Master of Fire (2 page)

Lieutenant Logan MacRoy walked around the truck to join the blonde. He was a big man, broad-shouldered in the black knit shirt of the bomb squad, with his military-style uniform pants tucked into combat boots. Terrence felt his muscles coil in anticipation. His sheriff’s department contact had been right. The e-mail from [email protected] had said MacRoy was the bomb squad tech on call today. Sure enough, here he was.

Terrence did love a reliable informant.

The file the client had provided said MacRoy was thirty-one years old, six-foot-four, two hundred ten pounds, Caucasian, brown and brown. A lieutenant with the Greendale County Sheriff’s Office, he’d graduated at the top of his class at the South Carolina law enforcement academy. No surprise, considering he also had a master’s degree in chemistry.

MacRoy had a long list of other certifications as well, including arson investigator and, of course, bomb squad tech. An unusual set of qualifications for a forensic chemist, according to Terrence’s research.

Actually, it was pretty rare for a Southern sheriff’s office to have a lab at all; those that did kept their chemists busy testing seized cocaine, pot, crack, and methamphetamine. Logan had evidently talked his sheriff into letting him do a lot more, maybe on the strength of his nine years in law enforcement. He’d been one of the first forensic chemists in South Carolina.

Somewhere along the line, he’d also pissed somebody off. Really, really bad. Terrence John Anderson bad.

Terrence lifted his cell phone and thumbed 119. Listened to the beep that signaled his booby trap was armed. And smiled in anticipation.

The blonde’s head snapped up as if she’d somehow heard that tiny beep. She stared into the woods, right at Terrence, eyes narrow. The assassin froze, except for the slight movement of his hand finding the rifle. He could snatch it up and fire before the little bitch got the shout of warning out of her mouth.

The metal bracelet the client had given him suddenly blazed hot around his wrist, a ferocious burning bite so intense he could almost smell his skin sizzle. He bit back a snarled curse. The blonde’s gaze turned uncertain, and she scanned the woods around him in confusion.

And then she looked away.

The pounding of his heart began to slow, and his hand slid away from the rifle. Seems she hadn’t seen him after all.

He could let the chemist go find his little surprise.

 

 

“Something wrong?” Logan
asked in his deep rumble of a voice.

Giada Shepherd wiped the wary frown off her face and turned toward him. “Thought I saw something moving in the woods.” She shrugged and lied. “Just a squirrel.”

She wasn’t sure what it had been, but it hadn’t been a squirrel. Overactive bodyguard imagination, maybe. Furry and four-legged, no.

But for a moment there, she’d felt such a sense of chill menace, she’d been unable to breathe. Then it was just gone. Had to be her imagination, especially since she’d done a scanning spell and found nothing.

On the other hand, it was daylight, and her magic wasn’t all that reliable when the sun was up. Maybe somebody in those woods was eyeing Logan MacRoy’s handsome head through a sniper scope.

That thought sent ice creeping down her spine on razor claws. She had to protect Logan. That was the whole point of this charade.

Gravel crunched with the sound of running feet. Giada wheeled, only to relax as a small boy darted around the bulk of the bomb truck, his eyes wide as an anime character’s under a mop of fine blond hair. She was no expert when it came to judging a child’s age, but she figured he was no more than six or so.

“Hi!” He slid to a stop to study Logan with breathless excitement. “Are you a real cop?” His blue gaze darted to the weapons belt with its nine-millimeter automatic and handcuffs. “Is that a real gun?”

“Yep, and yep.” Logan dropped to one black-clad knee and offered the kid a handshake, his smile broad and easy in a way Giada could only envy. She had never been that comfortable with children.
Probably because I never was one.

Her shoulder blades started itching again. She threw another look at the woods. It was almost sunset, and the trees swayed in a spring breeze, whispering secrets to the shadows.

Somebody out there might be getting ready to blow Logan’s head off.

“Can we get this show on the road?” Giada demanded, interrupting Logan’s earnest discussion of cop stuff with the kid. “It’s been a long day, and I’d like to get back to my hotel.”

Logan shot her a cool, disapproving look. Her cheeks heated. She really hated sounding like such a bitch, but he didn’t know the situation. And she couldn’t tell him what was going on, or his mother would turn her into a frog.

Or not. The woman had probably been joking. On the other hand, Giada had no desire to spend the rest of her life cooling her butt on a lily pad. Like it or not, she had to keep MacRoy in the dark and feed him nothing but bullshit.
Though he’d make an awfully big mushroom . . .

Her eyes lingered on the breadth of muscular shoulders displayed by that black knit shirt.
Defi nitely not a mushroom. More like a truffl e. Chocolate, not fungus. I’d sure like to give him a nice, long lick . . .

Stop that.
Giada gave her wayward libido a mental swat.

“Josh! Josh, where did you . . .” A plump young woman rounded the truck at a pace just short of a run. She blew out a breath in relief as she spotted the boy. “There you are! Don’t scare me like that.” Hurrying over, she snatched the kid’s hand. He pouted at having his hero worship interrupted.

Logan rose to his feet and gave the woman his warm, lethal smile. She blinked and looked a bit stunned—a reaction Giada could sympathize with. The lieutenant had a face an Armani model would envy: dramatic cheekbones, slashing brows, and a square, angular jaw. He wore his thick mink brown hair cut ruthlessly short, his long-lashed eyes were richly dark, and his wide mouth was both intensely masculine and nakedly sensual. And every time he turned around, her libido sang arias in praise of his ass.

“I’m Lieutenant Logan MacRoy of the Greendale County Bomb Squad,” Logan said, offering a big, tanned hand. He nodded at Giada, who extended her own paler palm. “Dr. Giada Shepherd. She’s the new civilian forensic chemist for Tayanita County. I’m showing her the ropes this month.”

“Nice to meet you,” Giada murmured.

“Karen Harper.” The woman gave Giada’s hand a limp, unenthusiastic squeeze, looking miserably self-conscious in her dusty jeans and SpongeBob T-shirt. “Thanks for coming.”

“Hey, that’s why the taxpayers pay us the big money,” Logan said easily. “I’m saving up for a Happy Meal.”

Karen gave the joke a very faint smile as she turned, gesturing them to follow. “My great-grandfather apparently collected an interesting souvenir during World War II.” She grimaced. “The kind that goes boom-yow. I found it while I was cleaning.” Hazel eyes darkened in grief. “Greatgranddad passed last month—heart failure—and we’re getting his house ready to sell.”

“He put a mortar in his footlocker,” Josh announced earnestly. “It’s explosive. It could blow us all up.”

“It sure could,” Logan agreed. “Which is why I’m going to get rid of it while you two stay outside at a nice, safe distance.”

“Oh.” Karen paused to frown thoughtfully up at him. “Yeah, I guess you’re right.” She gestured at the house. “Front door’s unlocked. The stairs to the attic are at the end of the hall. The mortar is in a footlocker in the middle of the floor.” Herding the boy ahead of her, she moved off to wait in the front yard, next to a cluster of pink azaleas.

“What about me?” Giada asked in a low voice. She might be a civilian, too, but mortar or no mortar, she wasn’t crazy about leaving Logan alone.

“Actually, handling a mortar is pretty safe if you know what you’re doing, which I do,” he told her. “I just don’t want that boy bouncing around me while I do it. But if you’re not comfortable . . .”

“No, no, I’m fine. Like I said, I want to watch you do your job. Even the non-chemist parts. You get many cases like this?”

He nodded as he led the way along a set of paving stones toward the front door. “A lot of World War II soldiers brought home explosive souvenirs. Plus, we had a World War II training camp in the county, and we’re still digging up all kinds of vintage ammo. The bomb squad gets called out to take care of old grenades and mortars about once a month.”

The screen door banged closed behind them, and Giada heaved a breath of relief. Safe. At least until they went back outside.

Her heart lightening, she followed Logan down the hallway. The scent of Lemon Pledge did valiant battle with the smell of musty old house. The carpet was worn underfoot, its red flowered pattern faded and crushed from years of padding feet. A passing doorway revealed stacks of boxes sitting on elderly furniture and crowding the scarred wooden floor.

They climbed one flight of stairs and rounded the corner to ascend steps so narrow, Logan had to angle his broad shoulders sideways to fit between the walls.

Finally they reached a door that creaked on rusting hinges as Logan pushed it open. Cardboard boxes hulked in the dim light cast by a tiny attic window. A lightbulb festooned with spiderwebs dangled overhead. He gave its chain a tug, spilling a dim yellow glow just bright enough to reveal the words scrawled on the sides of those dusty boxes: “Christmas Decorations,” “Winter Clothing,” and “Charlie’s Toys,” whoever Charlie was.

“There it is,” Giada said, moving toward the open footlocker that lay just beyond an enormous brown teddy bear that looked like a depressed grizzly.

The mortar lay on top of a stack of folded uniforms, among a battered green helmet, a pair of cracked leather combat boots, and an ancient pack of Lucky Strikes.

Logan had shown Giada a training mortar the previous day, so she was familiar with the long metal tube with its nosecone and fins. But unlike the one she’d seen yesterday, the Bakelite cone on this one was pointed. It was definitely a live mortar. “Is it stable?”

“Oh, yeah. As long as the button on the tip of the cone doesn’t get depressed, it won’t go boom.” Logan sank to one knee to take a closer look.

Curious, Giada followed suit. For a moment, she felt hyperaware of him, his warmth, his sheer size. Their eyes met. His were very dark. Very . . . male . . .

Don’t go there, Giada. I do
not
want to spend the rest of my life catching fl ies with my tongue.

Logan cleared his throat. “I think we need to take it out to the field in back of the house, dig a nice big hole, put it in with a bursting charge, and blow it the hell up.”

“Uh-huh.” She forced a grin. “I think you just want to watch it go boom.”

He grinned back, and her heart gave a helpless little thump at the pure charm in that white smile. “There is no problem that can’t be solved by a suitable application of high explosives.”

She eyed him. “You’ve been on the bomb squad way too long.”

“Nope, I’m just male,” he informed her, as if she hadn’t noticed. “The blow-stuff-up gene is located on the Y chromosome.”

Giada snickered as he started to reach into the box.

The vision rolled over her in a silent detonation of blood and terror.
His hand closed over the mortar, started to lift it. Mercury rolled inside a tiny tube, triggering an explosion that bloomed in vicious slow motion. The fi reball ripped into his hand and seared the skin off his face, shattering his skull, sending his body tumbling across the attic to lie smoking. Right hand blasted away, head and torso a burned and bloody ruin. Dead.

Oh, God,
Giada thought in sick horror.
Not a sniper. A bomber. He booby-trapped the mortar.
“Logan!”

He jerked and looked up at her, alarmed at her tone. “What?” Frowning, he studied her face. To her relief, his hand stopped short of the mortar in favor of steadying her elbow. “You okay? You look pale.”

She opened her mouth and promptly closed it again. What the hell was she going to tell him?
I had a vision?

His mother had been adamant.
“You can’t let Logan know what you are. He’ll insist he can take care of himself, and he won’t have a prayer.”

On the other hand, she certainly couldn’t let him trigger the booby trap. Her only option was to disarm the bomb with a spell before he could touch it.

Giada shot a desperate look at the attic window. Judging by the reddening light, the sun was setting, but was definitely still up. Since she wasn’t the strongest witch around, she had to struggle to work a spell on mortal Earth during the day. Could she even disarm the thing this early? “Don’t you think we should X-ray it first? Or something?”
Yeah. Go downstairs after the portable X-ray machine in the truck. Leave me alone with this thing long enough to think of something.

Logan gave her an
Are you nuts?
look. “We already know it’s explosive. It’s a
mortar
, Giada. And mortars are built to be handled by eighteen-year-old boys with people shooting at them. It’ll be fine.” He started to reach for it again.

So Giada, sweat breaking out on her forehead, shot out a hand and closed her fingers around the deadly tube.

How much movement would it take to set off the booby trap? Giada had no idea, but she sure didn’t want to be the booby it trapped.

“Giada . . .” Suspicion darkened his voice.

“Give me a minute!”
Work fast, girl.
Closing her eyes, she opened her senses to probe the bomb. The assassin had removed the propellant in the shaft of the mortar, replacing it with a cell phone trigger, battery, and mercury switch, all wired to the explosive in the mortar’s cone. She saw instantly that if the angle of the mortar changed more than fifteen degrees, the mercury would flow forward in its tiny tube and complete the circuit, setting off the explosion.