Page 87 of Counter Attack

Silence followed. She ran the bell again, then rapped on the door.

“Go away! Leave me alone!”

“Move out of the way,” her partner said.

She waved him off. “Come on, Mr. Denton. We just want to ask you some questions.”

Something crashed inside the condo, and she unsnapped the strap on her Glock and her partner kicked in the door. Alex rushed inside to the right. Phillip Denton stood with a gun pointed at the floor.

“Drop it!”

Instead he raised the gun and pointed it at her. She’d fired immediately, hitting him center mass ...

“You okay?” Nathan asked.

She jumped. “I’m fine.”

But every day since she discovered his gun had been unloaded,she’d questioned whether she could’ve handled the situation differently. Why didn’t he drop the gun? Did he forget it wasn’t loaded? Or was it like she’d come to believe after they discovered Denton was responsible for the mall bomb—he’d used her to commit suicide, believing she’d come to arrest him for the terrorist attack.

And a month later, Alex made the connection between the stolen items and the bomb found at the mall and Denton.

That’s when the small coil of wire CSI had found under his bed became an important piece of evidence. Wire that matched the kind found in the mall bomb.

They never found any other bomb-making materials, making Alex wonder if Denton had a partner. Was that partner now out for revenge?

45

Phame flipped from one Chattanooga TV station to another to catch coverage of the bomb scare in Pearl Springs. A day later and it was still news. There was so much power in being one step ahead of Stone.

By now the newly minted chief deputy had figured out the reference to Phillip—or at least she thought she had. It was all about misdirection. Making everyone think the killings were in revenge for Phillip’s death when that was only partially true. There was no way anyone could connect Phame to him. An image of Stone flashed on the TV screen, and Phame paused channel-surfing and leaned forward. When did Stone give a news conference?

“This is for the Queen’s Gambit Killer. You’re not as smart as you think. I’m coming after you.”

Phame’s hands curled into tight balls. Who did she think she was? It was time to get the final plan rolling after retrieving a few articles from Phillip’s condo.

The chief deputy wouldn’t know what hit her.

46

The entryway was dark just like it had been that morning, and Alex fought to not fall back into a flashback. She automatically reached for the light switch and was surprised when light flooded the room. The room looked just like it had the day Denton died. “His stuff is still here?” she said.

“Yeah. Since Denton had no heirs, the property belongs to the state, and no one has gotten around to packing it up. The state turned it over to a real estate company. They keep the power on,” Madden said to no one in particular. He turned to Carl. “Why don’t we first see what the dog finds?”

Carl had introduced them to the dog’s handler when they first arrived, and now he gave the dog the signal to seek explosives. As the Belgian Malinois worked the room, Alex glanced at the bookshelves she remembered seeing while she waited for the CSI team and the medical examiner. Books that included titles written in Latin and French. A brilliant man, evidently. What could have gone so wrong with him? She scanned the titles.Madame Bovary, Ultricem Angelus, Les Misérables, L’Étranger—

Mal barked, jerking Alex’s attention to the dog.

“Good girl,” her handler said and turned to them. “Nothing in here.”

He led the dog to the hallway and gave the command to seek. Mal trotted to the master bedroom. Madden shook his head when she didn’t alert there. “I didn’t think she’d find anything,” he said as the dog moved to the other bedroom. “And be prepared when you go in here.”

“Whoa!” Alex blinked when she entered the room.

“I told you.”

The floor was covered in three-by-three squares of multicolored, geometric carpet that made her dizzy. “Who in the world buys something like this and puts it in a small bedroom?”

Mal barked once and scratched at a center square.

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