Edge of Black

by J. T. Ellison

  “Leighton’s chief of staff is giving me the runaround,” he grumbled.

  Sam smiled. “Isn’t that his job?”

  Fletcher glanced at her, saw the amusement etched on her face. It provoked a smile of his own, and he relaxed a bit.

  “Yeah, I suppose it is. Fingerprints on the inhaler belong to him. That matches his statement that when he came into the office and saw the congressman down, he retrieved the inhaler and gave it to his boss.”

  “Okay. So where’s the issue?”

  He drummed his fingers on the steering wheel, then ran his hands through his hair. “I don’t know. I’m tired as hell. I’m getting put on the Joint Terrorism Task Force.”

  “That’s good, right? You’ll be able to see this through to the end.”

  “Maybe. We’ll see. They might have me running around town with my dick in my hand.”

  She cleared her throat, trying to hide the laugh.

  “Sorry, Sam. That was crude of me.”

  “You’re fine, Fletch. The image was priceless.”

  He laughed with her then, and the light turned. He took a right, then a left, and she was at her door a moment later. There was a pause, awkward and three beats too long. He looked like he wanted to say something important, but refrained. Instead, he shook it off and said, “Get some sleep. You did good today.”

  “Thanks, Fletch. You, too. Call me if you need anything else, okay? And if they get the results back on the toxin, let me know.”

  “Will do. Last round of calls got it down to two or three, with ricin still leading the pack.”

  “If that’s true, we’re damn lucky there are only three people dead.”

  “You said it, sister.”

  He watched her go up the stairs, waited until the door was unlocked to drive away.

  She caught the blue glow of the clock on the microwave. It was nearly two in the morning.

  Exhaustion suddenly paraded through her body, and she sagged a bit. She wanted a shower and bed. She took the stairs carefully, quietly.

  She found Xander crashed out cold on top of the covers. Just the sight of him caused a little thrum in her stomach. She stopped in the doorway and watched him, marveling at the fact that he belonged to her.

  With a soldier’s unerring ability to sense a threat, he opened his eyes, and she saw he already had one hand tucked under his pillow, where she knew he kept a loaded weapon. Only one of many stashed throughout the house.

  “It’s me,” she whispered. “Go back to sleep.”

  He rolled up in one smooth motion, both hands free.

  “I’m glad you’re home. We need to talk.”

  * * *

  He gave her fifteen minutes to S-cubed—military jargon for shit, shower and shave—and met her in the kitchen with a fresh pot of coffee and her laptop glowing on the table. She took one look at him and went to the liquor cabinet, fetched a bottle of Lagavulin. She splashed some in both their cups, then tucked her damp hair behind her ears and settled in, recognizing Xander in full operational mode. He might as well have had his uniform on and a rifle strapped to his chest.

  Loaded for bear.

  He sat across from her, took a deep drink from his cup. Xander made seriously good tea, but he was a first-class coffee maker. A connoisseur. Sam was amused when the first thing he did was buy her a Bunn, claiming it was one of the finest coffeemakers in the world. She found that ironic, considering he often made his coffee by throwing the grounds in a pan of water and heating it over the fire. He took personal affront at Starbucks and the like, instead preferred to grind his own beans, which he imported from a friend in Colombia. She wasn’t entirely sure that was legal, but she could hardly complain—the coffee it made was out of this world.

  “There’s a message from GW on the answering machine. I heard them leave it. School’s closed for the rest of the week.”

  “Not surprising. I assume they are going to have people combing that Metro stop and the surrounds for a few days to make sure things are safe.”

  They sipped their coffee. Finally, Xander set down his cup.

  “Aren’t you going to ask?”

  She stared into his eyes, best described as a deep chocolate-espresso—eyes that were so like the dark, intense brews he favored—and sighed.

  “Fine. You were here in D.C. at least an hour before you should have been if you’d heard about the attacks on the news. Which means you fibbed to me this morning about your fishing date gone wrong.”

  He smirked. “I didn’t fib. My guy didn’t show, and I did go to the café to check things out.”

  She knew the café he mentioned was the Mountain City Coffeehouse in Frostburg, Maryland—the closest internet café to Xander’s cabin that had decent food and coffee. She had to admit, it was a quaint, charming place, perfect for him to stay under the radar. He liked the window by the fireplace; he was able to see the rest of the room, the entrance and exits. Once a soldier, always a soldier. The cabin didn’t have internet access, so Xander made it a routine to head to Frostburg a couple of times a month to check his mail, set up his appointments as a fishing guide, and generally check up on the world. She was tempted to buy him an iPad so he could save himself the trip, but she knew it was more than that. He shed his humanity in the woods—like his daily piano practice, the bimonthly sojourns were his way of keeping himself engaged. He didn’t want more than that, and his psyche couldn’t stand less. Without some sort of socialization, he might truly get lost.

  Then he dropped his bomb.

  “But that was all yesterday.”

  All sorts of words rushed to mind, but all she managed was, “What?”

  He flipped the laptop around so it was facing her.

  “See this?”

  She looked at the screen. It was a message board of some kind. “What’s this?”

  “One of the groups I sometimes look in on. It’s comprised of people...like me.”

  He rose to fill his cup again, leaving her to wonder exactly what that meant. She wasn’t able to focus properly.

  “Soldiers?”

  “Some. Some want to be. Some could have been, but chose a different path.”

  Sam felt the edge begin, the panic, like an annoying little mosquito buzzing around her head. She pulled her hair back into a chignon, stuck a chopstick through the knot to hold it in place. She closed her eyes for a moment and took a deep breath. In four counts, hold four, out four, wait four. Then, the urge to wash her hands dispatched, she addressed her lover.

  “Xander, honey. It’s late. I’ve been up for twenty hours, been in the middle of a terrorist attack, did an autopsy on a congressman, and have my own little anxiety disorder brewing. Would you mind cutting to the chase?”

  “Survivalists, Sam. I don’t think this was a terror attack. I think it was one of our own.”

  Chapter 11

  Sam’s expression moved from confusion to incredulity in a matter of seconds.

  “You’ve got to be kidding. Are you talking like...what, a militia?”

  “No. Well, sure, some of them. It’s like any group of people, there’re bad seeds mixed in with the good and innocent. There are militias spread all across the country, homegrown groups who like to think they’re the law, parade around in uniforms, ragtag batches of locals who spew nonsense and are basically harmless. But there are groups who are dead serious, people you wouldn’t want to cross. The government keeps a damn close eye on them. And some of them are idiots, people who are just wrong in the head and can’t be fixed. Skinheads, those kinds of yahoos.”

  “Ruby Ridge?”

  “Right. But the people I’m talking about—no, they’re not militia. Just concerned private citizens who have shared their knowledge of survival to help like-minded individuals prepare in case there’s a c
atastrophic event. Anything from a nuclear bomb to economic collapse to a tornado.”

  She noticed he didn’t say flood, though that would certainly qualify.

  “They’re good people, just trying to figure out where we’re headed, and what to do in case something awful happens.”

  Sam raised an eyebrow. Sometimes she forgot that they came from very, very different worlds. She was a debutante from Nashville, a good little Southern girl, raised on manners and money and all things genteel, and he was a soldier who’d been raised by hippies, seen too much and had a healthy mistrust of the government.

  He must have caught her thought, because he continued. “Okay, this isn’t something that you and I have talked a lot about. It’s hard to understand, but there are people out there who think things are going to hell in a handbasket, and are trying to make preparations in case it does. They’re harmless, and smart. They’re like pioneers, able to grow food and build shelter and live off the land and, most importantly, defend themselves if it’s needed.”

  “Like you.”

  He smiled.

  “Like me. Many of them are ex-military, of all generations. You know many of us don’t fit back into the world anymore, Sam. What we’ve seen, what we’ve done, civilians can’t necessarily comprehend. It’s only natural that some of us fall back on our training, and want to be prepared. Just in case, you know? When, or if, the shit hits the fan, you’re going to want us on your side, if you get my drift.”

  “I follow.”

  “Okay. So this one group that I check in on from time to time lit up last night. Like they knew something was about to go down. Chatter.”

  “And the feds didn’t see it?”

  “Trust me, there are no feds in this group. It is very private.”

  “There’s no privacy online. You’ve told me that a million times.”

  “And that’s true. But even if they do know about it, they can’t get in.”

  “My God, Xander, if these friends of yours were talking about an imminent attack, why didn’t you do anything? Say anything?”

  She’d said the wrong thing. He closed up tight as a drum. Slammed the laptop closed and stalked from the room. He went to the bedroom, started gathering his things.

  She followed. “Xander, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it like that. This isn’t your fault. None of it is your fault.”

  He kept his back turned. “You don’t get it. I’m not mad at you, I’m mad at myself. I should have said something. Maybe if I had, it wouldn’t have happened. Instead, I couldn’t sleep, and finally ended up leaving Thor with Bryan at the Forest Ranger station and heading down to the city. I must have just missed you this morning, but by then it was too late. The attack had already occurred.”

  She took the bag and his semi-folded shirt from his hands and set them gently on the bed.

  “Hey. I’m sorry. I’m exhausted, and that came out wrong.”

  He was silent for a moment, then shrugged. “Accepted. There was nothing specific anyway, just a couple of guys talking about this dude they knew who had recently joined up, and was flapping his gums. It just felt...wrong to me.”

  “All right. So let’s call Fletcher and let him know.”

  “It’s too late.”

  “It’s not. He can get a subpoena, go after their records—”

  “Seriously, it’s too late. The site’s dark.”

  “Dark?”

  “Gone. The owners took it down. It’s like it never existed.”

  Sam wasn’t a computer expert, but she knew that it was virtually impossible to get rid of every footprint on the internet. Caches existed of material. It could be accessed. Someone talented enough could get in there and find it. She told Xander that. He shook his head.

  “You don’t understand. The group doesn’t exist. The site doesn’t exist. It was a closed portal on another site’s network, accessible only to certain people who knew certain ways to get into it, and then had the proper passwords. They’ve erased everything.”

  He sat on the edge of the bed, looking despondent.

  “You know who they are, though, don’t you?”

  He was quiet for a moment.

  “I know their internet handles. I’ve been looking for them since you left. I’ve trolled every site I can think of, and a few that I had no idea existed. They’ve gone gray.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  “They’re hiding in plain sight, where no one will be able to find them until this thing is over. They’ll lay low and wait until the time is right to resurface. They can’t take the chance that they’ll be strung up in this mess.”

  Sam’s pulse increased. “Until this is over...you mean he’s not through? Whoever did the Metro attack?”

  “Not by a long shot.”

  “Xander. There’s no choice here. We have to tell Fletcher. Right now. He’s been added to the Joint Terrorism Task Force. He’ll know what to do.”

  His answer was very pointed. “I know what to do.”

  “You just said you’ve been searching for them all afternoon with no luck. Let Fletch and the JTTF take it from here. This is too much for just you. You’re brilliant and talented and, given the right amount of time, I have no doubt you could find them. But, Xander, people are dead. More may die. It’s bigger than you, or me, or a group of like-minded individuals on the internet. We need every available resource on this. If they know who this is, or what he might do next, they must be found.”

  “Fletcher won’t find them. He has no idea what he’s up against.”

  Sam knelt before him, took his face in her hands.

  “We have to let him try. Okay?”

  Xander hesitated a minute, then nodded. “Okay. But you better get a guarantee out of him first.”

  “A guarantee of what?”

  “That he doesn’t come roaring in here and arrest my lily-white ass.”

  “He wouldn’t.”

  “Fletcher might not. But the feds? They don’t exactly stop to ask questions. Shoot first, that’s what they’re taught.”

  “You mean that metaphorically, don’t you?”

  He gave her an exceptionally oblique look that again reminded her just how different they really were.

  “If that lets you sleep at night, darlin’, have at it.”

  Chapter 12

  Washington, D.C.

  Detective Darren Fletcher

  Fletcher needed sleep. He needed it in the worst way. He wasn’t young anymore, couldn’t pull these forty-hour-on shifts like he could when he was a rookie. At some point, his brain just plain shut down, and there was nothing that could be done for it until he closed his eyes and recharged.

  But the JTTF was expecting him, and his city was under siege. Sleep wasn’t an option.

  He fueled up at the 7-Eleven on the corner of 24th and New Hampshire Avenue, an extra-large black coffee, and headed to the address he’d been given.

  He rolled up on the JTTF at just past one in the morning. Nineteen hours post-attack, and the investigation was in high gear.

  The people inside the offices weren’t dragging, that was for sure. They were chipper and rushing about and calling out factoids over their impressively toned shoulders. He hoped that somewhere in here was someone his age. Someone who didn’t get their information from Twitter and could speak in complete sentences without using “like” or “really” every three words.

  Now, Fletch. You’re being unkind. If the kids are part of the JTTF it’s because they’re damn good at their jobs, and nothing else should matter.

  He was getting old. Old at forty-two. Old and broken down and lacking faith in humanity.

  A young woman in bulky glasses, with blond hair clipped high in a ponytail and a trim black-skirted suit paired with fantastically
high heels, met him at the front desk. She didn’t smile, but her face lit up when she saw him come in the door.

  “You must be Detective Fletcher. I’m Inez Crow. I’ll be your assistant while you’re on the JTTF.” She started him walking toward a steel door. “As you can see, we’ve got a lot going on. There’s too much paper for you to handle by yourself, so I’ll be dealing with as much as I can for you. Anything you need, you call me.” She handed him a slim mobile phone. “All my numbers are already programmed. I hope you’ll take advantage, I’m pretty good at this.”

  She’d managed the whole speech without a breath.

  Fletcher followed her through the door, which she unlocked with a thumb on a fingerprint scanner, then a series of numbers and letters on the keypad. Decent security, but he would expect nothing less.

  “So what’s your story, Inez? How’d you get to be an assistant to a scrub like me? Punishment?”

  She gave him a look of sheer incredulity. “Hardly. B.A. in criminal justice from Princeton, graduate school in Bern, Switzerland, in International Affairs, two years at Interpol, went through the FBI Academy last year and I’m just finishing my Ph.D. in forensic psychology at Harvard. I asked to be assigned to you so I could make sure you could get up to speed quickly and make sure you don’t step on your own feet, which you’ve already managed to do and you haven’t been here for five minutes, which isn’t a record, but damn close to it, and that tells me I made the right call. In a few months you’d have to call me Dr. Crow. In the meantime, I’ll settle for Inez, and a bit of respect.”

  She stepped off again, back straight, walking briskly, and he took a deep breath and slurped back some coffee and followed. He didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Inez Crow had more qualifications than he did to be on the JTTF, yet she was working for him.

  When he caught up to her, he said, “No offense meant, Inez. Just trying to get to know you.”