Keeper of the Bride. Tess Gerritsen

take it,” said Gillis. He rose heavily to his feet and went to the conference wall phone.

      Liddell was still focused on Sam. “So this is all that Portland’s finest can come up with? We wait for another bombing so that we can establish a pattern? And then maybe, just maybe, we’ll have an idea of what the hell we’re doing?”

      “A bombing, Mr. Liddell,” said Sam calmly, “is an act of cowardice. It’s violence in the absence of the perpetrator. I repeat the word—absence. We have no ID, no fingerprints, no witnesses to the planting, no—”

      “Chief,” cut in Gillis. He hung up the phone. “They’ve just reported another one.”

      “What?” said Coopersmith.

      Sam had already shot to his feet and was moving for the door.

      “What was it this time?” called Liddell. “Another warehouse?”

      “No,” said Gillis. “A church.”

      

      THE COPS ALREADY had the area cordoned off by the time Sam and Gillis arrived at the Good Shepherd Church. A crowd was gathered up and down the street. Three patrol cars, two fire trucks and an ambulance were parked haphazardly along Forest Avenue. The bomb disposal truck and its boiler-shaped carrier in the flatbed stood idly near the church’s front entrance—or what was left of the front entrance. The door had been blown clear off its hinges and had come to rest at the bottom of the front steps. Broken glass was everywhere. The wind scattered torn pages of hymn books like dead leaves along the sidewalk. Gillis swore. “This was a big one.”

      As they approached the police line, the officer in charge turned to them with a look of relief. “Navarro! Glad you could make it to the party.”

      “Any casualties?” asked Sam.

      “None, as far as we know. The church was unoccupied at the time. Pure luck. There was a wedding scheduled for two, but it was cancelled at the last minute.”

      “Whose wedding?”

      “Some doctor’s. The bride’s sitting over there in the patrol car. She and the minister witnessed the blast from the parking lot.”

      “I’ll talk to her later,” said Sam. “Don’t let her leave. Or the minister, either. I’m going to check the building for a second device.”

      “Better you than me.”

      Sam donned body armor, made of overlapping steel plates encased in nylon. He also carried a protective mask, to be worn in case a second bomb was identified. A bomb tech, similarly garbed, stood by the front door awaiting orders to enter the building. Gillis would wait outside near the truck; his role this time around was to fetch tools and get the bomb carrier ready.

      “Okay,” Sam said to the technician. “Let’s go.”

      They stepped through the gaping front entrance.

      The first thing Sam noticed was the smell—strong and faintly sweet. Dynamite, he thought. He recognized the odor of its aftermath. The force of the blast had caused the pews at the rear to topple backward. At the front, near the altar, the pews had been reduced to splinters. All the stained glass panels were broken, and where the windows faced south, hazy sunlight shone in through the empty frames.

      Without a word between them, Sam and the tech automatically split up and moved along opposite sides of the nave. The site would be more thoroughly searched later; this time around, their focus was only on locating any second bombs. The death of Marty Pickett still weighed heavily on Sam’s conscience, and he wasn’t about to let any other officers enter this building until he had cleared it.

      Moving in parallel, the two men paced the nave, their eyes alert for anything resembling an explosive device. All the debris made it a slow search. As they moved forward, the damage visibly worsened, and the odor of exploded dynamite grew stronger. Getting closer, he thought. The bomb was planted somewhere around here…

      In front of the altar, at a spot where the first row of pews would have stood, they found the crater. It was about three feet across and shallow; the blast had ripped through the carpet and pad, but had barely chipped the concrete slab below. A shallow crater was characteristic of a low-velocity blast—again, compatible with dynamite.

      They would take a closer look at it later. They continued their search. They finished with the nave and progressed to the hallways, the dressing rooms, the restrooms. No bombs. They went into the annex and surveyed the church offices, the meeting rooms, the Sunday school classroom. No bombs. They exited through a rear door and searched the entire outside wall. No bombs.

      Satisfied at last, Sam returned to the police line, where Gillis was waiting. There he took off the body armor. “Building’s clean,” Sam said. “We got the searchers assembled?”

      Gillis gestured to the six men waiting near the bomb carrier truck. There were two patrolmen and four crime lab techs, each one clutching empty evidence bags. “They’re just waiting for the word.”

      “Let’s get the photographer in there first, then send the team in. The crater’s up front, around the first row of pews on the right.”

      “Dynamite?”

      Sam nodded. “If I can trust my nose.” He turned and eyed the crowd of gawkers. “I’m going to talk to the witnesses. Where’s the minister?”

      “They just took him off to the ER. Chest pains. All that stress.”

      Sam gave an exasperated sigh. “Did anyone talk to him?”

      “Patrolman did. We have his statement.”

      “Okay,” said Sam. “I guess that leaves me with the bride.”

      “She’s still waiting in the patrol car. Her name’s Nina Cormier.”

      “Cormier. Gotcha.” Sam ducked under the yellow police line and worked his way through the gathering of onlookers. Scanning the official vehicles, he spotted a silhouette in the front passenger seat of one of the cars. The woman didn’t move as he approached; she was staring straight ahead like some wedding store mannequin. He leaned forward and tapped on the window.

      The woman turned. Wide dark eyes stared at him through the glass. Despite the smudged mascara, the softly rounded feminine face was undeniably pretty. Sam motioned to her to roll down the window. She complied.

      “Miss Cormier? I’m Detective Sam Navarro, Portland police.”

      “I want to go home,” she said. “I’ve talked to so many cops already. Please, can’t I just go home?”

      “First I have to ask you a few questions.”

      “A few?”

      “All right,” he admitted. “It’s more like a lot of questions.”

      She gave a sigh. Only then did he see the weariness in her face. “If I answer all your questions, Detective,” she said, “will you let me go home?”

      “I promise.”

      “Do you keep your promises?”

      He nodded soberly. “Always.”

      She looked down at her hands, clasped in her lap. “Right,” she muttered. “Men and their promises.”

      “Excuse me?”

      “Oh, never mind.”

      He circled around the car, opened the door, and slid in behind the wheel. The woman next to him said nothing; she just sat there in resigned silence. She seemed almost swallowed up by those frothy layers of white satin. Her hairdo was coming undone and silky strands of black hair hung loose about her shoulders. Not at all the happy picture of a bride, he thought. She seemed stunned, and very much alone.

      Where the hell was the groom?

      Stifling an instinctive rush of sympathy,