by Dee Davis
Cullen recognized the direction of her thoughts, and waved a hand at Nigel. “Sam, I don’t think you’ve had the chance to meet Nigel. He’s flown in with some information for Payton, but in light of his experience with Special Forces and MI6, I thought it might be worthwhile to have him listen in.” Cullen shot a glance at Nigel that could only be called speculative. Payton obviously wasn’t the only one with a long memory.
“I don’t know that I’ll have much to offer,” Nigel said. “But I’m happy to listen.”
Gabe nodded, obviously much more accepting of his old friend. Madison, too, looked pleased. But then Sam doubted Madison held much of anything against anyone, her view of the world much more open-minded than the rest of them. Maybe because she knew better than anyone the atrocities man was capable of committing. Once you’d seen the work of a madman like the Sinatra Killer, you were more likely to cut someone like Nigel a little slack.
“All right, then. Sam, why don’t you lead off with what we know.” Cullen sat back, waiting, and Sam worked to order her thoughts, telling them first about the newest Tai and then moving on to the Bryan bombing.
“So we’ve got four bombings with the Tai, all of them with one end cap welded and no tool marks. They all seem to use electronics for detonation. But the actual device varies each time. Three of the incidents have occurred within days of each other, and the first one is six years old.”
“Anything come back from trace?” Nigel asked.
“Nothing on the Virginia or the San Antonio bombs.” Sam shook her head, impressed that he was already up to speed and moving in the right direction. “None of the parts are identifiable, and there are no fingerprints and no DNA. The ATF lab is looking at Albuquerque, but my guess is that they won’t come up with anything. This guy is good. And getting better.”
“What about the other possible priors?” Madison asked.
“We’re still waiting for Abilene,” Harrison answered. “Sam’s put a call in to someone she knows there. And Refugio looks like a wash. They can’t seem to locate the paperwork, and any evidence has long since been destroyed.”
Madison frowned, her gaze shifting to Sam. “You know people in Abilene?”
“Yeah, I used to work crime scene investigation there way back when.”
“And the Prager—have you ever been there?”
Payton’s head popped up, his heated gaze settling on Sam.
She shivered, Madison’s train of thought apparent. “I was there once. It’s been years ago now. I attended an FBI seminar on bomb detection and removal. That’s where I met Walter Atherton.”
“Okay, I’ll bite,” Gabe said, leaning forward, his eyes narrowed in thought. “How about Bryan. It was a barbeque joint, right?”
“3D Barbeque, to be exact,” Harrison offered.
Sam shook her head. “I don’t know. I don’t really like barbeque. But I did go to A&M. So it’s possible, I guess.”
“But not probable?” Cullen asked.
“I can’t say for certain. I don’t remember a place called 3D per se. The only place I remember was a beer joint where all the engineering students hung out. They had dollar pitchers, and pool. But that was in College Station.”
Nigel’s eyebrows rose in question.
“The two towns abut each other. College Station and Bryan. Anyway, the place I’m talking about was called the Blue Goose.” She shrugged in apology.
“It was just an idea,” Madison said.
“A good one.” Payton was still staring at Sam. “If the bomber is targeting Sam, then it would make sense that the sites of the bombings have significance for her.”
“But I haven’t been to the 3D.”
“Maybe the significance is all in the bomber’s head,” Madison said with a shrug.
“Well, whichever it is, I’m afraid there’s more,” Harrison said, producing the stack of photos he and Madison had been looking at earlier. “These are photos of one of the fragments of the model car that exploded in Sam’s room.” He waved them in the air. “I’ve taken the liberty of putting them on the computer.”
He hit a button on his laptop, and an image appeared on the whiteboard behind his head. “When I first saw this etching, I thought it was the result of the blast. But on further examination, it appears to have form.” He hit another button and the image changed, this time the anomaly looking more like a circle. “And when you enlarge it yet again.” The picture switched, this time the crude etching coming clear.
“The Tai.” Payton’s voice held an edge of anger. “This bastard is targeting Sam.”
Sam opened her mouth to refute the idea, but closed it again, her throat too dry to allow words.
“What about the fragments from the bomb in Elliot’s car?” Gabe asked. “Anything there?”
“No.” Sam shook her head, her mind still trying to make sense of this newest development. “There isn’t much left. When the car exploded, the gasoline intensified the fire and most everything altered unrecognizably.”
“How about information on Elliot Drummond?” Cullen asked.
Madison frowned. “I’m afraid I found something.” Her gaze met Sam’s, her expression apologetic. “Seems Elliot was in a bit of a fix. To the tune of fifty thousand dollars.”
“Drugs?” Gabe asked, his eyes narrowed.
Sam wanted to defend Elliot, but obviously she hadn’t known him as well as she thought she had.
“No.” Madison shook her head. “Gambling. A little bit of everything. Horseracing, poker, even a stint in Atlantic City. Elliot had a definite problem, and unfortunately he picked the wrong people to do business with.”
“So he had motive.” The words came out on a whisper, Sam’s mind scrambling to deal with the new information.
“And then some,” Madison sighed. “I haven’t been able to find anything to support the idea that he’d made a deal, but I didn’t really expect that I would.”
“But when you add up the facts, I don’t think we can ignore the truth,” Gabe said looking at Sam.
“Elliot sold information and it got him killed.” Her heart twisted at the thought that he’d fallen so far. “I wish I’d known.”
“There wasn’t anything you could have done, Sam.” Madison’s voice was consoling.
“I know.” She nodded. “Really, I do. It’s just that he was my friend. And even if it was indirectly, I feel like I got him involved in all of this.”
“But you didn’t,” Payton said, tension radiating from the line of his neck and jaw.
Sam nodded, knowing in her heart that he was right. But it still hurt.
“How about the confetti bomb?” Cullen asked, forcing their attention back to the bomber and his handiwork.
“I found a mark. But I can’t make anything of it,” Harrison said, switching to another photograph, everyone turning their attention to the screen. “This is from a piece of the box itself.”
Sam stared at the image, her heart pounding in her throat, her vision swimming.
“Sam?” Payton was beside her in an instant, his hands on her shoulders. “What is it? What do you see?”
She shook her head, her brain screaming in denial, her gut churning with bile. “It’s mine, Payton. My jack-in-the-box. That’s an S and a W.” She pointed up at the screen, the scratches clear only to her. But then she’d put them there herself, using her father’s penknife. “Those are my initials.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
“WHEN DID YOU SAY the jack-in-the-box was stolen?” Cullen asked.
Payton was sitting beside Sam now, his leg pressed against hers in a subtle attempt at comfort. She’d regained her composure, but he could see the stress reflected in her eyes.
Gabe and Madison had wisely taken over the conversation, giving Sam a chance to pull herself together while they filled Nigel in. Cullen was pacing at the front of the room, Harrison as usual staring at his computer.
“About seven years ago. Right after I went to work for the FBI.”
“Which means that it fits into the time line—if there is a time line.” Cullen frowned, frustration apparent in his frenetic back and forth movement.
“Why don’t we see if we can plot this out. It’ll make thinking about it a lot easier,” Madison said, getting up to walk to the whiteboard drawing a long horizontal line. “When were you in Bryan?”
“College Station,” Sam corrected. “I was there four years, but it’s been almost thirteen since I graduated.”
Madison made a hash mark at the far left side of the continuum. “All right. And when did you go to Abilene?”
“Right after I graduated. I was there almost two years.”
Madison made a second hash mark. “And that’s when you went to the Prager?”
“No.” Sam shook her head. “After Abilene I went to work for the Houston bomb squad. They’re the ones who sent me to the FBI seminar.”
Madison nodded, and then made hash marks for Houston and the Prager respectively.
“And the seminar is where you met Walter Atherton?” Nigel asked, his eyes narrowed as he studied the whiteboard.
“Yes.” Sam covered Payton’s hand with her own, her nervousness reflected in the gesture. It was the only sign that she was reacting to their line of thinking, and Payton wasn’t sure she was even aware of the fact. But it was telling—in more ways than one.
“And from there you went to work for the FBI, right?” Madison asked, already putting a hash mark in for Sam’s job with ERT.
“And then four years ago I went to work for ATF.”
“Right.” Madison nodded, adding ATF toward the right end of the continuum. “Okay, Harrison, help me with the prior bombings, and for the time being let’s assume that Abilene is in the mix.”
“Well, the Bryan/College Station bombing—” he shot a grin in Sam’s direction, but she missed it, her eyes still glued to the whiteboard “—was six years ago.”
Madison inserted a hash mark for the barbeque bomb between Sam’s ERT job and the ATF. “How about Abilene?”
“Three years ago,” Harrison said. “But shouldn’t you put Sam’s Abilene bomb up there too?”
“Sam’s bomb?” Gabe asked, his eyebrow lifting in question.
“The potential prior in Abilene was at the city complex. I worked a bomb there, too. But it was totally different. Not even a pipe bomb, and I successfully defused it.”
“Did you find the bomber?” Payton asked, wondering if it could possibly be this simple.
“Yeah. A guy who’d been fired. Turned out he’d also lost his wife to cancer or something. Basically he had a total meltdown. He confessed and cut a deal, psychiatric help in exchange for time served. Look, I’ll admit the guy wasn’t a candidate for citizen of the year. But his bomb wasn’t anything close to sophisticated. I’m not even completely certain it would have detonated.”
“Meaning you don’t think he had the potential to move up to the expertise of our bomber,” Gabe said.
“No way.” Sam shook her head. “I’d stake my life on it.”
“Well since you are staking your life on it,” Payton said, his tone dry, “why don’t you let us check into the guy anyway?”
“Sure,” Sam sighed. “His name was Henry Norton. If I remember right he was living in a neighboring town called Eula. But that was a long time ago.”
“Should be easy enough to check out.” Harrison jotted the information down, with a nod.
“And in the meantime I’ll note it on the time line.” Madison wrote it next to the hash mark for Sam’s Abilene bomb, and added another mark for the Abilene prior. “Harrison, didn’t you say there was another potential prior?”
“Refugio,” Harrison answered. “It was sixteen years ago, but the records have been misplaced. So there’s no way to check it for similarities.”
“Have you ever been to Refugio, Sam?”
“With my mom and dad in the sixth grade. We did Goliad, San Jacinto and Refugio. Even the Alamo. My dad had a thing for Texas history. But I can’t imagine that it’s relevant.” Her look said she was beginning to question the entire line of thinking, but Payton couldn’t shake the feeling that they were on the right track, Refugio notwithstanding.
“I tend to agree,” Madison said, “but I’ll put it up there anyway.” She extended the left hand end of the line and added Refugio to the list, once for the bomb and once for Sam’s family vacation. Then she went to the other end of the board and added the San Antonio bomb, then the confetti bomb, followed by the bomb that killed Walter Atherton, then Elliot Drummond’s bomb, the model car bomb and finally the one in Albuquerque.
“Is that everything?” Madison asked, her gaze encompassing them all.
“That’s all I’ve got,” Harrison said.
“All right then, people,” Cullen said, resuming his pacing. “Let’s connect the dots.”
“Well…” Harrison squinted up at the whiteboard. “We’ve got the Tai on the three big bombs, and the one in Bryan, as well as the last one that went off in Sam’s suite.”
Madison made a circle at each appropriate hash mark.
“And we’ve identified the jack-in-the-box, and therefore Jack, as the one Sam had stolen in Virginia,” Gabe said.
Madison marked those with Sam’s initials.
“I guess we can mark a connection between Elliot’s death and the model car used in the bomb in my room. They were the same make and model, and Jack seemed to be a surrogate for Elliot.”
Madison nodded and linked the two events with a bracket. “All right, what else?”
“How about the robbery? Based on Sam’s identification of the jack-in-the-box fragment, it looks like the bomber is also the one who broke into her apartment. How else would he have obtained the toy?” Payton asked.
“It’s a bit out of character,” Madison said. “Usually these guys keep a really low profile. But if he already knew of the box’s existence, then maybe it wasn’t such a stretch. I mean, he also broke into Sam’s rooms at the hotel twice. So maybe he’s just making damn sure no one is around before he makes his moves.”
“He obviously got in and out of the control room at the Hyatt undetected,” Harrison noted.
“Yes.” Madison nodded. “He seems to be adept at blending in when he chooses to do so, which means he’s more social than I’d originally profiled. At least more tolerant of people. I’d still say he’s a loner though.”
“All right, now that we’ve profiled the bastard, what else can we say about his work?” Cullen said, his pacing beginning to wear on Payton’s nerves.
“This bugger’s been really busy, with a marked escalation after the Prager,” Nigel said, the crease between his eyebrows marking his concentration. “If we assume that the A bilene bomb fits the profile, then we’re looking at a three-year gap between the first and second incidents, and again between the second and third. That’s compared with a matter of days for the last two.”
“So maybe the senators really were superfluous,” Payton mused, trying to make sense of the facts spread out across the whiteboard. “Which means that we’re right and our attention was focused in the wrong direction.”
“So the guy takes out Walter Atherton in an attempt to get the focus back where it was supposed to be.” Harrison’s voice held a note of excitement they were all beginning to feel.
Everyone but Sam.
She sat staring at the board, still holding on to Payton’s hand.
“It’s going to be all right.” The words were banal at best, but he couldn’t stop his overriding need to comfort her.
“No.” She shook her head, pulling her hand away. “It isn’t. Not until we work this through and figure out who the hell is behind this.” She crossed her arms over her chest, a defensive posture that spoke volumes to Payton, her gaze moving to Madison’s. “Why Atherton?”
“I don’t know. But looking at the continuum, I’d say it’s related to the Prager. It’s where you met the man, right?”
“Yes.”
>
“Did you have a relationship with him?” Gabe asked, his gaze skimming the top of Sam’s head, his face reflecting his distaste for the question.
“Of course not,” Sam snapped. “He saw potential in me. We talked about bombs and the FBI, and as a result he offered me a position with ERT.”
“While you were at the Prager?” Gabe queried, this time looking directly at her.
“No. A couple months later. But our meeting there is the reason why he even considered me.”
“All right, so maybe killing Atherton was the best way to get you away from considering the senators and make you see the Prager in the proper context.” Gabe shot a glance at his wife, who nodded in agreement.
“So what?” Sam asked, raising her hands in frustration. “None of this makes any sense.”
“Well, we can add Bryan to the connection category.” Harrison said, spinning his laptop around for everyone to see. “I just got verification that 3D Barbeque was actually in College Station. It occupies the same building as the now-defunct Blue Goose.”
Sam shivered, her arms back around her middle. Payton damned the consequences and wrapped an arm around her, ready for her rebuff, surprised when she not only accepted the comfort but leaned into it. Across the room, Nigel lifted his eyebrows in surprise.
“All right,” Madison said, turning to make the notation on the whiteboard. “That gives us three bombs, three years separating each of them, all at places that Sam has been to, quite possibly with some meaning to her. The job with the FBI, a favorite college hangout…”
“My first bomb scene.” She moved away from Payton’s embrace, her attention back on the board.
“Abilene.”
“Yeah. I’d worked a couple as part of the crime scene investigation. But only after the fact. This was the first live bomb I ever worked with—officially.”
“Okay so we have three significant events in your life,” Madison summarized. “What if this guy knows that, and is playing off the fact by bombing those exact locations?”