Nothing.
Time stretched out, dragging along second by second. But after three or four agonizing minutes had passed, Sariah stirred.
“Okay. I’m going to step out. See if I can draw his fire.”
Had started to protest, but Reggie shushed him. A flush of warmth passed through Sariah at that. There were other ways to interpret that, of course, but Sariah saw the gesture as one of trust. Reggie knew that Sariah could do her job and take care of herself.
Now she just hoped that was true.
She cracked open the door of the car, keeping her head down below the window. Shielded by metal, Sariah crawled out onto the pavement.
Still nothing.
“Psst.” The hiss came from the front of the car, over where Phoenix was hiding.
“What?”
“I think whoever it was has gone.”
Sariah sighed. Civilians. She had no idea what she was talking about. That sniper could be luring them out, just to be able to pick them off as they exited and started feeling confident.
“Just stay down, all right?” she said to the girl, before calling into the car. “Okay, Reggie and Had, you next. Come out, but stay down.”
The two officers took their time exiting the car, and still there were no shots. As the time continued to tick past, Sariah was beginning to think that Phoenix was right.
And then, the tattooed girl made a raspberry sound with her mouth. “Screw this. I gotta cramp in my leg. I’m standing up.”
* * *
Reggie liked this girl.
Of course, she was totally going to get herself killed, but she was kind of awesome. And there was the whole tattooed, pierced thing she had going on. It was sort of sexy, in its own quirky way.
No surprise, the second that Phoenix stood up, Coop went ballistic. “Get down, you crazy-ass cracker!”
Man, Coop must be pissed. She almost never went ethnic.
But the girl just grinned at her. “It’s fine.” She waved her arms in the air. “See? I told you the guy had already bailed.”
“And how would you know that?” Coop yelled, standing up and walking over to the girl. “Spent much time under sniper fire?”
Reggie didn’t say the obvious, which was that Coop was totally exposing herself in the same way she was getting mad at Phoenix for doing it. Besides, what was happening in front of her was too good to interrupt.
Phoenix spread her hands out wide. “Actually, quite a lot. I was stationed in Afghanistan for close to two years.”
Well, that was unexpected. The girl with the pink hair and the piercings was ex-military? Of course, it did explain the maneuver back in the car. That had been sweet.
In the meantime, Coop appeared to have totally deflated. “You were in the forces?”
“Yep.” Phoenix had the good graces not to appear smug.
“Well, then…” Coop cleared her throat. “I need to apologize.”
“Hey, no need.” The girl slapped her hands against her ripped jeans that had safety pins holding certain key areas together. “I woulda done the same thing if a civvie had walked out onto a battlefield while I was out with my platoon.”
“Your…?” Had asked. “You had your own platoon?”
The girl nodded. Reggie might have been imagining it, but it looked like Coop had gone a whole shade paler. The woman didn’t like to apologize at the best of times, but then having that cold dish of crow crammed down her throat? This was not a comfortable moment for their team leader.
“So you’re like a lieutenant, right?” Had continued. His face was suffused with a near-glow, and it almost seemed like birds were about to start chirping and burst into a musical number with him. If Reggie didn’t know that Had was crazy for Nadira, she’d say that he was getting whacked over the head with the sledgehammer of love.
“That’s me,” the girl admitted. “Second Lieutenant Phoenix Greyson.”
Man. This had to be killing Coop.
“All right,” the BAU agent finally said, turning to the surrounding woods. “Let’s go see if our sniper left anything behind.”
“Hey!” Had mentioned, glancing at Bella. “Maybe we could get Bella to try to track for us.”
Everyone stopped and looked at the dog. The Boxer-Labrador mix cocked her head to the side and let her tongue loll out.
“I’m not sure it works that way,” Joshua groused, folding his arms. “Don’t dogs have to go through all kinds of training for that sort of thing?”
“Well, kind of,” Phoenix said, cocking her head back at Bella and messing with her ears and the sides of her mouth, making the dog bark and snap at her in play. “But I hear some dogs are just born with it.”
“Worth a shot,” Reggie said, and snapped her hand against her thigh, calling for Bella to come along as they angled through the woods toward where they thought the shots had been coming from.
After a moment or two of walking into the forest, Phoenix called out to them. “I think it’s more over here,” she said, moving through some underbrush in a direction just off of where the rest of them were searching.
Reggie watched as Coop stiffened up. But it was just for a second.
“Let’s head over where Phoenix says we should look.”
Half a minute later, the woods opened up into a mini-clearing, and they could see an area that looked like it had been trampled down. Bella bounced over to the area, sniffing and huffing at the crushed grass.
Then she stopped and peed all over the ground. Right on top of where it appeared the sniper had been.
“Okay, so tracking dog, maybe not,” Reggie murmured.
“Not just that, but she’s probably contaminated the crime scene,” Coop grumbled.
“Whatever,” Joshua said. “Not like there was much evidence here. Guy knew what he was doing.” He walked around the area, searching the ground. “Looks like he collected his shell casings and everything.”
Agent Cooper bent down and peered at the grass. “That’s fine, but the sniper didn’t get airlifted out of here. He had to have left some kind of trail. Once we talk to the CID, we should have them get a CSI team out here.”
She straightened up and looked around at the team. With a smile, Reggie realized that Coop was including Phoenix as well. Someone should maybe warn the poor girl that this team had a tendency to take in strays.
Then again, maybe that’s exactly what Phoenix needed.
Heaven knew Reggie had.
* * *
As they drove down to the welcome center, the hot wind blowing through what used to be their windows, Sariah’s thoughts churned over and over in her brain. All coherence was lost to her, as she couldn’t seem to focus on any one of the ideas for more than a second or two.
There had been a tumbling rock polisher in her Earth Science teacher’s room in high school. Her thoughts were the stones on the inside of that machine, rolling around and bumping into one another. Whether or not anything polished would come out was anyone’s guess. Right now it didn’t seem probable.
Someone here on the base had taken shots at her team.
A sniper who was skilled enough to hit a moving car with a fair amount of precision. Trained enough to not leave behind any trace. Determined enough to take on an entire team of experienced law enforcement professionals without apparent fear.
The likelihood was that it was someone from the base.
That wasn’t an idea that sat well with her, but what other conclusion could she come to? The only ones who knew they were coming were the CID and the base security itself.
Was it possible that the killer they were tracking was not Humpty at all, but a disgruntled member of the armed forces? It was an avenue of investigation that they should at least pursue.
“Joshua,” she called into the backseat, where once again Bella had flung herself over the three teammates in the rear of the car. “What’s your take on this? Does it feel like Humpty?”
“Whoa,” Phoenix breathed from the driver’s seat. �
��You guys are hunting Humpty Dumpty? That killer from like fifteen years ago or something like that? I thought he was dead.”
Well, that hadn’t been too smart of Sariah. The combination of the fact that Phoenix was their driver and that she had handled the situation with the sniper so well had caused Sariah to forget to be circumspect while speaking about the case.
Joshua shrugged, seeming to ignore Phoenix while answering Sariah’s question. “Yes and no. I mean, there’s the whole severed head that was found out in Des Moines.” He rubbed his hand across his stubble, making a scratching sound. “But then again, if the two kidnappings on bases halfway across the US from one another are related, then it complicates things.”
“How so?” Phoenix asked. The woman was sharp. She was also nosy. Sariah was about to tell her that this was an ongoing investigation and that they couldn’t really answer her questions about it, when Had stepped in.
“Well, the kidnappings happened on the same day, within an hour or two of each other, as far as we can tell.” He smiled at Phoenix in the mirror. “Makes it kind of tough for one person to do both.”
Sariah tried to get Had’s attention to tell him to knock it off, but while she was busy doing that, Reggie spoke up. This was getting ridiculous.
“But there’s been no other body parts found, right? So these might not have anything to do with each other.”
“I don’t know,” Joshua mused. “The kidnappings sound very similar.”
“Okay, but that doesn’t make any sense, either,” Reggie shot back. “Either they were coordinated or they weren’t, right?”
“Look, we know that Humpty’s been recruiting acolytes. Why couldn’t they be working in tandem?”
Joshua scratched behind Bella’s ears, making her tail thump in appreciation. The tail went right into Reggie’s face and she squawked, hitting Joshua on the shoulder.
The taxi pulled up to the welcome center, and Sariah saw that there was a man that appeared to be about Joshua’s age standing outside the building looking at the cab with dismay. It likely wasn’t every day that a car arrived at the base with all of its windows shot out.
The man was dressed in a suit, no uniform or military rank marking him as anyone official. But the fact that he was waiting for them, combined with a certain air of authority, made Sariah think that this was their liaison from CID.
His strong mouth was pulled into a slash under a misshapen nose, both of which indicated previous damage. Sariah wondered if the man had been a boxer at some point. After being friends with a Golden Gloves fighter back in high school, Sariah could recognize some of the signs. Her friend had sported the beginnings of scars and breaks like those.
“What the hell happened here?” the man asked as Sariah stepped out of the car.
“Someone fired on us as we were coming in,” she answered, something about the man’s attitude grating on her. “We found the site, but we should get CSI out there as soon as possible.”
At first, the man seemed to not be processing the information well. He just stood there, his mouth agape, staring at Sariah like she was some sort of an alien life form. Then he stirred.
“Of course,” he muttered, shaking himself. “I apologize for my reaction. This isn’t an everyday occurrence around here.” He extended his hand. “I’m CID Special Agent Tad Klingler, down from Fort Bragg. I’m in charge of this investigation.”
“BAU Special Agent Sariah Cooper, in from Quantico,” Sariah responded, shaking the man’s hand. “And so am I.”
Klingler seemed taken aback at that. Then he gave her a grim smile that looked almost more like a grimace.
“What you really mean is that we’re both from organizations that usually take a back seat to local law enforcement to whom they’re almost always far superior.”
Sariah gave the man an assessing gaze. Maybe there was more to the man than she had originally thought.
“I can accept that,” she responded. “So do we have any local authorities on this one yet?”
“Not at this point,” he said. “Wanted to discuss the case with you first.”
“Then that makes this a distinctly awkward encounter, doesn’t it?” Sariah challenged the man.
“Only if we can’t play nice and get along.”
“I think we can manage that,” Sariah said with a smile.
“Well then, Agent Cooper…” Agent Klingler responded to her smile with one of his own. “Welcome to Fort Jackson.”
This was shaping up to be an interesting day. With the way in which it had progressed so far, Sariah just hoped that they all ended up surviving it.
CHAPTER 4
Had checked himself over. So far, he hadn’t been able to find any cuts or bruises, which was something of a minor miracle.
Today hadn’t been his first experience with a sniper. He’d taken fire before. Heck, he’d been kidnapped and tortured at one point. But something about knowing that there was a guy out still out there… on an army base, for crying out loud… with a rifle that wanted to take out their team was more than a little disconcerting.
Phoenix had been left back with the cab. Coop had assured her that the FBI would take care of any repairs to the car, but she had still seemed despondent. Maybe she was worried about all the time it would take to get it repaired and lost income in the meantime. Had would need to talk to Coop about seeing if they could help her out.
They had moved on from the welcome center to the barracks, which Had found to be a lot nicer looking than he would’ve expected. Somehow, the word “barracks” just sounded like something squat and ugly, or maybe even some sort of huge tent. Instead, he was faced with a very modern-looking building that stretched up three stories.
Granted, it still wasn’t very pretty. It was a building made for function, not style, after all. But it exceeded the expectation, at least as far as Had was concerned.
A group of new recruits marched past them, looking like they were trying not to pay attention to what was going on. Had guessed that word had spread about the BAU team that was investigating the murder of one of their fellow recruits.
“The problem with nailing down the crime scene,” Klingler was saying, “Is that it was after the fact.”
“What do you mean?” Reggie asked.
“Well, the severed head didn’t show up until later, so we were treating the kidnapping as just another kid in Basic going AWOL,” the CID agent explained. “It’s not like he would’ve been the first one in the history of the planet.”
“But you feel confident that this is where the kidnapping happened?” Coop probed.
“Look at this,” he said, pointing at the side of the building. There was a line of brown dots, old blood spatter from a hard blow. “We’ve sent off a sample for DNA testing, but initial typing seems to indicate that it could’ve been from Private Starling.”
“That’s not a lot to go on,” Coop grumbled.
The CID agent shrugged. “Best we could do, considering the circumstances. This is the largest facility for Basic Training in existence. There was going to be some contamination of the site. That was inevitable.”
“How much of the rest of the base was searched?”
Klingler appeared a bit defensive at that. “This is a huge base,” he said. “We looked around the barracks and the nearby vicinity, and we checked the perimeter. Other than that--”
Coop cut him off. “I’m not judging your level of effort, Agent Klingler. Just trying to get an accurate assessment of where we need to go from here. What did you find on the perimeter?”
The agent’s face cleared at her statement, and he continued with a lot less hostility. “Not a whole lot. There were several possible points of ingress, but no DNA or other trace evidence we could find. This isn’t exactly the most secure facility in the armed forces.” He grinned. “They’re more interested in keeping the new recruits in than keeping everyone else out.”
Had could see that. From what he’d heard about Basic Training, it made
sense that they had quite a few newbies in here that tried to bolt.
“Which point do you think was the most likely?” Joshua asked.
Had glanced over at the former agent. The man had seemed pretty subdued the last few minutes. Earlier on, Phoenix had been over talking to him, and from that point on, he’d appeared a bit… distant. Or something like that.
Agent Klingler paused, his brow furrowing. “I mean… there’s no way to know for sure…”
“Best guess, Agent,” Joshua insisted. “Look, either you had someone break into the base or you have a bad recruit. Either one is possible, but the first one gives us fewer places to look first. So let’s start there.”
Klingler nodded. “There is one that’s been on my mind more than the others. C’mon.”
Moving out, Agent Klingler didn’t wait to see if anyone was following him. Had wondered what it would be like to have that level of confidence.
Just then, his phone rang with the theme to Psycho. Mama.
At least this time she wasn’t calling in the middle of a meeting, but for crying out loud. He was in the middle of an investigation.
Not answering was always a possibility. But who was he kidding? Dealing with the aftermath of a ditched call was always worse than the potential embarrassment of taking it when he was in the middle of something professional.
This was a cycle of behavior that might indicate that some family therapy would be a good idea. Had made a mental note to research psychiatrists in Ann Arbor. Maybe Had could be Skyped in or something.
Three rings. He held out for three rings before the pressure was too much.
“Mama,” Had said, trying to keep the irritation out of his voice. “What’s up? I’m in the middle of an--”
“Had, honey, I’m here,” his mama gushed, cutting him off. “Where can I meet y’all?”
She was here. In all the excitement, Had must have forgotten about the fact that his mama might be showing up.
That had been a serious oversight.
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