She grabbed at his hand. “Dad, no! He might be suicidal and blow up the place while you’re there. I can’t lose you.”
Her dad’s other hand came down on hers. He showed her his phone. “I’m calling you right now, and we’ll leave the connection open so you can hear what’s happening. I’ll be fine, Button.”
The slip of the tongue caught at her heart, but her dad walked through the open gate before she could reply. His long legs ate up the distance, and she watched him pause and open the second gate. In a few minutes he was a speck in the distance, so she focused the binoculars on the scene, veering between her father and her uncle.
She turned to Jackson. “You have a long-range rifle in the trunk?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Get it and circle around through the woods until you’re close enough. Keep it trained on Edward Hardy. If he looks like he’s going to blow up something or pulls out a gun, protect my dad.”
Jackson nodded and got the rifle out of the trunk. Her hands were too shaky to try to stop an ambush herself.
She turned on the speakerphone and turned on a recording app, then perched her phone on the fence. She brought up the binoculars again. Reid had found the other pair and stood watching with her.
“Edward,” her dad said. “I hardly expected to see you after all this time. Implicating my grandson in a murder wasn’t enough for you? You had to bring a bomb here too? Where is it?”
Her uncle rose and smiled. “I’ve been dreaming of this day for years, Charles. You killed my boy, and you’re about to discover how it feels to have everything you care about stripped away. I don’t care what happens to me anymore. Doc says I only have a few months anyway, so if I was going to get justice for Colton, I knew it had to be soon.”
So that was why this had all come up so suddenly. Edward was dying. Her dad would be alone. No, not alone. He still had Will and her.
“I’m sorry,” her dad said. “No matter what went down between us, you were always my brother, Ed.”
“Don’t try to talk your way out of this, Charles. Retribution is at hand.”
“You never even let me explain. I didn’t even know it was Colton when I took him down for the murder of that old woman.”
“If you’d known, would it have mattered?”
A question Jane could answer. No, it wouldn’t have mattered. Justice ran through her dad’s veins even stronger than his blood.
“No,” her dad said. “What he did was wrong.”
“And it should have been up to me to punish him, not you! You didn’t have the right.”
Her dad propped a boot on the first step to the porch. “When did you hear about the dirty bomb?”
“Gabriel mentioned it about five years ago. I didn’t think much about it until my diagnosis a few months ago. Then I realized I had a powerful weapon to bring you down. When Lauren told me where you were finally—and even better, that you had a grandson—I started making plans.”
“You’ve known Lauren a while?”
“She came to camp looking for Gabriel. She thought he might know how to find Reid Dixon since they were roommates when he was at Liberty’s Children. I thought maybe if we found Reid, we’d find you since he’d been married to Button. She turned into quite the lawman, by the way. Plucky little thing.”
“Leave Jane out of it. This is between you and me.”
“That it is.” Edward nodded.
“How did Gabriel know where to find Reid?”
“He didn’t, and he sent Lauren off. But I liked her looks, and she liked my money. We got along for a while until I got tired of her constant demands for money. The house I bought wasn’t good enough, the car wasn’t fancy enough.”
Her dad grabbed a porch post and walked up a step. Jane glanced at Reid. “He’s trying to get close enough to strike.”
Edward pulled a hand out of his pocket, and Jane saw a remote in his palm. Her pulse stuttered in her chest. “That’s the detonator,” she whispered.
Her uncle seemed relaxed and happy to talk. “I cut her loose and thought that was the end of it until she showed up with news of where to find you. I fed her some more money to keep me posted, and that was working well until she shot off her mouth to her friend. I had to buy Gail off too, but I figured it was worth it. I was going to be dead and I couldn’t take the money with me. But she threatened me, and that’s not something I could let slide.”
“Then Lauren figured out you killed her. She was going to tell Jane.”
“Worse than that. She wanted more money, and I was tired of giving it to her. And I saw the perfect way to wreck your life.”
When she saw his hand twitch with the remote, Jane screamed, “No!”
Thirty-Nine
Reid reached for Jane when she screamed, and she buried her face in his chest. Burying his face in her hair, he closed his eyes, and in that moment before death could take them, he prayed for God to help their boy get through this.
A retort echoed in the treetops, and Reid lifted his head. That wasn’t a bomb blast—it was a rifle.
Reid brought the binoculars up and looked toward the house. Edward lay crumpled on the porch with his arm out flung. The remote lay next to him, and Charles reached down to pick it up as Parker bounded out of the dusky shadows to nose at his knee.
“Edward is down,” Reid said. “I can’t believe it.”
Jane released him and took off running for the house. The SUV would have been faster, but he needed to release the pent-up energy as much as she did, and he loped along beside her. Winded and sweating, they reached the porch in time to see Jackson and several ATF officers burst from the trees brandishing weapons.
Charles had the detonator in his hand and gave it to the first ATF agent he saw. “I don’t know where the bomb is, but I expect it’s in the bunker somewhere. He would have wanted to destroy everything important to me. Check the entrance in the barn. It’s probably open. And Edward is alive. He’ll need a medic.”
“I called for one, and we’ll find the bomb,” the agent said. The men got out equipment and went toward the barn.
Jane ran to her father and embraced him. After an awkward moment, Charles’s arms came down around her. His eyes looked moist, and he backed away.
“I need to tend to Edward.” He turned and knelt beside his brother.
Edward’s eyes fluttered open, and he stared up into Charles’s face. “So you won after all, Charles. You always did. I hated being younger.”
“I know, Edward. Did you kill Lauren yourself?”
Reid exchanged a glance with Jane and brought out his phone. He began to record the conversation.
“Gabriel. He always followed instructions well.” Edward coughed, and a bubble of blood oozed from his lips. “He arranged to get that firefighter out of the way too. I didn’t want him to continue to plague the lab and uncover the money I gave Gail. It was all turning out so well. You always ruined things. I hate you.”
A long sigh eased from Edward’s mouth, and he turned his head. The light of life went out of his eyes.
“Found it!” an agent called from the door to the barn. “Stay back while we remove the bomb.”