Lie in the Moment

by Nicole Camden

  Maura flushed. Now, why had he hidden his phone in the silverware drawer? He may want her to trust him, but he certainly didn’t trust her.

  “Are you sure?” he asked his friend. “All right. I’ll be there in thirty minutes.”

  He hung up the phone and met her gaze, his eyes wary.

  “Something on Keenan?” she asked, picking up her shirt and pulling it on, already knowing the answer.

  He nodded. “They think they found the kid who planted the bomb.”

  She was giving him the silent treatment. Not about Keenan. Oh, no. She was all too happy to discuss Keenan and the bombing and how they were going to try and locate the kid who’d adiosed his Mercedes, but not anything else, not since she’d seen how he’d hidden his phone.

  What did she expect him to do?

  After he’d finished the call, they’d dressed quickly and Maura had strapped on her duty weapon.

  Seeing her checking the gun, her movements brisk and efficient, reminded him of the women he’d met working with the CIA. Though he’d spent most of his time behind a computer, he interacted with plenty of women during training. He’d forgotten how much he liked them, liked their toughness. When he’d gotten out of the CIA, he’d immediately headed to MIT and forgotten about everything except starting his life again. And the women he dated now were only tough when they were filing for divorce.

  With Maura, he’d miscalculated. Perhaps he’d gotten a little too used to women who expected nothing from him except presents and expensive dinners. Mentioning trust at this point had been foolish; he wasn’t sure why he’d done it.

  Back in the elevator, she stood as far away from him as she could, but he could still taste her on his mouth, see her beautiful body spread out before him when he closed his eyes.

  Keenan, he reminded himself. The point was to catch Keenan. He couldn’t afford to get distracted.

  “I’ll meet you at the station before the press conference,” he said to her when they reached the garage, already walking toward his Rolls.

  “Wait.” She caught his arm. As soon as he stopped, she released him as if her fingers were burned. “I need everything you found sent over to Bert. He’s still at the station. Including the name of the kid and anything you’ve got about his background, criminal history, and current location.”

  Roland didn’t hesitate. “I’ll have Nick send it over.”

  She paused, as if she didn’t quite believe him. “My captain won’t buy that this has anything to do with Keenan. We still don’t have any direct evidence tying him to the bombing or to the theft at the chemical plant.”

  Roland didn’t give a shit what her captain thought, but he knew she did. “I’ll have a word with him, but it doesn’t really matter. You’ll have the surveillance of the kid. It’s not a hundred percent match, but it’s close.”

  She nodded. “Yeah, I can go after the kid for the bombing, but I need my team and the assisting officers to know what they’re up against. That remote-controlled machine gun Keenan turned on the crowd at Quincy Market last year was no picnic.”

  Roland stepped forward and took her hands, ignoring the keys that dug into his palm. At first she tried to pull away, but then she lifted her chin and glared at him.

  Usually Roland had no problem dealing with angry women. He charmed them, he bought them something, and then they weren’t angry anymore, or at least they didn’t show it.

  “I promise that I’ll either convince him or compel him.”

  Her lips twitched, just a little. “No one talks like that, you know.”

  Roland ran his thumb over her knuckles. “Would you rather I said, ‘Don’t worry, baby, I’ll make him listen’?”

  “That’s a horrible Bogart.”

  “I was going for James Cagney.”

  “Don’t.” She shook her head, laughing, sending tendrils of her hair dancing over her shoulders. The faint greenish light from the garage made her pale skin take on a ghostly hue, but she was still lovely. “And I’m not your baby.”

  He slid his right hand into her hair and dropped a kiss on her surprised mouth. “We’re not finished with this, Maura O’Halloran.”

  “This,” she said pointedly, picking up his hand and removing it from her person, “is just fooling around.”

  Roland didn’t make a habit of getting angry. In fact, the only times he’d lost his temper in the past few years were at a former employee who had mocked Zach, his administrative assistant, for being gay and for being paralyzed—the man hadn’t known what hit him as Roland frog-marched his ass out the front door—and when he found Blake, beaten up and curled into a ball in the private elevator that led to his apartment. Her then-boyfriend had discovered what it felt like when someone stronger and considerably more dangerous decided to beat the shit out of you.

  So he was surprised when he felt a small, but undeniable flare of fury in the pit of his stomach. What the hell was that about?

  Disturbed, he turned away.

  “All right,” he agreed. “Fooling around. And the adrenaline of nearly getting blown up.” He’d learned a long time ago that the fastest way to get a woman to change her mind was to agree with her. And if you wanted a woman to come on to you, it was best to give her a little bit of a challenge.

  She didn’t say anything, so he continued to the Rolls. He opened the driver’s-side door and met her eyes over the top of the low-slung vehicle.

  “I know what you’re doing,” she said.

  “Yeah?” He smiled at her. “Is it working?”

  “No.”

  “Too bad,” he said with a shrug, and slid into the supple leather seats. But it was working. Maura O’Halloran would be in his bed again before the week was out. He half smiled as he waited for her to back up and head out of the parking garage. He followed behind her and then turned toward Accendo, thinking about what he would do with her the next time he had her at his mercy.

  His phone buzzed insistently, draining him of humor and reminding him that Keenan wasn’t caught yet, and he apparently had a significant supply of a flammable solvent and enough hacked code to outsmart surveillance.

  “Yeah, what’s up?” he answered, putting the phone on speaker. No one with half a brain drove a Rolls one-handed.

  “You on your way back to the office?” It was Nick.

  “I am.”

  “Press is here. Guess they figured out that it was your Mercedes that got bombed.”

  “Great.” Just what he needed, the press gathered outside his offices. And he wasn’t exactly inconspicuous in the Rolls.

  “I would go to Milton’s brownstone, have Shane drive you both in.”

  “Any progress locating the kid?” Roland asked, ignoring the suggestion.

  “Not yet.”

  Roland had thought as much. “All right. Here’s what I need: Gather everything you have on the kid and send copies over to Detective Bert Boatman, Maura’s partner.”

  Unlike Milton, Nick knew when to ask questions and when to shut the fuck up. “Anything else?”

  “I’ll call you if I think of something.”

  As soon as he heard the click of Nick hanging up the phone, Roland cursed roundly. Keenan with a chemical weapon was one of the most awful fucking scenarios he could imagine. He would call his contact at the DoD again when he got to the office, see if MOMENT had picked up any more hits, but he didn’t hold out much hope. If Keenan had stolen enough of MOMENT’s code, then he knew basically how it worked and could circumvent it.

  His cousin was clever, probably the cleverest person Roland had ever met, with the exception of Roland’s own father. But Keenan had a weakness. He reveled in his own wit, considered himself smarter than anyone else, and never hesitated to take the opportunity to prove it. Roland was certain that he’d left clues as to his intentions and would bet his Ferrari that Keenan had left those clues in his letters to Blake. Roland needed to see those letters, needed to find them sooner rather than later. He had a feeling that later was going to
be very bad for someone. Probably someone he loved.

  MAURA DIDN’T KNOW what Roland did with himself after he dropped her off at the station around 3:00 a.m., but she took a nap on the couch in the break room at the station. When she woke up a couple hours later, she found Bert stuck at his desk with a phone glued to his ear and the captain pacing around his office, like he always did when he had to speak in front of the press. The room smelled like coffee and fresh doughnuts. Someone must have made a run to the bakery around the corner. Bert’s desk was messier than usual with folders and papers spread out over his keyboard.

  Maura dropped her bag on her own desk and started looking through the flotsam in her usually tidy partner’s workspace. Her eyes caught on blurry surveillance photos of a figure in a hooded jacket and vest, bent over near the driver’s-side door of Roland’s Mercedes. She tugged them out while Bert gave her the stink eye, his attention still mostly on his phone call. Puffy, dark-circled eyes, an empty mug of coffee, and the lack of a tie were all indicators of a sleepless night. Maura was sure she didn’t look much better.

  She was reading through the stuff that Accendo had sent over when he ended the call.

  “You’re sure about this?” he asked, pointing one thick finger at the photo of the bomber. According to the documents she held in her hand, his identity could possibly be one Garrett Morris, a discontented teenager from a wealthy suburb of Chicago.

  “Sure about what?” She was still reading through the dossier in front of her. Roland’s sources were thorough, she’d give them that.

  “This is a blurry image of a kid in a hoodie. Facial rec wouldn’t even give a ten percent match that this is the same kid.”

  “I’m sure that this kid is worth investigating,” Maura affirmed. “Or at least, Roland is sure, and in Keenan’s case, I trust his instincts.”

  “All right, Maur, having him consult on the case is one thing—but you have to be careful accepting evidence that you’re not even sure is connected. The captain’ll have your ass if you—”

  “Relax, Bert. The captain isn’t going to fuck with Roland. He has top-secret clearance and is best buds with the governor.”

  Bert made a distressed noise and adjusted his position in his chair.

  Maura scowled at him. “Don’t make that sound. Jesus, Bert, you’re a detective.”

  He huffed, gathering up papers and shoving them in a manila file folder. With a grunt, he thwacked her in the chest with it. “Just make sure you’re convinced that this is the kid. He posted a few antisocial messages on Twitter and was caught on camera with Shy at an airport in Zurich. That doesn’t make him a bomber.”

  “Doesn’t make him a Boy Scout, either,” she hissed in return. “I’ll make sure, okay?” She glanced around. Two patrolmen standing near the doughnuts were looking at them, and also one of the lab techs, a dark-haired woman named Carly.

  She lowered her voice. “I’ve got to take a shower. Did they say they were close to a location on the kid that bombed Roland’s car?”

  He put one elbow on the arm of his chair and leaned back. “How should I know? I sent what I knew over to your contact at Interpol; I imagine Roland’s people are doing the same thing.”

  “Yeah,” Maura agreed, twitching in frustration. Tapping the folder against her opposite hand, she set it back on his desk. “But you put out a bulletin here in Boston, right? See if someone has spotted him?”

  “Word’s out,” he said, nodding. “So far nothing, but it’s five a.m. on Monday, Maur. Even bad guys are asleep at this hour.”

  “All right, all right,” Maura agreed. “Gimme thirty minutes, and I’ll take this over while you take a break. You’re getting bitchy.”

  Grunting, he hauled himself out of his chair and picked up his coffee mug. “I’ll show you bitchy,” he muttered under his breath, and lumbered over to the coffeemaker. The patrolmen scattered.

  Maura grabbed her bag and headed to the locker room.

  The smell of sweat and some kind of powdery perfume greeted her as she stepped inside the old brick room; it was part of the building that had been built in the twenties and had the tiny tile floor and noisy pipes to prove it, but it appeared to be empty. Dropping her bag on the wooden bench between the lockers, she yanked off her coat and hung it on a hook. A hint of Roland’s cologne seemed to linger in the air. She pulled her shirt away from her chest and smelled herself. I smell like him, she realized. It wasn’t unpleasant. She kind of felt . . . owned. Which was totally unacceptable.

  Ten minutes later, she was showered and changed, her wet hair pulled back into a bun that dripped cold water down her back. The steam from her shower hadn’t done much to raise the temperature. She could hear the clatter of a locker door being opened and the sound of feet. Shift change.

  Wrapping herself quickly in a towel, she dashed from the shower area to her locker. “Fuck. Fuck. Fuck,” she chanted as she dried off and hurried into her clothes. It was cold as shit inside the locker room at this hour. She didn’t think they cranked the heat until later in the morning.

  Once she was dressed and her hair dried, she checked her duty weapon and badge and drew her jacket on over her shirt. Her phone was sitting on the shelf at the top of her locker. She reached for it and was surprised to see that it was unlocked. She never left her phone . . . Oh, shit. This wasn’t her phone.

  Putting a hand on her gun, she backed up until her shoulder blades hit the vents in the locker and eased her weapon out of the holster. She kept her breathing shallow and in and out of her mouth as she listened intently. Water dripped in the shower and the pipes in the old building tinked and groaned a little, but she didn’t hear anyone.

  “Who’s there?” she called. “If you’re in here, come out with your hands up.”

  No one came forward.

  Maura cautiously stepped toward the main path from the door to the showers, keeping her back to the lockers and checking the corners. Several minutes later, she was satisfied that she was currently alone in the locker room. But she clearly hadn’t been.

  She kept her weapon drawn and ready as she grabbed her bag and the mystery phone. Someone had put it in her locker while she was showering. She wasn’t crazy.

  Shoving open the door that led to a side hallway, she checked the corners before stepping fully into view. A kid in uniform spotted her and drew his own gun, shouting for her to drop the weapon.

  “Easy, kid,” she said. “Detective O’Halloran.” She kept her gun pointed at the floor. “You see anyone leave through here?”

  He shook his head no, still wary, his gun drawn. “Okay.” She straightened up and holstered her weapon, tugging her blazer to the side to show him the gold badge she had clipped to her belt.

  He visibly relaxed, as if he’d been run through with an electric current that had only now shut off. “What the hell?”

  “There’s an intruder in the building,” she said. “Check all the offices along this corridor,” she told him, and headed to the squad room to find Bert, only when she arrived, he was nowhere to be found and the captain was roaring at someone on the phone. Radios squawked as two uniforms hurried by, their belts and gear jangling.

  Maura distinctly heard the words “shot” and “parking lot.” Shit. She grabbed the next person who rushed by, another uniform, this one vaguely familiar. “What’s going on?”

  “Someone shot the officer on duty at intake and took off.” He shook her off and rushed down the hall as well, leaving her standing alone in the squad room with wet hair and a phone that didn’t belong to her. It dinged loudly, startling her so bad that she nearly dropped it.

  She looked at the screen and saw that it was a text message, a picture of her in the bowling alley with Roland. It dinged again as she held it, and, with a sound like waves in her ears, she opened the next text—a photo of her after the bombing. Another—a picture of her standing in the snow outside the Diner, kissing Roland. Her hand shook as the messages continued to roll in, all pictures of her, all taken wit
hin the past two days. The last text was a video message. It showed her showering in the locker room, her silhouette visible through the white shower curtain.

  “Motherfucker!” she hissed, and damn near threw the phone against the wall, but she caught herself at the last second. It was evidence. Not evidence she intended to log with the Boston Police Department, but evidence all the same.

  As he pulled into the parking garage at Accendo, the Rolls growling like some enormous cat, Roland heard a text message alert on his phone, and then another, and another. Feeling like it could be nothing good, Roland swerved over and stopped the car, taking up four or five spaces. Nick’s Subaru was parked in its usual spot, so he knew that his friend hadn’t gone home as ordered. He picked up the phone—unknown number.

  The first text was a picture of Blake and Nick kissing on Nick’s yacht, both of them bundled against the cold. The second showed Milton and Regina at Boston Children’s Hospital. The third showed Shane and Jessie, eating pizza together at her restaurant.

  He called Nick immediately. “Nick—”

  “Are you getting these messages?” Nick interrupted. “An unknown number sending photos of Blake and me?”

  “I’m getting photos of everyone, even Shane and Jessie.”

  Nick didn’t say anything for a second, and Roland knew that he was undoubtedly wrestling with his control. When he spoke again, his voice was tight. “Blake’s okay. I spoke with her a moment ago, and her security detail is checking the house. I’ll call and check on Milton and Regina, and Shane. He’ll probably be at Jessie’s.”

  “Call Boston Children’s as well. Ask if our security team can run a check for explosives.” Roland knew that the request would be granted. Accendo and Milton, in particular, donated millions to the hospital every year.

  “You think he’s planning to bomb the hospital?” Nick sounded horrified.

  Roland ran a hand through his hair. How was he going to protect them all? He couldn’t keep Keenan from hurting someone he loved.

  “I’m going to Maura’s station now. I’ll get extra security put on everyone and call my contact at the DoD. If Keenan is planning on blowing up anyone, we should be able to catch him or whoever’s working for him. Try and track where these texts are coming from if you can—”