Page 34 of Maverick Detective Dad
Hudson made a sound of agreement to confirm thatvariety of security services, and he gave a voice command to send a file to Noah. “Grayson asked me to work up a list of possibilities for the person who built the explosive device in the box left on the road,” Hudson explained as he drove away from the sheriff’s office.
Noah used his laptop to bring up the file, and Everly watched as the list loaded. There were several dozen names.
“Those are known explosives experts in the area,” Hudson explained while he drove. She saw that the monitors on the dash were showing all angles of the road. “I’ve highlighted those with drug habits and such since they might be desperate for money and might not object to helping a killer.”
The highlighted ones were at the top, and both Noah and she started to scan through not only the names but the brief bios that Hudson had provided. Judging from those bios and their run-ins with the law, these were not model citizens.
“How much would it cost to hire someone to build explosives?” Everly asked. “I’m thinking about that money Bobby’s been withdrawing weekly,” she added to Noah.
“It doesn’t cost as much as you might think,” Hudson answered, his attention on the road and his monitors. “Someone needing drug money might be willing to do it for a grand or two. I checked with the bomb squad about the specs of the explosive in that box, and it wasn’t a sophisticated device. It was rigged so that someone nearby with a remote could have detonated it.”
That sent an icy chill through her.Someone nearby.The killer who’d no doubt been watching them.
Everly had to push away those images, and she did that by continuing to focus on the list. And she saw something.
“Freddie Barker,” she said, tapping the screen before she opened the laptop and went to the social media pages she’d researched earlier. Everly quickly found what she was looking for. “He commented on one of River’s ranting posts.”
Noah scowled when he read aloud Freddie’s comment. “‘The SOBs should all die.’” He whipped out his phone and requested that SAPD immediately pick up Freddie and bring him in for questioning. He’d just finished getting the okay on that when Hudson pulled into her driveway.
Even though she wanted to scour the rest of the list Hudson had compiled, Everly looked out the window at her house. She got another icy chill. One she silently cursed because she didn’t want to feel that way about her home. She definitely didn’t want to see images of a dead body and a bloody box.
But she did.
Mercy, she did.
Even though she didn’t say anything, her expression must have shown what she was thinking because Noah took her hand and gave it a gentle squeeze. “You don’t have to go in there now if you’re not ready,” he offered.
Everly shook her head because she didn’t think putting this off was going to make it easier. Just the opposite. Sooner or later, she had to face this, and she was going with the sooner option.
Hudson parked in front of her porch, and he pressed something on the monitors. “I’m scanning the house and the area,” he explained. “No one is around, and I’m not picking up on any kind of explosives,” he added several moments later. “But why don’t Noah and you go ahead inside, and I’ll get started on setting up some cameras.”
The man hauled an equipment bag off the passenger’s seat and got out. Noah and she did the same, and when she used the app on her phone to unlock the front door, they hurried onto the porch.
Everly glanced around them and then up at the bruise-colored sky. A storm was moving in, a bad one from the looks of things, so she was glad the CSIs had finished processing the yard.
Leaving Hudson on the porch, Noah shut the door behind them when they went inside. But Everly only made it a few steps before she had to stop. She dragged in a deep breath, hoping it would steady her nerves.
It didn’t.
What did help though was when Noah took her hand and gave it a gentle squeeze again. A reminder that she didn’t have to do this alone. Good thing, too, because she wasn’t sure she could have managed it.
“It’ll take time,” she muttered, speaking more to herself than to him. “I just have to remember how much I love this house.”Loved, she silently corrected, but Everly pushed that aside. She couldn’t let the killer take this away from her.
“There’s a suitcase in my closet,” she said, and Everly headed in that direction.
Noah went with her, of course, but instead of actually going into her bedroom, he stopped in the doorway, bracketed his hands on each side of the jamb and watched her.
“I won’t ask if you’re okay,” he volunteered. “But I will ask if there’s anything I can do to make it better.”
It surprised her that the image that flashed in her mind this time had nothing to do with killers or attacks. It was the memory of Noah kissing her. Everly thought that another kiss from him would definitely get her mind off the bad things, but it would be like playing with fire.
The corner of Noah’s mouth lifted as if he knew exactly what she was thinking. Probably because he, too, was feeling this damned heat between them.
Angry with herself and the heat, Everly dragged out the suitcase and started toward the nursery across the hall so she could pack Ainsley’s things. But she halted directly in front of Noah. She couldn’t stop herself from doing that. And on a heavy sigh, she leaned in and touched her mouth to his.
Playing with fire indeed.
It was so wrong of her to take comfort like this from him, but he seemed to welcome it. Well, welcome it with restraint anyway. He took hold of her shoulders and turned the kiss into more than a mere touch. It was deep but short, and when he eased back, she saw the regret in his eyes. Not regret that the kiss had happened though. No. It was because it couldn’t be a whole lot more.
