Chapter Nine

Link

Damn it!

He was going to skin himself an Eagle if the guy continued pushing his buttons.

Snatching up an empty cup at the morning buffet, he filled it with black coffee and stood sipping it.

“You good?” Creed asked, coming to stand next to him with his own coffee in hand.

“Yeah.”

Link avoided Creed’s searching gaze. He still had Eagle’s bare ass burned in his brain. And as irrational as it sounded, it bothered the hell out of him that Eagle had slept naked. His eyes had immediately gone to the tattoo—simple links of a metal chain—etched around Eagle’s muscular bicep. Link rubbed at his own left shoulder and the eagle tattoo there beneath his shirt. They’d got the tattoos years ago on a drunken bender during a weekend leave.

He gnashed his teeth and took another swallow of coffee before he answered.

“Did you do what you planned?”

No, he hadn’t told Eagle about his father. He had planned on it, but the motel room had been too fucking crowded.

“No,” he clipped out.

“Why not?”

“Because I’m still pissed at him.”

“For what, not understanding your reasoning?” Creed drawled.

“It wasn’t the right time.” Link flashed Creed an annoyed look. He was almost sorry he’d shared with Creed, although he shouldn’t really be surprised Creed had noticed something was wrong; the man was by nature quiet and observant.

So yeah, in a weak moment a few days ago when he was feeling depressed and couldn’t get Eagle off his mind, he’d shared with Creed.

Now that he thought further, on a job probably hadn’t been the best time to bring up what had happened. Nevertheless, he’d told Creed why he’d moved out of Eagle’s aunt’s house in a fit of anger, and he’d also shared a few more things. It wasn’t like he and Eagle didn’t still have to work together, see each other at the Pegasus bunker, and work together on some of the same missions.

He’d tried for the sake of keeping the peace, but it sucked that every time he called a truce, something came up between them that skyrocketed the tension.

His own childhood had been filled with tension so thick it had given him an ulcer at an early age. He hated the constant source of stress in his work life.

Forty-five minutes later, they pulled up to the bombing site to find Detective Wall standing with two people in the lot near the building. Parking, Link left the vehicle and, along with his men, headed toward the group.

“I’m telling you, I don’t know who did this!” an older man said with a raised voice. The guy was big, but not very tall, and had dark hair and a sweaty face. Or maybe that was the drizzling rain.

Link would bet money the nervous wiping of a handkerchief on the man’s brow was a habit. A young man stood next to the guy, wearing baggy pants and a t-shirt, with his hair hanging in his face and blue sneakers on his feet.

Detective Wall gave Link a quick nod and a relieved look before gesturing to the men.

“This is the owner, Mr. Richards, and his son Kenneth,” Wall told Link when they reached the group.

“I’m Agent Beckett. Can you tell me what happened?”

“Someone blew up my restaurant,” Richards snapped.

“Do you have any idea of who they might be?” Link squinted.

“No! And now they bombed me!”

“Who are they?”

“I told you, I don’t know,” the older man said angrily, glancing away.

Kenneth rolled his eyes skyward at his father’s snappy answers.

Link released an irritated breath, but kept his face blank. He wasn’t getting anywhere with Richards so he might as well cut the man loose. He could always question the guy in the future.

“Okay, Mr. Richards, leave your number with Detective Wall and we’ll be in touch,” Link said.

“Wait,” Wall told Mr. Richards and waved at a nearby cop. “I have something that belongs to you.”

The cop reached into the detective’s car and pulled out the dark-colored pup, then walked over and held the dog out to Mr. Richards.

The owner turned on his son. “I told you to get rid of that rat last week!”

“I did, but it keeps coming back,” Kenneth said, shaking his head when the cop tried to hand the younger man the pup.

Link watched the exchange with narrowed eyes.

“Take it to the pound,” Mr. Richards snapped.

“I’ll take it.”

The quiet voice had everyone, even Link, turning that way. Ice walked toward the cop and plucked the pup out of the man’s arms.

“Hey,” Mr. Richards started. “We might be selling it.”

Ice turned his head and stared at the older man until the guy swallowed and glanced away. “Whatever.”

Link wanted to knock the fucker into next week and he was sure it showed in his face and voice. “Detective? Get them out of my crime scene.” Link didn’t wait for an answer, jerking his head at his men.

Without hesitation, all of them entered the blown-out building behind Link.

“You think the owner’s lying about what’s going on?” Eagle asked.

“Maybe.” Link sighed and pulled on a pair of crime scene gloves.

Ice stood in the center of the room with the puppy and then placed him on the floor. Crouching next to the animal, Ice lifted a piece of charred wood and held it out. The pup sniffed with a happy wag of its tail. Ice removed something that looked like a treat and said something too low for Link to hear as he gave it to the dog. When Ice stood and advanced through the blown-out crime scene, the puppy was right on the heel of his boots.

For the next few hours, they combed through the wreckage for any and all evidence that might have been missed by CSI.

After a while, the smell of soot, burned rubber, and singed overheated metal drove Link out of the deeper parts of the building for fresh air. He noticed that the others hadn’t been outside in some time.

“Let’s gather at the front,” Link ordered.

Nobody argued and they stepped outside, gathering around him. The pup tripped and rolled before jumping up and sitting on Ice’s boots.

“Excuse me,” a voice said from behind them.

“Yes?” Link turned to meet the eyes of the restaurant owner’s son. They were supposed to have left the premises.

“I know who did this,” Kenneth said.

“Who?”

“The Carson kids.”

“Do you know their first names?” Link asked.

“John and Terry…no wait, it’s Tyler.”

“Do you have any idea why they would bomb your dad’s place?”

The guy rubbed at his mouth and shook his head.

“Why didn’t your dad want to tell us their names?”

“I don’t know.”

Link studied Kenneth for a moment and turned to Jordan. “Find me everything you can on John and Tyler Carson.”

“You got it,” Jordan said, making his way toward one of the SUVs.

“Thank you,” Link told Kenneth. “Go with Jordan and give him a number where we can contact you if we have more questions.”

The young man nodded and hurried after Jordan.

Link turned back to the team. “The good news is that we have a name. The bad news is that we still don’t know what’s going on.”

“So, the restaurant owner definitely knows more than he’s saying,” Eagle said, and Link agreed.

“Ice and I will start with examining the bomb fragments CSI collected,” Owen suggested. “We might be able to trace where some of those parts were purchased.”

Detective Wall had made the evidence accessible to them so that sounded like the best place to start, but all the evidence was down at the station.

“If we could get an address of where those parts were delivered, we could potentially pinpoint the buyers,” Creed added.

“You think there’s enough frags?” Link asked Owen, including Ice.

“There’s always something left. We can try, at least,” Ice said with a nod.

“Go, give the crime scene unit a call,” Link said, and Owen, Ice, and Creed went back inside, followed by the puppy.

“Wait!” Link called out, and they all turned.

“What kind of dog is it?” Link asked Ice.

“It’s a chocolate lab,” Ice said, glancing down at the dark brown pup.

“What are you going to call him?” Link asked.

“Grit.”

Link smirked. “Cool.” The three men entered the building and Link turned to Eagle. The chances of finding the manufacturer of the frags was slim, but they had to exhaust all leads.

He found the man strangely quiet, and Link didn’t like it. “Thoughts?”

“It’s too soon,” Eagle said, and carefully started walking through the crime scene. Link gritted his teeth and followed after the big man’s form. It irritated the hell out of him when Eagle turned his back. It went deeper than walking away from him at a crime scene; it brought up the last time Eagle had walked away.

“Boss?” Owen’s voice came over the comms and Link pressed the unit in his ear.

“Go ahead.”

“I called the station’s lab tech and had him check. The mechanism has tracer elements embedded into it. We can trace those back to the manufacturer.”

“You and Ice get to the station and work with the tech,” Link said.

“We’re on it.”

That would make their job a whole hell of a lot easier and maybe, just maybe, they could get enough information to catch the killers.

“Agent?” Kenneth was once again at the door. “I remembered something else.”

Link walked with Eagle and with a gesturing hand, Link motioned Kenneth back outside. The fumes in the place weren’t good. Creed walked over to join them.

“Go ahead,” Link told the young man.

“Last week, we had a group of people protesting outside the restaurant,” Kenneth said.

“What were they protesting?”

“They had signs that said go home, you don’t belong here and that kind of thing.”

Link frowned. “Why would they have signs like that outside of an eatery?”

“We belong to and attend services at the local mosque.”

“Were the Carson kids part of the protesters?”

“I don’t know,” the owner’s son said.

“Okay, Kenneth, thank you. We’ll be in touch.” Link turned to Creed after Kenneth walked away. “Look up any active hate groups in the area.”

Creed nodded and disappeared inside the XL SUV where Jordan was currently running a search on other data.

“Boss?” Jordan’s voice came over the comms.

Link pressed his earpiece. “What do you have, Jordan?”

“Brothers Tyler, John, and Cliff Carson. Ages fifteen, eighteen, and twenty-two. Photos on your phones. All three have records. John and Cliff for breaking and entering, and Tyler for petty theft. Their address is not too far from here.” Jordan rattled off the house number and street. “Parents deceased. Mother died from cancer and last year, the father crashed his car into a tree.”

Link, with his finger still to his ear, said, “Creed, you need help locating hate groups?”

“No. I found one close. It’s a local group that has an office a few miles east of here,” Creed said.

“An office?” Jordan huffed.

“Okay, Jordan and Creed, check out that group. Owen, let me know the minute you find anything.”

“I’ll let you know the second I do,” Owen said.

“Okay, Eagle, you’re with me,” Link said, ignoring the man’s surprised look.

“I can stay here and pick through the wreckage,” Eagle said.

Link clenched his teeth and scowled. No way in hell was he letting Eagle out of his sight.

“It’s not up for debate. Let’s move.”

He spun and stalked away from the building, not giving Eagle a chance to disagree.