Cold Spite (Cold Justice: Most Wanted #5)

Chapter 23

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

I t was a miracle he’d managed to hold onto the cell phone. He couldn’t hear whether or not Delilah was still on the other end of the line because his head felt as if he were underwater but hopefully, she’d heard him and knew he was okay. Last thing she needed was to worry he’d met the same fate as her friends.

He didn’t know if Scanlon—it had to be Scanlon—was now waiting in the woods planning to pick off anyone who came outside the church or if he’d already run away like the coward he was. Cas crawled around the nearest vehicle and sat behind a massive truck wheel, using it as a shield.

He called Novak.

“Car bomb. Keep everyone inside. I’m okay but deafened, so don’t bother with instructions. I’m worried there’s a shooter in the woods. I’m gonna take a look.”

He hung up and stuffed the cell in the pocket of his ruined suit.

Suddenly, there was someone crouching beside him. Alex Parker. He must have followed him out of the church.

“Are you okay?”

Cas read his lips and pointed to his own ears. “Yes, but I can’t hear anything yet.” He was probably yelling. “Spotted a possible scope or binoculars in the woods.” He got into a low squat and pointed in the direction. “I want to check it out before anyone else exits that church.”

Other operators would be checking the area for secondary devices.

Parker nodded. Mouthed, “Together.”

Cas nodded. They both shifted position and spent a moment sheltering behind the engine while the fire a few vehicles over burned out of control. Parker popped up and down quickly, to offer a target. No one took the bait, but it wasn’t Parker that Scanlon was after.

“I’ll go left and try to flank him.” Parker made sure Cas could read his lips. “You go right after we hit the trees.”

Cas drew his weapon. Parker counted down with his fingers. On zero, they both sprinted across to the woods and paused for a second behind the trunk of a mature oak.

Nothing happened. No shots fired.

With a nod, Alex cut away while Cas worked his way, tree trunk by tree trunk, toward where he’d seen that flash of reflected light.

As a trained sniper, Scanlon could be lying completely camouflaged waiting for a clear shot. They both knew the tricks of the trade. It had been sloppy to let the glass catch the sun, and Cas knew with certainty it was the only reason he was alive right now.

Scanlon was making mistakes, but he had spent the past five years in prison—which had clearly blunted the man’s skills.

Cas’s ears finally began to clear a little, and he could hear himself breathing hard. He forced himself to calm down. Use his training which he’d worked on non-stop the whole time Scanlon had been locked up. He crept forward, presenting as little of a target as possible while at the same time providing Parker the opportunity to circle around. They arrived at the location at around the same time. Cas spotted tracks through the wet rotten leaves. Pointed.

“That way.”

They started to haul ass. Almost immediately, they hit a park with a bunch of baseball fields. Thankfully, there were no games going on. In the distance, just cutting into another stand of trees, was a figure wearing a black ball cap.

They both broke into a full-out sprint across the grass between baseball diamonds, ignoring the fact they were wearing slippery-as-fuck dress shoes.

Was it Scanlon?

The guy was white. Right height and build for the former SEAL as of five years ago.

He disappeared from sight.

They ran through someone’s backyard and there, about thirty yards ahead, the guy climbed into a white van. He must have spotted them because his tires spit gravel as he screeched away.

Cas and Parker both bent double to catch their breath. “You get a plate?”

Parker shook his head. “Covered in mud.”

Cas got on his cell to Novak. “We need a roadblock. White male. White van. Heading north on Old Triangle Road.”

“Million different ways he could go from there. Roadblock is going to arrive too late. It’s pointless,” Novak argued.

Cas swore. Novak was right. “We need an Evidence Recovery Team on the area in the woods where I believe the bomber was watching from.”

“Affirmative.”

“Perhaps they’ll get something off the device.”

“Doubt it. I’m standing looking at what is left of your truck and wondering how the fuck I am even talking to you. You wanna fill me in on what’s going on?”

Cas caught Parker’s quiet gaze. “Heading back now.”

They began walking to the church, Cas suddenly registering aches and pains from the blast. The sting of the palm of his left hand where the skin had scraped off on the asphalt. The bang on his right knee.

He expelled a deep breath. “What do I tell them about Delilah? ”

“You don’t have to tell them anything.”

Cas shook his head. “I can’t lie to them. Not now there’s been a direct attack on HRT. It has to be Scanlon. If Delilah truly wants to keep her job, she has to come forward now.” Even though he didn’t want her to. “Where’s Killion?”

“He was delayed. Audrey had some contractions in the middle of the night.”

“She okay?”

“Yeah. They stopped. Probably Braxton-Hicks. He was on his way here when I last spoke to him.”

“Shit.” Cas rolled his stiff shoulders. “I mean, that’s great she’s okay. But I wish he was here to deal with the higher-ups, so I don’t have to.”

“You trust him.”

Cas eyed the other man. “Yeah. I trust him. For a spook,” he said pointedly.

They stood in the woods looking down at the burning wreckage. The explosion had totaled both vehicles either side of his truck and damaged a lot more.

Hell .

“It’s a miracle no one was hurt.” Cas looked at the men and women milling around. His friends, his teammates. Wives. Children. Innocents. “Scanlon would have happily killed or maimed any number of people to get to me.”

Parker nodded. “Disguise it as a mass casualty event—especially as the FBI Director was in attendance. If it weren’t for Delilah surviving the attempt on her life, we would never have put the pieces together so quickly.”

Dammit.

He couldn’t risk her.

He couldn’t let her down.

Not again.

But he couldn’t lie to his teammates, either.

It was an impossible situation. “Who else knows Delilah is alive? ”

“That I’m aware of? Lincoln Frazer from BAU. Mallory. Killion. We can trust them to understand the significance of this situation and the delicate nature of what we need to do in order to catch the bastard. Plus, they have enough clout to get Delilah’s actions retroactively sanctioned. There’s an issue though.”

“What?”

Alex rubbed the back of his neck. “It’s one of my best friends’ wedding this Sunday, and we have a rehearsal dinner on Saturday night. Frazer, Mal, Killion are all supposed to be going, along with most of the negotiators. After that, I’m supposed to be spending the week in the Caribbean.”

Cas met the man’s gaze. “The FBI and HRT can take care of this motherfucker. He planted a car bomb at Kurt Montana’s memorial service. He won’t know what hit him.”

Parker frowned. “Which is all well and good, but first we have to prove it was him. And where does that leave Delilah in the meantime?”

Cas didn’t know, but he had no intention of letting her get in the line of fire.

An ambulance arrived, closely followed by Patrick Killion who climbed out of his Jeep and stared up into the woods to where Cas and Parker stood in the shadows.

“You better get yourself checked over.” Parker scanned Cas to assess his injuries.

“I’m fine.”

Parker rolled his eyes. “You took a hit. You know bombs can cause internal damage. You can’t save the girl if you up and die on her.”

Cas snorted. “The girl doesn’t want me to save her. Plus, Delilah would flay both our asses for calling her a ‘girl.’”

Parker huffed out a reluctant laugh. “True. Go see a medic.”

They started toward the others and Cas wondered what the hell he was going to say to his teammates and exactly how he was going to keep Delilah safe while at the same time hunting down the man who’d tried, and nearly succeeded, in killing him .

He pulled out his cell, wincing as his hands started to bleed. “I need to call her. I was talking to her when the bomb went off.”

Killion started walking in their direction.

“I’ll do it,” Alex said. “Put her mind at rest you’re in one piece. You deal with all the people who are going to want to know what happened.”

It made sense, but Cas resented it. But with his fellow HRT operators busy checking every vehicle for more explosives and police patrol units arriving on scene, he didn’t have a lot of choice.

He doubted Scanlon would have gone beyond planting something beneath his truck, but no one would be willing to take a risk.

Scanlon must have been watching him, or he’d figured out what Cas drove and the fact he’d be at this memorial service today.

Cas needed to reverse engineer all those details and figure out how Scanlon had got here and where the hell the bastard was right now.