The hair on my arms danced upward and tension had my spine snapping straight. I let my eyes scan the crowd looking for a familiar white-blond head and didn’t see one. I didn’t see Race or Brysen either, which made me breathe a sigh of relief. The school would’ve had to call Brysen to pick her sister up once the kids got released.
“What’s the status?” I looked over at another detective as he came up beside me asking the question.
“I don’t know. It’s not my scene. I was working the armed robbery downtown and was just a few miles away, so I drove over. I think they’re just waiting for the bomb squad to go in and make sure that it isn’t a real threat.”
He grunted in response and I took a few steps toward where I saw the kids gathering to wait for their parents to pick them up. I was hoping to find someone that had seen Karsen when a harried-looking woman clutching a cell phone rushed up to me. Her eyes took up most of her face and she was panting like she had run a mile. She thrust the phone at me and bent over to put her hand on her knees as she struggled to catch her breath.
“Are . . . you . . . Detective . . . King?” I looked at the phone in my hand then at her. A chill of apprehension slid down my spine as she panted and shook in front of me.
“I am. Who are you?”
“Debbie Granger. I’m the principal. The man on the phone said to find you. Told me to give you the phone.”
I scowled at her and put the phone up to my ear. I wasn’t surprised at all when the voice that greeted me had a lilt to it.
“Hello, Detective.”
My teeth gnashed and my heart rate kicked into overdrive. “Roark.”
“I thought it was about time I let you know that I very much remember the hand you played the night my father was murdered. I saw you there, Detective.”
My spine snapped straight and my hand curled painfully around the phone. “What are you babbling about, Roark?”
“The night my father was killed . . . you were there. I saw you when we raided the club. Beaten and useless. You did nothing to stop my brother from killing our father. He still had the smoking gun in his hand when we made entry into the building. I’ve been slowly corrupting the one thing you care about most, Detective, and you haven’t even seen me doing it. And if you think you can just swoop in and take my girl, you are sadly mistaken. I will not let any of your actions or her betrayal stand.”
I forked my fingers through my hair and swore. “What do you mean you’ve been corrupting what I care about most? Are you talking about Race and Bax? Are you talking about hurting my family?” My head was spinning and the more time that went by without me seeing Karsen the more certain I became that she was inside the building, possibly with him, possibly sitting on a powder keg getting ready to blow.
The accented voice cackled and it made the hair on the back of my neck rise. “You’ll figure it out. In fact you’ll figure it out as you stand there in front of that school and do nothing while you wait on pins and needles to see if I harmed the pretty little blonde.” He clicked his tongue at me and his voice got hard. “You step foot inside the building and the girl dies. If I see a single cop head toward the front of that building, I’ll take her out and she won’t be the only casualty. Do you understand what I’m telling you, Detective King?”
I gritted my teeth and bit out, “The apple didn’t fall far from the crazy tree with you, did it, Roark?” He had me over a barrel and it was killing me that he was close enough to watch his handiwork unfold, but not close enough for me to get my hands on.
“One man’s crazy is another man’s brilliance. We’ll be seeing each other soon enough. Tell Reeve hello for me. She looks like she’s enjoying the limited time she has left on this earth fucking your brains out.”
I forced myself to hand the phone back to the principal and stared up helplessly at the entrance of the school. There was no doubt in my mind that Karsen was trapped somewhere inside and everything inside of me was screaming at me to go save her. That’s what I did—saved the innocent from the violence of the Point—and now Roark had effectively tied my hands, and it was making me furious. I started shouting at my fellow officers and anyone that would listen that they had to wait before they went inside. I wasn’t sure what kind of threat Roark had in place but I was in no position to push him. When my colleagues looked at me like I had lost my mind, I told them we had to wait for the bomb squad. It was the simplest excuse I could come up with off the top of my head. They didn’t like it but they backed down as I paced back and forth, never taking my eyes from the door.
She was just a kid, a really good kid at that. She deserved better than to be drawn into Roark’s deadly games. I clenched my hands into tight fists at my sides and looked at the cop that I had spoken to when I arrived on the scene. “The parents are starting to show.” He nodded his head in the direction from which cars and people were starting to stream in. Parents hysterical as they spotted their kids and the kids looking bored with it all. I was trying to figure out a way to sneak inside the school or a way to get some idea of what was happening on the inside when I heard a shrill voice call my name.
“Titus! What’s going on?” My heart immediately dropped into my shoes when I saw Brysen jogging up to me, her superblue eyes wide with fear. She wasn’t with Race, which was surprising; instead Booker was keeping pace with her, looking like he was going to murder anyone that got in his way.
“There was a bomb threat.”