Known Threat

by Kara A. McLeod

  “That isn’t what I meant. I meant how.”

  He didn’t elaborate, but I didn’t need him to. I knew what he was asking. He wanted to know how someone we were supposed to have been monitoring could’ve pulled something like this off. How he could’ve taken us so completely by surprise. How we could possibly have dropped a ball this big. How I could have failed to see this coming. Unfortunately, I didn’t have any answers. Not concrete ones, at any rate. All I had were theories and gut feelings. And voicing them wouldn’t undo what’d already been done. It would’ve been pointless to dwell on that line of thinking. Not that I wasn’t already doing exactly that. But I did recognize the fruitlessness of my self-flagellation.

  “Adam Royce Walker is extremely intriguing in that he’s intelligent on a level you wouldn’t think him capable of, which is a large part of what makes him so dangerous. He’s a paranoid schizophrenic who’s off his meds more often than he’s on them, and you’d think that would make it impossible for him to function effectively outside his persistent delusions about his relationship with Hurricane. But he’s smart enough to recognize that at certain times he needs to play the part to get what he wants.”

  “Play the part how?”

  I gathered my hair into a bunch and pulled it down over one shoulder so I could play with the ends. “Cleaning himself up. Fixing his hair, shaving, wearing cologne. Donning the appropriate clothing for the environment. Walking with confidence, acting as if he belongs. Little things. It’s not necessarily enough to get past us—especially not those of us who’ve seen him and know what he looks like—but it’s enough for him to not stand out as crazy to the general populace. Depending on the situation, sometimes that can be sufficient.” I didn’t have to say that it sounded like it’d been sufficient today.

  “You’re telling me he can turn it off.”

  “That isn’t the term I’d use. You can’t turn off mental illness, obviously.”

  “So what term would you use?”

  “I guess I’d say he can rise above it in order to further his delusions when he needs to. He can’t keep it up long-term. But he can certainly do it long enough to effectively cause us a whole mess of trouble when it suits him.”

  “Good God.” Dad ran a weary hand across his eyes.

  “That about sums it up.”

  “So how do you think he got Rory?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I’m not asking you to etch your theories in stone. I realize you’re not certain. I just need some idea what we’re up against. Paint a picture for me. Tell me how you think he could’ve done it.”

  I tilted my head back and cast my eyes toward the ceiling. “It’s tough for me to say. I don’t have any idea how long he’s been out of the hospital or where he is in his cycle. His periods of lucidity fluctuate, especially when he isn’t compliant with his prescribed medication schedule, which will directly impact how comprehensive a plan he could put together. Even with all that information, I’d be guessing. Without it…”

  “Then guess. I need to know what this guy is capable of.”

  “Dad, I can’t—”

  “Do you think he hurt her?” My father’s voice was small, and I’d have sworn I heard a tremor. The sound caused the already-deep furrows in my heart to tear even wider.

  “I had Rico ask her if she needed a doctor. She said she was fine.”

  Dad pinned me with a pointed look. “That’s not what I asked you.”

  I sighed heavily and sagged in my chair. “I know it isn’t.”

  “Oh.”

  We sat in silence for a few long moments, each floundering in our own worries and fears. Dad was too much of a professional to allow any of his to show on his face, but, try as I might, I was afraid my own attempts at appearing strong weren’t cutting it. I was feeling too many things inside every single moment. I didn’t think I could handle keeping all of them under wraps. Not completely, anyway. Some of them were bound to bleed through.

  I glanced at my watch again and stood.

  Dad blinked. “Where are you going?”

  “The clock’s ticking. Literally. I need to reach out to Claudia and get this ball rolling sooner rather than later.”

  Dad stood, too. “I’ll come with you.”

  I held up one hand. “No. I think maybe you should stay here.”

  Dad looked pained, incredulous, and irritated. “You don’t seriously think I’m going to sit here and do nothing while my daughter is in the hands of a lunatic.”

  I opened my mouth to point out all the reasons why he shouldn’t be involved in this situation but thought better of it. For one thing, someone could apply whatever case I’d been about to make to my continuing presence in this investigation, and I was not at all eager to have that person point it out to me. For another, I knew how he felt. No way in hell would I let anyone bench me. I could understand why he’d feel the same way.

  “Of course not. It’s just that I have some paperwork to pick up from the squad and a few phone calls to make. Maybe you’d like to meet me over at the Sin Bin after you talk to the guys down in the cell-tracking unit? Get them set to move when I have something for them to go on?”

  “Okay.”

  As I moved toward the door, Dad moved to retrieve his suit jacket. I was just about out of his office when something occurred to me, and I stopped. Slowly, I turned back around.

  “Dad?”

  “Yes?” His tone was absent. He was busy gathering up his phone, wallet, and keys and stuffing everything into his pockets or clipping it onto his belt.

  “Dad,” I said again, louder, trying to make him look at me.

  He did. “What?”

  “You need to call Mom,” I said softly.

  Dad’s walls visibly cracked then, and his eyes widened just a tad. We stared at one another for a minute before he nodded. “Of course.”

  I gazed at him sympathetically. “I’ll see you over there.”

  I turned to leave then, not envying the task I’d just set him to. I heard him take a seat and closed the door on the telltale clacking of phone buttons being hastily yet deliberately punched.

  Chapter Twelve

  The ride over to the Sin Bin seemed to take damn near forever, and I was a wreck the entire trip. My heart raced. My stomach felt as twisted and knotted as a loaf of braided bread. And my thoughts bounced around with all the grace and subtlety of a wine bottle tossed down a trash chute. My insides practically clanged as ideas banged back and forth in my overtaxed brain. It was a miracle I made it to my destination.

  After throwing my car down in a spot reserved for commercial parking only, I strode into Hurricane’s building. For an instant I was positive I’d left the elevator key card Hannah had given me at my desk, and I nearly had a heart attack thinking I’d have to go all the way back to Brooklyn to retrieve it. But after some frantic pocket searching, I located it wedged in my commission book. Of course, after I’d gotten on the elevator and punched the floor for the Sin Bin, it occurred to me that I could’ve just called upstairs and asked one of the on-duty agents to come get me, thus negating the need to go anywhere. Yeah. I wasn’t thinking clearly.

  I shifted my weight from foot to foot and checked my BlackBerry three times for messages as I endured the endless ride upstairs. By the time I made it, I was all kinds of anxious, and I’m sure it showed in my body language as I barged into the command post.

  The agents on duty all looked up from what they were doing, but none of them appeared surprised to see me. Of course, I’d been a somewhat regular fixture there in recent weeks. I didn’t even bother to greet any of them.

  “Is Hannah here?” I was unable to keep the panic out of my voice, and I cringed at the realization.

  One of the detail guys pointed toward two small offices at the back of the room, the doors to both of which were closed. “Hers is the one on the right.”

  I nodded my thanks and made my way back there, still trying to figure out what I was going to say. I
rapped lightly on Hannah’s door, checking my phone one more time as I did.

  “Come in,” she called.

  I opened the door just enough to slip inside and then shut it behind me. Hannah frowned at me in obvious confusion.

  “Hey. Did we have plans today?”

  I shook my head and chewed on the corner of my lower lip as I settled into the chair on the other side of her desk. I was spending a lot of time that day sitting on one side of a desk or another trying to deal with a problem I had no idea how to even begin solving. Somehow, it seemed wrong.

  “Everything okay?”

  Hannah’s question pulled me out of my inane musings about chairs. When I finally looked into her eyes, the concern I saw there was both touching and heart wrenching.

  “Yes. I mean, no. I mean, I need to talk to you. And Claudia. I need to talk to both of you. Is she around?” I was rambling. I took a deep breath, forcing myself to push past the panic burrowing into my chest and focus. “Something happened that you and Claudia both need to be aware of. And I’m going to need her help in order to fix it.”

  Hannah’s expression of concern morphed back into confusion and then became tinged with fear before settling into determination. She stood and grabbed her suit jacket off the back of her chair. “Let’s go talk to her, then.”

  I felt a trickle of fear all my own. I didn’t want to go anywhere near Hurricane’s apartment. But before I could even think to object or ask where our protectee was, Hannah had already popped her head into the adjacent office to let someone know she was headed upstairs and was well on her way to the elevator. I had no choice but to go after her.

  Not knowing what to say, I busied myself with playing with my phone again as we took the elevator up to the floor where Hurricane’s apartment was located. My nerves felt like wind chimes in a tempest: twisted and tangled and jangling discordantly. I couldn’t help thinking that each second this took was one second less I’d have to save my sister. And I’d already lost almost an hour as it was.

  The time between Hannah’s knock on the door of the apartment next to Hurricane’s that the detail used as a crash pad and Claudia’s opening it felt like at least an age and a half, and I had to force myself not to fidget as we waited. If nothing else, it gave me something to concentrate on besides what special brand of hell Rory might have been enduring at that exact second. It was something, I supposed.

  “Ryan, how are you?” Claudia’s voice startled me, and I blinked. She looked surprised.

  “SAIC Quinn. I’m sorry to bother you, as always. I’m afraid this is becoming something of a pattern for me.” I shoved my hands into the pockets of my pants so she wouldn’t see them shaking.

  Claudia opened the door wider. “Don’t be silly. You’re always welcome here. Please, come in.”

  Hannah and I trudged inside, and I turned to face her the second she closed the door behind us. A small, distant part of me was screaming to at least let the poor woman sit down or fix herself a drink before I started bombarding her with my latest personal crisis, but the part of me that was all too keenly aware of the passage of every solitary millisecond won out over reason. I licked my dry lips and took a breath.

  “Do you have a moment? Hurricane isn’t scheduled to depart any time soon, is she?”

  “She has an open schedule today, so we have time. Just give me a second to make a phone call. Please, make yourselves at home.”

  I shifted my weight back and forth between my feet as Claudia told someone she wouldn’t be able to make the meeting and that he or she would have to conduct the interview by themselves. Then she holstered her phone and turned back to me. “So, what can I do for you?”

  I cleared my throat. “The very first time we met, when I stopped by a few weeks ago, did Hannah brief you on why I was here?”

  Claudia’s face gave away nothing. Instead, she made her way over to the living room and took a seat on the couch. She crossed her right leg over her left and laced her fingers together in her lap.

  After a long moment—during which I had to force myself not to rush her—Claudia’s eyes flooded with recognition. She nodded. “Yes. That PI subject. Adam Royce Walker. He’d been let out of Saint E’s and was on his way here, correct?”

  I was relieved she remembered. I definitely wasn’t in the mood to catch her up. Not when we had only—I consulted my watch—two hours and four minutes until Walker would call back demanding to see Hurricane or else. I nodded as well.

  “That’s right. Walker has been fixated on Hurricane for quite some time now.” I went on without giving either of them a chance to chime in. “As the years have progressed, Walker’s delusions have apparently only gotten stronger. He’s now under the impression that he and Hurricane are married. He also seems to believe I’ve been running interference and deliberately keeping her from him because I want Hurricane for myself.”

  Claudia and Hannah both stared at me.

  “You can’t be serious,” Hannah said.

  “That was actually his second theory. His first was that I wanted him.”

  Hannah smirked, clearly unable to help herself, but Claudia continued to watch me in silence.

  “When we came here a few weeks ago to intercept him, he became extremely agitated and belligerent. We ended up having to commit him to Bellevue for a psych eval.”

  “Is he out now?” Claudia asked.

  I nodded. “He is, yes.”

  “Do we need to be worried about him?” Claudia cast a troubled glance toward the door.

  “Not in the way you’re thinking, no.”

  I took another deep breath and willed myself to get through this next part without any discernable display of emotion. I was already more involved in this entire situation than I had any right to be. I was afraid if Claudia saw even one iota of feeling, she’d shut me out of the rest of the investigation entirely. And if I were forced out of the loop, I’d go insane.

  “We received a call in NYFO a little more than an hour ago on the main PI Squad line. Walker has a hostage. He said if we don’t let him see Hurricane, he’s going to kill her.”

  Claudia didn’t even try to conceal her surprise. “What did he say? I mean, exactly.”

  I reached into my interior suit-jacket pocket and retrieved the printed copy of the transcript of Rico and Adam’s conversation, complete with my own handwritten notes regarding the things of particular interest. I unfolded it and smoothed it out before handing it over. Claudia took it without a word and started to read. She hadn’t gotten very far before she stopped and pinned me with a dark look.

  “He thinks he has you.”

  I nodded. “Yes.”

  “Why does he think that?”

  “Because he has my identical-twin sister, Rory.” I was unable to keep the tremor from my voice.

  “What?” Hannah nearly shrieked.

  Claudia ignored her. She kept her eyes locked on me, but for some reason, she looked almost angry now. “You could’ve led with that.”

  “I didn’t think you’d see that as the most important piece of information.” And I meant it. For her, it shouldn’t have been. Rory wasn’t her concern. She was mine. All Claudia needed to worry about was Hurricane, and on that front, she needed to know only that a hostage was in the mix. It didn’t matter who it was.

  Claudia narrowed her eyes, and the muscles in her jaw tensed as though she were clenching her teeth. “We’ll talk about that later. But for the record, you couldn’t be more wrong.”

  I sat squirming in silence as I waited for her to finish reading and then pass the paper to Hannah so she could peruse it as well. She fixed me with another intense stare, and I felt like she was trying to see straight into my brain. It wasn’t a pleasant feeling.

  “How much time is left on the clock he gave you?” Claudia asked.

  I consulted my watch again. “Just about two hours.”

  “Not a lot of time.”

  I shook my head. “No. It isn’t.”

  “How
do you want to play this?”

  “This isn’t strictly a matter of national security, but since the president’s daughter is peripherally involved, I was hoping you could pull your magical strings in the AUSA’s office and get a tracking order authorized. If I can figure out where they are, maybe we can have NYPD-ESU do an extraction.”

  “You want the Emergency Services Unit to do it?”

  “They have the most experience.” I didn’t say I was afraid to take any chances with Rory’s safety. I didn’t have to.

  “Done,” Claudia said without hesitation. “Give me the numbers, and I’ll call right now. I assume the cell-tracking team is standing by to respond and narrow it down to a more specific area?”

  “Yes. One of my colleagues is setting that up back at the office as we speak.”

  “What does dearg choíche mean?” Hannah asked.

  “What?” I blinked at her, momentarily confused. Oh. Right. The transcript. “Loosely translated, it means ‘ever red.’”

  “Why would you tell her that?”

  “Adam always asks me what color he’s thinking of, and the answer is always red. It’s something of a ritual for us at this point. I was hoping if he asked Rory what color he was thinking of, she’d remember that and answer correctly.” I didn’t say he’d know something was up if she answered wrong. I’d been trying very hard not to think about that for the past sixty-six minutes. I didn’t even want to contemplate what such a revelation would mean for her.

  Hannah nodded thoughtfully, and I thought Claudia looked a little impressed. “And éigin, muinín, socair? What about that?”

  “I was more or less trying to tell her to be vague, project confidence, and remain calm. I never act unsure or scared around him. Not even when he’s in a rage. If she does…”

  “And Laval, Asha? What’s that?”