Page 548 of Cold Case, Warm Hearts

“Can I change things?”

“How would I know?” he says quietly.

“How long am I here?”

He lifts a shoulder. “But I think you should hurry.”

I finish the lemonade, and down the hallway, the grandfather clock chimes.

He takes the glass from me and nods toward the door. “Be stalwart, Inspector Stone.”

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

"Isuppose you’re going to miss a lot more breakfasts.”

Eve looked up from the magnifying glass and her examination of the fabric that matched the bomber’s backpack to spot her father as he came into her lab. Inspector Mulligan held his jacket by a thumb over his shoulder, his tie loosened, a haze of whiskers on his face.

“Are you just getting off, or are you starting your shift?”

He dropped the jacket on a nearby folding chair and came over, pressed a kiss to her forehead. “Just getting off and heading home now. We missed you this morning.”

“We have to catch this guy.” She offered him a smile, the best she could give at the moment. After eight hours dissecting the debris from today’s Lyndale bombing, sorting evidence, ordering tests and sketching out a preliminary crime scene, her feet ached, her eyes burned.

“Your poor mother.” He shook his head. “In her head, you’re still thirteen.”

“She’s not the only one who thinks that.” She raised an eyebrow.

“Fifteen, max,” he said and winked. “Why are you the only one here?”

“Silas will be back any minute. He went downtown to drop off samples for testing, but we’re fairly sure the bomber used the same ingredients as the Franklin Avenue bomb—ammonium nitrate, fuel oil, and antimony sulfide.”

She pulled off her rubber gloves, touched her pinky to a black residue on a slide tray. “Taste this.”

“What? No.”

She laughed. “Chicken. If you did, you’d discover it tastes sweet, and a little metallic. That’s antimony sulfide. It’s used in fireworks. And in its pure form, is used in batteries and even bullets.”

“Fireworks, huh?”

“Mmmhmm. This time, the bomb was packed into an old thermos, the kind someone might use for soup in their lunch.” She pointed to the torn, curved metallic shards. “Smaller than yesterday’s, although still deadly.”

She walked over to the scene, sketched out on a grid on a nearby table. “After talking to the fire chief and measuring the burn and blast patterns, we think the backpack was left behind the counter, near the supply of beans.”

“An employee?”

“Or at leastsomeonewho had access. Although, according to Burke, he and Rembrandt interviewed all the employees and they all alibied out.”

“Rembrandt. As in Inspector Stone.” Her father’s eyebrow went up. “You’re working with him?”

She grabbed a nearby stool and slid onto it. “Dad. I work in the Minneapolis Police Department. So does he. Of course I’m going to run into Inspector Stone. He’s lead on the case.”

He ran a hand under his chin. “And does that include eating dinner together?”

She gritted her teeth. This was why she needed to move to another state.

“I ate with Inspector StoneandBurke.”

Her father’s mouth tightened into a grim line. “You heard what happened today, at the scene, right? With Rembrandt?”

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