“You didn’t break into my house and take the pictures?”
“You’ve lost the map?” A string of profanity spewed from the phone. “How could you be so stupid?”
So it was the map he’d wanted. The pictures were just a smoke screen. “We’d like to know who took them too. Jane assumed you had them. She sent the Michigan state police to the site, and everything is gone.”
“She did what?”
“You heard me. Someone took the map and dug up the weapons. If you didn’t take the pictures, who did? Did someone in your group double-cross you?”
“No one would dare. It had to be someone you told about it.”
“We told no one.”
Gabriel sputtered more curse words and hung up.
Jane lowered her window and punched in the gate code. “If it wasn’t Gabriel who broke in, who was it?”
“One of his cohorts? Or is this bigger than we realize? Who else could have known about the bomb material?”
Jane chewed on her lip. “After we talk to Dad, let’s head for my office so I’m in the hub of what’s happening as it’s happening.”
The gate began to open. She drove in and parked in front of her dad’s house. When she opened the back door, Parker ran off to chase squirrels.
Reid took her hand. “You doing okay? All this hitting at once has to be hard. Remember anything else?”
She shook her head. “I think it has to be someone close to Gabriel though. Maybe he told someone about it.” Who? Edward hated her dad, but wouldn’t Gabriel know if his boss was doing something on his own? It didn’t make sense.
* * *
Jane saw her dad by the bunker. The older man waved at her and Reid as they got out of her SUV. This visit felt like she was grasping at straws. Her dad wouldn’t tell them anything.
He opened the second gate and headed their way. The air was heavy with humidity and smelled of rain and mud left over from last night.
“Just putting my drone away.” He took one glance at Jane’s face. “What’s wrong?”
“Do you know anything about a dirty bomb Moses and Gabriel planned to sell to the highest bidder?”
She launched into what her mother had told her and everything that had happened. His eyes widened when she said she’d had the Michigan state police dig up the location.
His eyes narrowed when she mentioned the dirty bomb. “Why are you just now telling me you remember all that?”
“Wait, what?” Jane eyed him. “You knew about the nuclear material and the explosives?”
He mopped his red, wet face with a handkerchief he pulled from the back pocket of his overalls. “Come inside out of the heat, and I’ll tell you what I know. I’d hoped it would never come to this.”
Frowning, Jane glanced at Reid as they followed Charles into the cool wash of the air-conditioning. She was met by the scent of some kind of Mexican dish from his dinner, maybe enchiladas.
Her dad went straight to the pristine gray kitchen and poured them all a glass of sweet tea. He handed them glasses beaded with moisture, then took a big gulp. “Hot out there today.” He motioned for them to come with him to the living room where he sank into his recliner. “I’ve known about the bomb for years.”
Jane shuddered and closed her eyes. Her dad simply didn’t know how to be open and honest with her. Or anyone.
Beside her on the sofa, Reid set a calming hand on Jane’s shoulder. “How did you know about it? Did Kim tell you?”
Charles glanced at her. “Actually, Jane told me.”
She gasped. “That’s not true! I just remembered it when I saw the picture of it.”
“Remember when you had some sleepwalking bouts when you were about seventeen?”
She nodded. “So you said. I never woke up to realize what I was doing.”
It had been during a period when she was anxious about where to go to college and what she wanted to do with her life.
“I was leading you back to your bedroom, and you said something like, ‘It’s buried but it will explode.’ I asked what you meant, and you said, ‘It’s that dirty bomb, Dad. The one Mom and I buried. When is it going to explode? We need to be far away.’”
Jane shook her head. “I have no recollection of that.”
“You were asleep. I asked where it was, and you said, ‘Under the twisted tree by Mom’s cabin.’ I knew exactly what cabin you meant, and at first I dismissed it as a nightmare. But I was uneasy since I knew your mom was buying and selling all kinds of weapons for Moses. I wanted to go look for it, but I was always so busy here and tried to convince myself it was long gone anyway. I should have checked to be sure.”
Jane sagged against the back of the sofa. “And you never said anything?”
“What was there to say?” He took another gulp of tea. “Did you look at the pictures?”
“We did,” Jane said. “It contained pictures of the murder. But why all the interest now, after all these years? I mean, of course there’s no statute of limitations on murder, but no one was looking into Reid’s mother’s disappearance. No one really knew she had been killed. It seems out of place. I think it was all about getting that bomb.”
Jane’s stomach churned. They were no closer to finding out who had killed Lauren so they could get Will out. And that was the most important thing to her.
Thirty-Six
A distant alarm blared and Charles whipped around to race to his control room. “There’s an intruder!”
Reid and Jane followed, though Reid didn’t think it was likely to be anything serious. Maybe a deer had wandered into the compound and brushed up against sensors. It could even have been Parker nosing around outside.
They followed Charles to the small control room, and he called up screen footage. The bank of computer monitors showed various parts of the land around the compound, and Reid saw nothing amiss until Charles went to the one on the far right and fiddled with the settings. The video displayed three men dressed in black with face masks, manipulating electronic equipment in their hands before they entered the bunker on the west side.
“Someone’s breached the bunker,” Charles said. “That’s impossible.”
The camera showed the men moving noiselessly through the interior. One man held a box of plastic explosives with wires, and another man carried the cylinder with the ominous black-and-yellow radiation symbol.
Jane gasped. “That’s the lead box with the nuclear material!”
Charles opened a safe and extracted an AK-47 as well as a pistol. “Call ATF and then get off the property. I don’t want you in harm’s way.”
Jane drew her gun. “I’m going with you.”
“Me too,” Reid said.
Charles shook his head. “You are responsible for Will. You can’t run the risk of leaving the boy on his own.”
Jane shook her head. “Dad, there are three of them! You can’t take them on alone. Reid can get Parker and leave the property.”
“I’m not leaving you.” How could she even think he would? She was strong and capable, but those guys meant business. Even now he kept glancing back at the screen to see what they were doing. Time was running out to stop them.