Harlequin Intrigue April 2021--Box Set 2 of 2, Carol Ericson [good book recommendations TXT] 📗

or a bomber. Attention from an eager audience without the risk, since they were all criminals, too.

If Anderson was right, the bomber wasn’t committing the other crimes. If the communication was happening in a chat room on a dark web site, then the bomber probably didn’t even know who the other people were.

A familiar frustration welled up. Even if they caught the bomber, would it get them any closer to Juan’s killer?

Or was her dream of finally solving his cold case just that?

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Talking to Aiden DeMarco’s parents had been brutal. All of their dreams for their eldest son had been shattered in a single moment. Jax and Patches had been able to offer them support over the whole day that Jax knew they needed. And he’d managed to gather as much information as he could about what Aiden’s parents—who’d been nearby when the bomb went off—had seen. But they had no idea why anyone would target their son or his aunt. Neither did Jax.

Frankly, he didn’t think anyone had targeted either one.

Halfway through the day Ben had called him after checking in with Anderson. He’d shared the other agent’s theory about a group of criminals coordinating on a dark web site. It had Ben excited and the cybercrime unit back in Anchorage pivoting to the theory as a priority.

If they were right, a serial bomber with the knowledge and connections to access a site like that probably wasn’t using bombs as a messy way to kill a few specific people. He was way more likely to be an indiscriminate killer more interested in watching the chaos he created.

The fact that they hadn’t found other bomb sites with the symbol could have meant his earlier bombs weren’t as perfected and the symbol he’d intended to leave behind had been destroyed in the blast. Or evidence had been poorly collected or missed. Either way, this seemed like a practiced criminal.

Someone like that was prepared. He was well hidden, might have even booby-trapped his home in case law enforcement ever figured out his location.

Keara was driving around on top of a secluded mountain, searching for him.

The idea had lodged a ball of fear in his chest that had just gotten worse as the day turned into evening and the sun set, descending the town into darkness.

He’d heard from her again early in the afternoon, letting him know they were at the top of the mountain and hadn’t had luck so far, but nothing since then. Jax had resisted calling or texting her, not wanting to distract her at a crucial moment. She was a seasoned law-enforcement officer with more than a decade of experience under her belt, about half of it in a busy city with a much higher crime rate.

Right now, though, making the lengthy drive back from Luna with Patches asleep in the backseat, he’d been alone with his worry for too long. He’d be at the Desparre police station in five minutes, but he wasn’t sure if anyone would be there since it was after nine. He knew Ben had gone back to the hotel, but he didn’t know whether Anderson and Keara had made it down the mountain yet.

Was this what it would be like if he could talk her into giving a relationship with him a chance? This constant fear about whether she’d make it home? Was that something he’d be able to handle long-term? Because despite the distance between Anchorage and Desparre, if he and Keara started something, he couldn’t imagine ever wanting to stop.

“Call Keara,” he told his phone.

From the backseat, Patches let out a quiet woof, then he heard her sitting up.

It rang twice before Keara picked up. “Hi, Jax.”

She sounded happy to hear from him, but he could tell from the exhaustion underneath that the trip hadn’t yielded anything promising.

Woof! Patches chimed in loudly.

Keara laughed. “Hi, Patches.”

“I take it no one recognized the picture?” Jax asked.

“We had a couple of vague ‘he looks sort of familiar, but I don’t know where from’ kind of answers. But no one had a name and address handy.”

“So he might live up on that mountain,” Jax said, feeling more encouraged than Keara sounded.

“He might,” Keara agreed. “We’ll definitely have officers canvassing again tomorrow. The thing is, the mountain is huge. People stake out land and build without permits or actual ownership. It’s not like we can stop them if we don’t know they’re up there. Some of it is pretty far off the beaten path. And if you’ve got someone willing to venture off the road a ways—which we definitely do—it can be nearly impossible to find them.”

“It sounds like the stereotype of Alaska,” Jax commented. “That you can just venture off and get yourself completely off the grid, if you’re not afraid of the harsh elements.”

He’d seen some truth to that when he’d gotten here, but Anchorage was a pretty developed, populated area. Still, he could drive about an hour outside town and find solitude at a glacier if he wanted. He and Patches had done it a half dozen times since moving here and only once had he run into another person.

Compared to Anchorage, Desparre was the wild north.

“Well, sometimes the best thing about a place can also be the worst,” Keara said.

He heard her turn signal in the background and the knot in his chest loosened up, knowing she had to be off the mountain to need a turn signal. “Are you going back to the station now?”

“I’ve already been there. I dropped Anderson off and now I’m almost home. I was just about to call you, actually.”

“Oh, yeah?” His long day suddenly seemed less exhausting.

“How did the trip to Luna go?”

“Nothing new, really.” He sighed, remembering the devastation on the parents’ faces, the confusion and grief in every movement of his three younger siblings.

“I guess I’m not surprised.” He heard her car door slam, then her voice got more distant, maybe as she juggled the phone and opened the door to her