Tough Justice: Countdown Box Set

by Carla Cassidy

  Ty carried a small battering ram for breaching the garden apartment door and one of the agents from Homeland carried another one to go through the front door. The rest of them were going into the house through windows.

  They ran across the grass like silent shadows. The Homeland team ran next to them. Two of the Homeland agents raced to the other side of the house while Nick Lara, Xander and James ran to the fire escape that crawled upward to the third floor.

  Nick and Lara allowed their teammates to go up the ladder first and then they followed. When Lara reached the second floor window, she leaned back against the house. Nick did the same, making sure they weren’t seen by anyone who might be inside.

  They were both armed not only with weapons but also with flashbang grenades that would give them an edge if necessary when they entered.

  Lara released slow, measured breaths to center herself. She couldn’t see the expression on Nick’s face in the darkness, but she knew his eyes would be ice cold and his jaw would be set in grim determination.

  This could be it. If all the information gathered was right, then this could end the bombings. Excitement danced in her veins. This is what she lived for. There was nothing she loved more than getting criminals off the streets.

  Nick whispered into his mic, telling the others they were in place. One after another the agents checked in to indicate they were ready.

  “On my go...” Warwick’s voice came through the speaker in Lara’s helmet. “One. Two.” Every muscle in Lara’s body tensed. “Three. Go. Go. Go!”

  Chapter Nine

  Nick smashed the window and Lara dove inside. At the same time the thunder of battering rams sounded and a flashbang grenade went off somewhere in the house with a tremendous boom.

  By the light attached to her gun, Lara spied a young man huddled wide-eyed against the headboard on a bed. “FBI, get down on the ground,” she shouted.

  Shouts echoed from other rooms of the house as Nick swept past her and went into the hallway. “Get out of that bed and on the ground,” she screamed to the man.

  The man in the bed quickly climbed out and lay facedown on the carpeting. “Is this about the weed?” he asked. “Oh, God, I’ve never been in trouble before. It was only three joints.”

  With her gun trained on him, Lara backed up to the wall with the light switch and turned it on. The room was an ordinary bedroom with a bed, a nightstand and a dresser. It was obvious the man wasn’t armed for all he wore was a pair of checkered boxers.

  “Okay, get up,” she demanded. The hall light turned on and Nick appeared in the doorway with a man and a woman in tow. Both were in nightclothes and appeared absolutely terrified.

  They escorted the three downstairs to the living room where Ty and Jennifer and the rest of the Homeland team were gathered and a young Asian woman sat silently weeping on the sofa.

  Within minutes they had identified each of them. Daniel Myers stood shaking in his boxers while Megan Tanner, in a sexy pink nightie, tried to disappear into the sofa cushions.

  “What’s this all about?” Seth asked.

  “I told you I bought that weed,” Daniel replied in anguish.

  “I thought this was a drug-free house,” Isabelle cried.

  “It was just three joints,” Daniel replied.

  “Be quiet,” Warwick commanded. “I want to know how you all know Mohammad Johnson?”

  “He’s Seth’s friend,” Megan said.

  “Yeah, he’s in one of my classes and is a drinking buddy of mine,” Seth replied. “You still haven’t told us what’s going on.”

  “Did you know your friend is on the terrorist watch list?” Lara asked.

  Seth’s eyes widened as he looked first at her, and then at Warwick. “Oh, God, I didn’t know. I... I had no idea. We just drink beer and talk about football when he comes over.”

  “Then maybe you all can tell us what you all know about the stash of bomb-making items on the third floor in this house,” Xander said as he and James entered the room.

  “Bomb-making?” Isabelle released a wail and a new round of sobbing.

  “And here’s our search warrant,” Warwick pulled the paperwork from his pocket and handed it to Seth, who still stared at Xander and James.

  “Listen, we don’t know anything about what’s up on the third floor. That’s always locked and none of us go up there. You’ve got to believe me,” Seth said.

  “He’s right,” Daniel said frantically. “Nobody goes up there except the owners of the house. We’re all just students who rent here.”

  “We’re going to take you all down to headquarters and you can explain everything there,” Warwick replied.

  An hour later the four suspects had been taken away and the rest of the agents fully executed the search warrant. They searched in closets and under beds, in drawers and anywhere else some evidence might be stashed.

  They found nothing other than the third floor bonanza. In one large room there were about a dozen pressure cookers, a box of cell phones, nails and metal scrap and every ingredient necessary to make an IED or improvised explosive device. There were also ingredients that could be used for a hydrogen peroxide bomb.

  “We’ll take it from here,” Warwick said to the team after they’d checked out the third floor. “We appreciate your help on this.”

  “Not a problem,” Nick replied although Lara could tell he was a little put out that they were being summarily dismissed. “We’re always glad to help.”

  Minutes later the team was in the van and headed back to headquarters. “At least that went down pretty easily,” Jennifer said. “Do you think they’re the bombers?”

  “I’m more interested in the house owners,” James said. “I think maybe they’re who we’ve been looking for.”

  “Too bad we don’t get to follow up on it,” Xander said.

  “Surely Homeland will let us know what happens. Meanwhile we’ll keep doing what we can to find more evidence from the bomb scenes,” Lara replied. “Hopefully we can find the evidence to support any conviction Homeland wants to make.”

  She heaved a tired sigh. Now that the adrenaline of the night was gone and it was almost four in the morning, all she wanted was some sleep.

  “At least Victoria gave us a break by moving the morning briefing to nine thirty,” Xander said. “Unfortunately Maddy will be up in a couple of hours and will probably demand waffles for breakfast. She likes the way I make them in a waffle iron that looks like Mickey Mouse.”

  “Ah, isn’t that sweet. Do you wear a frilly apron while you cook?” James asked.

  “If Maddy wanted me to wear a pink apron with cotton candy in the pockets, I’d do it,” Xander replied, not rising to the bait. “Wait until you have kids, James, then you’ll understand.”

  “All I want to understand right now is the softness of my bed,” James replied.

  “I’ll second that,” Lara said and stifled a yawn with the back of her hand.

  “Maybe this will take the pressure off a bit,” Nick said as he pulled into the parking garage at headquarters.

  “Let’s hope Homeland is getting the bad guys in custody as we speak,” Lara replied. It would be nice to go to sleep with the belief that the bomber or bombers were finally under arrest.

  * * *

  “You look tired,” Nick said to her the next morning.

  “Did you look in the mirror this morning?” she replied. “After last night we’re all looking tired today.”

  Of course she wasn’t about to tell him that even this morning when she got home instead of going straight to bed she’d sat in her office and sipped on a drink for an hour.

  According to the morning briefing, Homeland Security agents had picked up Mohammad Johnson, but the man wasn’t talking. They were still trying to find the o
wners of the house, who neighbors had told them had gone upstate for a couple of days.

  Nick got up from his desk. “I’m going to get a cup of coffee from the break room. You want one?”

  “Thanks, I could use some,” she agreed.

  After all the flurry of activity over the past couple of days, things in headquarters were relatively quiet for the moment. Only Nick and Lara were in-house, working at their computers to go over each and every witness report that had been taken so far in the investigation.

  Xander and James were back out at the bomb site looking to talk to any other witnesses they might have missed in the neighborhood. Ty and Jennifer were interviewing more surviving family members and Christina was holed up in her office.

  Despite the fact that the raid last night was officially Homeland’s territory, Christina had dug a little into the owners of the house. Jeff Connelly was a student at Berkeley College in Midtown and his wife, Miranda, was attending classes at the School of Design.

  Miranda’s father had been a bigwig on the Wall Street scene and when he’d died from a heart attack eighteen months ago he’d left his daughter the house in Brooklyn and enough money to afford the couple to live on the Upper East Side and enjoy the finer things in life.

  Nothing in the information Christina had obtained indicated the young couple had any ties to international terrorism, but Lara was still hopeful they were the bombers and the terror in the city would end.

  Nick returned from the break room carrying two Styrofoam cups of coffee. “We’re in luck. Somebody had just made a fresh pot.”

  She took the cup he offered. “Thanks.”

  He settled back in his cubicle next to hers and she was grateful that the silence between them no longer held any tension.

  They’d always worked well together and she didn’t want that to get screwed up. She had no idea how long she and Nick would be partnered together, but it was never good to have tension between partners.

  This made her think about Ty and Jennifer. She really hoped that Ty would ease up on the younger agent so that they could build a good working relationship with each other.

  “I’m still intrigued about the two survivors who were told about a free concert. Something had to have made the bomber choose them to save,” Nick said, interrupting her thoughts.

  “We’ve dissected their lives backward and forward and can’t find any kind of connection between them,” she replied.

  “I know, but there’s got to be something we haven’t found.”

  “I agree, but what?” She held his gaze intently. This is one of the things she and Nick did best...brainstorming ideas in an effort to catch the guilty.

  He frowned. “I wish we knew if the two of them are part of a pattern. You know, maybe the bomber intends to save only blond-haired, blue-eyed people in their twenties.”

  “Unfortunately, two people don’t make a pattern. In order to establish a real pattern we need to have more ‘saved’ people,” she replied.

  He scowled. “And none of us want that. I’m hoping Homeland has the perpetrators in their custody by now. It’s just so freaking strange that they would only pick to save two people without even knowing them.”

  “Maybe he did know them and we just still haven’t figured out how yet,” she replied.

  “They didn’t know him,” he countered.

  She shrugged and reached for her coffee cup. “It’s possible he somehow found them on social media or stalked them before he saved them. If the bomber is Jeff Connelly then maybe Homeland Security can get him to tell them about his motive in telling two people about a free concert. And it’s possible there are more people out there who were told about free concerts who haven’t come forward yet or might never come forward. The free concert thing hasn’t been made public.” She took a sip of the coffee, as always welcoming the jolt of caffeine.

  “If we did make it public we’d have all kinds of nuts claiming to have been whispered to.”

  “You mean like Clay Whitson?”

  “Exactly,” Nick replied dryly.

  According to the Homeland Security report they’d received, a young man named Clay Whitson had come forward and confessed to being the bomber. He’d also confessed to assassinating Kennedy and sleeping with Marilyn Monroe. He was twenty-two years old.

  It hadn’t taken long to discover that he was under the care of a psychiatrist and off his meds.

  Lara returned her attention to her computer with a renewed sense of urgency. Connections. Somehow, somewhere there had to be a connection between the two survivors and possibly the owners of the house in Brooklyn.

  Whatever information they could glean could only help. Just because Jeff Connelly and his wife might be arrested didn’t mean the work was over. That’s when it would really begin...the gathering of enough incriminating evidence to get them convicted.

  If Jeff Connelly and his wife were guilty, were there others involved? Was Selfie Guy maybe a friend and cohort of theirs? It still pissed her off that he had walked without them getting a name or address on him. He was a loose end and she really hated loose ends.

  Xander and James came in and it only took one look at their tired faces to know they were coming in with nothing. Xander flopped down in his chair while James headed for the break room.

  “All we got is more of the same...no one saw anything suspicious before the bomb blew. Nobody heard anything unusual before the blast. We even had another conversation with Grant to see if he could tell us any more about the bomb itself, but he had nothing more to give us right now.” Xander leaned back in his chair and swiped his hand down his strong jawline. “I sure as hell hope Homeland has this all tied up in a pretty knot.”

  “Let’s hope we have some answers within the next couple of days,” James said.

  “I’d prefer to have answers by the end of the day,” Lara replied and they all echoed the sentiment.

  They had all just returned to their own desks and computers when Christina came back into the room. “I’ve got another one for you.” She handed a piece of paper to James. “Her name is Cindy Wingate and she was just outside of the police station before the blast. She saw several people run out of the station before the bomb detonated.”

  “So, it’s possible she not only saw Kevin Manning run out, but also saw the bomber,” James said, his eyes lit with a new energy.

  “It’s possible,” Christina agreed.

  Xander jumped up from his desk and grabbed the picture of Jeff Connelly Christina had obtained. Without another word, the two men left the office.

  “I sure as hell hope they get something good,” Nick said and whirled around to face his computer once again.

  “If Cindy Wingate can describe everyone who ran out seconds before the blast, then she had to have seen the bomber. Somehow he’s managing to escape the blast along with his survivors,” Nick said.

  “And hopefully she saw Jeff Connelly run out and can identify him from the photo.” Lara took a drink of her coffee and for the first since the blast on 34th Street a streak of optimism ran through her.

  “Neither Tammy nor Kevin noticed who might have run out of the scenes before them or after them,” he replied. “If you were in a movie theater and somebody started shooting would you notice the people in front or behind you as you ran for safety?”

  “I wouldn’t be running for safety, I’d be taking down that bastard,” she replied.

  “Of course you would...what was I thinking?” His tone was light and once again she was grateful that at least for now there wasn’t any lingering tension between them.

  “Maybe I should see what kind of information I can find on this Cindy Wingate,” Lara said. She spun her chair around to face her desk and got on the internet.

  This investigation seemed to have a thousand tendrils and their job was
to somehow tie them together to make sense. She was still optimistic that the raid last night had led to getting the bad actors off the streets.

  “Cindy Wingate has a Facebook page,” she said to Nick. “According to what information I can see she’s thirty-four years old and works as an elementary school teacher. I wonder what she was doing in the police station?”

  “I’m sure Xander and James will find out,” Nick replied.

  “I can’t get any more information on her without friending her. I’m going to go talk to Christina and see what she can get us through all her back doors.” Even though she knew her teammates would get all the information they could out of the woman, Lara wanted to get any background possible. The last thing they needed was to waste time on another nut.

  Even after all her years in law enforcement it still amazed her that people would confess to crimes they hadn’t committed, or pretend to witness something they hadn’t really seen in order to get their five minutes of fame.

  After speaking with Christina she returned to her desk. She and Nick had only been working for about an hour when Victoria approached them, her eyes dark and her features in obvious distress. It was one of the few times Lara had ever seen her boss without her usual cool composure.

  “I need you two to check out a death scene,” she said.

  Lara frowned at her. “A death scene? Why isn’t NYPD taking care of it?”

  “They responded to the initial call and just requested our presence there.”

  Both Lara and Nick got out of their chairs. “Why would they call for us?” Nick asked.

  Victoria’s features paled uncharacteristically. A knot of tension formed in the pit of Lara’s stomach. “Victoria?” she asked softly.

  “The man is the president of the Brooklyn Borough.” She hesitated a moment before continuing. “It’s William Walsh. Apparently he killed himself and left a note claiming responsibility for the police precinct bombing.”

  Lara’s stomach dropped. “Isn’t he...?”

  Victoria nodded. “Yes. It’s James’s brother.”

  * * * * *