Save Your Breath (Morgan Dane #6) - Melinda Leigh Page 0,61

Sharp moved toward the first doorway.

Stella called him back. “No. We’ll wait outside for backup. There’s a unit on the way. ETA is eight minutes. This place is too big for us to clear on our own.”

Sharp hesitated.

“Sharp,” Stella warned in a firm voice, “we don’t know if whoever did this is still here or not. You can’t find Olivia if you’re dead.”

“All right.” Sharp didn’t like waiting, but Stella was right.

They backed out of the building and waited next to the car.

Sharp knew she was right, but the time seemed to tick by in slow motion. He paced. There were no sounds coming from the barn or either house.

The house!

“Hold on.” Sharp spun and ran up toward the main house.

“Sharp!” Stella yelled. “Get back here.”

He heard her boots hitting the dry ground behind him.

Sharp reached the back of the house. The bulkhead doors stood open, and the chain that had secured them lay on the ground. Several links were severed. Sharp opened the flashlight app on his phone again.

Stella caught up, breathing hard. “We can’t go down there.”

“You’re right,” he said.

Stella had procedure to follow.

Sharp shone his light on the steps and started down. “We can’t, but I can.”

He descended, leading with his gun. He swept his light around the space. Footprints covered the concrete, lots of them, and scrape marks showed where something heavy had been dragged. He followed the same path he and Lance had used earlier that morning.

Even before he got to the area where the trunks had been stored, he knew. The room was empty. Four clean rectangles on the concrete marked the spaces where the trunks had sat.

Disappointment crushed Sharp.

“The guns are gone,” Sharp said to Stella as he returned to the stairwell from the back of the basement.

On the way up the stairs, Sharp checked the time on his phone. Five o’clock. He opened a text from Lance and read the message. “Holy shit.”

“What’s wrong?” Stella asked.

“Someone left a bomb at the office.”

Stella stared at him.

“Everyone is OK,” he said quickly. “It detonated but only did minor damage to the porch.”

Stella’s eyes turned back toward the barn. “None of this makes sense.”

Sharp agreed.

“But is this connected to Olivia’s disappearance?” Stella asked. “Did she discover something about the guns in the basement?”

Every lead they followed generated far more questions than answers. Mr. Olander had been murdered. The Olanders had been into something dangerous. They were no closer to finding Olivia, and now someone had tried to blow up his office.

“Did Olivia stumble onto an illegal arms deal?” Sharp asked.

The thought of Olivia in the hands of an arms dealer gave Sharp a pain behind his sternum. He bet Mr. Olander had been executed. If Olivia had been abducted by the same person or people and they considered her a threat, would they have any reason to keep her alive?

Chapter Twenty-Three

Lance stood in Morgan’s office, staring at the whiteboard, when he heard the back door open and close. He glanced at the doorway. A moment later, Sharp appeared. His face looked leaner, and the bags under his eyes were more pronounced than they’d been that morning. Of course, none of them had slept much the night before, and it was nearly four o’clock in the morning.

“Where’s Morgan?” Sharp walked into the room and stood next to Lance, his tired eyes on the board.

“Asleep on the couch in your office.” Lance had taken a nap earlier, but he was sure he didn’t look fresh either.

“You’re back.” Morgan entered her office and beelined for the coffee maker on the credenza behind her desk. She was barefoot. Her skirt was rumpled and her blouse untucked. On the way past the men, she stopped and rested a hand on Sharp’s shoulder. “Are you all right?”

“Honestly, no.” Sharp shook his head. “And I’m not going to be until we find Olivia. But I don’t know what else to do except keep looking for her.”

Morgan gave his shoulder a squeeze. “And that’s exactly what we’re going to do.”

Realistically, they couldn’t maintain the pace at which they were working for much longer. Mental function declined drastically with sleep deprivation. Naps would hold them for only a couple of days. But when would Sharp agree to back off? It was Sunday. Olivia had been missing for two days.

Morgan checked her phone as she brewed a cup of coffee. “Olivia’s agent left me a return message while I was asleep. She’s available this morning.”

Sharp perched on the corner of Morgan’s desk. The exhaustion in