Yes, that’s right. She knew that.
She’d worked for a pet shop in a local mall her senior year of high school.
He was close enough now that Rebecca could hear his frantic sputters into his handheld walkie-talkie.
“It’s bad. It’s really bad,” he said. He looked young. Probably not much older than Rebecca. “I don’t see anyone else with red backpacks.”
Even through the shock, it sent a chill through Rebecca.
The backpacks.
She tried to stand, tried to twist around and look toward the direction where she had last seen Chad.
No Chad. Not even a wounded Chad stumbling around like her.
All Rebecca could see was a scorched wall. Smoke. Bits and pieces. A pile that looked like a heap of smoldering black garbage.
Chad?
She felt dizzy. Her throat tightened. The nausea threatened to gag her.
No, she wouldn’t think about it. She couldn’t think about it.
Rebecca looked in the other direction. Standing now, gripping the handrail with white knuckles and wobbling to her feet. She could see a black hole where the women’s restroom used to be. The restroom where she had left Dixon’s backpack, hanging on the door of the first stall. The backpack that she was supposed to be carrying.
Oh God. That’s what exploded. The backpacks.
She slid back to her knees, the realization hitting her hard as she eased herself onto the floor. There was something sticky underneath her. She didn’t even care. How close had she come to becoming a smoldering pile of garbage?
Somewhere from inside her coat she could hear the theme to Batman, and amidst the stampeding feet and the moans surrounding her, the music seemed not at all surprising. In this bizarre version of reality the theme to Batman seemed to fit in perfectly.
Chapter
6
Newburgh Heights, Virginia
This wasn’t at all the day Maggie O’Dell had planned.
R.J. Tully turned on the TV in Maggie’s great room but instead of listening to ESPN’s pregame predictions Maggie could hear bits of news as her partner flipped from one cable news channel to another.
“There’s nothing yet,” Tully reported to the others all gathered around the counter that separated the kitchen from the great room.
“A.D. Kunze said it just happened,” Maggie told them. “Local police haven’t arrived at the scene yet.”
“Then how does he already know it was a terrorist attack?” Benjamin Platt asked.
“He doesn’t, but the governor’s a personal friend.” Maggie tried to relay what her new boss had just told her—which wasn’t much—while she jotted down a list of what she needed to pack.
“So he calls in the FBI?” Julia Racine joined in.
Maggie shrugged. The nice thing about having friends who were colleagues was they understood better than anyone else what the job entailed. The bad thing about having friends who were colleagues was that they couldn’t shut off being colleagues.
“They think there were at least two explosions inside the mall,” Maggie said. “Possibly three. They believe there may be more targets.”
“But why send you?” Gwen didn’t bother to hide her irritation. “You’re a profiler, for God’s sake, not a bomb specialist.”
“They’ll need to draw up a profile immediately, so they know who to start looking for,” Tully said, remote in his hand, still pointing it at the TV from across the room. Still flipping channels though he had the TV on MUTE now. “They’ve got to put pieces together as soon as possible before any eyewitnesses start second-guessing what they saw or heard.”
Maggie glanced at Tully, looking for signs that he might be disappointed he wouldn’t be going along. They had been a team before budget cuts and before his suspension. Paid suspension. It was protocol anytime an agent used deadly force. Less than two months ago Tully had shot dead a man he had once considered a friend. The agency would find it justified. Maggie knew Tully would, too…eventually. Just not yet.
“Okay, so Kunze needs a profiler on the scene. That doesn’t answer why it has to be Maggie.” Gwen fidgeted with the knife that had recently been chopping vegetables. Maggie watched her friend stab the knife’s tip into the wooden cutting board, then pull it out and stab it again like a person tapping a pen out of nervous energy. “Are you sure you should even be flying?”
This made Maggie smile. There was a fifteen-year age difference between the two women and sometimes Gwen found it difficult to hide her maternal instinct. Although it made Maggie smile, all the others were looking at her now with concern. The same case that had garnered Tully a suspension had landed Maggie in an isolation ward at USAMRIID (the United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases) under the care of Colonel Benjamin Platt.
“I’m fine,” Maggie said. “Ask my doctor if you don’t believe me,” and she pointed at Ben who remained serious, not ready to agree just yet.
“Kunze could send someone else,” Gwen insisted. “You know why he’s sending you.”
Maggie could hear the anger edging around the concern in her friend’s voice. Evidently so could everyone else. Harvey even looked up from his corner, dog bone gripped between big paws. The silence was made more awkward by the oven timer that reminded them of what the day had started out to be.
Maggie reached over and tapped several of the oven’s digital buttons, shutting off heat and sound.
More silence.
“Okay,” Racine finally broke in. “I give up. I seem to be the only one who hasn’t gotten the latest news alert. Why is the new assistant director—”
“Interim director,” Gwen interrupted to correct.
“Yeah right. Whatever. Why’s he sending O’Dell? You make it sound like it’s something personal. What have I missed?”
Maggie held Gwen’s eyes. She wanted her to see the impatience. This was bordering on embarrassing. People in Minnesota may have lost their lives and Gwen was worried about department politics and imagined grudges.
Tully was the one who finally answered Racine. “Assistant Director Ray Kunze told Maggie and me that we were both negligent on the George Sloane case.”
“Negligent?”
“He blames them,” Gwen blurted out.
“He didn’t say that,” Maggie insisted although she remembered the sting of the words he did use.
“He insinuated,” Gwen corrected
