Far Gone (17 page)

“Hot chocolate?” Elizabeth smiled at him.

“Why not?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know. I figured you for beer, but I guess that goes to show how little I know about you, right?” She folded her hands in front of her. “Such as what’s this case you’re working on out in the middle of nowhere?”

That was it, then. She’d invited him here for scoop, not because she wanted to jump his bones. It was a setback but nothing major.

He debated how much to tell her. He was pretty sure he trusted her, but he wasn’t used to talking about this case. At least, not with anyone besides North and their team.

“You know much about OKBOMB?” he asked.

“Just what they presented at the Academy, really. Why?”

“You probably know, right, that some people think there might have been others involved? Not just individuals but groups.”

“The mysterious John Doe Number Two,” she said. “I thought all those accounts were conflicting. Different physical descriptions.”

“Could be,” he said. “Or could be there was more than one John Doe Number Two. You heard of the Aryan Republican Army?”

“Vaguely.”

The waitress dropped off their drinks, and Torres stirred his cocoa.

“In the nineties, they pulled off a string of bank robberies,” he said. “They saw the crimes as both symbolic and practical: rip off a government-backed institution, and use the money to fund an insurgency. Kind of a double ‘eff you’ to the feds. Some people think they funneled some of the money to Tim McVeigh to subsidize his plot.”

Her eyes widened, and she leaned forward on her elbows. “Are you telling me . . . what I think you’re telling me? You think these robberies might be connected to what just happened in Philadelphia?”

He didn’t answer.

“You think Shay Hardin is the connection?”

“We’re looking into it. He has a documented history of making threats against the government, and Senator Kirby in particular.”

She leaned back against the seat, clearly shocked, which was good news and bad. Good news because Maxwell evidently had managed to keep a lid on what their team was up to out in Maverick. But bad news because it demonstrated just how little credibility their boss had given this theory.

The Philly case involved more than two hundred agents, and yet only a few were working the Shay Hardin angle. Obviously, no one at the top took him seriously as a suspect. Maxwell had emphasized that fact just this morning by giving them a one-week deadline before he pulled the plug.

Elizabeth shook her head. “That’s . . . wow. That’s quite a theory.”

“You don’t buy it.”

She gave him a level look. “I think it sounds complicated.”

“So?”

Elizabeth played with her straw and seemed to choose her words carefully.

“It’s been my experience that when one explanation for something is complicated, and one explanation is straightforward, the straightforward one is more likely true.”

Torres didn’t say anything. He’d walked through the same logic a few hundred times during the course of this investigation. North was convinced they were on the right track with this thing, while Torres often thought they were in the weeds. Not just the weeds, the freaking wilderness.

North looked at Shay Hardin and saw parallels with OKBOMB. He saw a homegrown terrorist who was about to strike again, big.

Torres looked at the man and saw a possible suspect for the judge’s murder and maybe the bank robberies. But the rest of it? The rest seemed fuzzy. Vague.

Like his commitment to his job lately. Torres sometimes had a hard time scrounging up the motivation to really tackle this case.

North felt something for this case that Torres could see but didn’t really understand. He felt a passion about it, a determination that they were going to get the guy and bring him to justice. Not just any guy, but
this
guy, Shay Hardin, someone who had—literally—gotten away with murder years ago and needed to be held to account.

Their food arrived. Elizabeth picked up her club sandwich and looked at him. “I heard the bomb in Philadelphia was made with fertilizer, right?”

“Ammonium nitrate and racing fuel, which is highly flammable,” Torres said. “They make it for cars, motorcycles, powerboats.”

“Any evidence Hardin bought those materials?”

“Nope.” He chomped into his burger.

“Any evidence he was in Philadelphia at the time of the crime?”

“Nope.”

She sighed. “You guys are way out on a limb here.”

“I know.”

For a while, they ate in silence. Torres knew what she was telling him, underneath the tact. If they blew it with this thing, it could affect their careers permanently. North had a law degree to fall back on, but Torres didn’t.

“Why are you so convinced?” She watched him closely.

“I don’t know.”

“Sure you do.”

He sighed. “North has a gut instinct about the guy. He believes he got away with something, and now he’s trying to do it again, on a much larger scale.”

“What about your gut instinct?”

Torres looked at her, surprised she’d asked. The answer that popped into his mind didn’t come from North but from his own legwork.

He stirred his cocoa. “You know Hardin made it into Ranger school? Washed out after the first week.”

“I didn’t know that.”

“He’d been in Iraq for a few years leading up to that, managed to get pretty out of shape. He’d trained at Fort Benning, and they really kick your ass while you’re there, but once you’re overseas, it can get pretty calm. There’s a lot of sitting around, lot of people lose their edge. That’s what happened to him.

“So all his life, he had this dream he wanted to be a Ranger, be part of this elite group. Then he finally gets his shot, and he botches it.” He looked at her. “You ever met one of those guys who’s obsessed with black ops—the toys, the lingo, the secrecy? Thinks he’s Jason Bourne or someone?”

“Had a few in my Academy class,” she said drily.

“Same here. Thing I noticed, they’re arrogant. Think they’re smarter than everyone. They give off the attitude with anyone they ever meet. Shay Hardin’s like that. I’ve turned the guy’s life inside out looking for stuff, and that’s what keeps coming up.”

“So you do believe in this.”

“I do,” he said, surprising himself. Maverick was a pain in the ass, yes, but he didn’t actually believe he’d been wasting his time there. They had some solid leads; they just had to develop them. And they had to do it quickly, because if they
were
right about it all, then they were dealing with a ticking clock.

“Okay, sold.” She gave a crisp nod.

“Sold?”

“You’re closer to the case than anybody. If you think there’s something there, that’s good enough for me.” She smiled. “I’ll quit complaining about wasting my weekend.”

Torres didn’t know what to say. She glanced at her watch, and he braced himself for an excuse.

“It’s late,” she said on cue. “I should get home.” She pulled some money from her purse, but he caught her hand.

“I’ll get it.”

“No, let me,” she insisted. “I invited you.”

He eyed her curiously as she scooted out of the booth, beating a retreat for some reason.

“Thanks for sharing.” She stood and smiled down at him. “I’ll let you know what I find.”

♦

It was nearly midnight when Carmen pulled into her driveway. She collected her purse and a few files off the front seat and remembered to check her mirror before getting out of the car.

The street looked empty. No detectives or FBI agents camped out on the curb.

She mounted the steps to her front porch, averting her eyes from the empty flowerpots on either side of her door. Her mother would be horrified. It was April, and she hadn’t planted a thing. She hadn’t even set foot in her backyard in more than a week.

Carmen let herself in and dumped her purse and files on the table. She glanced at the living room, where Bella was sprawled on the couch watching
South Park
.

“How’d it go?” Carmen kicked off the heels that had been torturing her for hours.

“Good.” Bella sat up and rubbed her eyes. “He went right down.”

“How’d he eat?”

“Pretty well.” She stood and picked up the hoodie draped across the sofa arm. “He had about six ounces at dinner. Another four at ten o’clock. Then he was out again. We did a walk earlier, so I think the fresh air wore him out.”

Carmen felt her shoulders loosening. She smiled. “Thanks for coming on short notice.”

Bella picked up her keys. “No problem. See you tomorrow.”

She saw Bella out and then went into the kitchen. The remains of a frozen pizza sat on a metal baking sheet tucked beneath plastic wrap. Carmen poured a glass of wine. She’d already had two tonight, but that was over the course of six long hours. She never really drank or ate at fund-raising dinners—just enough to appear social.

She picked up the merlot and savored a long sip. She went into the living room, switched off the TV, and padded barefoot into the bathroom, where she set her wine on the counter. Then she tiptoed to the end of the hall to peek in on Lukas.

He was on his tummy, fast asleep, with his satin blankie bunched up against his face. Carmen resettled him on his back. She spread the blanket over him and touched her hand to his downy hair. She stroked his cheek. Velvet soft. She’d had no idea what soft was until she touched her baby’s skin for the first time.

Carmen leaned over the crib. She stared down at her son and felt the familiar swell of emotion in her chest. From the first day, she’d been astonished by the utter
love
. She’d once been in love with her ex-husband, but that paled in comparison with this. This love was intense and fearsome, and she’d had no idea how much it would change her life.

His little lips moved—just slightly—like he was sucking a bottle. She wanted to scoop him up and squeeze him and smell his hair, but he was sleeping soundly, and he might be up later anyway. Instead, she wound up the Winnie the Pooh on the rocking chair and listened to the first bars of music as she eased shut the door.

Her cell phone was chiming from her purse across the house. She checked the caller ID. Ryan again. She plugged the phone into the charger on the kitchen counter. Then back into the bathroom for another sip of wine. She hung her robe on the hook beside the claw-footed tub and turned the water to scalding. A splash of bubble bath. Then time for the rounds.

She peered through the peephole and surveyed her quiet street as she flipped the bolt. Then she turned off the lamps, locked the back door, and switched on the floodlights that illuminated her driveway.

She returned to the bathroom, unbuttoning the tiny pearl buttons on her blouse as she went. Sinking into the fragrant water, she immediately felt her muscles relax. Sunday, midnight, and she was just now getting a chance to unwind from the week. In just six hours, she’d be up to do it all over again.

She hated nights like these. She hated smiling and chitchatting and making witty conversation with wealthy strangers when all she really wanted to do was go home and play with Lukas. When was the last time she’d had a full, uninterrupted weekend with him?

Carmen sipped her wine and sank deeper into the lavender-scented foam. She rested her arms on the sides of the tub and tipped her head back.

Something smelled strange. An odor. She opened her eyes.
Gas
.

She stood up and grabbed her robe. Bubbles streamed down her arms and legs as she stepped onto the bath mat and wrapped herself in terrycloth. Had Bella forgotten the oven? She hurried down the hall and into the darkened kitchen. The oven was off. She glanced at the stove. A faint hissing noise—

Creak.

She whirled around. A shadow loomed in the corner.

Lukas.

She lunged for the hall, but the man grabbed her arm and slammed her against the doorframe. Hands clamped around her neck and hurled her to the floor. Pain seared her scalp as he yanked her head back by the hair.

She bucked and kicked. She threw elbows and flailed under him, but he was heavy and strong, and he had her pinned against the wooden planks.

Lukas.

She reached back, clawing for the man’s face, his eyes. Soft flesh. A grunt of pain, and his weight shifted. She bucked him off and scrambled to her feet, but he caught her ankle. She crashed to the floor, hitting her chin.

Stars swam before her eyes. The weight smashed down on her. Hands closed around her neck from behind.

Oh God, oh God. What does he want?

She could roll over. She could let him rape her and bite her tongue and not make a sound and pray Lukas would stay fast asleep.

Gas.

Panic set in as the odor filled her nose. She had to get down the hall to Lukas. She had to get him out. She bucked again, clawed at the floor.

The grip on her neck tightened. Her chin was pressed against the wood. The coppery taste of blood filled her mouth. She tried to scream, but she couldn’t move her head, her mouth, and the only sound was a muffled wail.

The hand tightened again. One hand. Where was the other? His weight shifted, and her heart pounded wildly as she struggled to turn her head to see what he was doing.

A dark arm arced up. A flash of metal.

A raw sound tore from her throat, but it was too late.

chapter fourteen

ANDREA WOKE UP WIRED.
She lay in bed, staring at the ceiling and trying to pinpoint the reason for her mood. She rolled onto her stomach, pulled the pillow over her head, and squeezed her eyes shut. Maybe she could sleep it off.

Yeah, right.

Nick Mays flashed into her mind for the first time in a week. She thought of that lopsided smile he’d used when he’d been trying to get her to sleep with him. It was a nice memory, but her brain quickly jumped to the more recent memory of Nick standing in the sleet outside the restaurant that night. She remembered his look of bewildered pity as he’d watched from across the parking lot while she gave the first of countless statements.