Veil of Civility: A Black Shuck Thriller (Declan McIver Series) by Ian Graham

her eyes with the shredded tissue. He waited a few moments for her to collect herself and then continued. "It was my understanding that your husband, Declan, is it?"
    Constance nodded.
    "It was my understanding that he was at the scene. Is that correct?"
    She nodded again and said, "Yes."
    "And were you with him?"
    She shook her head. "Only as far as the front gate. We left the university together and when we got to the residence we found the guard at the gate dead. He sent me to call for help because we couldn't get a signal on our cell phones."
    Castellano nodded. Just as they had planned, a signal jammer had been used to black out cell service for several hundred yards around the property to prevent anyone from calling for help. What they hadn't planned for was someone arriving at the property after Kafni and being able to leave to summon help. "So you weren't there when he was injured?"
    She shook her head and dabbed her eyes again with the tissue.
    "Why did the two of you leave the university and go to the Briton-Adams property?"
    "My husband was a friend of Dr. Kafni's. He worked security for him for a while. Declan helped get Dr. Kafni out of the building when—when it happened."
    There it was. The connection he'd been afraid of. An injured gardener or some kind of other domestic help that just happened to be on the property wouldn't be so bad. Maybe they'd just been in the wrong place at the wrong time, but a trained bodyguard? It was all but certain in his mind that Declan McIver had been directly involved in the scene at the mansion. But if that was the case then why had Ruslan Baktayev and his men left him alive? What did he know? Could he identify the men who'd killed Kafni? Castellano drew in another breath as the questions and potential answers ran through his mind.
    He'd been afraid that just such a mistake would happen and had tried to make sure Kafni was dead long before he ever reached the property. While Baktayev wouldn't have been happy about being unable to kill Kafni personally, as he had planned, he couldn't argue with the fact that he had been killed by a bomb originally intended only to evacuate the premises. Castellano wasn't in the business of making terrorists happy. He was in the business of making sure both he and David Kemiss were successful. Unknown to Baktayev, with the help of four hired guns, they had increased the size of the bomb in hopes of killing Kafni and had even placed the four men at the scene to ensure everything went as planned. Now, thanks to the apparent intervention of a former bodyguard nobody had known about, Baktayev's plan had gone forward and everything he and Kemiss had feared was now a fact of life.
    "You said he used to work security for Kafni, but he doesn't currently?"
    "No," Constance answered. "He worked for Dr. Kafni in the late nineties and for a short while after September 11th. It was before we met so I really don't know much about it. Tonight was the first time I'd met Dr. Kafni. We were supposed to meet him for dinner after the event had concluded. It's been several years since he and Declan have seen each other."
    Castellano nodded. "I see."
    "Agent Castellano, what happened?" Constance asked, becoming visibly upset.
    He didn't know what was going through her mind exactly, but after two decades of experience interviewing witnesses to various types of crime, he had a pretty good idea. Confusion mixed with moments of clarity was common.
    "Well," he said, "I don't know yet. That's what I'm trying to put together. We're only in the very early stages of our investigation."
    "Declan said there was a bomb in one of the security vehicles," she said, as she sucked in a loud breath and did her best to wipe away the tears falling from her eyes.
    "It was in one of the security vehicles?" Castellano asked, trying to sound surprised.
    "Yes. He said he saw the vehicle burning as we ran towards our car. He said it was one of the cars that belonged to the security