She focused on Kate again, her eyes moving slowly over her. “Well, let’s have a good day and hope that there is no more drama.”
Kate watched the woman as she walked away, a clear look of dislike on her face. It reminded me of the many times I’d seen that look on her face after a teacher reprimanded her for some slight in class.
“Drama?” she muttered. “Someone died and she calls it drama.”
I rapped my knuckles on her desk to get her attention. “I’ll be around.”
“You’re leaving?”
“I’m not going far. But you’re safe here.”
“How can you be sure? After all, this is where it all happened.”
I turned, located a security camera on the wall directly across from her desk that was looking right at her. “See that?”
“Yeah?”
“David hacked the bank’s security system and he’s watching you right now.” I pulled my phone out of my pocket and pulled up the app that was connected to David’s program. It had a green, all clear banner prominent across the top. “If anything appears out of the normal, he’ll notify me and I’ll be here in seconds.”
She glanced toward the front of the bank. I could almost read her thoughts. The front was all glass, and she was only ten or fifteen feet from it. What if someone made an attempt on her from out there? She was practically sitting in a fish bowl, vulnerable to just about anything.
I moved behind her and leaned close so that I was speaking directly into her ear where no one else could hear.
“Whoever killed the security guard picked late at night most likely because of the reduced chance of being seen. A perpetrator like that would not make an attempt on you in broad daylight where anyone and his dog might see him.”
She nodded, but I could still feel the tension rolling off of her. I laid my hand on her shoulder and squeezed lightly.
“I wouldn’t leave if I didn’t think you were safe.”
She nodded again, but her eyes flicked to that wall of glass again. I didn’t know what else to do to set her mind at ease, so instead of walking the perimeter as I had planned to do, I took a seat in the lobby for the time being. I watched her for hours, waiting for the scared glances and the tension to stop. And, slowly, as she got into her work and long conversations with the people who came in to ask for loans, they did stop. I chose a moment when she was preoccupied to get up and slip out the front door.
The bank sat on a busy street with businesses on either side of it. There was a narrow alley on one side and the wider alley where employees parked their car on the other. Customers were required to park out back where there was a large lot that supplied all five business on this block. I walked around, noting the placement of the security cameras. There were multiple cameras on the outside of the building that should have caught any activity that took place late Monday night. But, as Ash had said, there were no security cameras outside the closed bakery where the actual shooting appeared to have taken place.
No cameras meant no real evidence of what had happened.
I walked back to the employee parking area where Kate’s car still sat. I walked around it, looking for anything that seemed out of the ordinary. Everything seemed fine at first glance. But then I began to notice little things.
There was loose gravel on the asphalt that was thicker along the area that came right up against the building. But where Kate’s car was parked, these rocks looked like they’d been brushed aside, as though someone pushed them out of the way so that they could kneel comfortably there. Could have been the cops. But something told me it wasn’t.
And then there were tool marks on the bumper. There were still metal shavings there, so they were clearly new.
And when I knelt, in the same place where the rocks had been brushed aside, I could see that someone had loosened a couple of bolts that held the bumper in place.
I knew that my experience always made my head jump to what was obvious to me—that someone was setting an explosive on the car. But that was my military training. That was my expertise. It didn’t necessarily apply here. But it was clear someone had been messing with Kate’s car recently.
I tugged my phone out of my pocket and placed a call.
“Can you meet me at the First Premiere Bank in Santa Monica?”
***
Emily Warren was younger than most people might expect. At thirty-three, she already held the rank of lieutenant. Of average height and build, her curves hidden under a man’s suit jacket that was required to hide her shoulder holster, she could have been just any woman in the business world, running off to make sure the boss has his coffee on time. But, in truth, she would probably shoot the boss rather than run to get him coffee.
“Donovan,” she said as she approached me in the alley. “Haven’t heard from you in a while.”