The setup had been wrong from the beginning—from the non-uniformed squad that had scooped them up to the anonymous black van with the rental car company’s branded air freshener still hanging from the rearview mirror—the whole thing stank of a covert, off-the-books operation. Federal, if he had to guess. Words like secret police, unlawful detention, disappeared, and even black site ricocheted around his brain. He suppressed a shudder.
“Cops did show up, though. The regular cops, I mean.” Jackson nodded energetically.
“You sure they arrested the press?”
“Yeah. Before they took my phone away, my girl texted me a picture of this school bus that they brought. They were loading people into it. And both the reporters were in line.”
“They cuff them?”
“Zip ties. I told Alicia to book it out of there, but I don’t know if she got away or not.” His eyes fell back to his hands, and he resumed his examination of his nail bed.
Charlie allowed himself to feel a small ripple of relief, despite the weirdness of how it had all gone down. Most likely, most of the protesters had been ordered to disperse. And most of them would scatter. But even the ones who did spend a few hours cooling their heels in a local police department would be okay. Maybe some of them would leave with a fire in the belly and a commitment to the cause. The rest would leave with a story they could tell their old high school buddies when they went home for Thanksgiving break.
Unfortunately, with the immediate pressing worry about his students’ well-being lifted, he had nothing to focus on but his own dire circumstances.
“I got a question.” Barefoot’s voice rang out.
“What’s that?”
“Since these guys aren’t the cops, and they aren’t wearing any federal uniforms, you got any idea who they are?”
Suddenly, eight pairs of eyes peered out at Charlie. Looking back at them, he noted with a jolt that the eight faces studying him were all black and brown. There had been plenty of white folks at the protest, but somehow none of them had ended up in the back of the anonymous black van.
Curiouser and curiouser.
“Well? Do you?” Jackson demanded.
Charlie shook his head. He had some suspicions, theories, a couple of guesses. But they were all bad news. Nothing he wanted to give voice to.
“I’m not sure,” he finally said.
The uncertainty hung over the room like a heavy cloud, but he was pretty sure knowing would be worse.
7
Leo studied Sasha’s face over her bowl of oatmeal. For someone who routinely slept as little as she did, she rarely looked tired. But this morning she seemed … off. Pale, like a shadow of herself.
For one thing, she’d been unusually quiet. She’d crept back into the house and headed straight for the shower, then spent some time playing with the twins and getting them dressed.
He didn’t want to think that she was avoiding him, but he had to wonder. He padded barefoot across the kitchen and filled a fresh travel mug with hot, strong coffee. “I assume you want one for the walk to work?” He asked the question with his back to her.
“Um, yeah, although I’m going to drive today. Do you really need to ask?”
He turned. “No, I guess I don’t. Are you sure you can’t take a nap before you go into the office?”
She crossed the room to join him at the counter. She dumped her bowl in the sink and filled it with hot water to soak, then gently pried the stainless steel mug from his hand.
“I’m sure. And, really, I’m fine.”
“Are you, though? Really?”
She bristled and straightened to her full, meager height. “Of course. How were the kids when they woke up and I wasn’t here?”
Changing the subject.
But he answered anyway. “They rolled with it. Easy-peasy.”
She arched an eyebrow. “You must have a completely different relationship with our children and pets than I do. Because when I’m playing a zone defense, four on one, I almost never think to describe it as easy. Rewarding, even fun, sure. But easy? Not on your life.”
He quirked his mouth. The truth was, she held herself to an unrealistically high solo-parenting standard. He, in contrast, had taken the advice of his boss and friend, Hank Richards, single parent to six adopted kids, to heart. The name of the game was survival. Feed ’em, clothe ‘em, love ‘em. Everything else was gravy. With those goals, it really was easy. Adding elaborate craft projects, foreign language practice, and a sparkling clean house to the mix changed the terrain.
But he wisely shared none of these thoughts with his wife. Instead, he proffered a tray of misshaped balls. “No-bake energy bite?”
“You made these this morning?”
“It was Finn’s idea. Fiona supervised. I literally didn’t know it was happening until they put me on KP duty.”
That admission elicited a genuine laugh from her. She removed the tray from his hands, returned it to the counter next to her to-go coffee, and wrapped her arms around his midsection. She rested her head against his heart.
He pulled her closer. He’d learned that it was sometimes easier to have a conversation with Sasha without making eye contact, especially about difficult topics. So he addressed the crown of her head.
“Today’s the twentieth anniversary of your brother’s shooting, isn’t it?”
She murmured an affirmative answer.
“Are you sure that’s not weighing on you?”
She stiffened in his arms for a moment before relaxing back into his chest. “I mean, sure, Patrick’s on my mind. And I think Thanksgiving’s going to be tough this year. Twenty years. It just feels … significant. And, I guess, I might’ve dreamed about it if I was saying Allie’s name.”
She was telling him the truth. But something in her voice made him think she was holding something back, too.
He lifted her chin with a finger and stared into her bright green eyes. So green that it was startling even after all these years of losing himself in their depths. “You can talk about him, you know.”
She blinked and glanced away. “I know.” She popped an energy bite into her mouth. “Oh, yeah, I can tell Finn was involved in making these. He has a generous hand with the honey.”
“Sasha—“
She forestalled his next line of inquiry by brushing a sweet, sticky kiss against his lips.
He knew what she was doing, of course he did. But he didn’t call her out. He kissed her back, a long, firm kiss.
She took a step back and met his eyes again. “You know who I wonder about?” she asked in a soft voice.
“No. Tell me.”
“Karyn—Patrick’s wife. They’d been married for eight years when he died. The first couple years she still joined us for the holidays, birthdays. I think she came along for a few Pirates games with the family. But as some point, she started to drift away, and we saw less and less of her. Now I haven’t seen her in, oh I don’t know, at least a dozen years. I think she still sends my parents a Christmas card, but I don’t know where she lives, if she remarried, if she has kids. It’s almost like she was never part of the family in the first place. And she was—part of the family, I mean. She was a like a big sister. She started dating Pat when I was just a kid.”
“You know I don’t know a lot about big families.”
He suppressed a snort at his own understatement. Raised by a single mom who worked as a traveling nurse, he’d had no siblings and they’d never really put down roots. Hell, it wasn’t until after he and Sasha had married and had the twins that he met his father. Family ties were definitely outside his area of expertise.
“Yeah, I know.”
He pushed on anyway. “But I could see how, at first, it was probably a comfort to her to be around the McCandless clan, but, as time went on and your other brothers started having babies with their wives, she might have started to feel left behind. It might have been easier for her to fade out of the picture.”
She nodded sadly.
“You’re probably right.”
“You could find her if you wanted to. It would probably take Naya three minutes, tops, to track her down, assuming she’s not in the Witness Protection Program.”
“True. And if she has entered witness protection, it might take Naya as long as ten minutes to find her.”
She laughed, and the tension around her eyes softened. His heart squeezed.
“You don’t always have to be the woman of steel, you know.”
For an instant her eyes watered. Then she blinked and, as quickly as they’d filled, they were dry. “I hear you, Connelly, I really do. But I do have too much to do today to have a meltdown. On top of my real work, I promised Jordana that if her professor didn’t turn up, I’d I look into.”
He frowned. “Her professor’s missing?”
“Maybe. The Milltown police picked up most of the protesters and took them to the station on a school bus. That’s where I went to get her. But before the cops arrived, an unmarked black van sped up, and some men dressed in black, no patches or insignias or anything, hopped out and grabbed several men.”
“Including the professor?”
“That’s what she says. She also says the men in the van were armed to the teeth. I know what you’re thinking—that’s impossible, right?”
“Seriously? You think I would say it’s impossible? Me? I’m the guy who works for a shadow agency that doesn’t officially exist, remember?”
She furrowed her brow. “You and Hank don’t drag civilians off the street at gunpoint.” A long pause. “You don’t, do you?”
“No, but do I think there’s another agency out there that might be? Sure, it’s possible. Likely, even.”
She blanched. “Fair enough. So, in your professional opinion, who do you think these men in black are?”
He clicked his tongue against his teeth and thought. “I don’t know offhand. But why don’t you let me look into this one?”
The last thing he needed was for his wife to start poking around in the dimly lit shadows of federal agencies.
“Okay, but hold off. It may be much ado about nothing. Jordana is supposed to see if her professor shows up for his office hours. She’ll text me if he doesn’t, and I’ll let you know.”
“Sounds like a plan.” He leaned in for another kiss.
She snagged a handful of the energy bites and was about to dump them in the expensive bag she used as a combination purse/briefcase.
“Stop!” He grabbed a reusable snack pouch from the counter and swept them inside, then pressed the velcro closure shut.
She looked down at the design on the bright yellow fabric. “Um, this is a puppy dog.”
“Yes, but our children know better than to throw sticky foods into their backpacks. You need the puppy pouch more than they do.”
She stared at him for a few seconds, then threw back her head and laughed, really laughed. Good grief, but he loved her face when she was unguarded and happy.
“I better run,” she said, cutting short the moment. “I love you.”
He kissed the top of her head. “I love you more. Take care of yourself today, okay?”
“I always do.” She flashed a wide, reassuring grin that did nothing to reassure him. “I mean, I have coffee and energy bites. What more could a girl need?”
He watched as she ruffled Mocha’s fur and gave Java a good scratch behind the ears before she headed out to the garage. As she click-clacked away in her high-heeled boots, the answer came to him: sometimes, a girl needed a good long cry. But he didn’t know if she’d ever admit as much to herself, let alone admit it to him.
8
Landon pulled into the PPC detention center parking lot, snapped down his sun visor, and stared at himself in the lighted mirror. His eyes were red and blurry, despite the eye drops he’d squeezed into them before leaving the office. And he was exhausted, despite the ice-water bath he’d plunged his face into in the sink of his executive bathroom.
He’d been running on very little sleep for years, for decades, before Josh had died. It was the Silicon Valley way. But after Josh had died, sleep became more than just an interruption and a nuisance. Sleep was the enemy. Sleep kept him from working on Cesare, kept him from creating the program that would stop all the other Joshes from dying.
He knew the consequences. He understood that he was shortening his own lifespan, compromising his health, ruining the quality of his life through chronic sleep deprivation. But none of that was as important as what he did while he was awake. Every hour, every minute, every second that he spent perfecting Cesare brought it incrementally closer to achieving its potential. Someday it would be able to predict with great accuracy who would commit a heinous crime before they ever thought of doing it. And it would allow the authorities to stop them, to prevent them. And then, all the exhaustion, the sleepless nights, the misery—it would all be more than worth it.
He snapped the visor closed and took one final look at his revised list. Then he raced from his car to the building with his head bent against the cold wind. He pressed his index finger against the biometric scanner and waited. When the doors opened, he walked inside and relished the blast of hot air that hit him in the face.
He made his way through the labyrinth of halls on autopilot, following the path that his feet had trod so many times before. When he reached the outer chamber, he squinted at the guard on duty.
“Marshall, right?”
After a moment’s pause, the man gave a brisk nod. “Yes, sir.”
“I’ve reviewed the names of the detainees against the files we received from our local law enforcement partners. I’ve divided the names into two tranches.”
He slipped two sheets of paper through the cutout in the bulletproof partition that separated the guard from visitors to the lobby. He waited as Marshall ran his eyes down both short lists.
When he glanced up, Landon continued, “The men on List A are to be blindfolded, driven back to the engagement spot, and dropped off.”
“Dropped off?”
“Released.”
Marshall tented his brows. “We’re just … letting them go? Sir,” he added the honorific quickly to the question in a failed attempt to mask his disapproval.
“Correct. Most of them are students. They bear watching, and Cesare has flagged their files, but they’re not an imminent danger to anyone. The men on List B are the dangerous ones, the ones with established latent criminality.”
The guard gave an unconvinced shrug. “You’re the expert.”
Landon smiled without a hint of warmth. “That I am, Marshall. That I am. Spring List A and then arrange to bring me the men on List B one at a time.”
Marshall’s eyes widened. “Bring them to you?”
The surprise was warranted; his request was out of the ordinary. Landon did not, as a rule, interact with the latent criminals. But he wanted to probe Cesare’s decision-making formula, and the quickest, most effective way to do that was to talk to the men.
“Yes. I’ll set up in one of the boxes. Let’s say Room B. Bring me the first name on the list once the others have been transferred out of the facility.”
He fixed the guard with a steely stare and waited to see how the man would respond. The three boxes in the basement were the only interrogation rooms where every interaction wasn’t recorded on both video and audio. Of course, if Marshall were smart, he’d realize that Landon’s request itself was being recorded by the overhead camera. And that fact would give him cover if one of the detainees ended up beaten to a pulp, bleeding out in the box.
But Landon saw no reason to make the guard’s decision any harder than necessary. It was better, far better, to dispel the worry. He leaned forward, placed his hands face down on his side of the counter, and pitched his voice in a friendly, confidential tone. “I’m just going to talk to them, son. I’ll let you hold my weapons while I’m in there.”
Marshall nodded, convinced by Landon’s reassuring tone and unwavering gaze. “Yes, sir
.”
Landon removed his Glock from his shoulder holster, and then bent to free his hunting knife from its ankle strap. He pushed both items through the opening. The guard tagged them and dropped them in a metal lockbox.
“There. Now, get started on List A. I’ll show myself to Box B.”
Without waiting for a response, he strode toward a heavy metal door to the right of the reception area and jammed his finger against the reader. After a short pause, the door beeped and clicked open. He plunged into the belly of the building and took the stairs down, down, down into the dark, dank sub-basement. The bare overhead lightbulb in the hallway flickered as he clomped beneath it. He wondered if it was natural or staged for the horror movie effect.
He reached a door set into the stone wall. The metal had been coated with flat black paint and a “B” was scratched into the paint. He pushed open the door and stepped inside. The rooms locked from the inside only. The interrogator would throw a heavy, iron sliding bolt reminiscent of an old-fashioned barn latch across the door after the suspect was inside the room. The latch would catch with a deep clang that echoed off the bare earthen walls. That detail, he knew, had been chosen for its psychological effect.
He shrugged out of his suit jacket and unwound his cashmere scarf, hanging them carefully over the room’s only piece of furniture—a metal folding chair. Then he rolled his dress shirt sleeves up to his elbows. Optics mattered in a situation like this. In fact, his five o’clock shadow and his bleary-eyed expression would probably serve him well during his questioning of the men on his list.
He reviewed what he’d learned about the men. Max Barefoot was the most straightforward of the three. An automobile thief for a well-organized black market ring, Barefoot was equally happy to boost parked cars and take them at gunpoint from their owners. A string of carjackings in the mid-2000s had landed him in the state penitentiary system for a ten-year stint. He’d mostly stayed under the radar since his release, but that didn’t mean he was clean. His presence at the protest was puzzling, as he’d not previously shown any signs of activism. Although, Landon allowed, he may have found his calling in the joint. Some men find God behind bars, others reform into social activists. But most of them? They become more hardened versions of the men they were when they entered. Barefoot was a felon. Eventually, he’d commit another felony.
Inevitable Discovery Page 4