Page 75 of The 9th Man

“Was he a secretive man?” Jillian asked.

“He was the king of secrets. He worked for the FBI into his fifties, until their mandatory retirement age. After Nana died, he was elected here to the local police jury. One of five commissioners who govern the parish. He served for nearly thirty years and took care of a lot of people. Ray was Cameron Parish’s goodfather, like the godfather, selfless down to his bones. There wasn’t an ounce of malice in the man. But deep down he was troubled.”

Obviously.

“He drank a little too much too,” Sue said. “Especially these past ten years. Looking back on it, I should have gotten him help. An empty bourbon bottle was found beside his body. Some fortification, I assume.”

“How old was Ray?” Julian asked.

“Ninety-four when he pulled the trigger.”

The dog lay still on the floor, resting.

“Did he have a safe?” Jillian asked. “Or a special hiding place?”

A good question.

“He had a safe. It’s upstairs, but I don’t have the combination. I was going to get it opened.”

“With a locksmith?” Jillian asked.

Sue shook her head. “Not exactly.”

32

LUKE WASN’T A FAN OF EXPLOSIVES, HAVING DEALT WITH HIS FAIRshare of IEDs in Afghanistan. But getting into Ray Simmons’s safe was crucial. Blowing things up, Sue explained, had been a childhood hobby. In the navy, she’d risen to an Explosive Ordnance Disposal Technician, Petty Officer 2nd Class before she cycled out after six years. He knew all about EOD techs, considered part of special ops. Not SEALs. Next tier down. But they worked closely together. Training after boot camp started with open-water diving school, followed by explosives and weapons training, then parachute jumps. Nothing about that job for the faint at heart.

Only the best of the best.

She’d continued the interest after her discharge. With Ray’s permission, she’d moved all of her supplies to a shed at the back corner of the property where she liked to tinker, far enough away that any accidents would not take out the main house.

“I wouldn’t have pegged you for explosives,” Luke said, as Sue led them to the shed.

They were toting Ray’s two-hundred-pound safe among the three of them.

“It’s not so much the blowing things up I like. It’s the chemistry. That’s my degree from LSU. I like the precision of the work. It’s satisfying to get a charge exactly right, so it does what you want it to. That’s what I do. I work for construction companies handling demolitions.”

When they were fifty feet from the shed Sue said, “This’ll work, let’s put it down here.”

They deposited the safe onto the grass. Darkness had arrived and they were working without the benefit of much light. With Crusoe sniffing along, Sue spent several minutes examining the safe’s exterior, peering at the hinges, the combination keypad, and all six sides. A flashlight provided illumination. She tapped the black steel here and there before rising to her feet. “I’ve got some homemade plastique that—”

“As in C-4?” Jillian said.

“My version of it. I tweaked the chemical combination a bit. It packs less of a punch, but it’s much more malleable. Great for when you prefer your explosions gentler and kinder.”

“What do you do with the stuff?”

“It’s great for scaring away the gators.”

Sue disappeared into the shed and reemerged with three pencil-sized strips of homemade plastique and three detonators that looked like pop-up turkey thermometers. Luke held the flashlight while she tucked one charge each around the safe’s hinges and the third into the seam around the locking mechanism.

Finally, she inserted the detonators.

“This should be enough to get the job done. We’ll have sixty seconds. Walk, don’t run, away. You don’t want to stumble and fall in the dark. You ready?”

He and Jillian nodded.

“Here we go.”