Sighing, Tad rolled onto his back, put his arm over his eyes, and she wondered if he’d fallen asleep. Then he pulled himself up against the pillows and met her gaze.
“It started with a report of stolen property. A series of home invasions in an upscale neighborhood. A single perp. He didn’t take electronics. Just jewelry, silver, some collections, an artifact. He’d hit eight homes that I knew of, in at least three neighborhoods, and at the last one, an old man was home and got hurt. There was no obvious point of entry, but the thief didn’t seem familiar with the homes. You could tell he spent time in each place, looking for things. He always hit when the owners were on vacation. In the last case, a grandfather was cat-sitting for the family while they were out of town. He ended up in the hospital with—fortunately—minor injuries. Could’ve been a lot worse. There were never any prints at these sites. No sign as to how the guy was getting into gated communities, which told me he had to have access to them.
“I checked all the maintenance people they used, down to cleaning crews and pool companies. Nothing. Until I was questioning the old guy in the hospital and he said something about getting up to have a snack and all he could find were the pastry puff things the caterer had left after the party his son had the night before they left town. Turned out that the caterer had been to many homes in each of the neighborhoods, though not all the homes he hit were his clients’. He knew how to get in the neighborhood gates, though, without alerting anyone.”
Listening to him was like watching an episode of a cop show on television. Miranda almost forgot why he was telling the story. Almost.
“The caterer denied everything, of course, but his wife said she’d seen some receipts from an antiques dealer that she’d questioned him about. They didn’t have any antiques. She was able to find one of the receipts, which she gave to me. I showed up at the address on the receipt—an upscale antique store—early one morning, on a tip from a neighboring business that the owner usually came in an hour or so before he opened. As I get there, a woman’s walking out and I held the door for her and went on in. I had a black-and-white backing me up, two officers, on the street. I was thinking I’d just question the guy, but the second he saw my badge it all went south. Fast. There was this little girl behind the counter and the man grabbed her, put a gun to her head and started backing toward this door, telling me that if I came any closer he’d shoot the kid.”
He looked so...sorry. Like it was his fault. Miranda’s heart pumped heavily. She knew this story wasn’t going to end well. She’d seen his scars.
And remembered that he’d told Danny that only the bad guy had died. Of course, what else would you tell a seven-year-old who’d just narrowly escaped a beating from his father and ended up with a serious leg wound?
“I radioed outside, and then called for hostage negotiators. I was told to stand down, to wait for backup, but I could hear the little girl crying in there. Something crashed and the girl screamed. Like she’d been hurt. I tried to get the guy to talk to me, thinking that he couldn’t hurt her if I kept him engaged in conversation. It worked for a minute or two. He told me he wasn’t going to jail. No way was he letting his wife give his daughter another father. I figured I was getting him to trust me and I motioned for the two officers to come in and back me up. Others were arriving, coming in through the rear entrance, but the negotiators weren’t there yet. I was standing right outside the door by then. I could hear a toilet flush. The guy said something about taking the girl with him, and then she screamed, ‘No, Daddy, no!’ and I burst through the door. I couldn’t just stand there and let that little girl die.
“Turns out he’d rigged a bomb to go off when the door was opened. What he told me was that if anyone came in, he and his daughter would die. I saw the wires as I was pushing through. It was too late to stop the explosion, but I dived for the girl, pushing her out of the way and landing on top of her. The guy had been going through a divorce and didn’t want his ex and her new man to have full custody of his daughter. He knew that if he was charged with a criminal offense, he’d lose her for sure. Apparently, he was dealing drugs out of the shop, too. Probably thought that’s why I was there. Up until a few months before he’d been a law-abiding citizen. Ostensibly he was doing it all to have the money to pay alimony, child support and legal bills, according to a source who worked for him.”
“Did the bomb really kill him?” He’d told Danny it had.
“It just knocked him unconscious. He killed himself in the hospital.”
Miranda smiled, a sad smile, but still... “So you saved the lit
tle girl’s life and all was well—other than your own need to heal, of course.”
Tad shook his head. “I’m not just on leave,” he told her. “I’m under an IA investigation. I tried to quit outright, but the department didn’t accept my resignation. They want me back. They just have to work out how to get my fellow officers to believe I’ve got their backs.”
“I don’t understand.”
“The bomb didn’t completely detonate when I pushed through the door. It was still active and there I was, in there with a little girl who was going to die in my arms if someone didn’t figure out a way to get us out of there. The shop owner was unconscious, dead for all anyone knew, but that girl was very much alive and aware.
“If I’d waited for the hostage team, chances are they either would’ve known there was a bomb and taken proper precautions or, best-case scenario, they’d have been able to talk the owner down. Get him to release the girl, at least.”
“Sounds like he wouldn’t have done that. Not if he knew he’d be releasing her to her mom and this other man.”
“Hostage negotiators are trained to find out what they’re facing. If they’d had no luck, they could have rigged a small camera under the door, seen the bomb. People specially trained in volatile situations would have been on hand. As it was, there were two other officers and me, and a ticking bomb.”
Mouth dry, she tried not to imagine the scene in the detail he was giving.
“So what happened?”
“Help arrived. Someone who recognized the type of bomb, the particular chemicals used, and knew how to disarm it in a way that curtailed the blast.”
And all that time he’d been lying there, in excruciating pain based on his scars, with the little girl. Probably telling her that everything was going to be fine.
She’d seen his patience with Ethan.
“It was clear after further investigation that the shop owner was uncomfortable with his illegal activity and had been getting more and more paranoid. He’d been planning his way out for weeks. The theory was that he intended to blow up the office to hide his illegal activity. They think the flush I heard was him getting rid of cocaine. I don’t know if he’d meant all along to take his daughter with him, though. I do know she wasn’t even supposed to have been there that day. Her mother had been called into work on her day off. She’s the woman who’d been leaving as I’d come in.”
“And the girl? Is she okay? With her mother?”
“As far as I know. She was treated and released the same day.”
Reaching underneath him, Miranda placed her hand on the scars. “You saved her life,” she said. “If her father was as unhinged as he sounds, chances are he wasn’t going to wait for the hostage negotiating team. He knew there was no way out for him and had already decided he’d rather die than be caught.”
“Maybe. That was my take.”
“I’d wear these scars as a badge of honor,” she told him. “Life is complicated,” she echoed his earlier words. “It’s a messy situation and definitely doesn’t follow the rules.”