled for help, but he pulled me back again before I could get away. Once we went around the corner of the building, he shoved me out into the open. You know the rest.”
She studied their