Vanished (9 page)

"Let's get this perimeter managed, and then I'll take you
down there."

Pappas's eyes narrowed. "I expect your cooperation. As will
your superiors."

Logan folded his arms across his chest, feeling ridiculous
as the sleeves of the undersized T-shirt tugged on his biceps.
"Unless you got President Freeman in your pocket, you've
got no jurisdiction here. Since I do, I'm going to make sure
there's no one on the other side of that fire who needs help.
You can come with me or I can cuff you to a lamppost so
you'll stay out of trouble. Which is it, Pappas?"

"Your lack of cooperation doesn't bode well."

"Nothing bodes well today. Or haven't you noticed?" Logan
climbed the embankment to the bike path and headed for the
Circle.

Pappas caught up to him. "Sure you want to get this close?
What if it's a dirty bomb?"

"Then we're dead already. Soaked through with radiation,
right? But maybe you know something I don't."

"What're you saying?"

"What are you not saying?"

"I don't have time for this, Logan. Just say what's on your
mind."

"I want to know how you knew when and where a bomb was
going to explode. And why you didn't warn us."

"Straight up-we got a tip."

"Homeland gets lots of tips. That's what you said."

"Some gangbanger dropped a dime. Said this mutt was asking
around, looking for a courier. Implied it was a simple drug drop,
but this guy-calling himself Luther-was way off profile for the Flats. Gave the snitch the creeps. No one in DC or Boston
paid much attention. Too many threats, too little time. Even so,
this one was shunted our way because of the possible link with
the trains. The rest is just as I told it, Logan. I got a gut feeling.
When someone on the street decides something stinks, you've
got to sniff it for yourself. So I arranged this stop-by."

"Did you know the timing?"

"No clue. We knew this Luther wanted a courier, but that
was it. The rest is just brutal coincidence."

In the rotary, Logan headed counterclockwise, heading
toward South Spire Boulevard. A scorched, earthy odor
lingered in the air from the smoldering roots of the rhododendrons and azaleas. The fire blazed on one side, showing no
sign of lessening. The smoke was bizarre-shimmering as if it
were threaded with silver, making Logan more nervous than
ever about some sort of radiation. More mist than smoke, it
had no smell but felt cold against his skin. And it billowed
out from the fire and curved over their heads, forming what
seemed like a mushroom cap that bent all the way to the
ground and closed them in.

A deadly tunnel, Logan thought. We'll never survive this.

His skin crawled with the sense of utter abandonment.
Pastor Rich, the guy who led the Thursday night Bible study,
said God was with you wherever you went. Hard to believe
that here or most places. The pastor might see the kingdom of
God in the here-and-now, but it was Logan's job to clean up
after hell on earth had its way.

Like now. He had a job to do, so he kept walking in this
tunnel of mist and fire.

After a few more steps, Logan heard familiar sounds, similar
to what he'd left behind on University-shock, anger, fear.
Desperate people, looking for someone to tell them what to do
next.

For better or for worse, that someone was him.

HE OTHER SHOE, ALEXIS LATHAM THOUGHT.

Hadn't they been waiting since September 11 for the
other shoe to drop? These terrorists were termites. You
could spray the corners and cloak your foundations, drill holes
and drop poison. But when you least expected it, they'd bring
down your house around your ears.

It was good that this happened during the day while she was
at the store. As general manager and owner of Donnelly's Supermarket, Alexis had the fierce will and common sense to make
sure all her customers-and the store-would be taken care of.

And she had her gun.

Licensed to carry, trained to shoot, Alexis could protect
what was hers. As she shoved her Lady Smith & Wesson 9mil and an extra clip into her pocket, she flipped on the office
television. Snow was all she got. No signal, no emergency
broadcast. Just white static.

The emergency lights were on. Power was out on the street,
but after 9/11 she had installed three top-flight emergency
generators. As long as her diesel held out, the freezers and
refrigerators would, too.

Alexis took the stairs from her office carefully, in case they
had come loose in the blast. From up here she had a good view
of the windows-or what was left of them. Somewhere in the
cyclone of sound that followed the first explosion, she had heard
the glass shatter. The breaking apart seemed to take forever, as
if she counted every shard as it hit the floor.

Shoppers huddled near a display of Life cereal, some
banging on cell phones, others clutching children. An elderly
couple clung to each other, and a middle-aged man comforted
a squalling preschooler. Other than the windows, the store
seemed intact. A display of beach toys had toppled, but the
season was almost over anyway.

Only three checkouts had been manned to handle the
midmorning lull. Alexis wasn't the praying type, but she cast a
vague thought heavenward, hoping that she wouldn't find her
girls dead at their registers.

"Bev, where are you?" she called.

"We're here." Her senior cashier waved from under her
register. She huddled with Kate and jenny, the teens who
worked summers.

"It's OK. Come on out."

"What happened?" The tremble that seized Kate seemed
unable to exhaust itself.

"Shush, dear." Alexis rubbed her back. The girl was skin and
bones, expecting to graduate high school and become America's
next top whatever. "Breathe deep. Come on, that's a girl."

Bev grasped Alexis's shoulder hard enough to bruise. "I need
to talk to you."

"Jenny, hold on to her. That's good." Alexis moved away, Bev
still holding tight to her.

"Ralph," she whispered.

Alexis glanced at the door, saw Ralph Pepper lying in a
mound of glass and blood. So much blood. She took a long
breath, willed her voice to be steady. "I'll take care of it. I
mean, him."

"I've got to get home. My kids." Bev's children were ten and
twelve, old enough to fend for themselves while she worked.

"Sure. Go out the back. Keep away from... " Ralph, they both
knew, but Alexis said, " ... the glass."

Seventy-five years old and a retired bus driver, Ralph had
supplemented his retirement by jockeying carts. His eyes were
closed and his mouth serene, as if a gentle hand had said hush,
dear rather than shoving a shard of glass through the back of
his neck.

Alexis reached for a plastic bag to cover his face. But he won't
be able to breathe, she thought, then rebuked herself because
now was not the time to be irrational. Ralph wouldn't ever
breathe again, and despite that shocking fact, someone had to
remain calm.

Alexis had long ago elected herself to that job.

She untied his apron and covered his face and neck with it.
Ralph had just been diagnosed with advanced bowel cancer,
though she was the only person at the store who knew. What
mercy had ensured that he'd been the only person near the
windows when the bomb went off?

Shoppers moved cautiously toward the front of the store,
caught between the horror of Ralph's body and curiosity about
what was going on outside.

An overweight woman in a Red Sox cap shook her phone at
Alexis. "My cell phone's not working."

"Mine either." This from a worried mother with a baby
pressed to her shoulder. "Why won't they work?"

"I don't know," Alexis said.

Shoppers looked at her, recognizing the authority of her
straight back and white manager's coat. "Look, keep calm,
everyone. I'll see if I can find out what's happening out there.
You all wait here."

Alexis grabbed Ralph's broom and punched out the glass
shards that still remained in the door frame. Then she stepped
outside.

It looked like a war zone.

Windows were blown out in all the stores on the block.
Vehicles were crashed up and down University Avenue, mostly fender benders. One SUV had flipped over, and a UPS truck had
plowed into a telephone pole. Maybe that's why power was out.
Some people attended to the injured, helping them out of cars,
trying to keep them calm. Others wandered about, unsure what
to do or knocking their cell phones against their palms. Some
walked purposefully, purses, knapsacks, or briefcases over their
shoulders. Like Bev, their instinct was just to get home.

Not Alexis, though. No reason to go home. Her daughters
lived in California, one working as a screenwriter and the
other as a makeup artist. They were safe, she knew, because
her gut would have told her if they weren't. Even her cat was
self-sufficient, and antisocial to boot.

A haze cloaked the sky, a gelatinous mass of gray and blue.
It vibrated, making Alexis want to tremble, too. But no, there
was work to be done. A store-a neighborhood-needed her.

In her parents' time, the Flats had been a respectable workingclass neighborhood. Social programs and cultural disarray of
the sixties had paved the way for drugs and other afflictions.
Now decay ate away at a good neighborhood the way Ralph's
tumors ate away at him. Alexis could have put her hard-earned
money into a store in Vermont or Idaho, but there was work to
be done in the Flats. People needed to eat.

People needed someone who was one of them to believe in
them.

Dawn Martinez waved from Exotic Nails across the street.
Next door to her, Harry Kontos stood in front of his drycleaning shop. He had given up smoking ten years ago but joked
often that he'd take it up again right before he died. He puffed
on a cigar like he was enjoying the end of the world.

"What happened?" Alexis called out.

Harry took a deep lungful of smoke, blew it over his head.
"Bomb at the Circle."

At the police substation a few doors down and across the
street, a slender, dark-haired woman banged at the door. Alexis's heart ached at sight of a baby in the woman's arms. So young
to be exposed to terror. Despite the woman's knocking, no one
buzzed her in. What few cops the city gave this neighborhood
would all be down at the blast site helping out.

The woman spotted Alexis and waved frantically. It was the
nurse who ran the clinic. Correction: used to run it, until the
fools on the city council and the scum ambulance-chaser put
an end to all the good work she had done.

The woman ran across the street, holding the baby to her
chest.

"Something wrong?" Alexis said. "Other than the bomb,
that is."

"A bomb? That's what it was?"

"That's what they're saying." The clinic was six blocks east
of Donnelly's. Too far to hear the explosion, perhaps. "I'm
sorry, I've known you for years, but we've never met. I'm
Alexis Latham."

"Kaya de los Santos."

"I know. Is this your baby?"

"No, she belongs to one of my patients." Kaya's shirt was
drenched with sweat. Despite her dark hair and eyes, her skin
was pasty. "OK if we go inside?"

Alexis took a long look around. Thankfully, Donnelly's
parking lot was nearly empty-the Monday morning lull after
the weekend shopping. Her fellow merchants stood protectively
in front of their stores. There seemed to be no immediate threat
she needed to watch out for. "Sure. But I need to warn you,
we've got a fatality inside. My bag boy. Not a boy-he's over
seventy. Poor guy."

"I'm so sorry-but trust me, that won't stop me." Kaya ducked
through the door and scurried to the back of the store.

Alexis glanced up at the security mirrors to make sure no
one was light-fingering in the cosmetic aisle. She caught up to
Kaya at the display of twelve-pack sodas stacked almost to the ceiling. Good thing those hadn't come down during the blast.
Talk about a lawsuit waiting to happen.

"What can I do for you?" Alexis said.

Kaya stroked the baby's hair. The little girl hadn't squirmed
or cried. Poor thing seemed as shocked as everyone else. "I need
you to take this baby. Please."

"What? You're asking me to babysit her?"

"No. I am begging you to protect her."

"Why?"

Kaya blinked back tears. She was a pretty woman-beautiful,
really, no matter the gray at her temples and the lines around
her mouth. The closing of the clinic and the ridiculous publicity
must have been a huge strain.

"There's been a shooting," Kaya said. "Her mother-"

Alexis slipped her hand into the pocket of her jacket, felt her
steel security blanket. "Honey, you're safe here. Tell me what
happened."

Kaya poured out a tale so ugly that even Alexis was
shocked.

"I'm not even sure if this man Stone is still alive," Kaya said.
"But if I can hide the baby while I find Sergeant Logan, at least
I'll know she's safe."