“That’s always the case with you, isn’t it, Joshua? You whine and moan about what everyone else is doing. Had’s too cheerful. I’m too bossy. The only one you don’t bitch about is Reggie, and that’s because you want to sleep with her.”
Joshua’s face had gone white under the coating of grime that covered him. His mouth worked for a moment, then his expression hardened.
“You can’t do that, Agent Cooper.” The word was a mockery in his mouth.
“Do what?”
“Check out of your life and then start yelling about how I’m a black kettle.”
Sariah tried to sort through the meaning of that statement. What was he talking about kettles for? An idiom surfaced. Pot calling the kettle black. Something like that.
Oh, right.
“You don’t like it?” she demanded, and this time she could feel her mouth move. It was her that was speaking, and she was sharing from the depths of her frustration and anger. Anger that had built up over the course of their time spent together. “You are the biggest hypocrite I’ve ever met. So ready and willing to put the blame anywhere but on your own self.”
Joshua stopped for a long moment. Then he nodded, once.
“You’re right. I am a hypocrite.”
Sariah’s angry retort died on her lips. She had been prepared for almost anything but his acquiescence.
He continued. “I should have paid attention to what I saw. That’s my fault.” He swept an arm out, taking in the destruction around them. “But I’m not taking on all of this. Because at the end of the day, whether or not you want to admit it, you’re our leader. You. Not me.”
Turning on his heel, Joshua walked away, leaving Sariah no one with whom she could argue. Thoughts boiled around in her mind, seeking escape but finding none.
She looked down and saw Bella at her feet. The dog looked up at her with sad eyes and licked her hand.
Sariah couldn’t feel it.
* * *
Reggie followed on Joshua’s heels. He walked fast, but there was no way she was letting him out of her sight. Not this time.
“What was that?” she demanded at the back of his neck. She watched as the tension in the muscles there increased, and then Joshua stopped and turned around.
“I’m not going to pretend I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said.
“Good. That’ll save time.”
“Say it,” he urged.
“What do you mean?”
“Well,” he drawled. “You obviously have something you want to say to me. Say it. Don’t keep me in suspense.”
“Fine, I will,” Reggie said, thrusting out her jaw. She wasn’t sure what it was about Joshua, but she always ended up feeling flummoxed around him. “Are you sure you’re ready for this?”
Joshua tilted his head to the side, cracking his neck. “I’m not sure that’s possible.”
“Okay, here it is.” Reggie took a deep breath. “I think you’re amazing.”
Joshua’s face went slack. “Um. Thank you?”
“I’m not finished.” She licked her lips and tried to get moisture back into her mouth. “What you did is about the same as picking on a handicapped kid.”
His lips narrowed into a thin, white line. “Agent Cooper isn’t handicapped.”
“Isn’t she?” Reggie pressed. She pointed over at the retreating back of the agent in question. Had was helping her toward the nearest ambulance. “That woman over there is not the one who brought me on to this team. She’s not even recognizable.”
“That’s exactly my point,” Joshua fired back. “She’s wallowing.”
Reggie shook her head. “You really can’t hear it, can you?”
“What do you mean?”
“Just how much of a hypocritical bastard you’re being.”
Joshua waved her statement away like it was some kind of annoying mosquito. “I’m getting sick and tired of hearing that word.”
“Which one? Hypocrite?” she asked. “Then maybe you should stop acting like one. Sound like a plan?”
“Where is this coming from?” he asked, and the pain in his voice almost caused Reggie to stop. But she couldn’t. Not quite.
“I already told you,” she sighed. “I think you’re amazing. Truly. But you think your pain counts for more than anyone else’s.”
The hardening of his face told Reggie all she needed to know. Even before he began speaking again, she knew what was coming.
“Are you comparing what she’s been through to what I’ve experienced?”
Reggie held up a hand. “I can’t even begin to guess what it’s been like for you. But guess what? I can’t know that about Coop, either.”
Joshua’s expression warped from defensive anger into something akin to confusion. His eyebrows raised, and he opened his mouth to speak, but nothing came out.
“Here’s the thing, Joshua,” Reggie said, urging him to understand. “We can’t ever know what someone else’s pain looks or feels like to them. And you comparing your suffering to hers just makes you come across like a petty little child.”
“No,” he said, shaking his head. “That’s not what I’m doing. I just want her to step up and take charge of the team.”
“Why?” Reggie asked.
He stopped, his mouth working for a minute before any sound emerged. “Because… because she’s supposed to be the leader.”
“Supposed to be?” Reggie came in closer to this handsome, damaged man, and reached out a hand to place it against his chest. She imagined she could feel his heart beating under her palm. “According to the BAU? Or Agent Tanner? Or maybe in some kind of cosmic sense?”
“She’s… I’m… No one in their right mind would put me in charge of this team,” Joshua sputtered.
“Why not?” Reggie demanded. “You’re the one who has the experience. You’re the one who knows the man we’re following.”
“Yeah, but--”
“But nothing.” There had to be a way to make him see. To help him to embrace the incredible man he was. Or could be. “Agent Cooper’s a mess right now. That’s okay. It happens sometimes. But the team needs a leader.”
She turned and began walking over to where Had was talking to the paramedic who was working on Coop. Turning her head back, she left Joshua with one final plea.
“And that leader needs to be you.”
* * *
Had chatted with the paramedic, his hands waving as he described the crawdads he used to fish for back in the stream in his backyard. Well… crayfish… but no matter what his mama said, Had was pretty sure they were the same things.
The whole conversation had started because he was trying as best he could to get Coop to engage. Had knew that everyone thought that he was weird. Overly extroverted, naïve… almost like some kind of wind-up toy. And he wasn’t exactly arguing with them. He knew his quirks.
But sometimes it wasn’t about him and his endless fascination with people and places. Sometimes it was about making sure that a member of his family was taken care of. Physically, emotionally, didn’t really matter. They just needed to be cared for.
And Coop was his family. One hundred percent.
He knew that his attitudes about what a family looked like were a little odd perhaps, but as far as Had was concerned, if you had his back, you were part of the family. And when the shoe was on the other foot and the chips were down and whatever other cliché you might be able to think of was happening, Had would be there to have your back, too.
Coop was a mess. Her eyes were going in and out of focus. Her level of lucidity fluctuated from moment to moment. She might very well be experiencing some kind of mental break.
And so Had was going to take care of her.
Part of the way he was doing that was by making things as normal as possible for her. Have her hear his voice, talking about normal things, doing what Had always did, which was make friends and find out new stuff about them.
There was only one problem with that. He
kept forgetting that he was doing this for Coop.
The paramedic’s name was Buddy, his partner was Lori, and they looked like they could be brother and sister. Both blonde, both blue eyed, both pretty and fit and tanned. It was like they had stepped out of a Barbie and Ken box.
Turned out that Buddy was an MMA fighter and he had turned Lori onto the sport when they were out together on a late night shift. Buddy was semi-pro, but Lori had just started, and Buddy was still giving her tips on how to stay out of trouble in the cage.
Which had somehow led to Had talking about caging crawdads in Michigan. Made perfect sense, right?
He shook his head. “Anyway, the weird thing about crayfish is that I’ve heard that if you get some of them into an open ended cage, they’ll pull back any of the ones that try to get out. Freaky, right?”
Buddy frowned. “I’d heard about crabs doing that, but I don’t know anything about crayfish.”
Had thought about it a moment. “Now that I think about it, I’m not sure. I just heard that about them. We’d always use cut up soda bottles to catch them.” He thought about that image for a second. “That doesn’t fit with what we were talking about at all.”
“No, no, I think it does,” Lori argued. “It’s still that kind of I’ve got myself into this and can’t get back out again thing. That’s why I get so freaked out right before I go into the cage.”
“And that’s what’s going to get you hurt every time,” Buddy critiqued her.
Had was fascinated, but then he glanced over at Coop. She was huddled under one of those emergency foil blankets in spite of the heat and had that thousand-yard stare that said she wasn’t really taking in anything going on around her.
Okay, the passive let’s-make-her-feel-like-everything-is-normal approach didn’t seem to be working. But what else could he do? He wasn’t much of a stand-up comedian, nor did a soft-shoe routine seem situation appropriate.
“Um, guys,” Had told the two paramedics. “I know you need to monitor Agent Cooper, but do you think you could give me a minute alone with her?”
Buddy nodded. “She’s doing all right in terms of her vitals, so… sure. Just make sure and notify us if anything changes.”
The two walked off a distance, giving Had and Coop some privacy. As Had approached, Coop’s focus narrowed on his face.
“I know what you were trying to do, Had.” She attempted a grin, but it showed up on her face as closer to a frown. “Thanks.”
“What? I don’t know… What?” Had stammered.
“Come on,” she said. “You’re the worst actor ever. I doubt you even fooled the two ninja medics over there.”
Had gave Coop a half-grin, embarrassed. “Sorry. I just… I’m worried about you.”
“Don’t be. It’s not me that’s been blown to bits.” Coop’s attention shifted from Had’s face to a point off in the distance, toward the school. Her face was slack.
He thought he understood. The scene was horrific. It was the kind of thing that changed a person. While the death count could have been much higher, there were still four confirmed deaths, with three that had been taken to the ICU. A few other minor injuries that had been taken care of at this point.
Had didn’t want to think about it, either. Maybe he hadn’t checked out as much as Coop, but he was avoiding.
His “act” had been as much to distract himself as it was for her. In retrospect, the paramedics were accommodating Had and Coop, allowing them a moment’s reprieve from the horror surrounding them. While it did appear that they were totally into MMA, they probably didn’t spend time discussing it at the site of a recent bombing.
To be honest, it might have been the same reaction on their part. They were paramedics, sure, so they saw horrific things all the time. But it wasn’t every day you had to deal with the aftermath of a bombing.
Allowing himself to think about it fully for the first time since the explosion hit, Had felt the weight of the experience settle on his shoulders like a mantle, pressing down on him to the point that he almost couldn’t stand upright. Staggering over to the gurney on which Coop was resting, he sank down beside her, a groan slipping past his lips.
“You let yourself feel it, didn’t you?” Coop asked.
There wasn’t much more Had could do than just nod. Even that act seemed beyond the capabilities of muscles that had decided they weren’t going to do their job any longer. Had felt like he was drowning.
“I can’t…” The sentence died on his lips, his will unable to overcome his extreme lethargy.
But Agent Cooper just nodded, reaching out a hand and placing it on Had’s arm. The contact was surprising to him, and Had lifted his eyes to meet hers.
There was such a depth of sadness and despair there that he almost recoiled. Had recognized in that moment that she had never allowed him to see how deep her pain went. But now he was seeing it all.
How was she functioning even as well as she was? All of Coop’s recent behavior was explained in that look, and suddenly her apathy towards leading the team shifted in his view. It was no longer the mark of someone who had given up. It was an act of sheer will that she was even able to stand upright most of the time.
“You get it now?” she asked.
“I think so.”
“So, you going to stop trying to make me lead the team?”
Had paused before answering. With the depth of her grief, the answer should be clear. He wanted to let her off the hook, tell her it would all be okay and that she didn’t have to worry about it any longer.
But that didn’t feel right.
“I don’t think I can,” he answered.
Coop’s head swiveled in his direction. “I thought you understood.”
“I do.” He shook his head from side to side. “Or at least mostly. But that’s not the point.”
“What is the point?”
Had opened his mouth, trying to work through his thoughts with her. “I think… when bad things happen, we do one of two things. We get closer to other people, or we retreat away from them.”
Coop moved back from what he was saying, almost like she didn’t want to hear. But Had was pretty sure there was something important in what he was thinking. Something that she needed to hear. And possibly an idea that Had needed to know as well. He wasn’t sure what was going to come out of his mouth, but he could tell that it was significant.
“It doesn’t have anything to do with fair. Call it God or the universe or just sheer perversity, but we’re given stuff that’s way too big for us,” he continued.
“That’s my point,” she argued, her tone more engaged than Had’d experienced from her in a while. “It’s too much.”
“But that’s just the thing. It is too much. By yourself.”
Had watched as that statement appeared to penetrate. Coop’s eyes became thoughtful, and while he wasn’t sure she believed him, she seemed to be listening at least.
He cleared his throat and continued. “I think we’re supposed to find strength in each other. Like just now.” Had looked down at his arm. “You reached out and touched me. I was a mess, but for just a second I was stronger because you were there with me.”
“But I didn’t do anything.”
“You didn’t need to.”
Had pushed himself back up to his feet. He wanted to stay by her side, force her to listen to what he had to say, make her reengage, but the same instinct that had told him to speak to her now told him to walk away.
She needed to process by herself. Plus, if she was going to step back up again, it needed to be her choice. Forcing her to start leading again wasn’t such a good idea, no matter how important it had seemed a few minutes ago.
As much as the team needed her, she would either figure it out or she wouldn’t. It was her choice.
And Had needed to allow her to make it on her own.
CHAPTER 5
There was nothing.
Joshua had been prepared to search. He’d known that would
be part of the process, coming out of the aftermath of the bombing. Humpty never made things easy.
But he’d never expected to find nothing.
This wasn’t Humpty’s MO. There had to be some evidence, some note, some form of subtle mockery that would lead them on to the next big event the bastard had planned. But instead?
Silence.
“Are you sure they’ve picked over everything?” he demanded, trying to keep the frustration out of his voice.
Detective Cruz shook her head. “They’ve taken the whole area apart. There’s no sign of anything. Forensics is still looking at the evidence, trying to get a take on what was used to cause the explosion, but the fragments are so small, it’s going to take a while.” She grimaced and turned back to a file she was looking through.
They were missing something. They had to be.
Part of what was bothering Joshua was the note. While the previous message planted in the metal box had sounded like Humpty, this last one hadn’t. It was similar. Same sense of subtle mockery, same game-playing.
But there was something off about the delivery. Joshua couldn’t see Humpty ever taking on the role of a school child, even if it was to mess with him. The killer had too much of a sense of his own dignity to allow him to role play like that.
And the bombings. That wasn’t Humpty’s style.
The whole thing felt… off. Like the way things had felt off back in Iowa at the truck stop.
It was possible they were dealing with another copycat. No, worse. It was possible they were dealing with another acolyte.
Because one way or another, that first note had been Humpty’s. Of that, Joshua was sure. Which meant that if this other stuff wasn’t his, it was someone he was working with. That was something.
Preston Longmore hadn’t been as closely connected with the original. The young psychopath had talked about being a protégé, but once Joshua had realized that it wasn’t Humpty cutting up the victims, it had been clear that Preston had done all of it.
He might have learned from Humpty, but Humpty hadn’t been involved in the case. He’d just pointed them in the right direction.
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