Tough Justice: Countdown Box Set

by Carla Cassidy

  “Yeah,” Ty said softly. “Not so easy to watch someone else do it, is it?”

  A few moments later her head had cleared enough to realize Nick was talking. He was on the phone with Halpert. The phone call hadn’t been a bomb. Hadn’t been a trap.

  And as her head cleared, as her strength returned, her fury set in.

  Ty stepped in front of her as she began to storm toward the building.

  “Get out of my way, Ty.”

  “We’re a team, Lara. And we’ve got more important things to deal with than the fact that Nick just turned your own MO back around on you. Focus.”

  The damnedest thing was, he was right. Lara brought her fingers up to her sore jaw, still seeing stars slightly. “He sucker-punched me.”

  Ty chuckled. “It was a pretty beautiful sight to behold.”

  “Local PD have spotted Halpert.” Jennifer rushed over. “He’s in the park about half a mile away. Sitting on a bench like Forrest Gump or something.”

  Lara moved around Ty, much more in control. She marched into the doorway of the hotel room.

  “It’s for you,” Nick said, holding up the phone.

  She glared at him and held out her hand. Nick squeezed it gently as he put the phone in it.

  “My grandmother hits harder than you do,” Lara said as she brought the phone to her ear, knowing it was childish but not caring.

  Nick smiled. “Since she’s related to you, I don’t doubt it.”

  “They’ve spotted Halpert at a park half a mile from here.”

  “I already know he’s there. He told me himself.”

  Lara turned her focus to the phone. Halpert had allowed himself to be identified. Located.

  They were about to find out his endgame.

  “Halpert. I feel like I just got off the line with you a few minutes ago.”

  “Lara.” His voice was still as grating as it had been when she’d been forced to converse with him in her apartment. “I was disappointed when they cut our communication feed.”

  “So disappointed that you attempted to remote detonate the bomb in my chair with no way of knowing the bomb squad had already disarmed the bomb?”

  “Yes. I lamented that immediately.” Halpert actually sounded sincere. “I lost my temper. But I would’ve greatly regretted if you had died. I hope you’ll accept my apology.”

  Lara rolled her eyes. “Yeah, whatever. Thanks for being sorry you set me up to kill me, then didn’t plan to, then accidentally almost did.”

  He chuckled, the sound grating on her nerves. “Yes, I can see why you’d be pissy about that. I think I’ve found a way to make it up to you.”

  “You know how you can make it up to me? Surrender. We know you’re at the park. As a matter of fact, I’m on my way over right now.”

  She began walking out the door.

  “Surrender is not how I plan to make it up to you, but we’ll worry about that later. And yes, I’d very much like for you to come see me at the park.”

  Lara hit the mute button, then covered her hand over the mouthpiece just in case Halpert had disabled it or something.

  “What’s the situation at the park?” she asked Nick.

  “We’ve got eyes on him. He’s sitting on a bench. Has his laptop and a hands-free phone device. That’s how he’s talking to you.”

  She uncovered the mouthpiece and unmuted the phone. “How about I send some officers in to arrest you and we can talk in an interrogation room instead, Halpert.”

  “Well, see, that doesn’t work for me. And considering I’ve got a handheld detonator in my grasp, and if I release it the bombs I’ve set are going to go off, I think we better have our conversation in the park.”

  Lara could see Nick frantically talking with someone on his phone. Then he turned to Lara.

  “Halpert just held up his hands. He’s got some sort of device in one of them. A grenade?”

  “No,” Lara told him, not even trying to mute the phone this time. “It’s a handheld detonator. Pressure-sensitive. If he lets go it will detonate whatever bombs he’s created. Tell everyone to stand down.”

  Nick was talking frantically as he rushed out the door and she could hear Halpert chuckling over the phone.

  “I’m glad to hear you take me seriously, Lara.”

  “I might think you’re psychotic, Halpert, but I definitely take you seriously.”

  She walked out of the hotel room and Xander gestured for her to get in his car. Nick had already left.

  “I’m coming over to the park now, Halpert. Or should I say Harlen?”

  “You know!” His excitement was clear in his voice. “I was wondering if the CMU team would figure it out. I have to admit, I had my doubts.”

  Xander drove them the two minutes to the park, stopping the car on the far side from Halpert’s bench.

  “I was only sixteen when I changed my mother’s and my names. It had to be done.”

  “Because of the tracking software failure.” Lara just wanted to keep him talking. She could see Nick and the rest of the team were working with SWAT and the local officers to clear the park. She couldn’t help them. All she could do was focus on Halpert.

  “My tracking software was brilliant, Lara.”

  “I don’t think anybody doubted that. It was what could be done with it in the wrong hands that was so problematic. Like that pedophile.”

  She motioned to Xander that she needed something to write on. She didn’t want to stop her conversation with Halpert. He handed her a notebook and pen.

  “But what about all the good that could be done with it? All the criminals that could be caught. Repeat offenders could be instantly taken off the street.”

  Make sure SWAT knows that they CAN NOT take Halpert out as long as he has that detonator.

  She scribbled it on the notepad then handed it to Xander. Lara needed to get as close to Halpert as possible.

  “But it was a privacy invasion of every American citizen. It would’ve been shut down at some level even if the deal had gone through when you’d initially tried to sell it.”

  Lara began walking across the park.

  “I would’ve worked with them. We could’ve dealt with the issues. But they refused to see the overall importance of what I’d created. Of what it could do for the world.”

  Lara made as soothing a sound as she could manage. “Instead they shut it down. You lost all that potential money.”

  “It wasn’t about money,” Halpert yelled. “It was about everyone knowing me. About me being remembered for what I could do. Harlen Michaels should’ve been a household name. Should’ve been a name future generations studied when they studied the greats liked Steve Jobs or Thomas Edison!”

  Halpert was on the edge, Lara realized, quickening her pace. The way he was talking about himself in past tense did not bode well.

  “Mitchell... Or do you prefer Harlen?” She knew she needed to make some sort of personal connection with him. He was talking to her like someone about to commit suicide. And while the loss of Mitchell Halpert or Harlen Michaels or whatever anyone wanted to call him might be no big loss, Lara had no doubt if he was going out today, he was taking people with him.

  The detonator in his hand attested to that. Lara had to reach him before he decided to make some sort of grand exit.

  “That’s right,” he said, calming slightly. “Mitchell. Mitchell Halpert is my name now. Instead of ensuring the name Harlen Michaels would live on in the annals of history, that name instead was erased forever.”

  “It was a chance for a new start.” Lara didn’t know what she was doing, hoped that was the right thing to say. She just needed to keep him talking.

  Halpert laughed, no amusement at all in the sound. “Yes, a new start. Harlen Michaels lost his scholars
hip at MIT. Lost the esteem of all his professors and peers. The press started hounding us, so I had to move with my mother—poor pathetic creature that she is—and change our names. I lost everything, Lara.”

  “You’re young. There’s still time. Still time for more brilliant creations. Something else you can be renowned for.”

  But not really. Halpert wouldn’t leave here today a free man. Lara and the team would see to that. The only time Halpert possibly had left would be spent rotting in a cell, not creating anything brilliant.

  “Not anymore.” She could see him shake his head from across the park. “We both know not anymore.”

  Shit. “That’s not true—”

  “I tried to restart as Mitchell Halpert. I tried to go to school, but I could’ve taught ninety percent of the classes better than the professors.”

  Lara was getting closer, only about fifty yards from him now. She could tell he could see her approaching when he gave her a little wave.

  Halpert chuckled. “Then I saw the advertisement for BrainWave. A start-up specifically looking for brilliant minds who needed a place to create, regardless of their educational background or experience.”

  Halpert took a breath. “Lara. Brilliant minds who needed a place to create. Have you ever heard a description that more aptly fit me? I was eighteen years old. I thought BrainWave was the chance to turn my life around.”

  Dammit. Where was Dr. Oliviero when she needed him? Lara wasn’t great with interpersonal stuff on her best day. Interpersonal under pressure definitely wasn’t her forte.

  And it didn’t take a genius like Halpert or a psychiatrist like Oliviero to see where this story was going.

  “Halpert—” Lara struggled to find words.

  “I explained what I could do. Without giving too many details I told them about my tracking software. Told them everything we could do together. How I would make them so much money and together we’d change the world.”

  “He laughed at me, Lara.” Halpert continued almost without taking a breath. “Beckett Clarke looked at me from across his desk and snickered at me. Said I wouldn’t be a good fit at BrainWave. That they were looking for someone not quite as ‘narrowly focused’ as me.”

  “And Clarke certainly paid the price for that mistake.”

  “Yes, because rejection and humiliation—”

  “Won’t be tolerated,” Lara finished for him.

  For the first time Halpert seemed a little surprised. “I guess you found my motto.”

  “Agent Delano did, actually. With the help of one of your professors at Westchester Community College.”

  “Ah, Dr. Joyner. He was always the most tolerable of the people I’ve known. Not a very exciting person, but at least able to keep up. Usually.”

  Finally someone Halpert respected. It was the first person Lara had heard Halpert speak of without derision coloring his tone.

  “Dr. Joyner speaks highly of you. Do you want me to see if we can get him out here? He’s much smarter than me. Might be able to understand more of what you’re going through.”

  Lara was willing to promise anything right now. Anything to buy time to figure out and stop whatever was at the end of that pressure-sensitive detonator.

  “Stop right there, Agent Grant. You’ve come far enough.”

  Lara was about ten yards from him now. Close enough for them to clearly see each other’s faces as they spoke, but too far for her to make a tackle if he tried to release the detonator.

  Once again they seemed to have him in their sights but were powerless to do anything to stop him.

  Chapter Five

  “All right, Halpert, I’m staying right here.” Lara inched just slightly closer. She would have to measure progress from this point on in inches.

  Halpert tilted his head. “And don’t offer to bring Dr. Joyner out here, Lara. Don’t try to play me.”

  “Then what exactly do you want me to do?”

  “Maybe just listen. Is that too much to ask?”

  Lara shook her head, but really didn’t know. There had to be some sort of endgame here. Something Halpert was manipulating. He was playing her, she knew it.

  He’d played everyone from the very beginning, some sort of elaborate game like his computer world, and he was playing her now. She would be a fool to think otherwise, no matter how sincere he seemed. The minutes they were spending here talking were giving him a chance to put something else in place.

  “What’s on the other end of that detonator, Mitchell?”

  He just smiled. Didn’t answer.

  “I see. We’re still playing the game, then.”

  “Not everyone has paid for their transgressions, Lara. You forced me to advance my timetable at a pace faster than I anticipated.” He held his hand up as if he was saluting her with a glass of champagne. “I don’t begrudge you that. In fact, I applaud it. But there’s a price to be paid for what they did to me. And everyone needs to pay it.”

  “Like the CMU team? Do they need to pay the price? Are you planning to release their secrets at any moment?”

  Halpert actually looked sheepish. “Honestly, I never planned to do that. I would’ve if I’d been forced to. But it was never my intention.”

  Bingo. Just like they’d figured. Halpert wasn’t after the CMU team, but he was still plotting his revenge.

  “So you’re still after Paul Prentice and Kai Aoki.”

  “And Trevor Dunbar. That man’s secrets have to come out. He needs to be destroyed.”

  Lara knew Dunbar had worked with Nick’s father on multiple occasions. She wondered if any of the secrets would have to do with him. But they would have to worry about that another day.

  “You might possibly get to Dunbar, but Paul and Kai are in protective custody, Halpert.” Lara took another step closer while Halpert looked over at his hand with the detonator. “And, knowing your abilities, we made sure there was no electronic record of their location. You won’t be able to find them unless you do a country-wide door-to-door search.”

  And Lara was positive Nick would be sending units to protect Trevor Dunbar now also.

  “Again, a very smart move on your part, Lara.” He smiled at her. “That’s why I’ve liked spending so much time with you. You’re smart in a rule-breaking, dammit-I’ll-follow-my-instincts-no-matter-what kind of way.”

  “But you follow the rules, right?”

  Halpert shrugged and tilted his head side to side like it was on a balance scale and didn’t know which way it would tip. “Not necessarily rules. But I follow my code. My code is the most important thing.”

  His eyes shifted just the slightest bit and it confirmed he was using her to further an agenda. To stall or do something she didn’t know. But there was a reason he was prolonging this talk here in the park.

  “You know what? I think you’re full of shit, Harlen.” She spat his name. “This isn’t about your code at all.”

  Every pretense of likeability melted away from him. Every bit of vulnerability he’d been projecting.

  Here was the asshole who had kept her trapped with a bomb under her chair a few hours ago, intent on tearing her mind and emotions apart.

  “You really are good, Lara.” Halpert snickered. “I thought I had you fooled.”

  “What do you want, Halpert? Why are we really here? All this—” she gestured around the park with her arm, using the expression to cheat another couple of inches forward “—has nothing to do with your code.”

  He shrugged. “It does a little bit. The people who betray me, those who humiliated me, have to pay for what they did.”

  She pointed to his hand. “But that detonator isn’t just about them, is it? If it was just about them, you could’ve just waited. You’re too smart not to know that you could’ve delayed your plan, wa
ited until Kai’s and Paul’s guards were down and then made your move.”

  He shifted so his attention was more fully on her. Not what she wanted. She needed to get him as comfortable and relaxed as he could possibly be.

  Halpert raised an eyebrow. “That would’ve been the smart thing, you think? To bide my time?”

  “You know it would’ve. Assuming...” she trailed off, realizing that Halpert may be more dangerous than they’d considered.

  “Yes, Agent Grant?” Halpert said in a singsong voice. “What did you assume?”

  “I assumed you wanted to live through this. To live to see your targets suffer. That living above and beyond them was your plan.”

  “No.” Halpert shook his head. “It’s not about that at all. At the end of everything I’ve done, it’s about people remembering me, Lara. Remembering my name. My brilliance. I should’ve been remembered for a much different reason, but that was taken away from me.”

  “Halpert—”

  “The irony of it all is that I probably wouldn’t have done anything, wouldn’t have killed anybody or destroyed any lives, even though every single one of them deserved it. But they made me do it.”

  “How?” God, she hoped Nick was getting some sort of plan together. She could see SWAT moving in behind Halpert, but they were wisely keeping their distance. Halpert had to know they were there, too. She inched just slightly closer to the bench. “How did they make you do it?”

  “After I wasn’t hired by BrainWave, I immediately hacked into their system.”

  Lara did a double take. He’d been in their system all this time?

  Halpert chuckled. “That’s right, for three years I could’ve caused any sort of chaos I wanted for them, but I didn’t. Even reading Beckett Clarke’s report about my interview.”

  He shifted on the bench, sitting up a little taller, straightening an invisible tie. “‘Mitchell Halpert seems to be a brilliant, but disturbed young man. Definitely unfit for hire. Mark as not to be recalled for future interviews.’” Halpert said those words in a lower, almost robotic voice. His impression of Clarke.

  “Clarke was interviewing hundreds of people. His comments seem harsh there, but they were his private notes. I’m sure he could’ve offered you more constructive criticism.”