MY EARLY DAY of travel was catching up to me. Even though it was two hours earlier here than at home, the
time change from the East to the West always seemed to bother me more than the other way around.
Gary Trilling had shown me the comfortable-looking bedroom where I’d be staying. Fido, the llama, had a pen
attached to the outside wall of the house next to my room. I got a slight whiff of his living quarters. It wasn’t
terrible, but it wasn’t a bonus either. If I hadn’t known what was causing the odor, it might not have bothered me as
much.
As the Trilling brothers took off to do something on the property, I decided it was a perfect time to try out the twin
bed. A quick nap was exactly what I needed.
Just as I lay my head down on the soft, memory-foam pillow, I heard the theme to Green Acres. Damn. I had almost
accomplished the impossible. I pulled out my phone and answered immediately when I saw that Harry Grissom was
the caller.
“Hey, Harry. What’s going on?”
“We’ve had another bombing.”
“No.” I felt my stomach convulse. It took a moment for my follow-up questions. “Where was it? Were there any
casualties?”
Harry’s gruff voice didn’t soften the impact in any way. “It was on the first floor of a building in Midtown. It
knocked out the glass windows to some kind of rec eption area. There are two dead inside the office. Another three
in critical condition. Maybe a dozen or so who were transported to the hospital but don’t have life-threatening
injuries.”
I let that run through my head and started considering how quickly I could get back to New York. I felt like this was
my fault. Like it wouldn’t
have happened if I hadn’t dropped the ball on the investigation. I came out here against Harry’s wishes. Now I had
to deal with all that.
I asked, “Who’s responding? Is Maggie there?”
“She’s there, but so is everyone. The Bomb Squad is doing a swe ep to make sure there’s no secondary device
somewhere. We’ve got a small army of detectives ready to interview people and everything else that needs doing.
Crime scene hasn’t even been allowed into the building yet. I’m headed over there in a couple of minutes.”
“What kind of office was it?”
“Some kind of tech company. I think it was called Virtual Spaces.”
I wasn’t sure any single sentence had ever made me freeze like that. It was as if electricity shot through my nervous
system, rendering me numb for a moment. That was where my daughter and Rob Trilling’s roommate had been
heading for a job interview.
Saying it out loud only made me more tense. “Harry, that’s where Juliana was going today. She was bringing a
friend to a job interview.”
“Your Juliana?”
“Do you have a list of casualties?”
“No names.”
I heard a be ep on my phone and looked down to see that it was my wife calling me. I told Harry I’d call him back
and immediately switched to Mary Catherine’s call. I wasn’t sure I wanted to hear what she had to say. I hadn’t felt
panic like this since I sat with Maeve in the oncologist’s office and was told she had months to live at most.