Damaged (3 page)

“What?”

“I think it’s a goddamn human foot.”

CHAPTER 2

NEWBURGH HEIGHTS, VIRGINIA

Maggie O’Dell peeled off her blouse without undoing the buttons, popping one before it came off. Didn’t matter. The blouse was a goner. Even the best cleaners couldn’t take out this much blood.

She folded the shirt into a wad and dropped it into her bathroom sink. Something wet was stuck to her neck. She grabbed at it, threw it in the sink.

Pink. Like clotted cheese
.

She’d been so close. Too close when the fatal shot came. Impossible to get out of the way.

She swatted at her neck and yanked at her hair, expecting more pieces. Her fingers got stuck in sweaty tangles, damp, sticky. But thank God, no more chunks.

They hadn’t expected the killer to still be there. The warehouse appeared empty, only remnants of his torture chamber remained, just as Maggie had predicted. Why the hell had he stayed? Or had he come back? To watch.

Maggie’s boss, Assistant Director Raymond Kunze, had made the fatal shot. And afterward he was already taking it out on Maggie,
as if it were her fault, as if she had forced his hand. But there was no way she could have known that the killer was there, hiding in the shadows. No profiler could have predicted that. Kunze couldn’t possibly hold her accountable, and yet she knew he would do exactly
that
.

Harvey, her white Lab, grabbed one of her discarded, muddy shoes. Rather than taking it to play he dropped to his belly and started whining, a low guttural moan that tugged at Maggie’s heart.

“Come on and drop it, Harvey,” she ordered, but instead of scolding, she said it quietly, gently.

He could smell the blood on her, was already concerned. But the shoe plopped out of his mouth.

“Sorry, big guy.”

Maggie swiped the shoe up and placed it in the sink with her soiled blouse. Then she knelt down beside Harvey, petting him. She wanted to hug him but there was still too much blood on her.

“Wait for me outside, buddy,” she said, leading him out of the huge master bathroom and into her bedroom, telling him to sit where he could see her through the doorway. She scratched behind his ears until he relaxed, waiting for his sigh and his collapse into lay-down position.

The smell of blood still panicked him. She hated the reminder. With it came the memory of that day she found him, bleeding and cowering under his first owner’s bed, right in the middle of his own bloody ordeal. The dog had fought hard and still had been unsuccessful in protecting his mistress, who had been taken from her house and later murdered.

“I’m okay,” she reassured him, as she dared to take a good look at herself in the mirror to see if what she said was true.

It wasn’t so bad. She’d been through worse. And at least this time it wasn’t her own blood.

Her tangled, dark-auburn hair almost reached her shoulders. She needed to get it trimmed. What a thing to think about. Her eyes were bloodshot but it had nothing to do with this incident. She hadn’t been able to sleep through the night for months now, waking every hour on the hour as if some alarm in her head triggered it. The sleep deprivation was bound to catch up with her.

She had tried all the recommended remedies. An evening run to exhaust her body. No exercise at all after seven. Soaking in a warm bath. Drinking a glass of wine. When wine didn’t work, warm milk. She tried reciting meditation chants. Cutting out caffeine. Reading. Listening to CDs of nature sounds. Using new therapeutic pillows. Lighting candles with soothing aromas. Even a little Scotch in the warm milk.

Nothing worked.

She hadn’t resorted to sleep meds … yet. As an FBI special agent and profiler she received phone calls in the middle of the night or the early-morning hours that sometimes made it necessary for her to rush to a crime scene. Most of the meds—the good ones—required eight hours of uninterrupted sleep time. Who had that? Certainly not an agent.

She took a long, hot shower, gently washing. No scrubbing, though that was her first inclination. She avoided watching the drain and what went down. She left her hair damp. Put on a clean, loose-fitting pair of athletic shorts and her University of Virginia T-shirt. After bagging up her clothes—at least those that couldn’t be salvaged—and tossing them in the garbage, Maggie retreated to the great room. Harvey followed close behind.

She turned on the big-screen TV, pocketing the remote and continuing on to the kitchen. The fifty-six-inch plasma had been a splurge for someone who watched little television, but she justified it by having college football parties on Saturdays in the fall. And then there were the evenings of pizza, beer, and classic movies with Ben. Colonel Benjamin Platt had become a close … friend.

That was all for now, or so they had decided. Okay, so they hadn’t really even talked about it. Things were at a comfortable level. She liked talking to him as much as she liked the silence of being with him. Sometimes when they sat in her backyard watching Harvey and Ben’s dog, Digger, play, Maggie caught herself thinking, “This could be a family.” The four of them seemed to fill voids in each other’s lives.

Yes, comfortable. She liked that. Except that lately she felt an annoying tingle every time he touched her. That’s when she reminded herself that both their lives were already complicated and their personal baggage sometimes untenable. Their schedules constantly conflicted. Especially the last three to four months.

So “friends” was a comfortable place to be for now, though decided by default rather than consensus. Still, she caught herself checking her cell phone: waiting, expecting, hoping for a message from him. She hadn’t seen him since he’d spent two weeks in Afghanistan. Only short phone conversations or text messages.

Now he was gone again. Somewhere in Florida. She wasn’t used to them not being able to share. That was one of the things that had brought them closer, talking about their various cases: hers usually profiling a killer; his identifying or controlling some infectious disease. A couple of times they had worked on a case together when the FBI and USAMRIID (United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases—pronounced U-SAM-RID) were
both involved. But Afghanistan and this trip were, in Ben’s words, “classified missions” in “undisclosed locations.” In Maggie’s mind, she added “dangerous.”

She fed Harvey while tossing a salad for herself and listening to “breaking news” at the top of the hour:

“Gas prices are up and will continue to soar because of the tropical storms and hurricanes that have ravaged the Gulf this summer. And another one, Hurricane Isaac is predicted to sweep across Jamaica tonight. The category-4 storm with sustained winds of 145 miles per hour is expected to pick up steam when it enters the Gulf in the next couple of days.”

Her cell phone rang and she jumped, startled enough to spill salad dressing on the counter. Okay, so having a killer’s blood and brains splattered all over her had unnerved her more than she was willing to admit.

She grabbed for the phone. Checked the number, disappointed that she didn’t recognize it.

“This is Maggie O’Dell.”

“Hey,
cherie,”
a smooth, baritone voice said.

There was only one person who got away with using that New Orleans charm on her.

“Hello, Charlie. And to what do I owe this pleasure?”

Maggie and Charlie Wurth had spent last Thanksgiving weekend sorting through a bombing at Mall of America and trying to prevent another before the weekend was over. In a case where she couldn’t even trust her new boss, AD Raymond Kunze, Charlie Wurth had been a godsend. For six months now the deputy director of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) had been trying to woo her over to his side of the fence at the Justice Department.

“I’m headed on a road trip,” Charlie continued. “And I know
you won’t be able to say no to joining me. Think sunny Florida.
Emerald-green waters. Sugar-white sands.”

Every once in a while Charlie Wurth called just to dangle another of his outrageous proposals. It had become a game with them. She couldn’t remember why she hadn’t entertained the idea of leaving the FBI and working for DHS. She swiped her fingers through her hair, thinking about the blood and brain matter from earlier. Maybe she should consider a switch.

“Sounds wonderful.” Maggie played along. “What’s the catch?”

“Just a small one. It appears we most likely will be in the projected path of Hurricane Isaac.”

“Tell me again why I’d be interested in going along?”

“Actually you’d be doing me a big favor.” Charlie’s voice turned serious. “I was already on my way down because of the hurricane. Got a bit of a distraction, though. Coast Guard found a fishing cooler in the Gulf.”

He left a pause inviting her to finish.

“Let me guess. It wasn’t filled with fish.”

“Exactly. Local law enforcement has its hands full with hurricane preps. Coast Guard makes it DHS, but I’m thinking the assortment of body parts throws it over to FBI. I just checked with AD Kunze to see if I can borrow you.”

“You talked to Kunze? Today?”

“Yep. Just a few minutes ago. He seemed to think it’d be a good idea.”

She wasn’t surprised that her boss wanted to send her into the eye of a hurricane.

CHAPTER 3

NAVAL AIR STATION (NAS)
PENSACOLA, FLORIDA

Colonel Benjamin Platt didn’t recognize this part of the base, though he’d been here once before. Usually he was in and out of these places too quickly to become familiar with any of them.

“It’s gorgeous,” he said, looking out at Pensacola Bay.

His escort, Captain Carl Ganz, seemed caught off guard by the comment, turning around to see just what Platt was pointing out. Their driver slowed as if to assist his captain’s view.

“Oh yes, definitely. Guess we take it for granted,” Captain Ganz said. “Pensacola is one of the prettiest places I’ve been stationed. Just getting back from Kabul, I’m sure this looks especially gorgeous.”

“You’re right about that.”

“How was it?”

“The trip?”

“Afghanistan.”

“The dust never lets up. Still feel like my lungs haven’t cleared.”

“I remember. I was part of a medevac team in 2005,” Captain Ganz told Platt.

“I didn’t realize that.”

“Summer 2005. We lost one of our SEALs. A four-member reconnaissance contingent came under attack. Then a helicopter carrying sixteen soldiers flew in as a reinforcement but was shot down.” Ganz kept his eyes on the water in the bay. “All aboard died. As did the ground crew.”

Platt let out a breath and shook his head. “That’s not a good day.”

“You were there back then, too, weren’t you?”

“Earlier. Actually the first months of the war,” Platt said. “I was part of the team trying to protect our guys from biological or chemical weapons. Ended up cutting and suturing more than anything else.”

“So has it changed?”

“The war?”

“Afghanistan.”

Platt paused and studied Captain Ganz. He was a little older than Platt, maybe forty, with a boyish face, although his hair had already prematurely turned gray. This was the first time the two men had met in person. Past correspondences had been via e-mail and phone calls. Platt was a medical doctor and director of infectious diseases at Fort Detrick’s USAMRIID and charged with preventing, inoculating, and containing some of the deadliest diseases ever known. Ganz, also a physician, ran a medical program for the navy that oversaw the surgical needs of wounded soldiers.

“Sadly, no,” Platt finally answered, deciding he could be honest with Ganz. “Reminded me too much of those early days. Seems like
we’re chasing our tails. Only now we’re doing it with our hands tied behind our backs.”

Platt rubbed a thumb and forefinger over his eyes, trying to wipe out the fatigue. He still felt jet-lagged from his flight. He hadn’t been back home even forty-eight hours when he got the call from Captain Ganz.

“Tell me about this mystery virus.” Platt decided he’d just as well cut to the chase.

“We’ve isolated and quarantined every soldier we think may have come in contact with the first cases, the ones that are now breaking. Until we know what it is, I figured it’s better to be safe than sorry.”