“Mama, I’m fine. They checked me out and let me loose. Nothing’s wrong with me.”
“Uh huh,” she said, her tone sarcastic. “They done let you out. After you got yourself blown up.”
Wow. If he hadn’t been so completely screwed right now, Had would’ve been impressed. Not only had she somehow managed to find out that he was in the hospital, she’d discovered that he’d been involved in a bombing. At least she didn’t know that it hadn’t been the first.
“Mama, I wasn’t blown up.”
“Your beautiful face is all melted up, isn’t it? Don’t you lie to your mama.” Then she started to cry in earnest. And underneath the crying, Had heard something else. It was choked out and almost unrecognizable. Part of that had to do with the fact that she was crying. Part of it was that Had’s mama couldn’t sing a note.
Swing low, sweet chariot. Comin’ forth to carry me home.
Fantastic.
“Mama, come on. It’s okay. Everything’s fine. My face isn’t melted.”
The singing stopped, and there was a sniff. “Promise?”
“Promise.”
There was another long pause, then, “You’d tell me if you needed me, right, sugar?”
“Of course, Mama. If I needed you, you’d be the first call I’d make.”
Another sniff. “Good. ‘Cause I know I don’t show it, but I worry ‘bout you, kiddo.”
“I know, Mama.”
“Right,” she said, and Had could almost hear her pull herself together. “How’s that girl?”
“What do you mean?” he answered, caught off guard. How did she do that?
“You know ‘sactly what I mean, turtle. That pretty Arab girl at the funeral. I saw how you were lookin’ at her. And how she was lookin’ at you.”
“I wasn’t… She didn’t…” Had spluttered, then stopped. “Wait. She was looking at me? You saw that?”
There was a cackle from the other end of the line. “How could she not? My baby’s a hot little number.”
“Mama…” Had answered, embarrassed.
“I never thought to have little mixed-up babies,” she mused. “But I’ll betcha they’ll be damn cute.”
“Mama…” he said again, this time in a warning tone.
“Ooo, do you think they might get light colored eyes with what’s-her-face’s skin?”
“Mama, that’s not… You…” What was it about his mama that caused Had to get so mixed up, so fast? “And her name’s Nadira.”
“Oh, I know, marshmallow. I just don’t like that name much. We’ll have to find a nickname for her.”
“Mama…”
“Naddie. That’s it. I love it.”
For a brief, insane moment, Had considered telling her that Nadira was currently under investigation as having been the one to plant the bomb. But just in case she wasn’t involved and something ended up developing between them, he didn’t want to spoil any future visit to go out to meet the relatives.
Besides, she was too busy picking out colors for the wedding.
“With her dark skin, I think cream might be the way to go, even if it is a little trashy.” She seemed to mull that over for a minute. “Hmm. I’ll have to take that under advisement.”
At least the crisis had passed. Had was no longer in danger of having his mother pop out of a taxi here at Quantico. He pictured Mama going head-to-head with Special-Agent-in-Charge Tanner, and his brain almost exploded.
That could never be allowed to happen.
“Mama, I have to get back to my meeting,” he said.
“Okay, bunny, you do that. I got things to do, anyhow.” She hung up.
Had sighed. There was only one thing that could get his mother to hang up the phone on him first. And that was planning a wedding.
Maybe he should warn Nadira now.
Well, before he could do that, he had to at least open back up the lines of communication. He pulled out his cell phone.
I’m okay. We should talk soon.
A text came back almost immediately. Sounds good. When?
I’ll let you know, he responded.
Moving back toward the conference room, Had was surprised when Reggie appeared at the door, followed by what looked like the rest of the team. Bella pushed out past Reggie’s legs, pushing up toward Had, searching for some pets.
He dutifully reached down to oblige, while speaking to Reggie. “What’s going on?”
“Get your bags packed,” she answered. “Road trip.”
“Road trip?” he asked, taken aback. “Where to?”
“Hell,” Joshua quipped. “Better known as Centralia, Pennsylvania. Ghost town.”
They were going back to Pennsylvania? Why would that be hell? That was strange.
Then there was the ghost town comment. That was cool. It would be Had’s first time going to one. Another new experience.
That brought up another question. What would he wear? What kind of outfit made sense for a ghost town? That was a puzzler. He bent back down over his cell phone, his thumbs dancing over the screen.
The talk’ll have to wait a bit.
What’s up?
Going away on a case, he answered.
Where to?
Glancing up to make sure that no one was watching, Had texted back a response.
* * *
In the end, the only way Sariah had been able to get Salazar in one of the two cars they were taking was to threaten to report his reluctance to participate to Agent Tanner. And since Tanner was the one who had agreed to assign them the cakewalk case in Pottsville, Pennsylvania, it was an easy bet that the report would turn into a scolding.
He had finally bent when it became clear that Sariah wasn’t bluffing. It had been a bit of a surprise to Sariah herself. Something had shifted in her internal landscape. Pretending to be in charge with Joshua pulling the strings had given her the freedom to do whatever the hell she wanted. Salazar thought she was a bitch? Boo hoo. It was really Joshua he was angry with.
The way they had come upon the case itself was a bit of an odd process. Sariah had always been assigned cases. Shopping for one was a new and unusual experience for her. And one that she wasn’t sure she wanted to repeat.
To start with, they wanted a case that would get them away from the fishbowl of Quantico. Right now, they had no idea who the leak was. Getting out of the building would be a step in the right direction.
Next, it had to be a place that wasn’t too metropolitan. Having a city or town where outsiders tended to stick out like a sore thumb was a part of the trap they were laying for Humpty.
The issues they were facing at this point had to do with their team. While both Salazar and Lobo had been cleared by Tanner, Sariah didn’t trust either one of them.
When it came to one of them, her reasoning was obvious. Salazar was an arrogant asshole. She glanced over at the short agent as he squirmed in his seat, clearly uncomfortable to be a passenger.
As for Lobo, she seemed lovely. And since she was someone with no previous connection to their team, it was hard for Sariah to drum up suspicion in regards to her being the mole. But she was a complete unknown. Sariah had no idea whether or not she was capable of working with someone like Humpty.
Neither did she or anyone else have any idea how she’d do out in the field. She was completely untried and untested. And to start her out with one of the most intelligent serial killers Sariah had ever come across was an uphill battle at best. This assignment, at least, was a fairly controlled environment in which Sariah could get to know her.
Regardless, having those two away from their comfort zone would help to expose them if there was something to expose. It was doubtful, but enough of a consideration that they’d factored it in when they were searching for the right job for the team.
Joshua had looked through a bunch of outstanding cases that none of the other BAU agents wanted to shoulder. This one was close enough to Quantico that they could take a couple of Bureau cars. Or Bucars, as Salaz
ar insisted on calling them. Sariah had been unable to resist rolling her eyes at that.
The case itself was uninteresting. There were multiple cases of mail fraud that all seemed to be coming out of the same area. The perpetrators had, at least for a while, been holed up in Centralia, a town about fifteen minutes outside of Pottsville.
Well, it used to be a town.
Centralia had been a mining town, and coal mines wormed their way underneath the nearly 400 acres of the town. Back in the sixties, a nearby dump had been set on fire to clean it of its garbage. But the fire had gotten out of control and had entered the coal mines, spreading through the labyrinthine tunnels that undercut the township.
Despite their best efforts, the fire was not contained, and the coal seams smoldered unchecked, pouring toxic smoke into Centralia and heating up the roads, breaking them apart in many areas.
The town was claimed by eminent domain back in 1992, but before that it appeared to have housed the mail fraud scheme. Even after, there seemed to be some evidence that they continued operating there, as the area was unpoliced.
It wasn’t until 2002, when the zip code of the town was rescinded by the Postal Office, that the operation was forced into nearby towns. They bounced from place to place, ending up… as far as they could tell from the file… in Pottsville.
As impossible as it might seem, the fire continued to burn to this day. There were only seven holdouts now, residents who had refused to leave the town. According to record, they had worked out a deal with the state of Pennsylvania to allow them to live out their days in a place with no electricity, no water, no gas… no amenities of any kind.
The coal fire had become a bit of a tourist attraction, if a strange one, drawing only the bravest people in from all parts of the country to view the hellish wisps of smoke that rose from the graves of the cemetery, to feel the unnatural warmth of the ground, to see the town being absorbed back into nature.
The place was dangerous. There were risks from both the toxic fumes coming up from the ground, as well as possible cave-ins from the fire burning under the town.
A horror film, Silent Hill, had been based on the location, giving it additional cult status. And now, Sariah was headed there, along with her team.
Well, not exactly there. It was doubtful they would spend much time in the ghost town of Centralia, although knowing Had, he would probably try to convince them to get out there at least once.
Had.
He was driving the car that Sariah was going to be traveling in, and as she deposited her bags into the trunk, he gave her a grin. The smile tugged at her heartstrings. Mostly because it was a pale shadow of what it had been just a few days ago.
“Ready to go?” he asked. Sariah nodded in response.
One of the qualities that made Had so likeable was how much he seemed to care about everyone. Even the people that no one else got along with, Had seemed to somehow tolerate. It was a good addition to the team at the moment, what with Salazar being on board.
But it went deeper than that. There didn’t seem to be anything shallow about Had’s affection. That had never been more fully demonstrated than with Bilal’s death.
Something about that moment seemed to have broken Had. With all the death and danger he’d seen after coming aboard the team, this event perhaps shouldn’t have affected him so deeply, but the fact that it had just pointed to his loyalty.
At least he seemed functional. And his attitude as they clambered into the car together was close to his normal self. He was chatting with Agent Lobo about some research he’d done on the ghost town.
“There’s a legend that says there’s a curse on the town.”
“Curse?”
“Yeah,” he answered, with a glimmer of his old enthusiasm for strange places. “A Catholic priest was fighting with the Molly Maguires, a group of unionists, and he said that Centralia would burn and that the only building left standing would be the church.”
Agent Lobo smiled. “And is it?”
“Well, it was torn down in 1997, but it was pretty close to being the last one.”
The passengers in this car were Agent Lobo, Had and Sariah. Salazar, Reggie and Joshua were in the other, a fact which made Sariah feel a little guilty. But hey, he’d wanted to be in charge, and besides, he had Reggie there as a buffer.
Earlier, once they’d made the car assignments, Had’d pulled her aside and told her to sit in the back with Agent Lobo. Again, thinking of others more than himself, he’d figured that it would be a good opportunity for Sariah to get to know the new agent.
As she settled in behind the empty front passenger seat, Sariah glanced over at Lobo. She had toned down the makeup a bit, but Sariah could still see a line of the darker foundation against the woman’s neck. She was an attractive woman. What would cause her to hide behind so much product?
As if she felt the scrutiny, Lobo shifted in her seat and glanced over at Sariah, giving her a shy smile. The expression lit up her face, allowing Sariah to see what she thought was the enthusiastic agent… and woman… underneath.
What was her first name? Dolores; that was it.
She cleared her throat.
“Agent Cooper,” she began, her tone tentative.
“Yes?”
“I just wanted to tell you again how great I think it is to be on your team.”
It was the third or fourth time Lobo had said it. Even under normal circumstances, that kind of praise rubbed Sariah the wrong way. And right now? With her pretty much acting as Joshua’s figurehead? She had no desire to hear it again.
“Agent Lobo, you don’t have to keep saying that.” Once the words were out of her mouth, Sariah regretted them. Lobo’s face crumpled in on itself and she withdrew.
Taking a deep breath, Sariah reached out a hand to place in on the woman’s shoulder. “I’m sorry, Lobo, that wasn’t about you. I just don’t handle compliments all that well.”
Her expression changing again, this time to confusion, Lobo replied, “But why? You’re one of the coolest agents in the BAU.” She seemed to realize belatedly what she had done, and held a hand up to her mouth, as if to stop the words that had already exited. “Sorry, that was… Sorry.”
Sariah shook her head and gave her a grin. “Don’t worry about it. Like I said, it’s my problem, not yours.”
They sat in companionable silence for a moment, as Had pulled the car out onto the 95 freeway, headed north toward Pennsylvania. Sariah enjoyed car trips, much more than she did traveling by plane. There was something soothing about the muffled sound that came from the white noise of the tires against the pavement.
After an extended break, during which Had’d regaled them with more details of the Centralia curse, flipped through twenty radio stations searching for who knew what kind of music and starting a short-lived game of I Spy, he finally put in some ear buds and gave Sariah a significant look, thrusting his chin at Agent Lobo’s reflection in the rear view mirror. Sariah resisted the urge to stick her tongue out at the young cop.
In the end, Sariah’s reluctance didn’t seem to matter. Lobo shifted in her seat, angling toward her.
“Okay, I have to know. Why don’t you like compliments?” She lifted a hand, seemingly to forestall any response for a second. “Because I’m sorry, but you’ve got a lot going on.”
“What do you mean?” Sariah asked, trying to keep her tone from becoming defensive.
“You’re gorgeous, you’re smart, you’re a BAU agent. I mean, the fact that they gave the lead on the Humpty case to a woman is…” She made a funny little gesture with her hands, throwing them up in her lap, like she was creating an explosion. “You’re just awesome, is all I’m saying.”
It wasn’t something anyone had ever asked her before, and Sariah fought her instinct to shut down. The woman had asked her an honest question. She deserved an honest answer, right? Besides, Sariah was trying to get to know the agent. Couldn’t really do that without some knowledge exchanging hands.
Problem was, Sariah herself didn’t know why she hated compliments so much. Or maybe she did. As she began, the words started flowing out of her.
“First off, no one wanted Humpty. You should know that going in.”
“Oh, I know,” Lobo reassured her. “I’m not oblivious. I mean, I don’t get it, but I know the reputation the case has. Urban legend, or whatever.” She rolled her eyes in disgust.
The young woman’s honesty was refreshing. Sariah had come across its opposite in the agency so much, that when someone like Lobo came along, it was hard to believe she was genuine.
“As for the compliments,” Sariah continued. “I’ve never liked them. Even as a kid.”
“See, I just don’t get that.” Lobo chuckled. “I love compliments. Guess I never got them enough as a kid.”
Sariah struggled to explain. “I just never felt like they were honest. The second I hear one, I think, ‘what does this person want from me?’ Weird, I know.”
Lobo’s mouth formed into an O. “Wow, I really stuck my foot in it, didn’t I?”
Shaking her head, Sariah reassured her. “No. I mean, not much. You seem pretty straightforward.”
The agent blushed and ducked her eyes. “I try to be. Most of the time.” Her gaze flickered back up to meet Sariah’s. “Mind if I ask you another question? It’s pretty personal.”
Again, Sariah had to fight a stiffening that came over her. Opening up, sharing… this was not her MO. But one thing that losing her confidence had done for her was to crack part of her outer shell.
Hell with it.
“Ask away.”
Lobo gave her a long, searching look. “Was one of your parents an alcoholic?”
Sariah felt the blood drain away from her face. How in the hell had Lobo seen that? The only one she’d talked to about this was Joshua, and that was mostly because he himself was in the middle of recovery. Of a sort. If you could call recovery adopting a puppy and slapping an alcohol monitor on your ankle.
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