Free Dark Lava: Lei Crime Book 7 (Lei Crime Series) by Toby Neal

bottle back into the van. “No, we won’t wait. Let’s get the device out of the car and contained so the mall can reopen.”
    The two of them put their helmets back on and pushed the heavy containment safe across the parking lot. Lei was grateful for Torufu ’s brawn as they finally reached the car with the extremely heavy metal container. Working carefully, they opened the door and, careful not to jostle the missile, lowered it, wooden box and all, into the safe and closed the lid, latching it.
    “ This safe is rated to contain the equivalent of two hundred pounds of dynamite going off,” Torufu said. “I think we should be fine.”
    Several officers helped push the heavy safe up the ramp and clamp it down in the van. Lei drank another bottle of water, sitting in the driv er’s seat, as Torufu secured the container and finalized the plans to hand off the missile to the army.
    Lei checked her phone —Stevens had called but had not left a message. She’d get back to him when she could get out of the heavy gear and have a conversation.
    Torufu got in beside her. “ To the armory, stat. I can’t wait to get out of this gear.”
    “ You’re telling me. Turn up the AC,” Lei said, putting the van in gear. “Can’t say I enjoyed that.”
    Torufu frowned. “ That was about as easy as these calls get.”
    Le i said nothing, stewing in doubts and sweat in the bombproof suit.
     
     
    Stevens slid his phone back into his pocket. Lei still wasn ’t picking up. He sat on the top step of the building’s exterior staircase as personnel came and went from the room.
    Someone to uched his shoulder. “Mike.” It was Gerry Bunuelos, a crease between his brows as he looked at Stevens. “You’re covered with blood, man.”
    Stevens looked down at his hands —they were soaked. So were his shirt, his pants, and his shoes. A violent wave of nausea overcame him, and he turned to the side to vomit over the railing. Bunuelos patted his shoulder. “I need to get your statement. Let’s go to the station for that.”
    Stevens wiped his mouth on the shoulder of his shirt, hoping it was clean. “ Yeah.”
    “ Let’s go.”
    Stevens barely registered that Gerry put him in the back of the police cruiser for the short ride to the station, but he began to come out of the fog of shock when the crime-scene tech wouldn ’t let him wash. Instead, eyes flat and expression concealed behind a paper mask like he was diseased, she swabbed samples of blood off of the various areas on his body, pulled a hair sample and photographed him from all directions.
    He had to stop her to vomit again, into a nearby trash can, and he wasn ’t even surprised by then when she scooped a sample of that unspeakable muck into a plastic container.
    “ Change into these clothes,” she said, handing him a neatly folded stack of scrubs marked Maui Department of Corrections . “I need your clothing.”
    “ I didn’t do anything but try to administer first aid. And it was too late,” he said to the woman. Knowing it was useless. Knowing there was nothing he could say that would shortcut this horror—or end the horror that now lived in his memories. Knowing that this crime tech and her judgment of him was only the beginning.
    Finally, somewhat washed and changed, Stevens took his phone out of his pocket, removed his belt, his weapon, creds, wallet, and badge.
    “I need to process all of that,” the tech said, and with the numbness that had fallen over him, he watched her bag it all.
    He was obviously the prime suspect in his pregnant ex-wife ’s murder.
    Of course he was. He ’d think the same, arriving at the bloodbath of that room, seeing a man unresponsive with shock standing there, covered in blood.
    Gerry and Pono appeared together in the doorway. “ Do you want to call counsel or your union rep?” Pono asked, his bass voice serious.
    “ Yes, I believe I will,” Stevens said. The tech held his bloodstained phone while Stevens scrolled through