The Abandoned Chase by Daniels Cap

Author:Daniels, Cap [Daniels, Cap]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Anchor Watch Publishing, L.L.C.
Published: 2022-12-25T23:00:00+00:00

Chapter 18

I Guess They Know

Armed to the teeth, we sprinted up and down the riverbank in search of anything that might give us an idea of who we were dealing with. If they blew up the boathouse, they could’ve just as easily blown up the main house with all of us inside. Obviously, they wanted to make a point without piling up bodies. A rational man would’ve found comfort in that fact, but I did not. I wanted an enemy who’d come out and fight like a man—not one who was as calculated and devious as we were. I’ve never shied away from a fight, but chasing down a smart, plotting, well-trained opponent like us often meant walking into a trap, and I’d walked into far more traps than I wanted in the previous forty-eight hours of my life.

Thinking logically in the minutes following the explosive destruction of a beautiful boathouse and a couple million dollars’ worth of vessels wasn’t something my brain was prepared to do. As if the whole event had occurred in a vacuum, I didn’t think about anyone else hearing or seeing the explosion. That was, of course, ludicrous, and a whole flock of emergency vehicles poured onto Bonaventure from every direction. Firetrucks plowed across the lawn as if it were a superhighway, and blue lights flashed atop every St. Marys police car on duty that afternoon. I wasn’t prepared to answer questions, but from the looks of things, I wouldn’t be given the option to say “no comment.”

The first question surprised me, and it came from a fireman wearing captain’s rank on his jacket and helmet. “Sir, do you want us to fight the fire or let it burn?”

I turned away from the scalding heat of the fire. “Keep that pile in the middle of the yard wet. There’s a three-hundred-year-old cannon under that rubble, and I’d like to protect it.”

The captain nodded. “How about what I assume was a boathouse?”

“Let it burn.”

“Was there anyone inside the structure when the fire started?”

My initial reaction was a confident no, but honesty required that I say, “I don’t know for sure, but no one was in there with my permission when it went up.”

The captain pulled a handheld radio to his lips. “Possible victims inside the structure. Cool it off and get in there.”

I laid a hand on his forearm. “I said I don’t think anyone was in there.”

He pulled off his helmet. “If you don’t know, we have to assume the worst, sir.”

“But no one could’ve survived the explosion.”

“Explosion?”

I held up a hand to shield against the heat. “Yeah. We were in the house when the explosion shook the whole world.”

He placed his helmet back on his head and frowned. “How much gas was in the boathouse?”

“There was no gas, but there may have been as much as a couple hundred gallons of diesel fuel.”

As if his helmet were more burden than protection, he fidgeted with it until it was resting on the back of his head with the shield pointing skyward.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.