by Julie Rowe
Though the world still didn’t feel like it was properly under his feet, he headed toward Mike Creek.
The asshole was still yelling at the guards. “Ignore her. He’s a terrorist. Hit him again!”
The fucker wore a huge grin on his face.
Gunner approached him, gave him a hi, I’m here to help you smile, then punched the bastard in the stomach with every ounce of anger he had in him.
A couple of the cops glanced at them while trying to keep up with the action on suicide guy.
“You think this is fun?” Gunner asked in a low voice, putting his hand on the other man’s back like he was trying to help him. “Open your mouth again and I’ll put my fist through it.”
“Help,” Mike wheezed out as he tried, and failed, to stand upright.
Gunner grabbed him by the scruff of his shirt and towed him a bit too fast toward one of the cops. “This one needs watching. He’s involved in this shit up to his eyeballs.”
“Who are you?” the cop asked.
He almost said Doctors Without Borders, but his tongue remembered the right answer. “CDC.”
“He…” Mike gasped, pointing at Gunner. “Hit me.”
“If our suicide candidate dies,” Gunner said to him. “It’ll be your fault.” He turned to yell at Frank, get him to stop the guards, but Frank had already done it.
The guards backed away from the man on the floor, who wasn’t moving at all.
“He’s not breathing,” Gunner said, striding toward the still form on the floor. “Joy.”
She was there, a step in front of him, checking for a carotid pulse. She shook her head.
Gunner knelt next to the man and opened his jacket carefully.
A series of oblong objects were duct taped to his shirt. Two sets of black cables linked each object to the one next to it until they finally disappeared into rectangular boxes under each of his arms.
“Shit,” one of the cops muttered.
Another cop stepped up close enough to get a good look at the whole mess. “We need the bomb squad,” he said into his radio.
Gunner studied the cables, the tape, and whatever was under it. Something was off. Like really off. He pulled the guy’s shirt out from under his waistband and slid his hand under. The objects didn’t weigh what they should. They felt empty.
“It’s fake,” Gunner announced, causing the room to go quiet. “There’s nothing here but plastic, tape, and a couple of HDMI cables.” He stood and stared at Mike Creek.
“Should I cancel the bomb squad?” the cop asked.
“No. We’ll do this right, get it all checked out before we do anything.” He didn’t take his gaze off Creek. All the cops took notice, and everyone began to look at the little shit.
Who was sweating.
“You ordered your security guards to stun this man,” Gunner said.
“Yeah, so?” He shifted his weight from foot to foot. “You’re the one who cried suicide vest.”
“It looked good enough to fool me, and it sure as hell was meant to fool someone. A prank, Mike?”
Mike opened his mouth, but stopped himself from saying anything and closed his mouth again.
Gotcha.
“As pranks go, this one was pretty damn dumb. So dumb, it got your friend killed.”
“I don’t know that guy.”
“You and this imbecile stood with your heads together reading,” Joy said with a snarl that a tiger would have been proud of. A hungry, pissed off tiger. “Pretty hard to claim you were just giving him directions to the nearest bathroom in the middle of the brewery.”
Mike’s jaw dropped for an entire second.
Jesus, he’d actually thought everyone would believe him?
Mike Creek was a dumb fuck and a dead one if Joy got her hands on him.
“How did you do it?” Joy asked, scorn a serrated edge to her words. “How did you, with your miniscule imagination”—she pinched her fingers together to illustrate how small she meant. It was pretty fucking small—“manage to poison your family’s beer?”
For a moment that seemed to last forever Mike’s face transformed into a mask of anger and hate.
There you are. The real Mike.
The next second, the ugliness was smoothed over, concealed with an innocence so thin it hid nothing. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Chapter Twelve
Monday 1:14 p.m.
Joy really wanted to slap the stupid out of Mike Creek. She settled for giving the idiot the scary-ass smile she’d learned from her Army drill sergeant. “You’re not too bright, are you, Mikey?” She looked at his hands. “The evidence is all over you. Why don’t you save us all a lot of time and effort and tell us what you did?”
“Mike,” his brother, Frank, said. “What the fuck?”
“What the fuck?” Mike asked. The question triggered another transformation, and it wasn’t pretty. “What the fuck?” he yelled. “That cold fish we called a father finally dies, and what happens? You come home and take over the entire company.” He tried to get into his brother’s face, but the officer holding him pulled him back.
Frank looked like he’d been sucker punched. For about two seconds, then his face closed up and settled into a combat stare.
“Dad wasn’t cold,” Frank said, his voice as dangerous as his expression. “He worked hard, and he expected us to work hard, but you weren’t interested in working at all. All you wanted to do was party.” Frank crossed his arms over his chest. “Why was Gerry from our shipping department wearing a fake suicide vest?”
Mike sneered at his brother. “To see what you’d do. Find out if you really were the soldier Dad said you were, or not.”
So, he set up a friend with a fake suicide vest to see what would happen? That was bug-nuts.
“Are you fucking crazy?” Joy asked the mouthy asshole. “I don’t know what your brother did in the Army, but from the way he moves, it wasn’t riding a desk.” She stepped closer to him. “You told those security guards to shock that poor bastard. And keep shocking him until he was dead.”
“No joke there,” Gunner added. “This whole shit-show looks premeditated.” He looked at the cop holding Mike. “Arrest him, but don’t take him anywhere.” Gunner turned to her. “Joy, could you swab his hands and do a field test?”
Nothing would make her happier. Well, nothing but punching Mikey in the face, but she’d take what she could get.
She smiled. “Coming right up.”
It only took a minute to swab Mike’s hands and perform the test.
“It’s positive,” she reported to Gunner quietly.
The building was full of police, a bomb squad, and a group of firemen that had just arrived. Who’d called them?
Frank Creek asked, “What does that mean?”
“It means,” Gunner said, “that your brother has got what we’re looking for on his hands. Either he brought it in or picked it up from somewhere inside the brewery.” Gunner looked at Mike. “Got anything to say?”
The asshole just smiled.
“There’s nothing funny about killing people,” Joy said to him. “What’s the count so far?” she asked Gunner. “Four dead?”
“Five, if you count Mike’s dead ex-friend.”
She smirked at Mike. “You’re going to jail for a long time, and that’s nothing to smile about, either.”
“What the fuck are you talking about, bitch?” Mike said. “I didn’t kill anyone.”
“The bacteria on your hands did. Where did you get it, by the way?”
“Get what?”
“The deadly bacteria on your hands and in your beer,” Gunner said moving toward the creep until he backed Mike up into the body of the cop holding him. Gunner stood four or five inches taller, and that close, made the other man look up. “Where did you get it?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
They needed information. What, when, and where—everything.
“He’s p
robably already infected himself,” Joy said, studying the moron. “I’m sure he’s touched his face several times in the last hour alone. Wiped his nose, rubbed his eyes, coughed into his hands.” She smiled again. “I hope you really enjoy your fever and failing kidneys.”
“What the fuck are you talking about?”
“That’s what the bacteria you’ve been putting in the beer so generously does. It shuts down your kidneys then throws your body into septic shock, which kills you.”
“Even if you’re on life support,” Gunner added helpfully with a voice so calm she knew something was very wrong.
“If I did add something to the beer,” Mike said, his expression a combination of frustrated and arrogant, “I wouldn’t put anything deadly in it. I might add something to make people shit themselves and barf for a couple of days. That’s it. You’re just trying to pin this fuck fest”—he thrust a chin at the now covered body—“on me.”
“Why would you poison your own beer?” Gunner asked.
“What are you talking about?” Mike said, a smirk slithering out to sun itself on his face. “It’s not my beer. It belongs to the whole family and everyone who works here.”
Did he have any idea how his body language and tone revealed the lies coming out of his mouth?
“You hate us…me…that much?” Frank asked, his face pale. “Enough to poison people?”
“Maybe it’s just terrible beer.” Again with the smirk.
“Where did you get it?” Gunner asked.
Mike smiled at him. “Get what?”
Joy glanced at Gunner. Her partner’s body visibly vibrated with anger. Watching a man die like that was a horrible thing. He’d probably seen many people die in any number of horrible ways. Like her, Gunner had been damaged by it.
Was that why they got along so well? There was more to their relationship than battered psyches and an understanding of how bad memories could hijack a person. Right?
“Where did you get the shit?” Gunner asked again, his hands clenching and unclenching at his sides. “Because a dunce like you could not have figured out how to get it without help or someone else’s fucking credit card.”
Mikey didn’t like that much. His sneer came back, full throttle. “If you’re so fucking smart, you tell me, because I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
His anger a metallic taste in the air, Gunner snarled and took a step toward the younger Creek.
“What are you talking about?” Frank asked.
The question broke Gunner’s focus on Mike. He backed up a step, glanced at Joy, then took another step away from Mike.
She met his gaze with her own. Hold your shit together.
He must have read the concern on her face because he stepped back from Mike a third time and nodded.
“Frank,” she said to Frank. “Why don’t you come with me for a moment while Gunner fills in the police on what they need to be aware of inside the brewery.”
Gunner cocked his head at her, but didn’t seem unhappy with her giving him backhanded orders.
She moved away from the rest of the people milling around until they were at least twenty feet away from everyone else.
Frank had been military; he could handle a straightforward report. “The E. coli found in your beer is actually two different strains. This isn’t something that happened by accident. Someone introduced the bacteria to the beer either here in the brewery or at some point once it left here.”
“Holy fuck,” Frank breathed.
“The chances are so small as to be impossible for two strains to be in the same sample,” Joy continued. “Unless your brother is a closet genius in microbiology, and, no offense, he doesn’t give off that vibe, he got the bugs and instructions for how to use them from someone else.”
“You need to know from where,” Frank said, shock solidifying into cold determination on his face.
“Yes.”
“His phone is owned and paid for by the brewery. You can have it.”
She blinked. Well, this was unexpected. “Thank you.”
“Thank you for not letting the good doctor murder my brother.” Frank’s smile was grim.
Her stomach tightened. If he noticed Gunner was barely hanging on to his control, who else noticed?
“Gunner has no patience for fools, and your brother’s shitty attitude isn’t helping him at all. Has Mike said anything strange or out of place lately?”
“No,” Frank replied immediately, then added, “Maybe. He’s been oddly quiet and agreeable lately. He usually argues with me about every little thing, but not for the last couple of weeks.”
“Two weeks? Three? Think back. When did his behavior change?”
Frank held himself still, his hands behind his back, almost at parade rest. “We had an argument three weeks ago about money. He wanted a payout in cash for a percentage of the brewery. He’s been asking for a while, but this time I lost my temper. He apologized a couple of days later, something he doesn’t do often. I thought maybe he’d started to grow up.”
“What percentage of the company does he own?”
“Twenty-five. He wanted to sell it to me, but there’s no way I could buy him out. I spent most of our available capital on the development of the new craft label.”
“Thank you. That gives us a timeline to investigate.”
“All clear,” someone shouted.
The members of the bomb squad, who’d been huddled around the body, were moving away, headed for the back door. One man held the shirt with its duct tape, plastic, and black cables in one hand.
“I don’t understand any of this,” Frank said, looking from the body to his brother.
Mike looked bored, but when he noted his brother looking at him, he winked. He just couldn’t stop himself from gloating, could he? She’d bet he was a narcissist, as well as an asshole.
“This kind of selfish bullshit never makes sense.” Joy sighed. “Now the hard part begins.”
“Hard part?”
“Tracking down every source of infection in this building.” She looked around. “There’s a lot of space to cover.”
“I’ll ask him—” Frank began.
“No. Let the police, or more probably, Homeland Security, handle it. If you ask him anything, even a simple question, he’s going to turn it into an opportunity to hurt you.” She hesitated, then added, “Cast doubt.”
Frank apparently didn’t like that, but he nodded. “Fine. I guess I’ll call the lawyers.”
“His phone?”
“You’ll get it.” He strode to the cops standing guard over his brother. “Where’s his stuff?”
Gunner walked over to watch both Mike and Frank like he was at the last table of a major poker tournament. No emotion at all on his face.
“Evidence bag,” one of them said.
“I need the phone.”
“I’m sorry, sir. It’s evidence—”
“Perhaps you could just give me the password?” Joy suggested.
Frank nodded, pulled out a business card and a pen from his pocket, and wrote on the back. He handed it to her. “That phone is company property,” he said clearly to her, the cops, and Gunner. “I’m giving you permission to examine it.”
“What the fuck are you doing?” Mike asked, the arrogance falling off his face with the speed of an avalanche, leaving only ugliness.
Frank looked at his brother and said in a low, pain-filled voice, “The right thing.” He walked away.
“You can’t fucking do this,” Mike shouted, lunging for his brother. “That’s my fucking phone.”
The cops grabbed him and forced him to kneel on the cement, but he didn’t stop shouting obscenities at his brother.
Gunner came over to her. “Homeland is on its way. They want to know if this is an isolated incident or not. They really want to know where this idiot got the bacteria.”
Joy looked around the huge space. “Right now, I want to know what he did with it.”
“We need
a team of people to sweep the entire building before we can clear it.”
“Yup.”
“But, our first priority is to make sure we’ve got all the contaminated beer collected. We’re going to need to get into the brewery’s records.”
“Frank said his brother has only been acting off for two or three weeks.”
“Weeks…” Gunner mumbled. “That’s enough time to distribute a lot of contaminated beer.” He looked at the kegs around them. “Better get started.” He took a step away.
“Gunner?”
He turned to look at her.
“Are you…” They were out in the open with a dozen or more cops, firefighters, and EMS wandering around. She had to be diplomatic. “Good to go?”
“Yeah.” He glanced at the body, now covered with a black plastic sheet. “Horrible way to die. The yelling and shooting reminded me of a couple of attacks I witnessed in Syria. One of the White Helmets was electrocuted when some live wires landed in a puddle of water.”
“White Helmets?”
“Syrian Civil Defense. Everyday, average people who aren’t on anyone’s side trying to help the wounded, trapped, and dying. A lot of them die doing it. Have died, will die…” He shook his head, snapped his mouth shut, and walked over to where he’d left his kit.
The pain that had crossed his face just now…deep, divisive, and dangerous. That kind of pain had the potential to do the kind of damage to a person that was hard, or even impossible, to recover from.
“And the other attack?”
He stopped, frozen for two entire seconds, then continued walking as if she hadn’t asked her last question.
So, he hadn’t recovered. Damn it, he was too good a man to lose to his wounds, mental and physical.
He was important.
He was her partner, and she wasn’t going to let him suffer alone. She might not be able to heal him, but she could stay with him, support him, care for him despite those wounds. Right now that meant doing her job to the best of her ability.
Ha, like she was any better off mentally.
Joy grabbed her kit, donned gloves and a mask, and approached the pile of kegs to the right of the one Gunner had chosen to sample so she could keep an eye on him. Hopefully, the routine of work they’d performed over and over would help settle him.