Deadly News: A Thriller (23 page)

From the outside of the building, the explosion barely registered. The two lookouts, now in communication with one another via cell phone, did note it, since they were paying attention. Without a word to each other, they both checked in on their teams.

“Jango? Jango, are you there?”

Silence, then a burst of static, filled with screams.

The lookout for Team B immediately sent a request for medics, which was relayed to a local agency within seconds. She attempted to get confirmation. “Jango, what’s your status?”

“Fucked. I can barely hear you. A bomb— uh.” This was followed by raspy breaths into the mike, coughs. “Raven, status is fucked. Several injured, possibly dead. Need medical assistance.”

“Already on their way. Hostiles?”

“The drones breached our defenses, then one of them exploded, which decommissioned the others.”

“Jango, confirm all other hostiles are eliminated.”

“I, uh, roger.” A pause. “Fuck! Mother fucker.” His voice sounded like he was running.

“Jango?”

“We’re good to go, Raven. I was just stomping one of the fuckers that was seziurring around on the floor.” A laugh. “Shit, that could have been a bomb.” Silence. “Raven, I think I might be losing it. Can you get anyone else on comms?”

“No. Do you have visuals?”

“Negative. This smoke still hasn’t cleared. Wait, there’s something there. Eh, hold on.

“Okay, yeah, it looks like a hole in—” This was cut off by a scream, a sound like a branch snapping, and then the static and rattle as the earpiece skittered across the wreckage of the basement floor.

The man sitting in the corner got up, and left the room without a word. The one sitting at his computer watched him go. What an asshole, this one thought.

He packed up his gear and scanned the room one last time. Everything was as they’d found it. Now, the tricky part.

In the hallway, FBI agents went about their business, oblivious to the things which had just transpired in their own building.

He couldn’t help but smile as he thought of this. Several people smiled back as they passed, completely missing the point.

“All good?” the security guard asked.

He nodded, still smiling. “It’s perfect.”

The guard took his guest pass. “Hope it doesn’t act up again, it’s the closest to here.” He shook his head. “I almost didn’t make it the last time.”

“Oh, I’m sure it will be fine from now on.” He exited the building, keeping his face slightly downcast, but not enough to draw attention.

After walking for a block, he walked up a small set of steps, and pressed a button on the door. He heard the buzz from above, and entered.

“How’s the outcome?” the woman asked. She was sitting in a chair near the kitchen, a laptop in front of her, watching the output of a program that was scanning news headlines, and flashing them for her to approve or reject.

Those headlines would dictate what was to come next.

“All’s swell that ends well.”

“Don’t,” she said flatly.

“Everything went fine.” He tossed his bag on the counter. “The boss man was as creepy as usual.”

The woman shuddered. “It’s better that you deal with him.”

“You would say that.”

She glared at him. “Would you really want me working with him? Me?”

He tried to smile, failed, just said, “No.”

She clicked a headline that was flashing, accepting it.

He sat down next to her. “What next?”

“Pawn 2 is in place. He should be done soon.”

“And then there’s just the cleanup round.”

“You make it sound so easy.”

“It will be a lot of things. But it will be nothing like easy.”

Fe had fallen asleep, and Abby had been awake but drifting, when shouts woke Fe and caused Abby to stand. She looked to Fe.

“What’s going on?” Fe asked groggily.

“Let’s check it out.”

Fe grabbed Abby’s hand. “Wait.”

“Come on.” She pulled Fe off the couch.

“I don’t know.”

But Abby was already opening the door. It was once again the disorderly station she’d come to unconsciously expect.

She spotted Emily near a white board, drawing something, then making marks on a map stuck to the wall.

“Fire is waiting for the bomb squad?”

“Where are they!” the asshole—Mason, Abby corrected—shouted.

“On their way,” someone answered.

“No fucking shit. How long?”

“They’re passing Market.”

Mason looked at the map. “A couple minutes.” He turned to the people gathered around, and the room as a whole. “Any updates on their situation? How many are injured?”

“All, as far as we know.”

“No word from inside since Penter went silent.”

“What’s going on?” Abby quietly asked Emily.

Emily looked startled to see her. “What are you doing here? You need to be…” But apparently she didn’t know where Abby needed to be.

“Is it the suspect from the park?” Fe asked.

Emily shook her head. “No. Uh, we don’t know. Our guys went in and met a team from the ATF.”

“What were they doing there?” Fe asked.

“That’s what we’re trying to find out. Look, if you want to help, get word out to the locals to be on watch for someone matching this description.” She pointed to a poster of a man stuck up on the whiteboard. “It’s already been disseminated, but you’ll be faster.” She shook her head. “Now, let me do my job.”

Fe put her hands up and backed away a step. “Okay.” She gestured at Abby with her head. “Come on, you can help.”

Abby didn’t think she could, but followed anyway.

They went back into Emily’s office, and Fe put in a call to her lieutenant, who was a few floors below. Afterward, she said, “Let’s get down there.”

“They said something about a bomb, the bomb squad,” Abby said as they rode the elevator.

Fe nodded.

“Do you think it’s another building? What if they did it anyway?”

“I’m sure it’s nothing.”

Abby gaped. “You’re
sure
it’s
nothing
?”

“You know what I mean.”

“I don’t think I do.”

“Don’t think it means anything. Don’t think that just because this happened, it’s related to Ecks.”

Abby’s mouth hung open, and she looked at the elevator doors. “Well, I hadn’t been until you mentioned it.”

“Good.”

“But now that you have”—the doors opened—“that seems reasonable.”

Fe put a hand on Abby’s back and ushered her out of the elevator and once again toward the lieutenant’s office.

“What’s she doing here?” the lieutenant asked as the two of them walked into her office.

“What do you mean?” Fe asked.

“Forget it. I need you to coordinate this thing.”

“Okay.”

“You have already made inroads with her handler, right?”

“My handler?”

The lieutenant waved this away.

“Sure, I guess.”

“Good. You’re gonna pair up with Masterson, I want you two to work together on this.” She shook her head. “Hagelin, her—“she gestured to Abby—“Sellwood, the building, the crappy evidence we’ve managed to gather. It’s too much to be coincidence, and I don’t like not knowing what’s going on in my city.”

“The Hagelin case, wasn’t there a problem?”

The lieutenant squinted at Fe. “Yeah.” She shuffled some papers on her desk. “Missing his file.” She looked up. “Would you know anything about that?”

“Only what Masterson told me.”

The lieutenant leaned back in her seat. She looked haggard, Abby thought. “There are two possibilities, as I see it. Either we are incompetent, and lost it, or…” She looked between the two of them. “Oh hell, or we have a fucking mole. I don’t like either option.”

“I don’t think it’s anyone inside.”

The lieutenant raised an eyebrow. “Do you have any evidence it’s not?”

“Well,” Fe stammered. She looked as though she thought this was ridiculous. “I mean, no, but—”

“So we are going to keep it as a possibility. You can look into that, too.” She rubbed her eyes. “Now get out of here and find Masterson. He’s probably in the kitchen, or buying donuts.”

Abby laughed.

The lieutenant waved them out.

Masterson was not only in the kitchen making coffee, he was eating a donut while browsing a site with images of donuts.

“Are you joking?” Fe said coming up behind him.

He turned, a surprised look on his face. He swallowed. “Hey, don’t even start, this is for Bill’s retirement party.”

“Donuts?” Abby asked.

“Cake.” He clicked away from the current page. “I got distracted. Now what are you two doing here? You don’t eat, obviously, so it can’t be that.”

“We can’t all be vacuums,” Fe said, slapping his shoulder. “Partner.”

“Tell me that’s a joke,” he said, setting his donut down carefully.

Fe just shook her head.

Abby pauses.

“Why’d you stop?” the girl asks eagerly.

Abby shakes her head. She looks at you, then around the circle. “Nothing. Uh, so, yeah, they coordinated. They couldn’t figure out where the drones came from. Those things are expensive, something like ten million worth were destroyed, so there should have been a paper trail.”

She looks around again. “Anyway, that led nowhere.” She pauses, looks at the fire.

“Did you ever find out what happened to Soren?” the long-haired man asks.

Abby looks at him. Then she laughs. “Thanks for the reminder. I still need to look in that folder.”

“You got your stuff from the hotel?” the thirteen-year-old asks. “I thought it got blown up.”

Abby shakes her head. “Nope, got it back. I’ll skip ahead to there.”

“Don’t skip,” you say, before you can stop yourself.

Abby gives you a strange smile. “Not skip really, it’s just nothing happened till then. Anyway, I was still in the station, as were the FBI and the female agent who had been guarding me. There was a briefing, and the other person who had been guarding me was up front.”

“Okay,” Fe said, studying the board covered with everything they knew thus far. Abby sat in the back, trying not to draw attention to herself. She wasn’t sure she was supposed to be here, but no one said anything, so she wasn’t going to point it out.

“We have a footprint, which matches the estimated shoe size of the driver in the surveillance video from Ecks Sellwood’s residence, and whose height and weight match what’s on the bogus driver license on file with Uber.”

“And shit else,” someone called.

“We have DNA evidence courtesy of the FBI, and some partial fingerprints.”

“Which don’t match anyone in our database,” Masterson said, his bulk settled precariously on a table that seemed ready to break under the weight.

“But if we do get a suspect, it will help.” She looked around. “That’s all I have to add, everything else you already covered.”

Masterson pushed himself up. “What ya’ll waiting for?” He waved a hand at the room. “Go forth, my children. Find me someone to arrest.”

There was a chuckle at this, and the room emptied.

Feeling daring, Abby walked up to Fe and Masterson. “What are we going to do?”

“We? We”—he pointed at himself—“are going to go over the evidence again to see if we can find something we missed. You”—he pointed at Abby, tip of his finger poking her shoulder—“are going back to the FBI.” He frowned. “Wait, have you been here the whole time?”

“Oh, no, I mean, just caught the tail end.”

“Yeah, sure.”

“I can help though.”

“Don’t even start.”

“I mean it, I’ve spotted things, like, ten times now that you guys missed.” Saying this, she realized it might be an exaggeration. “And the FBI,” she added when she saw Masterson’s look. “Things they missed too.”

“I—”

“Come on, big guy,” Fe said. “Let her help. She’s involved in this as much as we are.”

“Have you—” He stopped, staring at Fe. “Oh, I see.” He nodded, then looked back to Abby. “Just don’t do anything stupid.”

Abby frowned, looking between the two of them. “I don’t plan on it.”

As Abby and Fe were getting in the elevator to leave the building, Abby thought for some reason of cell phone signals in elevators, which made her think of her cell phone, which brought to mind the fact that her things from the hotel were still missing. “Hey, have you guys gotten the stuff from the hotel yet?”

Fe paused entering the elevator. “That’s a good question. I had some stuff there too. I can’t remember what.” She gestured with her head for Abby to enter. “We’ll head upstairs first and ask your FBI friend.”

Emily did not look happy to see them. Abby wondered what she had been doing. Judging by the sweat stains on her shirt, it looked like she’d just run a few miles. “You look tired.” Abby said.

“Fuck you too. What do you need?”

“Have you heard from the hotel? We—”

“Yeah, yeah we got it. Good timing, it just came to us. Is there anything that might be evidence?”

“Not unless something I had was the bomb,” Abby replied, thinking of the folder. There wasn’t really a way to frame that response except as a lie. Oh well.

Emily shook her head. “No, the bomb was in the room across the hall from yours. Blew the door to your room straight out the window though. So if you’re missing anything, blame the wind, not us.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.”

Emily had Fe and Abby follow her to her office. The plastic bag had both of their possessions mixed together. Abby’s coat smelled like smoke, but other than that, nothing seemed damaged. She subtly snatched her purse from the bag, then covered it with the coat as she set it aside and continued going through the bag to take attention off her purse.

She hugged her laptop to her breast. “Oh, I have missed you. And you too, phone.” She kissed it.

“I think she finally broke,” Emily said.

“We all deal with things in our own way,” Fe said.

“I’m right here, I can hear you guys.”

A slight grin tugged at the edge of Emily’s mouth. “So, anything missing?”

“Not that I can see.”

“Then I’m getting back to work. Don’t break anything in here.”

“We were about to leave anyway,” Fe said.