Sign of the Maker (Boston Crime Thriller Book 4), Brian Shea [free reads .txt] 📗

Barnes opened the floor to conversation. "How'd you get into all this bomb stuff?"

"I don't know. I grew up out west. Small-town life with not much in the way of entertainment, so I spent most of my days and nights helping my father at his auto shop. He was the only certified mechanic within fifty miles of our town. Started off as just a little girl wanting to spend time with her father. Over time I became fascinated by the mechanics of it. Every part had its place. All of the parts working in conjunction with one another allowed the cars and trucks to function. I guess it made sense to me at a time when a lot else didn't. Having a black mother and white father wasn't exactly the easiest of childhoods in the place where I grew up. I found my first calling there in those grease-filled walls of my dad's shop."

"You said first calling?" Kelly scooted closer, filling in the gap between the front seats.

"You guys are in the presence of a NASCAR certified pit crew member."

"Where were you when I had my last car?"

Mills chuckled softly. "I don't get to do much of it anymore. More of a hobby now."

"Why'd you make the jump from the racing circuit to law enforcement?" Barnes seemed genuinely interested in Mills's story.

"One of the cars blew an engine during a warmup lap before my team was making a run for Daytona. We thought it was mechanical. Turned out it wasn't. A rival driver—well, one of his pit crew guys—had placed a small explosive device set to blow the brake when in a hard-left turn. The device went off and took out the engine instead. Burned the driver pretty badly but he survived. Seeing how the ATF agents handled it intrigued me. Never thought about being in law enforcement prior to that, but once I did, I couldn't get it out of my head."

Kelly understood. He knew Barnes did too. Once bitten by the law enforcement bug, little else could satiate.

"I left the circuit at twenty-one and put myself through college while working part time at a garage. I got into the ATF, and during my six months of basic instruction at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center in Glynco, Georgia, I found an interest in the intricacies of bomb-making. And while there are many paths within the ATF, I found that the closest match for me was the CES, Certified Explosive Specialists. It's kind of like being part EOD technician and part investigator."

"Been doing it a while?" Kelly asked.

"I've been with the ATF for ten years. Took me a while to get to where I am now. They throw newbies into softer investigations and save the big ones for the more seasoned veterans. I eventually got my shot to work the show and have been doing it ever since."

"Seems like it fits. Great catch finding that device signature. Not sure where we'd be with this thing if you hadn't," Barnes offered.

"Thanks. I'd like to say it was luck, but experience is a brutal teacher." Mills reached down toward her ankle and rapped her knuckles against it. Three distinct clangs followed. She pulled back her pant leg to reveal a prosthetic limb extending from the neoprene sock capping the demarcation midway up her tibia. "Now it's a little more than just a passion. I'm permanently linked to this work."

"A bomb did that?" Kelly asked.

Mills nodded. "Locals were working a case in Wichita a few years back. My partner, Trent Darby, and I were called in to provide support. You guys ever heard of Tony Belcher?"

"The name’s familiar." Kelly racked his brain for the details. In recent years, as mass casualty events rose, it sadly became increasingly difficult to sift through the list of tragedies. "Few years back, right? Tried to blow everybody up at some compound. Called himself The Hand. I don't remember what happened to him. That was you?"

She nodded. "Belcher was the leader of a fringe group called the Gatekeepers. He and those who followed him believed he was the hand of God sent to shield the world from the Rapture. His claim was that he received a divine message guiding him to form an army of true believers to serve as soldiers in the coming war. His recruitment effort had gone on with little notice. Adding a few nutjobs here and there. It wasn't until he caught the eye of Homeland Security after a shipment of nitroglycerine was stolen from a nearby industrial complex that the investigation led back to Belcher.

“The idea was to get ahead of it and stop him before he actually came up with a way to put anything into action. You've got to understand there are thousands of these lunatics floating around at all times. Not many rise above the talk phase. Those that do, or those deemed to have the potential to, are addressed. In this particular case, it was warranted, and all the information led us to believe Belcher was getting very close to that point. Intelligence gathering ops revealed he'd amassed a decent amount of explosive material and they were worried it was going to become weaponized in some fashion. Fearing another Waco event, we moved in."

The Waco Siege was known throughout law enforcement. A failed execution of a search warrant that resulted in the death of four agents and six Branch Davidians. The fifty-one-day standoff that followed ended in tragedy with an assault that left seventy-six of the compound’s residents dead, including twenty-five children. It was a permanent black eye for law enforcement, with the ATF taking the brunt of it. To avoid future incidents of a similar catastrophic end, investigators now tried to get ahead of these threats before they evolved into a real problem.

"If you don't mind me asking, what happened?" Barnes asked.

"It's been a while." Mills dropped the pant leg, masking the titanium. "When it