by Willow Rose
FanTAUstic345: But he had nothing to do with it. We swatted someone innocent, and now he’s dead. I’m scared they’ll come for us. I am afraid they’ll somehow find out who we are and nail us for this.
DeVilSQuaD666: Take it easy. They don’t know I made the call. I’m skilled. They can’t track me.
FanTAUstic345: I know.
DeVilSQuaD666: But you won’t talk, right? Tell me you won’t.
FanTAUstic345: I won’t if you don’t.
DeVilSQuaD666: Good. Keep a low profile. Never talk about this again. We should delete this chat and never talk again. Just in case.
FanTAUstic345: K. Good luck.
DeVilSQuaD666: Same.
Chapter 83
Liam booked us a room, and we went upstairs to hide, trying to avoid the clashes going down all over town. We could hear sirens in the distance and see flames licking at the sky as it was growing darker still.
Later, as day had become evening, and the protests had died down outside the windows, Liam ordered some food for us, and we ate together while the TV ran in the background, showing pictures of the riots. I felt awful but decided to not blame myself for not being able to stop this. Liam had been right about that. It wasn’t my fault. The Swatter had started all this, and it had been his plan all along. I was done blaming myself for not being able to save everyone.
Including Chad.
He had been killed by a murderer, and there was not a darn thing I could have done differently. It had taken me a while, but I had finally realized that I had to forgive myself for what happened to him.
It wasn’t my fault.
“You okay?” Liam asked, tilting his head.
I shrugged and took another bite of my burger. Liam had laughed when I ordered a burger from the hotel’s room service.
“You can have anything,” he said. “You could have lobster or duck, and you choose a burger and a milkshake?”
“I needed comfort food. I guess it’s hard to be very happy right now,” I answered, “when I feel like I’m farther than ever from finding the Swatter. He’s out there somewhere; I truly believe he’s in D.C., but where? I wish I knew why he was doing this, why he was killing. If I did, I’d be able to find him.”
My phone vibrated in my pocket and I pulled it out. It was my dad.
“Hello?”
“You’ve got to check the scanner,” he said, sounding agitated. “Something is happening, something big.”
“What do you mean?” I asked. “Anything other than the riots?”
“Yes, this can’t just be that. I’ve been listening for a few hours since Amal Bukhari was shot, and I spoke to you right after. But about ten minutes ago, something happened.”
“What?”
“Dispatch received seventeen high-priority calls at the exact same time. Seventeen!”
I sat down on a chair, heart pounding in my chest. I looked at my watch. “Let me guess. At eight fifty-six?”
“Exactly.”
“Dear Lord.”
I hung up and told Liam what my dad had said, then opened my police scanner app to listen in. My dad was right. A lot seemed to be going on at once. Several bomb threats, an active shooter situation, and a hostage situation. All life-threatening situations that will have highest priority.
“What’s going on?” Liam asked.
“It doesn’t sound like the riots,” I said. I grabbed my jacket from the chair and put it on.
“Where are you going?”
“Do you have a car?”
“Sure. I rented one at the airport. It’s parked in the back.”
I plotted a couple of addresses I had heard on the scanner into the GPS on my phone, then asked it for directions. I pointed at one of them.
“This one is pretty close to us.”
Liam nodded and grabbed his phone and car keys. “I’ll drive.”
Chapter 84
As we drove down 19th Street in downtown D.C., a tingling sensation shot up through my spine. It felt like a premonition of something horrible about to happen, something I couldn’t do anything to prevent. It was accompanied by an unpleasant feeling of utter helplessness.
What is going on here? What is he up to now?
“Take a right here, and then we’re there,” I said. “The address is at the end of the street.”
It wasn’t hard to find once we took the turn and came around a building. There was already what looked like fifteen or maybe twenty police cruisers there, along with a SWAT team, and they had set up a perimeter. I spotted the guy in charge in an instant, then bolted out as soon as Liam stopped the car and ran up toward him. An officer stopped me as I was almost there. His name tag said Steinberg.
“Hey, this is a restricted area. You can’t be here.”
“Can you tell us what’s going on, Officer?” I asked and stopped. The guy I needed to talk to was only a few feet away, but too far for me to be able to yell. Besides, if I did, they’d just think I was a crazy person. I needed to look into this man’s eyes to make him listen to what I had to say.
It was a lot easier said than done.
“We received a call about an active shooter inside this building in one of the apartments,” he said. “You better leave now. It’s not safe here.”
My heart started to race in my chest. I stared at the sergeant in charge as he obviously was giving directions to his men. I couldn’t escape this odd feeling inside of me that wouldn’t go away. Something was off.
“Do you have a headcount? Is he holding hostages?”
“I…we don’t know much as of right now. But I do need you two to…say, don’t I know you? You’re that chef, aren’t you?”
He stared at Liam, and Liam sent him a crooked smile.
“Weren’t you just arrested down in…Orlando for…?”
“Listen,” I said. “We need to speak to someone in charge. I think this might be a trap. Can you hear me, sir? Sir?”
The officer shook his head, still staring at Liam. “What are you doing here? You were in that car down in Orlando, when…when…I read that…”
“Listen to me,” I said. “You need to listen. Don’t go inside that building, please.”
As I spoke, I watched from the corner of my eye as the entire SWAT team was sent in.
“No,” I said. “No!”
I stepped forward, but the officer held me back by placing a hand on my chest. I looked at him, terrified.
“Please, stop them.”
But it was too late. The men disappeared inside the three-story red brick building while I held my breath. It felt like an eternity but was probably just a few seconds of complete silence before the officer spoke again:
“Now, I need you two to lea…”
Boom!
Chapter 85
The windows on the third floor of the building in front of us were blasted out, followed by big balls of fire shooting flames into the air above. Then, the second floor followed up with another explosion before the first floor did the same. Three explosions at the same time shook the entire neighborhood. Bricks were sent flying, along with glass and other debris.
Oh, dear God!
I was thrown to the ground by the force of the explosion, cracking my forehead into the pavement while waves of glass rained from the sky. Blood ran from my forehead down my cheek and nose while I struggled to figure out what had happened. The building in front of me wasn’t just destroyed. It was gone.
And so were the people who had been inside it.
Somehow, during it all, I saw Liam go down as well. His legs gave away under him, and he fell face-first into the pavement right next to me while the sound blasted out my ears and kept echoing for minutes after, pounding inside my head.
Please, make it stop, please!
Liam yelled something, but I couldn’t hear what it was. I tried to yell something back, but he couldn’t hear me either. Black smoke and dust filled the air and the neighboring buildings in front of us were completely engulfed in flames.
I stared at the scene, mouth open, gasping for air, while an inferno raged inside of me.
The worst part was that it wasn’t over yet.
As I was almost on my feet again, another explosion blasted through the air. This time, it came from another part of town, and as I scrambled to my feet, another one came, and then another one followed, and I fell forward to my knees, holding my hands above my head to shield myself from the terror.
Stop. Please, stop!
I counted seventeen explosions, all at almost the same time or right after one another, coming from all over town. It was like an earthquake, one of the bad ones, where you aren’t safe anywhere, where the very ground beneath you caves in, and every house crumbles around you.
As the ground shook and bricks, glass, and debris landed on the pavement in front of me, Liam reached out his hand toward me, and I grabbed it, holding it as tightly as possible like it was the very last thing connecting me to this world. A wooden electrical pole fell from the sky and smashed down scarily close to us, and I let out a scream.
Liam then covered me with his long coat and with his big body. He was hugging me tightly, protecting me, while the entire town seemed to be crashing around us. People were spilling into the streets in panic, crying out to God. I saw the officer from earlier, the one that had held me back, dragging the remains of the sergeant across the pavement, struggling, his face smeared in dirt and sod while the sergeant was barely alive, missing his right leg.
That was when I closed my eyes and covered my head completely. I didn’t want to witness any more. I simply couldn’t bear it.
THREE DAYS LATER
Chapter 86
It was like looking at a warzone. Several big buildings downtown had been completely demolished by the seventeen explosions. Hundreds of people had died. Hundreds. They still didn’t know the exact number since they weren’t done searching through all the fallen buildings. But they knew that sixty-nine of them were police officers, twenty-two were firefighters, and there were four emergency responders, along with an uncertain number of civilians. So far, twenty-five had been dragged out of demolished buildings, but it was believed there would be a lot more as the work for digging them out progressed. A baby had miraculously survived two days in the rubble and was dug out by firefighters, bringing a flicker of hope to us all.
Other than that, it was bad. It was really bad.
I was in the hospital for several days, being treated for a concussion and smoke inhalation. I was one of the lucky ones, though. My injuries were far from as severe as most other people.
The Swatter had outdone himself.
Liam was another lucky one. He only spent one day in the hospital before they discharged him, and he went back to his home in Philadelphia. The airports remained closed for three days, and the roads were clogged by people traveling by car instead of air, so my mom and the kids couldn’t come up to see me. And I told them they didn’t have to. I’d be home as soon as I was done in D.C.
Matt did come, though. As soon as he realized I had been hurt, he drove all night and all the next day to get to D.C. He stayed by my side for all three days while I was in the hospital, and I was so happy that he did.
“Actually, it was Alex who told me to come,” he told me on the last day when he had come back with coffee from the vending machine. “He came to my house after you left and we had a little chat.”
“Alex did?” I asked.
“Yes, he ran away from your house, and I called your mom immediately. He ended up staying the night, sleeping in Elijah’s room. I think those two are becoming really good friends. Anyway, Alex told me he wanted us to come back to the house, to your house and live there because we were needed. You needed me, he said. You were just too proud to tell me.”
“Wow,” I said.
“I know,” Matt said. “That little kid sees more than you know.”
“He sure is smart,” I said.
“Anyway, I was thinking that Elijah and I should just come back to the house as soon as we get back from here. It’s all been silly, really. I don’t even remember what I was so mad about earlier. It’s all water under the bridge.”
I swallowed. I smiled, thinking I should be happy about this, but somehow, I wasn’t. I had that feeling once again like someone was choking me—like I couldn’t breathe. I cleared my throat and shook off the feeling.
“Yes, sure, of course.”
He took my hand and kissed the top of it. For some reason, I winced, and he saw it. A shadow went over his face for a second, then disappeared. He smiled gently.
“That’s a deal, then. We start all over once we get back.”
“Yeah, about that. I might need to stay in D.C. a few days longer,” I said.
“What?”
“Isabella, my former supervisor, has put together an anti-terror task force to catch whoever was behind the attacks. She wants me to join them as soon as I’m ready. Which I guess is tomorrow when they let me out of here.”
“So…you’re not coming back then?” A furrow appeared between his eyebrows, signaling disappointment, but it swiftly disappeared. It was replaced by another smile, one that seemed awkward and forced.
“Not yet. I will as soon as we catch this guy. I promise you, okay?” I lifted his hand and kissed the top of it with a smile.
Matt smiled nervously and let out a small, seemingly insignificant scoff. I knew this wasn’t exactly his plan, but that was life for you, right? Plans were bound to be broken from time to time.
As were hearts.
Chapter 87
It was strange to be back. My old workplace at the FBI Headquarters on Pennsylvania Avenue hadn’t changed much, if at all. Isabella waited for me in her office. I knocked, then walked in.
Isabella smiled warmly.
“There she is. Returned to the land of the living. Please, have a seat.”
I found a chair and sat across from her desk. She kept looking at me, shaking her head.
“Remind me never to dismiss your theories again, will you? I mean…you knew this would happen. You saw it coming, you spotted it, and you tried to tell me in Orlando, but I wouldn’t listen. I feel like such a fool. I will never forgive myself for not listening to you.”
“I…well, I didn’t exactly know that this would happen,” I said. “Not the explosions and all. But I had a feeling something awful was about to go down, yes.”
“And you knew they would target our men in blue,” she said, pointing at me with her pen. “Seventeen calls led to seventeen ambushes. All were bombs placed inside the buildings with tripwires that were set to explode as soon as they entered. The calls led them straight into the traps.”
Isabella rose to her feet, then walked to the window and looked out. I could tell she was truly shaken up, and that said a lot. Isabella was solid as a rock; nothing shook her. I had never seen her like this before.
“This case has the highest priority,” she said. “President’s orders.”
“Of course.”
“We have all our terrorism experts on this, day and night.”
“I saw plenty of activity when I walked through the building to get here,” I said.
“No one has claimed it yet,” Isabella said and turned to face me. “Which means we have no idea what we’re dealing with here. ISIS? Al Qaeda? Another terror network that has managed to stay under the radar? Who are these people? It’s been four days now, and you’d think they’d at least want to claim it by now.”
“What do the experts say?”
Isabella sighed and pinched the bridge of her nose. “Nothing useful, that’s what.”
“Have they made a profile?”
Isabella nodded. She handed me a piece of paper. “This is what I wanted you to see. We think we’re dealing with a terror organization, which is kind of a given at this point, but…”
“I don’t think so,” I interrupted her. “Sorry, but I’m guessing that’s why I’m here, right? To give you my opinion?”
Isabella gave me a look, then sat down. “Please. Go on.”
“I think we’re looking for one guy. I call him the Swatter. He’s American, born and raised here. He’s also a loner. A computer-savvy gamer, which makes me think he’s not very old, but I could be wrong about that since my dad is a genius with computers and he’s in his mid-sixties. I believe he is most likely ex-military with his knowledge of explosives and how to place them. He might have shown signs of PTSD and could have been stationed in Afghanistan. He is most likely black, fighting for black rights, and against police brutality. He’s had some sort of collision with the police, maybe been a victim of police brutality since that is his focus. He’s chosen his victims to make sure it’s spectacular, and it’s the same with the bombings. He wants attention. He wants people to see and understand his mission, maybe even start a revolution. He killed Amal Bukhari on that stage to get the people to riot, and then placed the calls to lead the police to his bombs. It all went down in one day. It’s all very calculated, so he’s also extremely intelligent. My guess is that he’s also deeply religious, based on his targeting of declared atheists like Amal, who had denounced her family’s Muslim faith. He also has an attachment to the exact time eight-fifty-six p.m. He’s made most of his calls at that exact time, and that goes as well for all the calls to dispatch that led to the bombs four days ago. This is what I believe you’re looking for, not an overseas organization, but that’s just my opinion.”
She stared at me. “Really? You think this entire attack was orchestrated by only one person?”
I shrugged. “Yes. That’s what I believe.”
“And how is that possible?”
“I don’t have the details yet. But he makes me think of the Unabomber. He targeted people who were involved with modern technology, issuing a social critique opposing industrialization while advocating a nature-centered form of anarchism. We’re looking for someone like that. Someone who wants to change society for what he believes is the better.”