“Has anyone been able to confirm whether Dirk Nielsen is in his apartment or not?” Darger asked.
Fitch shook his head.
“The first officers on the scene went up and hollered from the elevator. But since they had orders not to enter the apartment until the bomb squad arrived, they couldn’t go in. For all we know the guy’s blissed out on Ambien in there, completely unaware of what’s happening.” He nodded at the screen. “But I guess ol’ Dobber is about to find out whether or not anyone is home right now.”
The elevator reached the top floor, and the door drifted open. The penthouse gleamed beyond the threshold, all glass and steel and sleek-looking. Modern. A little industrial.
“Exiting the elevator now. Entering the penthouse.”
The cam once again bobbed with Dobbins’ footsteps. Something of a foyer zoomed by — neon green running shoes pushed all the way to the side of a floormat — and then button-tufted leather furniture squared off the expansive living space, most of it pointed out at the seamless glazing facing the skyline, the window wall providing an uninterrupted view of the cityscape.
“Hello?” Dobbins called out. “Anyone home?”
His voice echoed off the polished floors and gleaming glass. There was no response.
Alvarez spoke up, the nearness of his voice startling Darger after so much silence in the van save for what came from the speakers.
“The front desk mentioned Mr. Nielsen receiving a flower delivery yesterday evening. We’re thinking that’s how Huxley got the bomb into the penthouse.”
“Copy that. On the lookout for a bouquet of some sort. Here we go. Now entering the kitchen.”
The camera wheeled hard to the left as Dobbins swiveled that way, the image blurring for a second and then sharpening into focus on the gleaming marble countertop of the kitchen island — bright white veined with smoky tendrils of dark gray.
His head rotated to the left and right, the cam sweeping past an oversized refrigerator that blended with the white shaker cabinetry around it. Dobbins did something of a double take, the feed on the monitor mimicking the motion, and then Darger saw what had caused the reaction.
A massive floral arrangement nestled in an antique metal bucket sat at the end of the countertop to the right of the fridge. The thin stalks and velvety petals looked especially delicate surrounded by all the hard, glinting surfaces of the kitchen. An organic island in a sea of glossy cabinets and shining marble.
“The base on this thing is pretty hefty,” Dobbins said. “I think this is it.”
Dobbins trudged toward the flower arrangement. The camera seemed to zoom in on it.
He stopped just shy of touching the mass of flowers, though his thickly armored hands hovered on the sides of the screen now, drifting up and down with his respiration.
“I’m going to remove the flowers now,” Dobbins said.
Pressure pounded in Darger’s head, a squishing throb in her temples. It whoomped like a fan blade spinning inside her skull.
She tried to stop her eyes from flicking down to the phone in her lap. Failed.
They had six minutes. Give or take.
Dobbins lifted the large bouquet.
“Yep, there’s definitely something here.”
He set the flowers aside and leaned over the bucket that served as a vase for the flowers. There was a cardboard box inside the vessel.
Up close, thin beige lines became visible running around the package both longways and widthways, crossing in the middle. Darger realized it was bound in a length of twine.
“According to the schematic he gave us, we’re supposed to be able to open the top of the box to disarm the anti-tampering trigger,” Alvarez said. “Just be careful.”
Darger chewed her bottom lip. What if they’d been wrong? What if Huxley wasn’t playing fair? What if the merest disturbance set off the trigger and detonated the bomb?
Using a multi-tool, Dobbins snipped the twine. Brushed it out of the way. Then he slit the tape sealing the top of the box.
The tip of the blade punched through the clear layer. Disappeared into the cardboard crevice.
Dobbins hesitated with the knife like that. Took a couple of breaths. Cam rising and falling. Rising and falling.
Then he raked the tool toward himself. The metal sliced its way through the tape, lisping against the sticky plastic all the way from one end of the box to the other.
From there he quickly slashed the tape along the corners. Two clean swipes.
The cardboard flaps relaxed then. Pulled apart slightly. Like the thing had let out a breath.
Everyone in the van sat up straighter. Breath sucked in and held. Soundless.
Darger could somehow feel that they were all experiencing the same thing. A shared intensity prickling over their scalps, along their necks. Chest and palms vibrating with strange tension. Like the feeling had spread over the interior of the van, infected all of them.
Dobbins set the tool down on the countertop.
“OK,” he said, voice going shaky for the first time. “OK. I’m going to open it now.”
That was when the feed on the monitor cut to black.
CHAPTER 33
Darger blinked hard and stared at the blank monitor. The van held tensely silent for that first jolt of shock, perhaps the span of a single heartbeat.
Then the panic hit.
A different kind of shockwave rolled through the enclosed space of the security van. Confusion rippling outward, throttling all of them.
Everyone in the vehicle flinched. Winced. Shoulders bucking backward.
Darger shot straight up. Her legs lifting her to her feet without her telling them to, some instinct standing her up for no good reason.
Fitch stood up a fraction of a second after her — the same inclination for action overtaking him. Their shoulders bumped, Darger getting knocked slightly off-balance, staggering on numb legs until she could right herself.
Gasps tore out of all the throats after that, as though on a timed delay, raspy sucking sounds full of surprise and fear.
The black screen just gaped at them. Empty. Nothing.
All the panicked voices rose then, finally able to find words and form them. The sounds tangled over each other. Cacophony.
“What the fuck happened? Did it blow?”
“I didn’t hear anything. Shouldn’t we have heard something? Is he OK?”
“Detonation or malfunction?”
Alvarez raised one hand like a kindergarten teacher. He cupped the fingers of the opposite mitt over the microphone portion of the headset. The laptop perched on his knees wiggled slightly as he spoke.
“We’ve only lost the video feed,” he said, his strident tone cutting through all the voices, drowning them out. “Let me see if the audio is still functional, see if he’s OK.”
Everyone took a breath, Alvarez included. His chest shuddered as the wind entered. Then he eased his fingers away from the microphone.
“Dobber. Are you there?”
Dobbins’ voice crackled through the speakers of the console.
“Yep. I’m about to open this sucker up. Is there a problem?”
Another deep breath rolled in and out of Alvarez, hoisting his chest and then lowering it.
“We’re flying blind now, brother. Video feed is down, but we can still hear you, so that’s something. Anyhow, I think you should fall back. No need to risk your life for some rich asshole’s property now.”
Dobbins was quiet for a second. Breath huffing over the line.
“Is the building fully evacuated?”
Everyone in the van turned their attention to the crowd of residents across the street. People were still filing out of the front of the building sporadically.
“Looks like there are still some stragglers,” Alvarez said.
“If there are still civilians inside, then we don’t have a choice. With a big enough blast… well, I don’t want to think about that. My point is, we’re out of time, brother.
I have to try to disarm it now.”
Alvarez grimaced. Lips curling to reveal clenched teeth.
“Goddamn it, Dobbins. Always with the cowboy shit. Cocky son of a bitch.”
“Hey, I’m here, and I’m all suited up. I can handle it.”
“What’d I tell you?” Fitch muttered. “Huge fuckin’ nuts, right? Wheelbarrow.”
“OK, enough talk,” the voice said through the speakers. “Opening the box now.”
Everyone leaned closer to the empty video screen. Darger found herself squinting into the blackness as though the image might flicker to life there after all, as though she could will the feed to resume.
It stayed blank. A vacant rectangle.
Faint scuffing sounds emitted from the speakers now — the telltale noise of a cut cardboard edge scraping against something. Papery scratching.
“Tell me what you see, Dobber,” Alvarez said.
“OK, after unfolding the four flaps from the top of the box, there’s a rectangular plate beneath them.”
Dobbins cleared his throat before he went on. Darger thought he sounded nervous for the first time, which she didn’t like.
“Looks to be aluminum foil wrapped around flimsy card stock. I think I can see how it’s attached to the bomb mechanism beneath. Looks like a very simple anti-tampering trigger.”
Alvarez nodded.
“OK, based on the schematic, you’ll need to clip the side wires to disable the trigger.”
“Affirmative,” Dobbins said. “Stand by for disarming.”
Again, there was a beat of silence that seemed to stretch out. A hanging vacancy.
Darger could feel her pulse in her neck. She watched Alvarez who had his left palm cupped under his chin and pressed the tips of all four fingers into the cleft between his lips. He kept shifting the digits against his mouth, not quite able to keep them still.
Then the metallic snip of the wire cutters sounded over the speakers. Two sharp notes. Percussive.
Dobbins exhaled hard into the microphone. It sounded like a gust of wind blowing into a phone’s mouthpiece, guttering and snapping, but Darger could hear some amount of relief in it.
“OK. Wires cut. Easy peasy. Removing the plate now.”
Darger’s eyes darted to her phone. Less than two minutes now.
She held her breath. Part of her waited for the blast, some thrust of deafening violence to break up all this tense quiet.
Something clicked. An odd sound. Almost musical.
“Plate removed. Eyes on the device now.”
He swallowed. Spit sloshing in his throat. Then he fell quiet again. Quiet for too long.
“What are you seeing Dobber?” Alvarez said, his voice soft now. “Talk to me.”
No reply.
The heads in the van began to swivel toward each other. Glances exchanged. Eyes narrowed. Concern mounting.
Fitch mopped the wrist of his sleeve over his sweaty lip and brow. Patting it there like a hand towel. He shook his head, and Darger watched fresh beads of perspiration weep down to replace the ones he’d wiped away.
“It’s a thicc boi, alright. Several times more powerful than what we found in Passmore’s kitchen.”
He whistled before he went on.
“OK. Looks like we’ve got four… five wires,” Dobbins said. He seemed to be muttering to himself more than answering Alvarez’s question. “And the timer trigger leading to a digital alarm clock.”
He clucked his tongue against the roof of his mouth as though figuring something, tallying something up.
“Keep talking, Dobbins,” Alvarez said, licking his lips like a nervous dog. “Tell me what you see.”
Darger looked down then. The clock showed less than a minute. Her throat got tight. She shoved the phone down into her pocket, concealing it. She couldn’t bear to look anymore.
She closed her eyes. Listened to her heart thunder out its terrified speed metal beat.
“Can you identify the power source?” Alvarez said. “Or the initiator?”
Another scraping clack echoed funny out of the speakers. A shrill sound that clipped off hard at the end.
Silence.
All the bodies before the console leaned forward. Listening. Anticipation mounting.
“OK,” Dobbins said. “I just cut the power supply. Got it. The device is disabled.”
CHAPTER 34
Darger let out a breath. Chest heaving, huffing, expelling its contents until she was empty.
Her neck went slack then, tension draining away from her shoulders as well. Her head drifted down until her chin rested on her chest. She closed her eyes, and everything seemed to go quiet around her. All sound blocked out.
She stayed that way. Breathed. Weightless. Floating in the silence, in the stillness.
Relief washed over her in waves, the comfort somehow growing in intensity.
Then the sense of relaxation slowly shifted toward a kind of pleasure, something celebratory. A charge of jubilation welling up inside of her, spreading over her from the middle out.
Endorphins overtaking her head and body both.
She opened her eyes then, and the light was all around her, and the sound faded back.
Fitch arched his back until his head faced the van’s ceiling, arms locked in some sort of Incredible Hulk pose. He crowed like a frat boy who’d just tapped a keg of Pabst Blue Ribbon.
“Woo! Boom, motherfucker! Bomber McFuckhead never stood a chance once we were on the case.”
He straightened, revealing pale blue eyes glowing with some animal ecstasy, and pumped his fist in the air four times. Then his voice switched over to a sing-song delivery that weirdly reminded Darger of Oprah.
“We fuck-ing did it!”
The big guy started windmilling his arms, giving everyone awkward high fives. The mousy guy behind the console made a face like Fitch had hurt his hand.
“Dobbins is the one who did it,” Loshak said. Then he reached over and clapped Alvarez on the shoulder. “Dobbins and Alvarez did it.”
Fitch’s arms stopped cartwheeling, suspended in midair. He slowly lowered the limbs. Blinked a few times. His eyes went wide. Locked onto Loshak’s.
“Oh, for… Don’t get me wrong, now. Dobbins is the king. The king! We are merely his loyal subjects, you know, uh… doing the, uh, whatever subjects do. Serving the realm and whatnot.”
He chuckled a little at his own lost train of thought. Then he arched his back again and howled like a wolf.
“Long live King Dobbins!”
CHAPTER 35
As soon as the disabled bomb had been removed from the scene, the investigators swarmed in to have a look. Darger and Loshak were among the first wave, gearing up in booties, nitrile gloves, and PPE suits. They moved through the vast living space, footsteps echoing off all the gleaming surfaces. It felt eerie, Darger thought, to walk in the room she’d just watched on the security van monitor — bigger and brighter than she could have imagined with all the glass up here.
Streams of bunny-suited crime scene techs flowed through the lux space after that. The crowd seemed only to grow, as though a clown car had pulled up outside the building and techs just kept pouring out of it, eventually spilling into the mob upstairs. Bumping. Jostling. They looked like lemmings following each other around.
Camera flashes strobed over everything, the flickers of bright white coming in an unsteady rhythm.
Darger struggled to make her way through the kitchen, where the congregation seemed to be clustered tightest. She turned sideways. Tried to make herself as skinny as possible. Squeezed through the bodies clogging the doorway.
“Same building as Beyoncé,” one of the bunny suits said to a small group. The ensuing oohs and ahs seemed to suggest that they were all deeply impressed by this fact.
Darger shook her head and kept moving. It was already the third time she’d heard the B-word.
The last of the euphoria still bubbled in her head like champagne, but the knowledge that Huxley’s ga
me wasn’t yet finished was coming back stronger and stronger. Replacing the joy was the blend of gritty determination and anxiety she was more accustomed to.
The next clue was here somewhere, tucked within the walls of this unfortunately massive apartment. 5,500 square feet. Even with a crew this size, they could search all day and still come up empty, especially if Huxley was as sneaky about hiding this clue as he had been with the others.
But she would find it. She had to.
What they needed to do — what she needed to do — was figure out what hints he’d left them.
She thought back on the journal as she walked through the space. Studied Dirk Nielsen’s possessions in hopes that some puzzle piece would fall into place the way it had when she’d been in Amelia Driscoll’s bedroom and spotted the framed magazine ad.
Huxley’s words echoed in her head.
This is what people are really like. This is what they really do to each other.
Cruel beings stomping around. Disturbed. Insane. Always hungry for more destruction. Always on the hunt.
Mindless violent raping world.
The ultra-modern dining space surrounded her now. She walked through it slowly. Scanned the details in the hope that it would trigger something.
A vaguely industrial-looking chandelier hung down from chains in the center of the space — all metal and sharp corners. The dining table and chairs looked like the expensive version of something from Ikea. Minimalist. Clean lines.
She brushed her fingers over the smooth surface of the tabletop. It felt cold. But it brought nothing to mind. Nothing here did.
Her eyes danced over another glass wall leading out to the lap pool running fifty feet along this side of the building. She moved through the doorway to walk along its edge. The water sloshed against the glass infinity wall, the wet noises seeming to dull the drone of the buzzing techs inside in a way that helped Darger focus.
Violet Darger | Book 8 | Countdown To Midnight Page 15