Tough Justice: Countdown Box Set

by Carla Cassidy

  Mercer storming out of the conference room, and then Nick, seemed like a lifetime ago. Since then the team had been working in a constant state of overdrive, grinding to try to find something that would lead them to the end of this thing. Or at least just to the next leg of it.

  Nick had asked Xander and James to start looking into the connections between William and Victoria, while Christina had been searching for connections between the website provided by Greg Byrne and BrainWave. She dove in headfirst, cross-checking user IDs and IP addresses. Uniforms had whittled down those with connections to both bombings to one hundred and twenty-five employees, all of whom had been interviewed by the company. Lara had personally looked through that list and, to her and everyone else who looked at it, no one stood out.

  No one shouted, “I’m a crazy-ass bomber with a weird God complex!”

  Because that would have been too easy.

  Lara leaned back in her chair and momentarily shut her eyes. Being on the streets, trying to hunt down a lead physically, would have kept her more alert despite being bone tired. But with nothing and no one to run down, she had been forced to go through lists and names and stick to her computer. Sitting in a comfortable desk chair wasn’t helping her level of exhaustion.

  “Hey.”

  Someone tapped her shoulder. Lara opened her eyes in a flash. James wasn’t smiling but he didn’t look as sullen as he could have, all things considered.

  “Want to join me for a coffee run?”

  “I guess I can’t pretend I don’t need a new cup, huh?”

  James shook his head. “I wouldn’t believe it if you did.” He nodded in the direction of the break room. Lara pushed back in her chair and followed, grabbing her empty coffee cup in the process. No one said a word as they left the room. Especially not Nick. He had only spoken to her about the case. And that had been words few and far between. Lara wondered when he’d let his anger for her dissolve. Knowing Nick? It wouldn’t. Not completely.

  “This is a helluva case,” James said after he got a new pot brewing. Lara took a seat at one of the tables. She knew she’d been tired but hadn’t felt the real weight of it until she was sitting again. Like the small distance between her desk and the break room had been the equivalent of running a mile.

  “That’s an understatement,” she belatedly said. “It’s like a bad dream that I can’t wake up from.”

  James took the seat opposite her. She may have felt the crushing weight of everything that had happened but James looked like he was being crushed. He had a new hardness about him. Something she’d seen at the cemetery as he stood by his brother’s grave.

  They might have had hard cases in the past year that the junior agent had been with the team, but there was always that one case that broke you. Or almost broke you.

  Looking at him now, Lara was surprised to realize she believed without a doubt that James could weather this storm.

  “I prefer the analogy of the tunnel with a door at the end,” he said, a tired smile pulling up the corner of his lips. “And I just keep trying to reach the door—”

  “But the tunnel is never-ending,” she finished.

  He pointed at her. “Bingo.”

  Lara found herself smiling. She blamed being tired.

  “Whatever you want to call it, it sucks.” She blew out a breath, sobering. “Our bomber is smart. I get that. But there has to be something on him. Like Christina said, a bread crumb. Anything. No one is invincible.”

  “I thought we’d find someone from BrainWave,” James admitted.

  “But no one stands out. Sure, they’re brilliant and maybe a bit OCD but nothing that suggests they enjoy destroying people’s lives. And certainly not taking them,” Lara said, mood nose-diving further. If that was even possible after the last twenty-four hours. James seemed to agree with her frustration.

  “Xander and I are hitting a wall trying to find a link between the targets. None of the employees I talked to even had a direction to point for someone who fit the bomber’s profile,” he said. “You’d think someone would have come to mind. I mean, if you work with people close enough you’d think you’d at least get a glimmer of an idea if—”

  Lara hit her fist on top of the table. James stopped midsentence. He might have been tired but his eyes narrowed, alert.

  “That’s it,” Lara exclaimed, scrapping her chair back.

  “What? What’s it?”

  Lara’s heartbeat started to pick up. “What if we’re looking at the wrong people?” she asked. “What if the reason why no one we interviewed had any idea about our bomber was because he never was an employee?”

  Lara didn’t wait for the new idea to sink in with James. She left her coffee cup behind and hurried out to the bullpen.

  “BrainWave attracts the brightest and best tech minds. But they’re highly selective,” she started, addressing the room. The team looked up at her from their respective spots. “The Whisperer is clearly brilliant. Someone with a psyche like his has to throw some red flags up. Maybe he applied and BrainWave rejected him?”

  Xander’s eyes widened a fraction. He snapped his fingers. “And this entire thing could be him retaliating for that,” he exclaimed.

  “We might have been looking at the wrong list,” Ty added in.

  It was a thought that made Lara’s excitement at possibly having a new lead momentary. Nick didn’t help.

  “The list of people who applied and were rejected numbers six hundred,” he deadpanned. No one needed to point out that that meant more work.

  They already knew that.

  Lara rode her high back to her desk, ready to dive in again. James appeared long enough to drop her cup off with freshly brewed coffee in it. Before she could start to absorb it, Mercer came into view. She fought the urge to roll her eyes. It seemed like every twenty minutes he’d walked down that hallway to just stand there and watch them. His brows drawn together, expression nothing but distaste. He was a constant silent reminder that the day had, in one, simple word, sucked.

  However, this time, he spoke. “Since we currently don’t have an active deadline I’m sending everyone home,” he began. They might have been tired as a team but as a team they started to complain. Regardless, Mercer continued. “You can either spend your time complaining about it, do shitty work because you’re trying to pretend you aren’t tired like a bunch of stubborn children or go recharge and hit the ground running in the morning. Got it?” No one responded. Mercer seemed pleased with himself. “Good.”

  Chapter Nine

  The moment Lara left the Federal Plaza she fully intended to go home and get right into bed. As much as she hated to admit it, Mercer was right. Their team was scraping the bottom of the carton. The weight of exhaustion, mental and physical, wasn’t helping anyone. However, her brain and her body seemed to disagree on how fast she needed to follow orders to recharge. Before she realized what she was doing Lara pointed her car toward somewhere she hadn’t expected.

  Like the rest of the team, Lara kept replaying everything that had happened so far in the case, recapping facts and theories until she was back at the beginning. Somewhere in between leaving the Plaza and getting into her car, Lara’s thoughts had snagged on one piece of the puzzle.

  Jacob Farzo.

  The eleven-year-old survivor.

  The bomber had walked up to him, talked to him, and subsequently saved his life. Even though it happened fast, maybe Jacob remembered something else.

  The phrase “grasping at straws” entered her mind as she drove into the Farzo’s neighborhood. She was trying to ignore the feeling that it wasn’t just the case and the CMU’s desperation to solve it that had her park and cut the engine outside of the run-down apartment building, in a bad area, late at night. She wasn’t there to check on the boy to make sure he was okay. No, she was there
to ask about the bomber. Second to that? She was there to get back the forty dollars he’d stolen from her. Beyond those reasons? Lara wasn’t going to admit there was probably more.

  Her life had become a vacuum lately. One that sucked in the bad, badder and worst. She couldn’t deal with the quicksand that was she and Nick, the muck that was everything that was happening with Victoria, the widening sore of her mother’s case, a technological genius bomber and then throw some punk juvenile on top of it all. While the events of last year had been almost unbearably tough for her, the pattern for this year was showing her everything was going to get worse before it ever got close to getting better. Which meant she didn’t have any business worrying about Jacob.

  Yet, there she was. Getting out of her car and staring at the Queensbridge public housing project. If its two worn buildings had ever looked inviting, they’d since lost their charm to age. Not even the community beautification efforts put a dent in the dreariness. Then again, maybe Lara’s mood was darkening her outlook. She locked her car and walked into the building and didn’t stop until she was in front of the kid’s door.

  To ask about the bomber, she told herself. Nothing more.

  Lara took a deep breath. She felt silly for needing it. She knocked on the door.

  Movement could be heard on the other side and, a few seconds later, the sound of deadbolt and the secondary chain sliding. The door was flung open revealing Mrs. Farzo.

  And man was she drunk.

  Wearing a pair of pants, unbuttoned and covered in unrecognizable stains, a baggy shirt that hung off her like a sickening second skin and a pair of mismatched socks, Jacob’s mother looked like a cartoon version of a crazed woman. Her smeared makeup and odor didn’t help. Plus, even if Lara hadn’t known the signs of being drunk well, the smaller details would have given it away.

  The way her eyes lagged as they took in Lara’s presence. The sway that made it impossible for her to stand still. The obvious disconnect from her mind to her surroundings.

  It took her too long to address Lara so she spoke instead, surprised at the level of hostility that was building within her. There were plenty of drunk parents in the world. It wasn’t her business, or even in her authority, to deal with them all. Especially not Mrs. Farzo.

  “Is Jacob home?” Lara asked, sidestepping any official greeting. She didn’t want to alarm the woman. She didn’t know what kind of drunk she was. She could get hysterical at the drop of a hat or go full on rage. Lara wanted to avoid both if she could.

  Mrs. Farzo gave a long nod and started to say something when Jacob appeared at her side.

  “Look who’s back,” he greeted. Lara didn’t miss his eye roll.

  “I just had a few questions.” She stuck out her hand. “But first you can pay me back for the money you borrowed the other day.”

  Jacob crossed his arms over his chest, defensive. He kept his tone light. Lifting his chin a fraction, he shrugged.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said. “You must’ve confused me with somebody else, lady.”

  “I don’t think so, boy,” Lara said. She tapped her temple. “Up here’s a steel cage. Nothing gets out.”

  “Maybe you should have that thing checked then cuz—”

  “Boy, I told you not to be skipping school!”

  Lara snatched back her hand as Mrs. Farzo exploded in a volley of shrieks. She waved to Lara but her attention was squarely on her son. Jacob dropped his hands to his sides and looked up at his mom. He didn’t seem surprised at her outburst. Which didn’t make Lara’s growing hostility at the woman any better.

  “I didn’t skip school,” he tried, with no real enthusiasm.

  Mrs. Farzo looked halfway out of her mind. Her eyes, bloodshot, were nearly bulging when she shrieked in response.

  “Don’t you lie to me!”

  “I’m not.”

  “What’s your teacher doing here then, huh?” she yelled.

  Lara was about to interject, stating exactly who she was and wasn’t but Mrs. Farzo was too far gone. She reached over and slapped the back of Jacob’s head so hard he stumbled forward. She reared back her hand again but Lara was quicker.

  “That’s enough,” she growled. Lara grabbed the woman’s wrist. Mrs. Farzo, in her drunken stupor, seemed to think it was an act of aggression on her part. She struck out with her free arm and an open hand toward Lara.

  Considering she wasn’t wasted, and had good reflexes to boot, Lara was able to grab the woman’s other wrist before she could connect the blow. Mrs. Farzo let out an unidentifiable string of words and tried to bow up, despite Lara holding both her arms.

  “Stop it,” Lara ground out. When it was clear the woman was going to do no such thing, Lara threw her weight into her until her back hit the wall. A picture frame fell to the ground next to them. Lara pinned her arms against the chipped paint, as if she was holding them up in surrender.

  “You can’t do this,” Mrs. Farzo yelled. “Let go of me!”

  “I can do this,” Lara snarled.

  She tightened her grip on the woman’s wrist as she continued to struggle. Out of the corner of her eye Lara saw that Jacob was still standing there but she couldn’t see his expression.

  “And I will let go of you if you stop trying to fight me. Got it?”

  The woman must have finally realized she was in a bad situation. Or maybe she felt the anger that was coursing through Lara. Either way she stopped struggling and let out a sigh that sagged her body.

  “If I let you go are you going to behave?” Lara asked. She didn’t let up on her hold. Mrs. Farzo sneered, but she nodded.

  Lara slowly released her hold, testing the woman, until her hands hovered over her wrists. When Mrs. Farzo didn’t try to get an upper hand, Lara backed up to give her space. Though she was still tensed, ready to throw her against the wall again if she had to.

  She wished she hadn’t left her handcuffs in the car. Then again, she hadn’t thought she’d need them for her visit.

  Even if the visit had been unscheduled.

  Mrs. Farzo didn’t look at Lara or Jacob as she took her sullen self to the living room couch. She collapsed into it and then felt backward until she grabbed a bottle from the end table behind her. Even from where Lara stood she could tell it was vodka. And already empty. That didn’t stop the woman from tucking it against her side and closing her eyes. When it was obvious she was done for the night, Lara finally looked at Jacob.

  She half expected him to be in some kind of shock, or maybe embarrassed or scared—hell angry, even—but what she saw instead broke her heart a little. He looked completely unfazed.

  Business as usual.

  “Are you okay?” she asked anyway. He was quick to nod.

  “Why wouldn’t I be?”

  Lara lowered her voice. She took a step closer. “I mean it,” she prodded. “Are you okay?”

  Jacob’s grin was back. “Other than some cop lady trying to shake me down for some money I didn’t take, yeah, I’m fine.”

  Lara would have bantered back but the sound of snoring soured her already sour-as-hell mood. Mrs. Farzo was indeed passed out. Jacob glanced over his shoulder.

  “Looks like it’s time for you to leave now,” he said.

  “Did you remember anything new about the bomber?” Lara asked, no humor or teasing in her tone. Not anymore. Not after what she’d just seen.

  Jacob shook his head. He might have been a kid with an attitude problem and a thief but she believed he was telling the truth now.

  He kept staring until it was obvious she needed a little motivation to leave.

  “I got school in the morning. Don’t want my real teacher to show up here if I ditch anymore.”

  That did the trick.

  Lara’s mind raced but her feet moved
slowly. She walked out into the hallway but paused before leaving completely.

  “Does she hit you like that a lot?”

  For one moment Lara thought the boy would nod. Instead his grin widened.

  “Night, cop lady.”

  He shut the door in her face. He didn’t answer but he didn’t deny it, either.

  Lara didn’t waste any time staring at a door she couldn’t force open but when she made it back to her car she did take a moment to look at the building. It was falling apart. The playground next to it was no better. Lara squinted at the movement between the slide and broken jungle gym. The glow of cigarettes preceded a few men dressed in dark clothes that sagged. Bottles littered the ground around them.

  The image just reminded her of Mrs. Farzo.

  Drunk.

  So far gone that she’d not only hit her son, but she’d tried to attack who she thought was his teacher. Lara didn’t need Jacob to answer her last question. If his mother could flip on a stranger that quickly then what was stopping her from doing the same, or worse, to her son?

  Lara inhaled deep. She closed her eyes.

  This wasn’t her business. Jacob wasn’t her child. This wasn’t her fight.

  Stay out of it, Grant. Drive away. Go home and sleep. Put this shitty day behind you.

  Lara let out her breath and opened her eyes. She started the engine and drove straight home.

  But not before she made a call to Child Protective Services.

  Because, while it wasn’t her fight, that didn’t mean she could just walk away, either.

  * * *

  Lara stood in front of her refrigerator and willed it to make the knot in her stomach go away. Nothing inside of it would. She hadn’t been grocery shopping in a while and she really wasn’t craving the frozen lasagna in the freezer.