“The body...” Small muscles flexed in the agent’s jaw as he tried lifting his head off the floor. “Rigged to blow.”
“Body?” His pressure on Duran’s wound faltered. The bag in the hole, the one covered in chunks of cement. The pounding at the base of his skull increased. “Who’s body? Who was in the bag?”
“Harold... Wood.” Sweat built along the hostage negotiator’s hairline. “Someone unburied it from under the cement and... Ana shouted for us to get down.” Wet coughing arced Agent Duran off the floor. The blast must’ve punctured a lung. “The bomb was a...distraction.”
“What do you mean, a distraction?” Benning fought to catch his breath as a pair of EMTs stepped in to take control of the agent’s injuries. He straightened, circling the area, searching every square inch of the space, under every piece of debris. EMTs pulled both Agents Cantrell and Duran from the scene on stretchers, but they still hadn’t found Ana. The bomb was a distraction. A distraction from what? Running his hands through his hair, he ignored the thin layer of blood on his hands as the single window at one end of the room came into focus. “She’s not here.”
Ana wouldn’t have left her team to bleed out. Wouldn’t have left the scene of a crime without telling anyone. Especially if she’d been injured as badly—if not worse—than Cantrell and Duran. Distraction. He understood how explosives worked. Depending on the setup, whoever had set that charge would’ve had to have been within proximity to trigger the explosion. They would’ve needed to watch the house in case the Tactical Crime Division identified the skull he’d pulled from the construction site and needed to tie up loose ends. Ana would’ve known that, too. He didn’t see any evidence the basement was being surveilled. Then again, there wasn’t much of a basement left. Claire Winston—or whoever was responsible—could still be close if it had been triggered remotely. Had Ana realized the same and gone after that person? No. Cantrell and Duran barely survived that close-quarters blast. Ana wouldn’t have been able to get out on her own, which meant someone had to have dragged her out.
Benning wound his way through the scene, back to the stairs leading to the main floor of the house, and out the way he’d come in. Crisp air picked up, and the hairs on the back of his neck rose on end. Thick trees lined the back of the property on the other side of the fence, leaving miles of open wilderness. Curling his fingers into his palms, he battled against the uncertainty threatening to break him. No new leads on Owen, and now Ana had gone missing. No. He wasn’t going to lose them. He couldn’t. Branches shifted with the wind and exposed a dark green structure set back about an acre behind the main property. Something he never would’ve seen if he hadn’t still been standing on the back deck. Slats in the wooden fence swung loose with another gust, and he stepped down—and froze. A swipe of blood on one of the slats. Fresh from the looks of it. “She left a trail.”
Or whoever’d taken her had.
SWAT and the rest of the Tactical Crime Division were focused on the scene, and Benning couldn’t waste time trying to convince someone to follow his hunch. He had to go now. Kicking the bottom of the fence, he wrenched a few more slats loose until he could fit, and slid to the other side. Flakes worked down into his boots, but it’d be easy to avoid if he retraced the large set of footprints interrupting the smooth surface of recent snowfall. Warning exploded behind his sternum as he closed in on the seemingly unused structure ahead. Tractor storage? A door on one side had been left partially open. He pressed his back against the opposite door and twisted around to see inside the other. No movement. Nothing to make him think someone was inside, but the footprints—Ana’s or the attacker’s—had led straight to the garage.
Old hinges protested as he pried the door wider, and he stepped inside. Darkness bled around the edges of his vision before his senses adjusted. His exhales crystallized in front of his mouth, but something other than low temperatures chased a shiver down his spine. He slid one hand along the cold metal wall until he found a light switch, but flipping it on did nothing. Someone had fled from Claire Winston’s house and come here. Why? As far as he could tell, the shed was empty, and there were no fresh tire tracks to suggest a vehicle had been waiting here.
Except...
Except the small LED light casting a red glow across the metal sheeting on either side of it hadn’t been there when he’d come in. Benning hit the light switch again, and the light disappeared. His footsteps echoed off cold cement and thin metal walls as he stretched one hand above his head and ran it over where he’d noticed the light. There. Ripping the device from its position, he turned to face the light coming in through the doors. Severed wiring brushed against the palm of his hand, a small lens reflecting the sunlight. “A camera? Why would you need a camera in—”
The video from the shooter’s phone. Owen had been crouched in a dark room like this. Alone, crying, scared. Benning spun around, fixating on the exact position
