Page 43 of Delusional

CHAPTER 51

MY EARLY DAY of travel was catching up to me. Even though it was two hours earlier here than at home, the time change from the East to the West always seemed to bother me more than the other way around.

Gary Trilling had shown me the comfortable-looking bedroom where I’d be staying. Fido, the llama, had a pen attached to the outside wall of the house next to my room. I got a slight whiff of his living quarters. It wasn’t terrible, but it wasn’t a bonus either. If I hadn’t known what was causing the odor, it might not have bothered me as much.

As the Trilling brothers took off to do something on the property, I decided it was a perfect time to try out the twin bed. A quick nap was exactly what I needed.

Just as I lay my head down on the soft, memory-foam pillow, I heard the theme to Green Acres. Damn. I had almost accomplished the impossible. I pulled out my phone and answered immediately when I saw that Harry Grissom was the caller.

“Hey, Harry. What’s going on?”

“We’ve had another bombing.”

“No.” I felt my stomach convulse. It took a moment for my follow-up questions. “Where was it? Were there any casualties?”

Harry’s gruff voice didn’t soften the impact in any way. “It was on the first floor of a building in Midtown. It knocked out the glass windows to some kind of reception area. There are two dead inside the office. Another three in critical condition. Maybe a dozen or so who were transported to the hospital but don’t have life-threatening injuries.”

I let that run through my head and started considering how quickly I could get back to New York. I felt like this was my fault. Like it wouldn’t have happened if I hadn’t dropped the ball on the investigation. I came out here against Harry’s wishes. Now I had to deal with all that.

I asked, “Who’s responding? Is Maggie there?”

“She’s there, but so is everyone. The Bomb Squad is doing a sweep to make sure there’s no secondary device somewhere. We’ve got a small army of detectives ready to interview people and everything else that needs doing. Crime scene hasn’t even been allowed into the building yet. I’m headed over there in a couple of minutes.”

“What kind of office was it?”

“Some kind of tech company. I think it was called Virtual Spaces.”

I wasn’t sure any single sentence had ever made me freeze like that. It was as if electricity shot through my nervous system, rendering me numb for a moment. That was where my daughter and Rob Trilling’s roommate had been heading for a job interview.

Saying it out loud only made me more tense. “Harry, that’s where Juliana was going today. She was bringing a friend to a job interview.”

“Your Juliana?”

“Do you have a list of casualties?”

“No names.”

I heard a beep on my phone and looked down to see that it was my wife calling me. I told Harry I’d call him back and immediately switched to Mary Catherine’s call. I wasn’t sure I wanted to hear what she had to say. I hadn’t felt panic like this since I sat with Maeve in the oncologist’s office and was told she had months to live at most.

CHAPTER 52

AS SOON AS I switched calls to Mary Catherine, I blurted out, “Harry told me about a bombing. Please tell me Juliana isn’t a casualty.”

Mary Catherine’s calm and steady voice instantly told me this wasn’t a catastrophe. “Oh, Michael, this is one of those crazy twists of fate.”

“What happened?”

“Juliana and Katie took an Uber into Midtown. Somehow Juliana left her phone in the car. Being a smart girl, she was able to borrow a phone to call Jane. Since they share an Uber account, Jane was able to reach the driver and had him wait while the girls ran back for the phone. It threw them off schedule and made them late to the interview.”

I flopped back on the bed. My whole body started to tremble. But I felt like my breath was evening out and I could fill my lungs again. “So Juliana wasn’t there during the bombing?”

“No, she and Katie were a few blocks away.”

I had such a flood of relief that I lay there silently, unable to form a coherent sentence. Mary Catherine’s lovely accent and calming voice was exactly the medicine I needed at the moment.

Mary Catherine continued: “Juliana called me as quickly as she could. She knew it’d be better to tell me than to worry you all the way out in Montana.”

Now I could sit up in the bed and breathe normally. “As long as she’s safe, I wouldn’t care who she called.” After a short pause I asked, “What about Rob’s roommate, Katie? Is she okay too?”