Unknown Enemy (Love Inspired Suspense) Page 11

  “What Major Nelson is trying to say, Mr. Tapping, is that the grenade wasn’t brought on property from somewhere else to be used during the library attack. It was already here.”

  Colin jumped up from his seat. “On property? We had a grenade on campus and nobody thought that might be a bad idea?” He looked over at Ginny, whose eyes were wide. Her complexion had paled and she regarded him with worry.

  “It was meant to be part of a class presentation,” Major Nelson said. “I had several pieces of nonlethal and less-than-lethal military equipment transported to the campus and secured last Sunday when very few students or staff were around to witness the transfer. The college approved the plans and assisted in securing the items until my presentation, which was to happen in—” he checked his watch “—about ten minutes.”

  Dr. Thompson pounded a fist on his desk. The man was flustered and Colin didn’t blame him. Thompson might lose his job over this, or at least receive a suspension. “It was secure, Tapping. We had permits, extra security. The military’s security guys checked it, our guys checked it. No one else knew it was there.”

  “Clearly, someone did,” Ginny’s voice chimed in. “Everything that’s happened so far indicates a level of familiarity with the school.”

  Colin agreed. “Or the ability to obtain information without arousing suspicion.”

  Dr. Thompson and Major Nelson’s expressions became even more perturbed than they’d been a few minutes prior. Thompson narrowed his eyes at Colin. “You think the attacks are an inside job?”

  Colin shrugged, thinking of Sam and his cluelessness over leaving the reception desk near Ginny’s office unattended, resulting in the department keys being ripe for the picking. “Not necessarily. All this would take is one smart, attentive individual. And we already are fairly certain he has lackeys—a hired crew doing some of the more technology-dependent legwork. The police are working on identifying one of the perps after yesterday’s events. I’m afraid it could be anyone, gentlemen. Maybe someone you’ve never met or never noticed before. Or it could be the result of loose lips from somebody who might not even know they’re being used as eyes and ears.”

  Or a randomly appearing military man who’d found a way to legitimately bring a grenade onto campus and then claim its disappearance? Colin didn’t voice this thought, but the whole situation didn’t sit right.

  Thompson groaned and pounded his fist on his desk again. “This is going to be a PR nightmare if anyone outside this office gets wind of it.”

  Colin exchanged looks with Ginny. He knew she’d keep quiet, and whom would he tell other than Chief Black? “You fill out the necessary paperwork to make a report,” Colin suggested. “If you just discovered the missing grenade, I assume that means it still has to be confirmed as the same one tossed by Tuesday night’s assailant. We’ll deal with that when the time comes. For now, sit tight.”

  He rose and exited, leaving a stunned but resigned Dr. Thompson and Major Nelson behind. He didn’t turn around until he’d left the building and reached the quad.

  Ginny stood behind him, uncertainty written across her lovely features.

  “So, now what?” She crossed her arms, once again shivering in the cold.

  He sighed and rubbed his eye with the heel of his hand. He needed sleep. “We’ll head back to the library so you can finish your meeting. But let’s be more careful about whom we talk to concerning what’s going on. If this is an inside job or if someone on campus is being played as a patsy, we don’t want to scare them into doing something drastic. Not yet, anyway. You’re still too vulnerable and we still don’t have enough information. Actually, we should take a quick drive to the police station before heading back to Hilden, okay? They need to know what we just learned.”

  She dropped her arms as a slight breeze kicked up and blew her windswept hair off her cheek for half a second, revealing the perceived imperfection that he suspected had something to do with her abrupt cancellation of the previous night’s kiss. Which he was not going to think about.

  No distractions. Because of a distracted heart, he hadn’t been able to protect Lynn the way he’d been trained to, but he had a chance to make things right here. He could make sure no one was able to hurt Ginny. Not again, not ever.

  Forget Ginny’s “God is in control” assertions. This time, he wanted to be the one in control, lest Ginny pay for his lack of perfect control with her life.

  TWELVE

  Colin paced back and forth in front of the library meeting room where Ginny and Dr. Hilden worked feverishly on the tablet translations. They needed to get the work done as fast and as accurately as possible—Colin saw that now—because it very well could provide the greatest clue as to the reason behind these attacks and why the tablets had been stolen.

  Dr. Hilden hadn’t been all that impressed by Colin’s assertion that he and Ginny needed to work on the report as long as possible today, but while the man’s obvious superiority complex rubbed him the wrong way, Colin chalked it up to the stress of the situation. Dr. Hilden couldn’t be having an easy time of it, trying to explain to Amar’s government that its ancient artifacts had disappeared on the other side of the world while he was supposed to be looking out for them.

  Here in the United States, an incident like that—even though it hadn’t been the man’s fault that they’d been stolen, or Ginny’s for that matter—would get a person stripped of his or her job position and torn apart in the media. So far, Colin hadn’t seen any local or national news about it, which meant the police and the college were doing a good job of keeping things under wraps.

  On the other hand, a lack of public awareness meant the local police hadn’t received any outside leads. Chief Black had called to let Colin know they’d immediately begun some internal questioning of college staff to try to piece together the break-in and disappearance of the stun grenade, but Colin had a theory that the investigation would do nothing beyond reveal where the college lacked in general security—such as not having cameras trained on important closets, no matter how tightly locked down anyone believed them to be. As for Sam’s description to the sketch artist, the person who’d told him about Ginny’s car being towed had actually been another student. The police had located the student and were interrogating him about the situation, which Chief Black believed would result in yet another sketch being taken. It meant more time wasted, which they didn’t have.

  As he paced, Colin scoured online auction sites for evidence of the tablets on the black market. When he came up empty, he resorted to calling every major museum in the country to warn them against anyone trying to sell ancient Amaran tablets without paperwork.

  They said goodbye to Dr. Hilden around nine o’clock, and Colin took a barely coherent, half-asleep Ginny back to the motel so she could rest. He’d suspected she would want to continue working on the translations through the weekend, but he hadn’t expected to be awakened at a quarter to seven in the morning by a rap on the car window. He awoke from a restless sleep to see Ginny and the officer who’d spelled him for a few hours standing outside the car. The officer gave an apologetic shrug when Colin shot him a questioning glance.

  “Rise and shine, Mr. Tapping,” Ginny quipped, coming around to the passenger side door. He unlocked it so she could climb in.

  “Decided to get an early start, did you?” Colin tried to shake off the grogginess. Maybe he’d been more sleep deprived than he’d realized. “What do you have there?”

  “Peace offering.” Ginny held up a brown paper bag and a takeaway coffee cup.

  He took it and peered inside, unable to suppress a grin. “Is this a blueberry fritter?”

  She extended the cup to him. “And I thought you might need this, too. It was my turn to call in a breakfast order. And I know you’ve said you’re used to this kind of watching or protecting, but it can’t be easy. You really do look exhaus
ted.”

  “Thanks.”

  “No, Colin, I mean... I appreciate it. I do. I know I probably haven’t been the easiest protectee so far, but I think I’m starting to get it.” She paused as though she had something else to say, but the words stalled on her tongue. Colin didn’t mind, and he didn’t want to push her. Still, he didn’t try to suppress his smile.

  He set the coffee down in the cup holder between the seats and pulled the fritter out of the paper bag. He took a bite that spilled flakes of sugary glaze all over the driver’s seat, surprised at his own physical hunger. When had he last eaten a proper meal? It wouldn’t be the first time he’d become so wrapped up in a protective detail that he’d forgotten to eat. “Then I guess I should thank you for noticing.”

  Ginny pursed her lips, brushed a lock of hair behind her ear—uncovering her smooth cheek, he noticed—and crossed her arms over her stomach. “You’re welcome.”

  An awkward silence descended as neither of them spoke. He polished off the doughnut and began the drive to the college, assuming that was where she wanted to go. They passed no students on campus on the way to Ginny’s office, but what student would be voluntarily awake at seven in the morning on a Saturday?

  Colin felt tempted to relax, to let down his guard. It was a false sense of security, he knew, and too similar to the day he’d let his heart run away—and made the mistake that cost a woman her life.

  “Did you make much progress last night on the translations?”

  As they reached her office, Ginny unlocked her door and set her bag inside, then turned back to him as her uncertain smile morphed into a joyous grin. “We did. And I know, maybe I shouldn’t have, but I woke up at two o’clock and kept going. You’re not going to believe this, but I was able to translate all but two, which then allowed me to write and submit a first-draft version of my report to Dr. Hilden and Curator Wehbe for review. I sent it over at six thirty this morning, and I’m hoping we can meet Monday afternoon to finalize the report. We’ll publish it in a few peer-reviewed journals next month. Colin, I think I’ve found the—”

  A bang and a shower of glass stopped Ginny midsentence as her window exploded inward. A large satchel covered in flames flew through the window and landed with a thump inside the office. Ginny jumped back in surprise and batted at her leg to smother the tiny tongue of flame caught at the hem of her pants. Colin reacted on instinct, crossing the office in a flash and pulling her out of the doorway.

  He rushed down the hall to grab the emergency fire extinguisher, then ran back. Ginny had opened up her water bottle and was trying to toss the water at the burning satchel. Pops and bangs from inside the bag sent his nerves into a frenzy.

  “Step back,” he shouted before letting the extinguisher’s foam spray all over the satchel and the floor. Within seconds, the fire was out. “You okay?”

  Ginny nodded and raced over to the broken window, but Colin grabbed her arm and yanked her back. If someone was watching, she’d be too easily exposed.

  The room grew silent, their breath the only sound. He looked down at Ginny since she hadn’t yet answered him, only to find their faces so very, very close together. Eyes locked, lips parted.

  And then Ginny’s eyes focused behind him and she cried out, pulling away. She stared down at the foamy, charred lump, then knelt, brushing foam off the blackened satchel. She opened it and reached inside. “No, no, no, no...”

  Colin knelt next to her, his heart racing at the panic and agony in her voice. “Are those what I think they are?”

  She lifted out a handful of crumbled, broken clay. Her hand shook, the tremor extending up her arm and into her whole body. “They’re gone. Destroyed. I can’t believe it. Thousands of years of history.”

  Colin reached inside the bag and pulled out a clip and a piece of bullet casing. “And that same someone had a really stupid idea to try to kill or injure you in the process. Bullets in a fire. Good myth, but it only works in movies.”

  Ginny’s complexion paled. “What did they think, that the bullets would go off and hit us when they exited the bag?”

  “Probably. But they put the bullets inside this leather bag, and the fire didn’t get hot enough to set off more than a few of these things. They’re only .20 caliber. Not enough to do much more than give you a bad scratch from the brass casing. Maybe poke your eye out if you had your head stuck in the bag.” He sat back on his heels and rolled the casing between his fingers.

  Ginny sighed, her breath shaky and full of emotion. Her eyes were still trained on the decimated contents of the bag at her feet. “With the tablets stolen, I’d hoped maybe this would end...but I suppose it was too much to ask.”

  Colin wanted to shout with frustration at the arrogance of such an attack. The first attack in the library had been the military-issue stun grenade, a less-than-lethal professional piece of equipment that someone obviously knew how to use to maximum effectiveness, but bullets inside a bag on fire? He had no doubt that this was intended to be a two-pronged attack. If the bullets didn’t kill Ginny—if they’d only injured her—the destroyed tablets had to be a contingency plan to shake her to the core, a punishment for not following through on the second drop. Making this attack the morning after she’d made a breakthrough could not be a coincidence.

  To steal the tablets, then return them in pieces? Their opponent knew very well what this would do to Ginny’s confidence and how devastating this would be on the chance that the bullets didn’t kill her outright. The person after her work was willing to destroy every piece of her, bit by bit, tearing her down physically and mentally until she was worn down to nothing. Their enemy knew how to get inside her head, tear her down from the inside out.

  Doubtless their enemy had hoped Colin would be killed or injured at the same time.

  “Someone saw us come in this building. They knew we were in this office.” But he hadn’t seen anyone on their way inside. It only served to reinforce his growing sense of concern about being here on a quiet day with few people about.

  “But I didn’t tell anyone.” She paused, recall drawing across her features. “Last night, after getting back to the motel, I had an urgent email from the dean about a meeting I’d missed yesterday regarding the tenure-track position requirements. I had to message him back about working with Dr. Hilden and may have mentioned being close to a breakthrough. And that I’d be here sometime today if we could reschedule. Oh, no.”

  He tensed. “Who else knows, Ginny?”

  “Beverly Dorn. She was CC’d as part of the discussion, since we’re both competing for the same position.” She swallowed hard, staring at the satchel of destroyed tablets.

  “No one else?”

  Ginny thought for a moment. “Donna. I sent Donna a private message over social media this morning. I was just so excited.”

  Beverly Dorn, Donna, the Dean, the curator who’d loaned her the tablets in the first place, as well as the Amaran representative. The only ones who knew she’d be here. It didn’t make sense. None of those people had any motive to harm Ginny or want her research stopped, except for maybe Beverly Dorn. He couldn’t dismiss the woman’s coldness upon discovering Mrs. McCall’s injured form lying on the floor, but was she the type to toss grenades and write threatening letters?

  “Call the museum,” Colin said, thinking out loud. “Get your meeting moved to this afternoon. Or first thing when they open, if you can.”

  “This morning? Why?”

  “Whoever wanted you to stop your work may have thought they’d succeeded after stealing the tablets. Now that you’ve made a breakthrough, it seems like that’s the one thing they were afraid of. They want you to know that they can destroy your life’s work or, if possible, simply eliminate you from the picture outright before you can tell anyone in person what you’ve learned. Someone just tried to kill you, Ginny. They failed, but the fact is, all o
ther attempts up to this point haven’t been specifically designed to kill you in particular, only injure or frighten. Do your translations contain anything that could be a motive for murder?”

  “I don’t see how.”

  “Then we need to dig harder to figure it out. These pieces need connecting today, because I have a feeling whoever is after you is not going to stop just because this attempt didn’t succeed.”

  * * *

  Ginny choked back tears as she gathered up her bags. Colin hustled them both out of the office, a worried look in his eyes. She said nothing, but had a good idea what bothered him. If someone had just tried to kill her, might the person come looking for the body? And what would happen when the attacker didn’t find it?

  The satchel of destroyed tablets felt like an anvil, weighing down her hopes, her future, ready to sink it all to the bottom of the ocean. How could this have happened? What kind of a callous monster would destroy pieces of history? She thanked God once again for Colin’s presence. She’d been wrong to resent him. The man knew what he was doing, and if she’d been left to deal with the satchel of destroyed tablets on her own, she’d have crumbled into a million tiny pieces, too.

  She couldn’t wrap her mind around it. Why would someone try to kill her over a few translated sentences? She hadn’t definitively proved that the summer palace was buried in the area she suspected—that would be the archaeological team’s job, providing a group could get funding to dig in that location—and even if it was there, what value could there possibly be in preventing her from telling someone about it?

  After a shaky and tear-filled phone call to the curator, at 9 a.m. they made their way to the museum. She had to face the music one way or another, historical breakthrough or not.

  “Professor Anderson, welcome.” Curator Wehbe interrupted her thoughts, approaching from the museum’s front atrium. “Let us meet in my office. Will sir be joining us?”

  “He will,” Colin said, reaching across and shaking the curator’s hand. “Don’t worry, I won’t get in the way. Just here in an observational capacity.” He scanned the museum entrance, completely void of visitors. “Quiet morning.”