Page 4 of Deliverance

“You are not fine. You were in an explosion!” Detective Patel half-shouted. He whirled on me, and I ignored the way Alexander and Sebatian stiffened. He wouldn’t hurt me, and he had every right to be angry. “What happened? Who did this?”

“I don’t know,” I said honestly. “We know there was a gas explosion, but that’s it.”

He huffed. “I’ll be opening an investigation into this.”

“No, you won’t,” I said firmly, not wavering when he glared at me. “It was a gas explosion.”

“Like hell it was!”

I understood his frustration, but an official police investigation wasn’t going to help us.

“It was a gas explosion,” I repeated, my voice steady. “Maya is safe now. They’re safe because it was a gas explosion.” Staring him down, I willed him to understand. Detective Patel knew the Archers existed. He knew the work we did. But he didn’t know the inner workings, and it was safer for him not to know. He needed to let this go.

“Dad,” Maya said. “It’s fine. It was a gas explosion.” They touched his arm, and his stance softened. “The doctor said I could be discharged tonight. Could you go see how quickly that could happen? I just want to be home in my own bed.”

Detective Patel sighed. He ran his hands through his hair again, then picked up his suit jacket and shrugged it on. “Fine,” he said. “But you will keep me updated on this gas explosion in case there are any more in the city.” It wasn’t a question, and honestly, I would take what I could get right now.

I nodded. “I will.”

He huffed again and strode past us. “I’ll be back in twenty minutes,” he called over his shoulder.

Izzy, Adrian, Dominic, and Marcus joined us in the room.

“We have twenty minutes before he comes back,” I told Izzy. “Let’s debrief quickly.”

“I can go first,” Maya said. “I was watching the mission on the cameras at HQ when the front alarm sensor tripped. A blacked-out SUV entered the alley, and four men dressed in all-black with face coverings got out. They took out the exterior camera and started working on the door. They looked like they had done this before, so I initiated a system wipe on the computers. They made it through the first door and were working on the second, so I was rushing to finish the wipe. The wipe finished, and I headed to the bunker but left my phone behind. That’s why I didn’t call you,” they said to Liam. “I watched through the bunker cameras.”

“The bunker had cameras?” Alexander asked.

“Just two,” I said. “The exterior one, which was taken out.” I looked at Maya to confirm, and they nodded. “And an interior one that looks into the main room.”

“That’s the one I watched,” Maya said. “One of them sat down at the computer and started typing. But then another one got a phone call. There’s no audio on that camera,” Maya explained to the guys. “So I couldn’t hear what they were saying, but after he hung up, two of them went back outside and came back in with gas cans and a box. They doused everything with gasoline and then set the bomb up under the back wall.”

“Fuck!” I cursed, pacing in front of the bed.

“What is it?” Adrian asked.

“The back wall is the load-bearing wall. Which they would only have known…”

“If they had the blueprints,” Izzy finished, eyes widening as she came to the same realization. “Someone went to a lot of trouble to make sure the building was destroyed.”

“That’s why they used a bomb instead of just setting it on fire,” Marcus said. “They wanted maximum damage.”

“How did they find out the building was ours, though?” I asked. “We buried that purchase beneath layers and layers of security.”

“Do all the Archers know where it is?” Adrian asked.

I shook my head. “No. Me, my lieutenants, and their seconds, and that’s it. We kept it small for a reason.”

“Could someone have tracked you to the building? Like followed you there?” Dominic asked.

“Nothing’s impossible,” Izzy said, “but it’s very unlikely. There are no working traffic cameras in that area, and we rarely park in the alley. Someone could have followed us on foot, but it would have been easy to spot them on our cameras.”

“Can you double check?” I asked Liam. “And see if they were able to access anything?”

Liam nodded. “I have my laptop in the van. Jerome is going to store the van for us and drop my laptop off here in a few minutes.”

“You’re welcome to use my computer setup at SDS,” Sebastian offered. “I’ll help too.”