Flashback by Justine Davis (classic reads .txt) 📕

seemed to rattle, each time from a different quarter.

But at this predawn hour, traffic was very light, and it wouldn’t be a lengthy drive back to his apartment. And there they had her rental if they needed something more reliable.

Assuming nobody’d gotten to it, too.

“No,” Alex said in answer to his half-rhetorical question. “But I know how much paperwork breaking a brand-new electron microscope causes, which is probably something similar.”

“Probably.”

He sounded beyond glum. Justin, she realized with an inward grin, was capable of near whining. For some reason, she wasn’t sure why, that pleased her. She’d have to figure that out someday.

But not now.

“It’s not like you parked the car next to a burning fireworks plant or something,” she teased. “They’ll cut you some slack.”

“Maybe,” he said, and she saw the corner of his mouth twitch. “But they tend to think it’s your fault no matter what. Even if you weren’t anywhere around when it happened.”

“I’m just glad we both walked away,” she said softly.

“Me, too,” he agreed, and reached over to take her hand in his. It was a casual, unstudied move that seemed utterly natural, and even now Alex was a little surprised at how right it felt.

“I hope you’re not in trouble with your boss,” she said.

“Lawrence? No, he’s all right. He’s sort of…used to odd things from me.”

She knew Justin had taken his share of heat for his involvement in the entire Athena investigation last year. But he’d never talked about it, so she’d assumed he worked it out with his superiors, as she had with hers. Of course, the spectacular results had been very hard to argue with, even with the brass.

“He’s been around this business long enough to have a few unresolved things of his own hanging heavy over his head,” he went on, “so he understands the need to tackle cold cases.”

“But this one’s not even yours.”

“It’s the bureau’s,” he said. “That’s good enough for him.”

Relieved, she leaned back in the seat. Between the adrenaline rush and resultant crash, the hours of explaining and giving official statements, and the lack of sleep from the night before, Alex knew she was running low on reserves. Knew that was when she was sometimes less than tactful. So she picked her next words carefully.

“Your office, this is really their jurisdiction. Do you think they’ll get in our way?”

“On the Gracelyn case? I don’t think so. Not yet, anyway. Their first concern will be who tried to blow up two of their agents, I think.” He gave her a sideways look. “How’s your boss going to react?”

Alex sighed. “I don’t think she’ll be surprised. Not after last year.”

He grinned at her. “Just a couple of problem children, aren’t we?”

“That’d be us,” she said, smiling in spite of her weariness.

“So,” he said, as casually as if he were still joking, “whose toes do you think we stepped on?”

“Somebody’s,” she agreed. “And hard, for them to risk killing two federal agents.”

“Indeed,” he said, and she caught a trace of an undercurrent in his voice. He was, she realized suddenly, angry. On the surface he was joking and bucking her up, but underneath…

As they pulled up to a stoplight she asked, “Which part are you angrier about? That they blew up your car, or that nobody saw anything?”

The canvas of the area around the restaurant had turned up nothing. Neither had a check of his neighborhood; no one had seen anyone loitering around his apartment or the parking garages.

“What I’m angry about,” he said, not bothering to even try to deny the emotion, “is that whoever planted that thing got close enough to do it. It means I was asleep at the wheel.”

“Then both of us were,” she pointed out. “But I don’t think so. I think they just planted it while we were in the restaurant.”

“Then they had to have followed us there.”

“Did they?”

“How else?”

“The maître d’ called you by name.”

He looked at her, brow furrowed. She shrugged. He’d get there, she knew. And he did, just as the light changed and they began to move again.

“Are you saying they knew I go there? That they’ve been watching me?”

“I’m just saying you’re the local. I’m not, not anymore. You’re the one who has established habits here that could be noticed. Or perhaps found out.”

He clearly didn’t like the idea, but after a moment he let out a compressed breath and said, “Damn. You’re right.” He slid her a sideways glance as they turned into his apartment building. “You should be a field agent.”

“No, thanks. I’ll stick to trace evidence, thank you. People are too darned irrational.”

He gave a wry laugh. “I won’t argue with that.” He turned the engine off and sat back in the seat. “I haven’t worked anything out of this office that would have made me wary about being tracked.”

“Oh, I’m sure it’s our poking around that brought it on,” she said.

“So they used me to find us and make a move.”

He sounded so disgusted she felt an unaccustomed urge to comfort. “We knew we’d be stirring things up, but neither one of us knew we were poking a live rattler’s nest,” she pointed out.

There was a pause in their assessment as they got out of the borrowed car and did a thorough recon of the garage, and inside it her parked rental car. Then they inspected the area around his apartment, and did an even more thorough inspection of the apartment itself, inside and out. Agents and local police had already been there, but nobody had as much at stake as they did, so they did it all again themselves.

They found nothing the others had missed, and headed inside at last.

“So, what does all this tell us?” he asked as they finally closed and locked the door.

Alex dropped her purse on the tan leather sofa and kicked off her shoes gratefully. The apartment was delightfully cool, and she wondered if the fact that they were in the desert and it looked like desert made her