Chapter Twenty-Five
Mindy smiled as she stuffed her purse under the reception desk. Usually she dreaded Monday mornings but today, she was on top of the world. She was in love!
She dropped to her chair and spun around in circles. She’d spent most of the weekend with Ray and it was amazing. He stopped by on Saturday afternoon and they’d fallen into bed, where they stayed for almost a full day. She’d wanted to get dressed and go out to eat on Sunday morning, but she couldn’t talk him into it. Then he had something to do in the evening, so he left. She considered calling in sick and coaxing him into coming back over, but it was only her second full day on the job. She didn’t think Uncle Pierce would appreciate her slacking on the job so soon.
The phone rang and she answered with the standard greeting. “NYC-TV3. This is Mindy. How may I direct your call?”
“Hey, sweet thing.”
“Ray! I was just thinking about you.”
“Yeah? In these thoughts of yours, was I naked?”
“Very,” she purred and he chuckled.
“I’m going to stop by later. Do you think you can finagle an interview with Olivia Larrson for me?”
Mindy couldn’t believe the woman she thought was Olivia was actually Callie Graves. When Uncle Pierce called and asked about the package, she assumed she was in trouble. She’d let the woman take it because she believed she was Olivia. As soon as she hung up with her uncle, she went back to the bedroom to tell Ray but he was asleep. She’d so enjoyed informing him on Friday that the woman he wanted to interview was a stuck-up bitch. Now she had to admit she’d been wrong. When he made a noise and rolled over, she hurried to her desk in the living room and searched the internet. She clicked on the station’s website, typed in Olivia’s name and her heart plummeted. Olivia was drop-dead gorgeous and her smile seemed genuine. She had long hair, striking blue eyes and a straight, white smile. Mindy had brown hair and eyes. They couldn’t look more different.
She’d tried questioning Ray several times over the weekend about his movie, hoping to finagle an audition, but he kept changing the subject. After seeing a picture of Olivia, she wondered if he was just a groupie of the pretty blonde anchorwoman and wanted to meet her. What if they were introduced and Olivia tried to take him away from her?
Mindy shook her head. She would do everything she could to keep Ray from Olivia.
“I’m sorry, Ray, she’s in meetings right up until she has to go on air.” She crossed her fingers, hoping that would lessen the karma of her lie. She actually had no idea about anyone’s schedule. She just answered the phones.
“Okay.”
Mindy’s eyes widened. That was easy. Almost too easy. Maybe he wasn’t a stalker after all. They made plans to meet after work and she hung up with a smile on her face.
#
Alex watched Olivia finish the broadcast after announcing the latest video from the Vigilante. He couldn’t take his eyes off of her. Even when her buffoon of a co-anchor was talking, his gaze stayed glued to her.
A hand slid around his arm and squeezed. “Hello, love,” the woman said in her proper British accent. He looked down into the brown eyes of the weathergirl. He scrambled to remember a name. It was something different. He glanced at the promotional poster featuring Olivia’s team. Quenby Allsopp. Now he remembered. Everyone called her Queenie.
She was squeezing his bicep and purring. “Uh, is there something I can help you with, Queenie?”
“Oh, love, there is so much you could do for me.” She winked. “But I do believe that would cause a right to-do. Olivia would give me a good going over.” Queenie wiggled her fingers and he glanced over to see Olivia staring at them with narrowed eyes. “Don’t worry, she knows I’m a big tart.”
He wasn’t totally up on British slang, but he was pretty sure a ‘right to-do’ meant a fight, and a ‘good going-over’ meant to beat up, but he had no idea what she meant by tart. His confusion must’ve shown because she smiled. “That means flirt. Anywhodoodles,” Queenie continued. “Don’t you drive that big black Caddie in the car park?”
He was going to have to download a British slang app to converse with her. “Car park…parking lot?”
“That’s what I said, love.”
He chuckled. “I do drive the Cadillac. Why?”
“Well, I ran outside to suck a fag—” Alex choked. She was grinning widely at him. “I so love teasing you Americans with that. A smoke, love, I went for a quick smoke. I saw a bloke crawling on the ground near your four by four. Strange, that. I caught him bang to rights so I called out and the bloody wanker scrambled from underneath the bonnet, spared me one quick sken and scarpered off.”
Ice ran down Alex’s veins. He didn’t even bother to translate, he understood the gist of her message. “Did you get a good look at him?”
She shook her head, still stroking his biceps. “No. Definitely a bloke.” She squeezed his muscle as she said this. “But he wore a black hoodie with the hood up and a bandanna around his face. Sunglasses, too. That can’t be good, right?”
No, that definitely couldn’t be good. He extracted his arm from her grip and patted her hand. “Thanks for letting me know, Queenie. I’m going to go check it out.”
“Anytime, love, and hey, if you get bored with Olivia,” she winked, “come find me. Cheerio.”
He gave her a half-smile and jogged to the Green Room where Sawyer was playing cards with Benson and Kramer. “The woman who does the weather report on Olivia’s team was just outside and she saw someone crawling under the SUV.”
Sawyer tossed down his cards. “Shit, car bomb?”
“That would be my guess.”
“Let’s go take a look.” Benson sprang to his feet.
“If it’s a bomb, we don’t know what might set it off,” Alex said. “I had to do this once with the Chicago PD when we didn’t have time to wait for a bomb squad. We need to fashion a device to look underneath without getting too close. Susannah, do you have a compact?”
She thrust a fist to her hip and huffed, “Do I look like a girly-girl to you, Mylonas?”
“Well, yeah.”
Her eyes widened and she smiled. “Really?”
“If it makes you feel better, you don’t look like one to me, Kramer,” Benson joked. She flipped him off and he threw out a hand in her direction. “See. That’s what I’m talking about.”
“There has to be a mirror in the dressing room,” Sawyer concluded, ignoring their banter. “And a broom or mop somewhere.”
They rounded up a mirror that was approximately six inches wide from the make-up table. Benson removed the end of a broom and a few pieces of duct tape later, they had a crudely-constructed bottom detection device.
They filed outside and since Alex had done this before, the detectives let him take the lead. He inched closer and swiped the apparatus slowly back and forth under the SUV. Sure enough, a blinking red light reflected off of the mirror. He backed slowly away and nodded to Benson.
Kramer raised her voice to order the few people milling about to clear the area. She grabbed a roll of crime scene tape and between her, Alex and Sawyer, they were able to block off a radius around the Cadillac. Twenty minutes later a NYPD Bomb Squad truck pulled into the lot. Men scrambled out and Benson indicated the SUV and the location of the explosive. Using a remote control vehicle called a wheelbarrow, they launched it to determine the type of device.
Alex couldn’t stop a shudder. What if Queenie hadn’t noticed the man? He, Olivia and Sawyer would have climbed inside, blissfully unaware. The next funeral they would’ve attended would’ve been their own.
#
“With Kip Prescott, this is Olivia Larrson for NYC-TV3, goodnight New York and thanks for watching.”
Olivia sighed as the camera clicked off. She was so tired, mentally and physically, she could barely keep her eyes open. Thank goodness the station employed a talented make-up artist. It took an extra effort, but Serena managed to completely conceal the dark circles beneath her eyes. They’d spent all night and most of the morning at the lake where they’d recovered the bodies of Mr. and Mrs. Wicks, along with Morris Clarke. And Callie. Now they were waiting on instructions of where to find Erica Long’s body.
“Hey, love. Smashing show as always.”
“Thanks, Queenie.” Usually she adored her co-worker, but when she saw her cozying up to Alex and stroking his arm, she’d almost lost it on air. As it was, she fumbled her lines and had a hard time recovering.
“You might want to go outside and find your hottie boyfriend.”
She was instantly wide awake. “Why? What happened?”
“I saw someone messing with your vehicle.”
Olivia stood so fast her chair spun in circles. She ripped out her earpiece and scurried around the desk. When Chuck blocked her path, she almost jammed a knee in his groin.
“So, Olivia, how about we—”
“Not now, Chuck.” She pushed past him without stopping.
“Olivia?”
She ignored Jonah’s summons as well. She burst through the door to the parking lot to see several emergency vehicles with their red and blue lights swirling and the area buzzing with activity. She scanned the throng of people milling about, her gaze finding Alex like a magnet. She rushed to him. “Alex? What’s going on?”
He spun around to face her. “Hey, babe. I didn’t realize the broadcast was over. Any word from the Vigilante?”
She shook her head, her eyes trained on the action. “What is this?”
“Queenie saw someone crawling under the SUV and thank goodness she did. We found a bomb.”
Olivia’s hand covered her mouth and she made a sound of distress. “A bomb?”
Alex gathered her close. She didn’t realize how cold she was until his body heat surrounded her. “Yeah. They’re removing it now.”
As they watched, a man in a suit that looked straight from NASA rolled to his back under the SUV. He carefully detached the contraption and handed it to another man dressed in a similar suit.
“What will they do with it?”
Alex pointed to a trailer behind one of the emergency vehicles. “That’s a bomb containment chamber. It’s basically an inside-out diving vessel. It has tiny vents that allow the pressure to escape if the bomb should detonate. I’m not sure about this one, but we had one in Chicago that could hold a blast of over 25 pounds of TNT. I got a quick look at the explosive and I don’t think it's anywhere near that powerful.”
The man carefully carried the gadget to the chamber and placed it inside. Once it was sealed shut, he high-fived with the man who removed the bomb from under the SUV and several others who gathered around.
“Did Queenie see who did this?”
“No. Male, hoodie, sunglasses. I’m just thankful she noticed him.”
“Me, too.” She vibrated…no wait, that was her pocket. She checked the name and it was unknown, which meant it was probably the Vigilante. Both the police and Alex’s computer guru had been unable to trace any of the calls he made through burner phones.
She showed Alex the screen. “Instructions on finding Erica Long’s body.”