Bounty

by J. D. Cunegan

  "You wanna take out all your misplaced anger on me? Fine." She yanked on the collar in her grasp. "But you talk about our mother like that again, and you will see, once and for all, just how far I will go to protect my family."

  Brian scoffed. "Just not your brother."

  She let go of Brian, tears burning her eyes. Jill pushed away and crossed back to the other side of the desk again, shaking her head. Her lower lip quivered, and before Jill had a chance to steel herself, the tears started falling.

  "You are such a fucking victim." Her voice cracked, tears dripping from her cheeks to the floor. "Oh, woe is me. The world is out to get me. Poor fucking Brian Andersen! I am sorry for not answering the phone that night, okay?! I'm sorry I wasn't there for you the night that car hit you."

  She paced, running shaky fingers through her hair.

  "You know what, I get that you won't go see dad." She sniffled, her eyes red and puffy. "I think you're being a selfish fucking brute for it, but that's your call. But Brian... in six months, I'm gonna be the only family you have left. Do you really wanna go through life estranged from your only family?"

  Brian fell silent and averted his eyes back to the book open in front of him. Several moments passed before it became clear to Jill that he wasn't going to answer her. Every time she came here, hoping to extend an olive branch, looking for something to get them to connect again, he just threw the branch out the proverbial window. He was her younger brother, and she hurt for him, but at the same time, Jill hated what he had become. She remembered Brian as a brave young man who always had a smile on his face. Now he wore permanent bags under his eyes, was confined to a wheelchair, and refused to talk with anyone outside of his job -- even his older sister.

  One of the brightest souls she had ever known was now so full of darkness and loathing that she barely recognized him. That reality broke her heart far more than she was willing to admit.

  "Fine." She sucked in a ragged breath, wiping away one last tear. "Throw your life away. I won't be around to watch."

  Chapter 23

  As she often did when she was emotionally ragged, Jill returned to the precinct, choosing to park herself at her desk and pour herself into her work. There still wasn't much they could go on with regards to the Dr. Roberts case -- not officially, anyway -- but security camera footage across the street from the crime scene provided a much-needed distraction. Harmony over in Tech had flagged the video footage from the night of Trent's murder for further review; she hadn't given any more detail than that, but Jill actually appreciated the cryptic message for once. Maybe she'd be so busy trying to figure out what they had all missed the first time around that Jill would forget her latest failed attempt at reconciling with her brother.

  How many times was she going to keep trying? When would she finally just give up? Sighing and shaking her head in the hopes of clearing out all of the clutter, Jill grabbed her wireless mouse and clicked. The grainy black-and-white video played. Natives and tourists alike came and went, not unlike a colony of ants meandering around the nest. The traffic pattern, the rhythmic changing of the stop lights, threatened to lull Jill to sleep.

  The detective fast-forwarded the video through midnight, noticing how the Inner Harbor itself was surprisingly empty. Crowds were sparse for a Friday night, but nothing else was out of the ordinary. The yacht in question was still at the dock, as it had been for a week prior to the murder. Boating records confirmed that. Unfortunately, that was all boating records confirmed; Ramon had hit a dead end trying to figure out who owned the yacht.

  An awkward, jerky motion in the background caught Jill's attention. She paused the video, leaning in and squinting. A series of keystrokes allowed Jill to zoom in on a hooded figure with its back to the camera. Hands were stuffed in the figure's pockets. Whoever this was, they knew how to hide their identity.

  Jill pressed play again and gasped out loud when she saw how the figure had a pronounced limp -- the left leg never bent with each slow, awkward step. She paused the video, dragging the mouse to create a box over the figure. She cropped that box out and saved it as its own image. If this was who Jill thought, they could make an arrest after all.

  Chapter 24

  Five years ago...

  The first time Jill had rode in the back of an armored Jeep through the bumpy "streets" just south of Baghdad, she'd gotten sick. Some in her platoon still teased her over it, but as time wore on, she had built a tolerance for the constant jostling and back-and-forth over the dirt, rocks, and sand. She'd learned how to curl her body just right to mitigate the sensation, how to hold her weapon against her left shoulder, arms wrapped tight almost as if the rifle were a baby to be cradled.

  The irony was, Jill never suffered motion sickness. Not in driver’s ed. Not in any of her missions. Not when she flew on vacations with her family as a child. Not even that one time she flew with the Blue Angels, when she was convinced her pilot was doing everything he could to make her re-visit breakfast. All those G's, those barrel rolls, those rapid climbs and descents never bothered her.

  But a worn Jeep with bad shocks? Different story.

  She lifted her head when the Jeep slowed to a crawl. The heat was stifling, made all the worse by the fact that she was covered head-to-toe in military fatigues, a heavy helmet pushing down on the top of her head. The Jeep creaked to a stop, and Jill heard their driver in a heated discussion with one of the locals, cursing herself for not knowing the native tongue.

  Jill tightened the grip on her rifle. The argument was becoming louder and more impassioned. The two men were shouting over each other, their voices overlapping to the point where even if Jill did speak the language, she still wouldn’t be able to make out the dialogue. Jill and the other three soldiers in the back of the Jeep with her exchanged glances, all four of them checking their weapons.

  Peeling back the drab cloth offering them something resembling cover, Nelson Blake peered out the back before returning to his seat and shaking his head. "We must be an hour out of Baghdad." He squeezed the butt of his rifle. "This area's covered in IEDs."

  The argument ended. The four in the back of the Jeep braced themselves to start moving again. Instead, the strange voice erupted again in anger before being drowned out by the loud spray of gunfire. Jill flinched, her eyes wide. Ferguson and Jenkins stared at each other, swallowing back their respective dread before turning to Blake.

  "Sir?"

  Blake was silent, his jaw clenched, rifle held in a position where he was ready to shoot. Jill could see the anger building in his coal-black eyes, nostrils flaring as each breath became more labored, more ragged, than the last.

  Jill scooted to the edge of her seat. "Sir?"

  The voice returned, louder and more insistent. The source of the voice was approaching the back of the Jeep, and all four soldiers readied their weapons. Footsteps crunched against the sand before stopping, not yet to the back of the vehicle. Jill exchanged a confused look with Ferguson and Jenkins. Jill could feel her heart thumping against her rib cage, swallowing the bile settling in her throat. A howling wind disturbed the remote dessert, before falling to leave the soldiers in silence.

  Jill had no idea how much time had passed. Seconds? Minutes?

  Blake grit his teeth and pushed aside the cloth leading to the back of the Jeep. "Enough of this shit!"

  "Sir!"

  Ferguson grabbed for Blake, but as soon as Nelson's foot touched sand, an explosion rocked the Jeep and the surrounding area. The vehicle teetered back and forth before the passenger's side of the vehicle slammed into the malleable yet hard ground. Jill grunted when her left shoulder slammed into the side of the Jeep, Ferguson and Jenkins thrown to the back of the compartment. All three of them lost the handle on their weapons in the blast, Jill's ears ringing long after the debris had settled and the dust cleared.

  The three soldiers struggled to regain their footing, stumbling over themselves before crouching back to equilibrium. Jill smelled fire, the embers of the explos
ion filling her nostrils to the point that she buried her face in the crook of her elbow in search of relief. Tears burned the edges of her eyes. She tried breathing through her mouth, only to gag and cough.

  Ferguson was the first to reach the opening in the back of the Jeep, and he promptly hunched over to empty the contents of his stomach.

  Jill and Jenkins exchanged a glance, and once Ferguson's retching subsided, the trio was met with a blood-curdling scream. Jenkins and Jill joined Ferguson by what was left on the cloth, and they both covered their mouths at the sight of Nelson Blake crumpled in the sand, his left leg barely hanging onto his body by shreds of tendon and flesh. His entire lower body was covered in blood, and when Blake's screaming stopped, he gritted his teeth, wide eyes staring skyward as his body went into convulsions.

  "He's going into shock!" Jenkins, the medic among them, leapt from the Jeep, ignoring the smoldering ground to his left before crouching by Blake and lifting his head off the ground. He called into the communication device attached to his left shoulder. "Man down! Repeat: man down!"

  Jenkins' voice faded as the reality overwhelmed Jill. This was her first true glimpse of the disgusting reality of war. The bloodshed. The torment. The pain. The torture. This wasn't even a case of a firefight gone wrong. This wasn't the enemy getting the drop on Jill's platoon. This was just random. Pointless.

  At best, Nelson Blake was going to live the rest of his life without a leg because his foot just happened to hit the wrong spot in the sand.

  Chapter 25

  Present day...

  "Nelson Blake." Ramon squinted at the monitor on his desk. "Honorable discharge from the United States Army five years ago after he lost his leg during a tour in Iraq."

  Captain Richards frowned at the head shot on the screen. "What happened?"

  "He stepped on an IED." Richards and Ramon both looked at Jill, who nodded at the monitor. "He was my platoon leader. I was in the Jeep when it happened."

  Richards crossed in front of Ramon's desk, approaching the white dry erase board and grabbing the blown-up surveillance photo Jill had pulled the night before. "And we're sure he's the man in the video?"

  Jill nodded, approaching the board after retrieving a hard copy of Blake's head shot on the Pentagon database. She tacked the photo onto the white board, taking a step back and folding her arms across her chest. Richards and Ramon approached on either side of her. She couldn't help but smile: her partners flanking her on either side, not unlike her military days.

  "Before his discharge," Jill recited from personal memory, "Blake met with Dr. Roberts."

  Ramon frowned. "Our victim?"

  Jill nodded. "Blake had heard the rumors about Project Fusion and thought that would be his ticket to avoiding a discharge."

  Richards scratched at his chin. "Blake wanted to continue serving."

  "The military was Blake's life." Jill grabbed a red marker, jotting down a note in block letters on the board: Believed in Project Fusion. "His grandfather served. His father served. His younger brother just started his third tour in Afghanistan. Blake had his eye on commanding his own unit one day."

  Ramon interjected. "But with only one leg, the military was about to cut him loose."

  Richards turned to his detectives. "A desperate man willing to believe any story he hears through the grapevine."

  Jill nodded again. "He begged Dr. Roberts to let him volunteer for the procedure, but Trent refused."

  Ramon frowned. "On what grounds?"

  "That Project Fusion didn't exist and the Pentagon wouldn't approve of the procedure even if it did." Jill sighed. "They amputated Blake's left leg two days after the accident and when he returned stateside, Blake was fitted for an admittedly primitive prosthetic."

  Richards shook his head. "Well, there's motive."

  All three of them glanced over their respective shoulders, and Jill was glad to see the precinct not as busy as usual. Confident they were in relative privacy once Richards had returned to his office and shut the door, unable to ignore the phone persistently ringing in the background, Jill leaned forward and squinted. "Truth was, Dr. Roberts turned him down because the process hadn't been finalized yet. It wasn't ready for a full human trial."

  Ramon turned to Jill, keeping his voice to a whisper. "How does he connect to Freeman or Gregor?"

  "Freeman was above Blake. He was our overall commander.” Jill shrugged. “I haven’t found a connection to Gregor yet, but if he financed the whole thing, then who knows?”

  Ramon frowned. "Any idea what Blake's been up to since his discharge?"

  Jill shook her head. "Last I heard, he'd gone back home to Nebraska. I called his folks in Omaha this morning, and they said he got divorced two months after returning home and has been working odd jobs over the years, barely making ends meet."

  Ramon shook his head. "Long way from Omaha."

  "Yeah." Jill chewed on her lower lip. "Almost makes one think he was lured out here."

  Chapter 26

  After what had been another long, draining day at the precinct, Jill was grateful to be heading home. Okay, that wasn’t entirely accurate – she had been pouring over financial data and enough security video footage that her eyes were crossing, becoming unfocused. Richards had practically ordered her to go home, get some sleep, and start anew the next morning, arguing that perhaps a night of distance would help clear the fog.

  Jill knew better. For her, time and distance were roadblocks. Other cops might have been able to work better after stepping away from the problem for a time, but Jill was the sort who did her best work when she was buried up to her elbows in the minutiae. Which was why, even as her key slid into the lock and she pulled the door to her apartment open, Jill couldn’t get the grainy image of Nelson Blake out of her head.

  Pushing through the threshold, Jill almost missed the cardboard box sitting beside her door. In fact, had Jill not looked down as her shoulder pushed the door open -- and truth be told, she didn’t know why she had -- Jill wouldn’t have seen it. She glanced to her left, and then her right, but the hallway was deserted. Other than the flickering light by the elevator -- maintenance had dragged its feet on installing a new bulb for the past two months -- she was alone.

  Her first instinct was to grab the box, but Jill stopped herself. After all, it might have been a bomb, and the last thing Jill wanted was to get blown to bits in front of her own apartment. As it was, she considered herself somewhat blessed to have survived two tours in Iraq without stepping on an IED; she didn’t want her eventual death to carry with it the irony of a bomb at her door.

  The box, roughly the size of a box her mother used to get from her numerous book orders, was devoid of markings. No signs. No writing. No address, hers or otherwise. Chances were, it wasn’t a bomb, but that wasn’t a chance Jill was willing to take. Her gut told her this was related to the case, and if that was true, who was to say it wasn’t a bomb?

  Fishing her phone out of her pocket, Jill sighed. Unfortunately, calling the bomb squad would draw the attention of the rest of the hall. Then again, so would an explosion, and Jill preferred her neighbors woken up and irritated to blown up.

  Dropping to a knee, Jill leaned in to place her ear by the box. There was no ticking sound. If this was a bomb, there didn’t appear to be a timer. There was probably a trigger sensor of some sort. Jill could open the flaps and… boom.

  Swiping her thumb over the screen of her phone, Jill pressed the device to her ear with a sigh. She’d probably owe kind Ms. Reynolds in 4D a plate of freshly-baked chocolate chip cookies when this was all over.

  “This is Detective Andersen, badge number 32844. I’m gonna need a bomb squad unit.”

  Chapter 27

  The bomb squad was at Jill’s apartment in ten minutes, thanks in large part to a lack of traffic at the late hour. The squad of five, led by Sergeant Tim Burgess, was quiet as it rolled through the hall to Apartment 6D, Jill giving him a nod as they approached. Jill, standing with her back again
st the door to her apartment, gestured toward the floor, calling Burgess’ attention to the package.

  Burgess glanced at his feet, scratching his bushy black beard. He then glanced over his shoulder and shook his head with a sigh. “Don’t suppose you got a closed-off place we could take this thing?”

  “You mean other than my apartment?” Jill smirked; at this point, gallows humor was her only recourse. “I’ve still got five months on my lease, so.”

  Burgess stepped aside to let one of the men in his unit drop to a knee, his heavy black kneepads giving a soft thud as they connected with the carpet. The other man, who wore a nametag on his heavy-duty vest that read Ellison, donned a heavy black pair of what looked like futuristic binoculars. They covered the entire upper half of the man’s face, focused rays of green light pouring from two points along the top of the visor. The green lights scanned along the surface of the box.

  “I didn’t hear any ticking,” Jill explained. “So if it is a bomb --”

  “It’s not a bomb.” Ellison stood and shed the device from his head. “I don’t know what’s in there, Sarge, but I’d say the coast is clear.”

  Relief gave way to confusion, but Jill held the questions at bay long enough to shake Sergeant Burgess’ hand. “Sorry for all the trouble, sir.”

  “Nonsense, Detective.” Burgess wore a smile somewhere in all that hair. “Better this than you not call and we hear about the entire building going down.”

  Burgess and his crew left as quietly as they had arrived, and Jill was as relieved for the fact that none of her neighbors were disturbed as she was for the fact that the box in question wasn’t a bomb. That did little to quell her confusion, though, so Jill pushed her way into her apartment, grabbing a pair of latex gloves from her kitchen before returning to grab the box. To her surprise, the box was cold to the touch, and she had to flex her fingers to get heat back into them once she set the box on her counter.