Terrorbyte (35 page)

“I'm asking. Shut everything down before these pricks get out: they'll either be back or set up operations in another country; that's more kids in danger.”

“Everyone is on standby. Go do what you need to do, let me handle this.”

I hung up. He didn't know.

Praskovya began searching the apartment for anything that might hint at the next move. He found a laptop cord still plugged into the wall, but the laptop was missing.

The chlorine irked me.

A piece of blue caught my eye.

“Misha!” I called. “Stop.”

He turned to look at me with his hand resting on a cupboard door handle.

“There is a problem?”

I pointed at his feet. He picked up a blue square of paper. He showed me. A Post-it note.

“Read it,” I instructed.

“It says, ‘It's been a blast.' Booby trap?”

With a sheepish smile he touched the cupboard door handle, then let his hand fall to his side. “In here?”

“Yes.”

I flipped open my phone and called the bomb squad, letting them know there could be a canister of weapons-grade chlorine somewhere. Then cleared the room.

On the way out I ran my eyes around every inch of the place. The rest of the apartment held nothing of interest. It was sparse. Nothing personal in it. No pictures, no reading material, no personal effects of any kind. I ducked into her bathroom. The cabinet was open and empty. Empty?

A woman with an empty bathroom cabinet?

Our Russian woman had an empty life. A controlled life.

All that control and care, yet she still ended up with a slit throat, lying next to a cop with a broken neck.  Despite what Praskovya had told me, I still felt there was much we didn't know and maybe would never know about Selena.

Then I remembered. “She has another apartment.”

Praskovya stiffened beside me. “Here?”

“Yeah, the kid said 7A. She called from this one but apparently lives in the other. I had them lock it down,” I replied.

“Probably rigged to explode. We leave now.”

As I stood there looking at the carnage in the empty apartment, it occurred to me that we were going to lose.

The country was too damn big to shut down before they could get out. We couldn't possibly close all the gaps in time. A photo; a name; but only one man. We had no idea who else was helping him. My gut said Hawk had a safe way out and was already gone.

Screwed sprang to mind.

Praskovya took my arm and escorted me through the door and outside. Everyone was outside, the entire building evacuated. The door guarded.

Paramedics still worked on Mac.

Why haven't they transported him yet?

I pushed Praskovya's hand off my arm and walked through the throng of police officers to the car. The crowd stood silently watching. I edged my way to Mac's side and knelt on the wet road. A paramedic turned to me and said, “We're trying to stabilize him for transport.”

I nodded. My cold fingers brushed Mac's hair off his face. His eyes flickered but didn't open. I wiped away foamy blood from his lips.

“You saved the kid. Now fight, damn you,” I hissed into his ear. Blood came from so many places on his torso I couldn't pinpoint the worst injury. So I opted for words of encouragement. “It's a flesh wound. Fight, dammit.”

I watched his face, his closed eyes, waiting, hoping and desperately wanting him to do something that meant he knew I was there.

“He needs to be in hospital, now!” I said to the nearest paramedic. “Has he spoken?”

“Are you Ellie?” the man replied, signaling to another paramedic for something.

“Yes.”

“He loves you.”

I leaned over Mac and kissed him. Tasting only blood. His eyes flickered, his mouth moved. I stayed close. He whispered or tried to. His mouth moved and I read the words. “I'm okay.”

“That's my line. Get your own …” I replied, squeezing his hand. He didn't squeeze back. His fingers never reacted.

Lee crouched beside me. I recognized his cologne without having to look. His hand covered mine and Mac's.

“They're taking him now, Chicky. Let him go. You and me, we'll follow.”

I don't remember standing up, or getting into a police car. Not my car. My car was full of blood and glass. I knew Lee was next to me; I knew Praskovya was in the front; I knew we had a police officer driving.

There were sirens, lights. Lee spoke on his cell phone several times. I didn't listen. It all happened outside my bubble.

Outside my bubble the harsh reality of life was hitting everyone we loved and rippling through the FBI and other law enforcement agencies. The ill-fated case that saw Special Agent Sam Jackson stabbed,  children and parents traumatized – their lives changed forever – and Special Agent Mac Connelly in critical condition, would be ripped apart and glued back together as we all searched for answers. We'd saved six kids and that wasn't enough. Okay, seven, I added Carla to the total in my head.

My bubble opened enough to let a question glide free. “Lee, who was that kid? The sixth one?”

“Her name is Lily Dean,” he replied. His voice sounded strange. Gone was the deep smooth tone I was used to, replaced instead by misery and distress. The materialization of pain twisted his expression as he struggled to talk. “Caine's en route to the family home now. He believes Lily was the first child taken. She's in the worst physical condition.”

The soothing cold walls of my bubble closed. Lee's voice faded away.

Inside my little world everything felt unforgiving and empty.

“What did it feel like?” She didn't make eye contact as she spoke. Her fingers traced the seam of her jeans. I sank back into the chair opposite. A small coffee table sat between us, with a box of tissues and last week's Time magazine featuring an article about Internet safety and sexual predators.

“Which bit?” My mind was running a video clip of that day. How do I explain how it felt without feeling all over again? Simple answer: don't.

Her eyes flicked up to mine as she said, “When they told you about your husband. How did you feel?”

“What about him?”

“That he was wounded, let's start with that.”

“They didn't tell me anything. I saw him lying on the road.”

The psychologist coughed lightly, reminding me she'd asked a question.

I looked her straight in the eyes and replied, “I didn't feel anything.”

Her gaze held. Tears prickled in the backs of my eyes. I didn't want to go over this, not ever. A lump formed in my throat; it hurt to swallow.

She pushed forward. “What did you do?”

“I carried on. I was at a crime scene and ready to interview a suspect before the Unsub got to her too.”

“You carried on?”

“Yes.”

“Didn't that feel unusual to you?”

“No, it didn't.” I sensed her frustration at my answers. For some perverse reason it gave me satisfaction knowing she had to work for every word I uttered.

“What happened next?”

“I told you. I went back to work.”

“Right away?”

My eyes wanted to roll skyward but didn't. My voice even remained level, “We were trying to stop a child trafficking ring that operated at least one terror cell. I went back to work.”

“Couldn't someone else have taken your place?”

“I was the Supervising Special Agent; it was my case.” And then what was I supposed to do – sit around uselessly? Get in the way as paramedics tried to save his life? Hold his hand and pretend he was going to be okay? I did that. I did that later.

I had glimpsed him as they worked on him. I pulled up the scene of carnage and mayhem and played it in my mind. No, I really didn't see much of him then, just blood and wounds. A bloodied torn body was what I saw but it didn't feel like my Mac.

A large internal sigh vibrated around my rib cage; I shut my mouth – tight – to stop it escaping and counted to five slowly. She had no idea what it was like being a field agent.

How could she possibly understand that no one had time to assimilate what had happened until much later? My turn to ask the silly questions.

“Do you know what we do?”

“I think so.”

She had no clue. We do the things no one else wants to do. We choose to do those things. She picked up her pen and wrote something on her steno pad. Probably how uncooperative I was being. She looked at me again, words forming. I could almost see them. I waited.

“When did you get to see him?”

“After I'd determined the woman I wanted for questioning and a police officer were dead and that the possibility of a bomb was high. I also attempted to get the borders closed. So it was at least twenty minutes later.” I managed to remain emotionless while retelling the sequence of events.

Her pen tapped on the arm of the chair as she studied me for a few minutes.

I knew what was coming.

“Why are you here?”

“Because I have to be.”

“You don't think I can help, do you?”

“No one can help.”

I looked at the carpet under my feet. That Sunday replayed for me in the pattern on the carpet. Lee and Caine emerged from a doorway at the end of the hall. Behind them I saw a surgeon. They both stopped and spoke to him. Then to each other. Caine and the surgeon hung back. It was Lee who walked towards me. A noise behind me made me turn. And I saw Sam. He was walking slowly, but he was walking. Sam stepped up beside me. There were no words that needed to be said. He stood so close I could feel the air pressure change as he breathed. We waited for Lee to deliver the news. Lee told me what I already knew.

We stood, the three of us, with our heads bowed, arms around each other in a tight circle. The three musketeers. Praskovya appeared. Lee and Sam dropped their arms, shuffling followed as Praskovya joined the circle. Shoulder to shoulder we stood alone in our silence. Caine came over; he tapped my shoulder. I moved my arm down and let him in.

There were no words to be said, and no words I wanted to hear.

And I still didn't want to hear whatever it was everyone wanted to tell me.

The psychologist coughed. My vision faded back into the floor.

“Why do you say no one can help?” she repeated.

“I can't see how anyone can help.”

She uncrossed her legs then crossed them again. It seemed like a pointless act.

“Why do you say that?”

I took a breath and stilled my inner grumblings. “Because it's true.”

“How do you know if you don't let me try?” She wrote something else. Curiosity got the better of me. I read her notes upside down.

“You've made a spelling mistake.”

She glanced from the page to me, “I have?”

“Third line, the word uncommunicative, you have two n's.”

She checked the word and smiled. “Thank you.”

“You're welcome.”

In different circumstances, I could quite like her. I guessed her age to be close to mine, which would put her in her early thirties. Her accent suggested she was from the south, maybe Georgia. She was giving off vibes that indicated she hadn't been in Washington long.

“Why do you feel I can't help you?”

Oh, we're back to that again.

“Because no one can help. It's nothing personal. It's just how it is.”

“Why?”

“He's dead.”

I looked at the carpet under my feet wishing what I saw would evaporate before it cemented as a real memory.

“I can help if you'll let me.”

I pushed the encroaching scene aside and smiled at her. She was working so hard and getting nowhere.

“You can't help,” I replied, with gentle firmness.

“You won't let me try?”

“He was murdered, nothing can change that,” I said.

“I can help you feel better.”

I took a moment before responding, “Can you bring him back?”

She shook her head.

“Well, then, what I need is inside me and it will take time to work through. Talking to some fresh-out-of-med-school shrink who thinks she can cure the world is not going to help me.”

I could tell right away that I had offended her. She stiffened and planted both feet on the floor.

“I'm sorry you feel that way. I am only trying to help.”

“And I am only here because I have to be,” I said, letting my tone convey a small apology.

She relaxed again, crossing her ankles. “What is it you do now?”

My eyes sought the clock on the wall behind her. Time was almost up; any minute now a buzzer would sound and I would be safe.

“I'm with the Director's office.”

“Do you enjoy it?”

“Yes and no. I prefer fieldwork. I was …” I made the correction, “… I am a Supervising Special Agent with Special Criminal Investigations, Delta team. The Director's office is temporary.”

She smiled. I realized I was smiling.

I steadied myself ready for the buzzer. As soon as it sounded, I rose to my feet. I had a feeling that as soon as I left she would look up Delta to find out what we did and try to understand what drove us to do such a physically and mentally challenging job.

“Would you like to come back?”

“No.” I had now fulfilled my division-required visit. “It's nothing personal. I think you and I could probably be friends. I'd just prefer not to talk to a shrink.”

Something changed. I felt different, lighter somehow; it made no sense to me at all but that's how I felt. The whole time I'd struggled with his death I'd had the answer and just never knew how to verbalize it. I could feel a smile on my lips.

She interrupted my introspection and asked, “Would you like to get a coffee sometime?”

I nodded. “I would like that.”

She smiled. “Me too. I'm new to the area and so far have only met nuts.”