Page 86 of Welker

Moira was in serious trouble, and even though the team was headed back at breakneck speed, they were still at least forty minutes away.

He’d had a bad feeling when they’d arrived at the convenience store in Millinocket. The crime scene had been quiet. Too quiet. There had been six squad cars from town parked across the street from the venue, with eight officers amassed behind them. Mason had approached, with Welk and his other squad leaders…

Forty minutes earlier:

“What’s happening?” Mason asked the officer who seemed to be the one in charge.

“Damned if I know.” The man looked frustrated and confused. “We got a call from the manager right before we notified you. He relayed that there were four armed men in the store, then the line went dead. We were on scene within seven minutes, and have been in position ever since, but we haven’t seen a soul. There hasn’t been a sound from inside; no shots fired, no plea for negotiations, nothing. So, we waited for you.”

Welker knew Mason appreciated that. There were too many cops with delusions of grandeur who threw caution to the wind and went in, guns blazing.

Welker perused the physical particulars of the op while the two men talked.

The store was one of many in an old, small-town block, with alleyways between it and the architecturally interesting buildings on either side. The sign on the storefront read, Your Everything Mart, even though the chiseled lettering on the granite blocks above the door proclaimed it had once been a United States Post Office.

The officers, by the looks of the deserted street, had done a good job evacuating and setting up foldable-barriers to keep curiosity seekers away from the crime scene.

Welker brought his attention back to the boss.

Mason’s brain was cooking on all burners. “Is there another way into the place besides through the front? If there is, is it being monitored?”

The officer blinked. “Uh, I’m not sure, and…um, no,” he responded a little sheepishly.

Mason didn’t call the guy out. Like most departments, they were probably underfunded, understaffed, and had their hands tied by local ordinances that allowed them just so much jurisdiction.

Not so, SWAT.

“Okay. Thanks. We’ve got it from here.” Mason spun away and barked over his comm. “Opal? You and Nolan pull up blueprints of the interior. And you know I don’t care how you do it.”

“Aye, aye, Chief,” Opal’s voice came back, smartly.

“Welker,” Mason turned to him. “Have your squad put up a drone and do a remote perimeter search.”

Welker was on it instantly. He approached his four unit-members, where Sin had obviously heard the order and already had their tech—whom they called The Beast—out of its protective suitcase.

“Nice work, Sin. Let’s launch that baby, stat,” Welker told her.

“One minute…” Sin logged into her computer and set up the video feed, then fiddled with a few other things before picking up the controller and…

“The Beast is airborne,” Welk declared to everyone listening on their comms.

H-squad huddled in around the computer, and watched the screen as Sin expertly flew The Beast toward the front of the store. Hovering, she zoomed its cameras in through the one section of glass that hadn’t been plastered with window-scape ads.

She made a frustrated grunt.

“Not a thing, LT,” Sin clipped. “No movement on the interior. Nothing.”

“Go topside and see if there are any escape hatches on the roof, then do a full perimeter sweep.” Welker knew he didn’t have to tell Sin her business. She was damned proficient at the controls. But he narrated anyway, if just to make sure the rest of the team was up to speed on what was going on.

Sin swooped The Beast skyward, and gave them a birds’ eye view of the roof. There was nothing up there but a large air-conditioning unit—along with an ancient one that looked like nothing more than a pile of rust—some vent pipes, and a lone Frisbee that some kid could have lost any time since the nineteen-fifties.

“Moving to the right,” Sin told him.

Again, nothing. The wall was entirely bricked up. The same with the left.

Welker watched Sin smoothly maneuver the drone down the side alley and around toward the back, where… Yes. There was a small access road, a dumpster, and a back door.

“Zoom in on the door,” Welker ordered. It looked almost like it was…

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