But Salazar was another matter.
“But--” Reggie began.
“No,” Coop said, cutting her off. “I’m sorry, Reggie, I just don’t agree with you. I think we should keep an eye on Nadira, yes. Although that’s going to be harder now that she knows about it.” The last sentence was said almost under her breath.
And it was an issue. If Nadira was indeed the link to the bombings and to Humpty, they might very well have severed that bind with Reggie’s impulsive arrest.
“I’m going to go cut her loose,” Coop murmured into the tense silence. “See if Tanner will authorize a tail.”
Reggie seemed to know she had screwed up. Her eyes dropped back to the floor, and she cradled her head in her hands once more. Bella jumped up and licked her nose, and Reggie didn’t even blink. Earlier her slumped pose had appeared to hold in her frustration. Now it looked to be an admission of defeat.
It did feel like a defeat, and Joshua understood why she was clinging to Nadira as the suspect. It was the same reason Coop had stuck with the trucker the last time they’d been tracking Humpty. They were no closer to catching the killer, and now their lives had been threatened, not once, not twice, but three times. It was almost too much to take in.
Too much.
It was too much.
“Hey,” Joshua said, and Reggie’s head slowly came up, her expression unchanging. It was almost as if she didn’t have the energy to ask what he wanted.
Didn’t matter. She was the only one here, and Joshua had to bounce this idea off someone. Bella didn’t count.
“We’ve been almost killed by explosions now three times, right?”
There was the barest suggestion of a nod.
“And all three times no one’s gotten hurt.”
Reggie’s face hardened, and for a moment Joshua could see the pain there. As he realized what had caused her emotional shut down, he felt a stab of shame shoot through him. Of course someone had gotten hurt. Many someones.
“I’m sorry. I meant on the team.” Her look continued to convict him. “And I meant physically.” Her expression softened an infinitesimal amount, and he continued. “Three bombings that were supposed to have been aimed at us, with none of us dead. Or even seriously injured, for that matter.”
Her expression became thoughtful, and Joshua could see that the idea was tugging at her. It made no sense. It was like Humpty had gotten sloppy all of a sudden. There were many things Humpty was. Sloppy wasn’t one of them.
Unless the game wasn’t what they thought it was.
“What if Humpty’s not trying to hurt us?” he said, voicing his thoughts. “What if he’s trying to force us into making stupid choices, based out of fear?”
Reggie found her voice. “So?”
“What do you mean, so? This goes to the core of our issue here. If we know the why, we can start to understand the how.”
“Fine. Let’s say that’s true. How does it change our actions?”
Valid question. One that Joshua wasn’t sure he knew how to answer. He called Bella over to his side, and once she trotted over, buried his hand in her fur. Her companionship did what it always did for him. Supported him, grounded him, gave him a reason to fight off the thirst, which was building again.
“We prepare,” he said, thinking it through as he talked. “We make choices that are our choices, not based off what Humpty does or doesn’t do.”
“But we have to follow where the evidence leads us, don’t we?”
“Maybe,” he answered. “But that doesn’t mean we have to do it with our eyes squeezed shut, our fingers in our ears and screaming bloody murder.” He sighed. “Besides, we don’t have any evidence right now. No note this time.”
“Which means it might not have been planned out like the others,” she observed.
“Which means it more than likely wasn’t planned out like the others,” he agreed.
Reggie pressed her lips into a straight line. “You may be right about going ahead and making choices.”
“How do you mean?”
“Well, if things keep going the way they have been, it doesn’t matter where we go, he’s going to come after us. With explosives.”
Again the use of explosives gave Joshua a thrill of doubt. Humpty wasn’t a demolitions kind of guy. He liked to get in personal and close. Build trust. Play mind games. It was about intimacy.
Bombs were what people used when they wanted the world to burn. When things had gotten so bad that they wanted them to end in the most horrifying and spectacular way possible. Bombs were about leveling the playing field when there was a lack of power. That had nothing to do with intimacy.
Were they chasing specters? Humpty had written those notes. Of that Joshua was ninety-nine percent sure.
Was their killer teaming up again? Working with another protégé? Making fun of all of them as he made his way through… what?
Their team’s confidence? Their rapport?
Joshua was unsure, and that sense of not knowing was keeping him edgy and tense. It was a good place for him to be as an investigator, not as a human being. His dead wife could’ve attested to that, before she’d been fed into the chipper.
So could’ve his daughters.
Livvie.
The vision of his daughter came unbidden into his mind’s eye. She was so bright, so radiant with intelligence and charm, that Livvie. There hadn’t been anything he’d been able to deny that girl when she’d been alive.
Anything but his time and attention.
The words of the card were carved on the back of his mind. “She would have been sixteen today.” Birthday cards from his tormentor, Livvie’s grandfather.
The bastard always laid in wait for him. The cards found him no matter where he was. The old man himself would ambush Joshua on the anniversary of his family’s death.
A graveyard should be a place to honor and grieve the dead. Not the scene of an emotional Waterloo.
But that very thought led Joshua to another. The old man did it. Laid in wait for Joshua, regardless of where he might be called upon to go. The force of that man’s hatred overcame all boundaries and obstacles.
It was time for Joshua to get obsessive.
“I think,” he said to Reggie, “it’s time for us to stop following and start stalking.”
Time for Humpty to feel their fear.
* * *
Sariah entered into the interrogation room where they’d been holding Nadira. Or allowing her to wait, depending on which version of the arrest you were taking.
Pushing down a surge of irritation toward Reggie, Sariah made eye contact with the Pakistani woman in front of her. The one with the dark eyes that spoke to Sariah of racial profiling and prejudice endured in patience.
“I’m sorry about this, Nadira,” she said, starting to deliver the best apology she could under the circumstances. But the girl held up her hand, stopping Sariah’s utterance from continuing any further.
“I’ve heard the evidence,” she said. “If I were in your place, I’d be suspicious of me too.”
“There are some questions that still haven’t been answered to my satisfaction,” Sariah confessed. “But for now we’re going to let you go.”
“For now,” Nadira repeated, her mouth stretching into a humorless smile. “Got it.”
“Your hair was found in a bomb that took out four crime scene investigators and put ten more in the hospital. One of whom didn’t make it. That’s five deaths.”
The smile, humorless or not, disappeared.
“I do understand,” Nadira said, “and I have no explanation for my hair. Shouldn’t that tell you something?”
That brought Sariah up short. “What do you mean?”
Nadira grimaced. “If I had planted that bomb, wouldn’t I have an alibi prepared? Some reason for why my DNA might be on the scene?”
“Only if you were an intelligent criminal,” Sariah answered. “I’ve seen plenty who aren’t.”
Nadira ga
ve her a sharp look. “Do I really strike you as being one of those?”
Sariah held her gaze for a long moment, then shook her head. “No. No, you don’t.”
The Pakistani driver dropped her eyes after another searching look. Her fingers were busy, touching each other, the table, the skin of her palms. Without lifting her head, she asked a question.
“How’s Had?”
Sariah wasn’t positive, but it felt like she could hear the concern for the young man in her tone. From all that she could see, Nadira cared about Had. It didn’t mean she wasn’t involved. People did terrible things to those they loved.
But it did make Sariah question how it could have been her.
It kept coming back to the hair. And the partial fingerprint of her father.
But for now, Nadira was in suspense, wanting to be reassured that Had was doing okay. And while there was a part of her that wanted to hold that information back as leverage against any other information the cab driver might be holding back, she couldn’t sustain enough righteous indignation to keep the woman in the dark.
“He’s fine. He was in severe shock, so he was taken to the hospital, but…”
“But he’s all right,” she breathed, her shoulders dropping down three inches. There had been a lot of tension built up there. And that wasn’t something most liars would think to fake.
Whether or not she was a killer, she cared about Had.
Sariah found herself hoping that the woman wasn’t involved. Shaking herself, she stiffened her resolve. She would go where the evidence and her gut instinct pointed.
Nadira seemed to see the shift, as she straightened. “I think I’ll head home now, unless it’s okay for me to visit Had?”
Sariah wanted to assent, to let her know that it was fine for her to go ahead and visit this man she cared about. But there was still that hair. That fingerprint. Could she really allow this woman to enter into a space where her friend and teammate was lying unprotected? That seemed to go beyond gut instinct and into stupidity.
“I think it would be better not to,” she answered, and then added, to take away the sting, “Besides, he should be out by now. They were only keeping him for observation.”
Nadira nodded, but Sariah felt that she could see the woman’s disappointment. A small, bitchy voice inside of her was speaking. Get used to it, sweetheart, the voice whispered. You fall for someone in law enforcement, and this is your life.
Another, more buried voice murmured of darker things. Of hairs and fingerprints and trust lost. Of leading and following and failure.
She did what she could not to listen.
CHAPTER 10
Are you okay?
Had stared at the text. It was from Nadira.
He should have been paying attention. Joshua was explaining his hare-brained scheme to stay one step ahead of Humpty, and it seemed pretty important. Important enough that Had should be listening.
But instead he was trying to figure something out.
Was having a girl try to blow you up on your second date a deal breaker?
He didn’t believe for a second that it could have been Nadira. There was no way. Just like he didn’t think Bilal had any involvement. It didn’t make any sense.
But there was that evidence.
Didn’t matter. Had knew Bilal. He knew Nadira. They were not involved. Period. He would know if they were the ones who had stalked the team around the country, trying to blow them up. He would know.
But he hadn’t known about Preston.
The text had come in more than a day ago. He’d been on his third go-round of testing at the hospital and had been ready to scream at the nurses and take away all their needles. He’d never been poked that many times in his life, and he’d spent time donating plasma back when he was in college.
But everything had checked out, and he was now back with the team, watching as Salazar and Joshua faced off. This should have been entertaining as all get out, but he couldn’t stop thinking about the text.
He’d never felt a connection like he had with Nadira, not ever. There had been plenty of women he’d been attracted to, dated, even a few he’d messed around with, but none that had affected him quite the way Nadira had in the course of a few short days.
And then there was the text. She was worried about him, which was sweet. It was also one of the shortest texts he’d ever received, and he’d gotten texts from Joshua, usually using Coop’s phone, that made a monk with a vow of silence seem chatty.
Maybe the attraction he felt on his end just wasn’t as strong for her as it was for him. Or maybe she hated texting. Or maybe she had weak thumbs. Or, or, or…
Had felt like he was driving himself nuts. Nuts with worry about what Nadira was thinking about in regards to him. Nuts with the thought that she might not be thinking about him at all. Nuts with the idea that he was seriously considering dating someone who was now on the FBI’s watch list.
Smacking himself on the forehead, Had tried to refocus on the conversation happening in the conference room. Conversation was perhaps not so apt. Brawl might be a better descriptor. Salazar was now standing, his face red with tiny veins popping out in his forehead. He looked like one of those cartoon characters with the lines radiating out to indicate anger.
“What the hell is wrong with you? All of you?” Salazar shouted, his attention swiveling around to include everyone there. “This makes no sense.”
“That’s my point, Salazar,” Joshua answered, his tone weary but still argumentative and sharp.
He sounded like a man who had made his argument so many times that he’d almost given up on winning. As if he were, at this point, just fighting out of pure cussedness. Actually, considering how distracted Had was right now, that might be exactly what had happened.
“It’s the stupidest point I’ve ever heard anyone try to make.” Salazar threw up his hands. He appeared to make an appeal to Agent Lobo, but the Latina wouldn’t meet his eye. She seemed confused, but much more open to Joshua’s idea than Salazar.
Had realized he wasn’t clear on what the idea was. That wasn’t good. As a member of the team, he should probably know what the plan was, right? Maybe he should ask, just for clarity’s sake?
“Um… what’re we fighting about?”
Joshua spun around to face Had, and the former agent’s face went purple. Wow. That was an even darker shade than Salazar had been sporting. It might not have been a good idea to interrupt him in the middle of a fight.
“You don’t know what we’re talking about?” Joshua choked out.
“No, sure I do,” Had backtracked. “I just… you know… wanted some clarification…”
Joshua’s hands began opening and closing into tight fists, and Bella came to his side and started bumping into his leg. She only seemed to do that when Joshua was really upset. Had gulped. He really should’ve been paying more attention.
Coop stepped to Joshua’s other side, the one not taken up by seventy-five pounds of Boxador. Placing a hand on his arm, Coop spoke with gentle insistence.
“Cut him some slack, Joshua. He’s still recovering.”
“From what? Shock? Please.” Joshua gave Had a last glare before turning back to Salazar. “More like blue balls.”
What was that supposed to mean? But Joshua was already back to his confrontation with Salazar.
“Let me spell it out for you, since you clearly have less sense than a brick.”
Salazar stiffened at the insult, but to his credit, he didn’t respond. It was strange. Had was on Joshua’s side, of course. They were teammates, and he trusted the former agent with his life.
But sometimes, Joshua was kind of a dick.
Plus, Had still had no idea what they were doing that was pissing Salazar off so much. If it were a trip to Hawaii, for example, Had was totally on board. But if he was wanting them all to dig through bomb rubble for the next three days…
No, actually, Had would be okay with that, too. Sometimes mindless tasks l
ike that could be very soothing.
Heaven knew he could use something comforting at this point.
As if on cue, his phone rang. Psycho.
He stood up, and both Salazar and Joshua pivoted toward him, their faces mirror images expressing disbelief. What was their problem?
Holding out his cell phone, screen facing them, Had said, “It’s Mama.” He then scooted out of the conference room before anyone could say anything.
By the time he was out into the hall, Joshua and Salazar’s glares following hot on his heels, the call had been missed. Had cursed his bad luck. That wasn’t good.
He hit redial and waited for the rings. They never happened. Before Had was even sure the call was working, Mama had picked up.
“You better tell me you weren’t screenin’ your mama’s calls, boy.”
Great.
“Mama, of course not. Come on. I was in a meeting,” Had responded, cringing. Man. He knew he should’ve gotten out of that room faster.
“So some borin’ ol’ meetin’ is more important than talking to the mother who spent twenty-one hours in labor with you?” Had wasn’t positive, but it seemed like that number got bigger every time she said it.
“Yes. I mean no. I mean…” Had sighed. “It’s part of my job, Mama.”
Sometimes talking to his mama was like trying to talk to some kind of a porcupine/badger combination. All prickly and defensive, but dug in and intractable. Made for quite the combination.
There was a sniff on the other end of the line, and Had made a realization.
“Mama? Are you crying?”
“No,” she snapped back, her tone giving the lie to the word. “I just…” She trailed off.
“What is it, Mama?”
“You were in the hospital!” she blurted.
“What…? You… How…?” he stuttered in response.
This wasn’t good. How had she found out that Had was in the hospital? No one was supposed to know about that outside of the team. He’d specifically told Coop to make sure that his mama never found out, for just this reason.
He was so screwed.
“Child, please. Like I can’t figure out that somethin’ done happened to my baby?” She was upset. Mama’s English got worse the more she was riled up. At least she hadn’t started singing spirituals yet. That was when you knew the train had gone off the tracks for good.
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