by Liliana Hart
Agent Strand didn’t move.
“Can you elaborate?” the man asked me as he took my arm gently and led me back into the kitchen. A place I most definitely did not want to be.
When I hesitated, Agent Strand was at my back, urging me forward.
We entered the kitchen followed by several of the other investigators, suddenly eager to hear what I had to say. I’d never done this. I’d never divulged what I could do to the common, as my mother had called them. Those who were not like us, like the women in my family, were common.
Before we could get into it, I had to ask a question. I glanced at the island, knowing the crime scene had been processed and that the couple had probably been carted off hours ago, but I still had to ask. “Are they still there?”
“Who?” Agent Strand asked.
I looked over my shoulder to glower at him. “The Padgetts. The people who died last night. Who else are we talking about?”
He glanced back at Murphy. “How much did you tell her?”
“I didn’t tell her anything,” he said, his voice full of skepticism. “But their names are on the mail in the entryway. It’s not rocket science.”
Ah, yes. Another thing I learned early on. The common can explain away anything. Absolutely anything. A UFO could land in their swimming pool and they’d have an alternate explanation all ready to go.
Murphy’s partner placed a reassuring hand on my arm. “No, honey,” she said, her voice reassuring. “They’ve been taken to the morgue. Take your time.”
I nodded, grateful for the camaraderie, and continued. “Well, unlike what some people might want you to believe, the Padgetts did not die in a murder-suicide scenario. A kid named Travis killed them.”
The room erupted in quiet conversation. The deputy secretary shushed them with a glare. “Can you explain?”
After drawing in a deep breath, I ran them through the whole scenario, from the Padgetts going out to eat, to the kid banging his head on the wall by the front window, waiting for them to come home. From the commercial on the television to the kid aiming a pistol at them, a stubby one with a round cylinder that only holds six rounds. I told them how Mr. Padgett tried to protect his wife. How she wouldn’t leave her husband when he told her to run. How she uttered the boy’s name, Travis, right before he shot her in the head.
By the time I was finished, my cheeks were soaked with tears. I didn’t wipe them away. I wouldn’t give them the satisfaction of knowing how much it killed me to not only watch what happened to the Padgetts, but to have to relive it as well.
“I can draw him for you if you’d like. The kid.”
Murphy’s partner handed me a tissue, and I finally got a chance to see her badge up close. Detective Anne Marie Williams. I turned away from everyone to use the tissue, but I turned right into Agent Strand’s chest. He stayed his ground, letting me use him to block out the rest of the room.
“There’s no blood in here,” Murphy said, his skepticism at an all-time high. He’d walked into the living room and was examining the wall.
I swiped at the tears with the tissue and walked to the doorway. The kid must have cleaned it up while I was watching the Padgetts.
“Test it,” I told Anne Marie. I walked forward to point it out. “It should be concentrated here with streaks of his blood here.”
Without another question, she did. She grabbed a kit, sprayed the area with a chemical, probably Luminol, then shined a black light on it. Residual blood glowed in the purplish hue and Murphy gasped aloud.
“How can you know that?” he asked, but Strand had questions of his own.
“Can you describe this kid?”
I did, giving as much detail as I could. “About my height, messy dark hair, a long nose and a wide mouth. He had thick eyebrows and wore an old dark blue hoodie with a dolphin logo on the left shoulder. I really can draw him if you need me to. It doesn’t take long.”
They sat me at the dining room table with a piece of notebook paper and a pencil. Strand sat across from me as the rest of the team examined the scene for more clues to Travis’s identity, using the information I’d given them.
“You don’t know why this kid did it?” Strand asked me.
“No. He never said anything. Not a single word. He just banged his head against the wall and pulled the trigger. Oh!” I said, almost shouting. “He drew the smiley face on the pumpkin. You should be able to get his fingerprint off it.”
Strand stifled a sad smile. “We already did. There were no matches, which simply means he’s never been arrested.”
“Really?” I asked as I added a shadow along the kid’s long nose.
“That surprises you?”
“Well, yeah, kind of. I mean, he raised that gun and pulled the trigger like it was nothing. Like he’d done it a thousand times.” I lowered my head as a fresh round of tears threatened to push past my lashes. “He didn’t hesitate.” My voice cracked, so I stopped talking and just drew. Strand let me gather myself before starting the questions anew.
“How can you do that?” He pointed to the drawing.
“Oh, part of the gift, I guess. I have a photographic memory.”
“She was a high school teacher,” he said. “Mrs. Padgett.”
I raised my head in surprise. “Maybe Travis was one of her students.”
Anne Marie walked in to glimpse my drawing. “Yep,” she said, “I’d say he was.” She held out a book, a yearbook from 2013. “Travis McCall. Is this your guy?”
When I looked at the picture, my stomach tightened. I bent slightly with the threat of heaving. All I could see were his cold, dark eyes as he lifted the gun. The void of emotion in them as he shot and killed two innocent people as though he were simply taking out the trash. “Yes,” I said, trying not to hyperventilate. “That’s him.”
“Good job,” she said. “We should be able to get his fingerprints or a DNA sample for comparison without too much fuss considering the severity of the crime.”
“She was pregnant,” I added, and my audience stilled, including Murphy who was pretending to look for evidence a few feet away from us. “Mrs. Padgett. They didn’t want anyone to know yet. I got the feeling she was having trouble carrying to term, so the minute she found out she was pregnant, her husband insisted she leave her job.”
Anne Marie turned to her partner.
Murphy nodded. “Padgett’s mother just confirmed.”
“That’s right,” I said, remembering. “He had lunch with his mother yesterday. He said she suspected. I think that’s why they went to dinner last night. To celebrate.”
Murphy nodded again.
Anne Marie leaned in to me. “You may have just solved a double homicide, honey.”
She was so nice and trying to be so positive, but all I could think about was how the room was spinning and making me a little nauseated. I thanked her then rose to get some air. Strand followed me. Neither of us could miss the sideways glances Murphy kept sending my way, and I wondered if Strand went with me to protect me against the burly man or to make sure I didn’t decide to pull a Houdini.
Once outside, I filled my lungs with crisp autumn air, savoring the scents of fall as a school bus rumbled past us. After a moment, my surroundings quit spinning long enough for me to say to Strand, who was pretending not to watch me, “We better hurry.”
He’d raised a brow in question.
“Briarwood.”
He stilled and his expression morphed into something I had yet to see from him: Absolute astonishment. “How do you know about Briarwood?”
“I listened in on the conversation you were having with your boss when I first walked up before dropping back to the crime. Your partner? Your best friend? He died there along with everyone else in Briarwood. I can only drop back twenty-four hours and the case here has already been solved. We’re wasting time.”
It took him a long moment to say anything, but when he did, it wasn’t to me. He took out his phone, punched a couple of buttons, then li
fted it to his ear. “Power up. We’ll be there in five.”
A helicopter. I was in a helicopter. And I did not like it. Not one bit. We landed 45 minutes after we took off and I had no idea what to expect. Seconds before we touched ground, Strand leaned toward me and secured a huge gas mask onto my face. It made me very uncomfortable for several reasons. First, it looked like an alien had attached itself to my face and was trying to impregnate me. Second, Strand wasn’t wearing one but everyone else was, so I’d clearly taken his. And third, the eerie stillness of the tiny town crept upon me the moment we landed.
We sat down on a school parking lot, and there was no traffic, no pedestrians, no store owners or mail carriers. In fact, there was no movement at all. In the distance sat a line of cop cars with lights flashing. They were blocking the road going into town. The area had been quarantined.
“This is stupid,” I said to Strand, the mask muffling my voice. He needed a mask just as much as I did.
He furrowed his brows in question as he lifted me out of the chopper. His hands, warm against the icy wind caused by the roaring blades above us, spanned the circumference of my ribs. “What?” he asked, yelling over the thunderous sound.
Before I could answer, he wrapped an arm around me and ushered me away from the chopper. The deputy secretary followed and we were met by a team of investigators in white containment suits. Wonderful. All I had was a facemask and Agent Awesome—a man apparently impervious to the effects of lethal toxins—stood completely unprotected.
Once the chopper lifted off, I straightened and tried to do something with my hair. It was poking out from beneath the straps of my facemask in every direction imaginable, but my mortification subsided when I looked past the hazmat team to the entrance to the school. There on the sidewalk lay a neat row body bags and the world fell out from under my feet.
Chapter Four
“Andrea?”
My lids fluttered open to the sound of my name on a deep, smooth voice. I brought Strand’s face into focus. A lock of dark hair fell over his eyes as he watched me. He ran his fingers through it with one hand and held out a glass of water with the other.
“That was quite a spill,” he said, his expression full of concern.
I wasn’t sure how to feel. People didn’t concern themselves with me. It just didn’t happen. “Sorry. I’ve seen a lot of death in the last few hours.”
Hours. I blinked past the fog. Hours. We were running out of time! I bound off the cot, wondering in the back of my mind where we were.
“Whoa,” Strand said, catching me to him with one arm. He placed the glass on a desk behind him then put his hands on my shoulders. “Take it easy.”
“How long have I been out? What time is it? How much time do we have?” It was odd. All the things I could do with time, yet there never seemed to be enough of it.
“You’ve only been out about twenty minutes.” He ducked to look into my eyes as though making sure I was coherent.
Trapped in his blue gaze, I stated the obvious. I was good at that. “We’re not wearing masks.”
Something terribly sexy tugged at one corner of his mouth. “They’ve tested the area. It’s clean, but we have no idea what it was. We’re hoping you can rectify that.”
“I’ll do my best.”
After another second or two of that penetrating gaze, he snapped to attention and sat back, dropping his hands. “I guess we should get to it, then.”
I nodded and he led me out from behind a stack of metal boxes where they’d tucked the cot. The tent was packed full of equipment, much of it like something from a science lab. People came and went in a rush. Each seemed to have a job to do. A helicopter roared overhead as though searching the area.
“What exactly am I looking for?” I asked as a kid brought us both bottled water. An absolute bundle of nerves, he dropped Agent Strand’s twice.
“What’s with him?” I asked when we exited the tent.
Strand had been watching me. He always seemed to be watching me, and I wasn’t sure if it was because he was still trying to figure me out or because he thought I would bolt. Where would I go, for goodness sake?
“Who?” he asked.
I almost laughed. He had to notice the kid’s behavior. I raised my water. “That kid in the tent.”
“Oh, that. Yeah, it’s a groupie thing. I have somewhat of a reputation in the department. I get a lot of admirers.”
Trying my hardest to stifle a laugh, I pointed to a gathering in the distance. “What’s going on there?”
Strand sobered. “That’s where my partner died. They think he may have been trying to stop this from happening, so they’re looking for clues. I thought we could start there.”
Suddenly worried there would be a body there, I slowed.
“They moved all the bodies while you were out. It’s okay.” He put a hand on the small of my back, encouraging me to keep walking.
We trekked up a hill to where the group had gathered. The deputy secretary was there. He walked over to us, his features more haggard than they were earlier.
“Can you do it again?” he asked me.
“Whenever I want.”
“Then let me reframe my question. Do you want to do it again?”
I let a sad smile slide across my face. “Sure. I’ll do what I can.”
“Can I watch this time?”
“There’s not much to see,” Strand said. “It’s instantaneous.”
“From your point-of-view,” I corrected. “From mine, it can seem like hours or even days before I jump back. I can turn back time again and again. But, yes, you can watch.”
He nodded and stepped to the side to let us work.
I scanned the area. There was nothing around us, really. We stood in an empty field behind the school, and the school was one of only five or six buildings in the entire town. They had a post office, a small store, a tiny gas station that looked like it had been closed for several decades, and a couple of churches. “I’ll drop and see what I can see, but I can only go so far.”
“Twenty-four hours,” he said.
“No. Well, yes, but I mean distance-wise. I can only go about one hundred feet in any direction, then I have to switch locations. I’ll look under every rock, though. If there is an answer to be found, I’ll find it.”
Strand nodded, seeming grateful. “You might listen in to Mark’s conversation. He died here with another agent, Ed Kerrigan. I want to know what they were talking about.”
“You got it. Mark was your partner?”
“Has been for years. We were working the same case but from different angles. And then this.”
“Can you give me more?” I asked. “Every little bit helps. What exactly are you working on?”
“I could tell you,” he said, then stopped, allowing me to finish the statement for him.
“But you’d have to kill me. Pictures?”
“Mark Cham was undercover. All pictures of him are classified.”
“That doesn’t help me much.”
“Trust me. The minute you see Mark in action, you’ll know it’s him.” He glanced around. “I’m not sure what you can hold on to out here,” he said before holding out his hands. “Me, I guess, if I’ll work.”
Surprised, I placed my hands in his. They swallowed mine in both size and warmth. “You’ll work.”
“Just don’t pass out again,” he said, a mischievous twinkle beneath his lashes. “’Bout killed me to have to carry you all the way to home base when you passed out.”
I gasped audibly.
“Damned near broke my back.”
That adorable tug appeared again. It mesmerized me. His whole mouth mesmerized me. His whole face. What had I gotten myself into?
“You ready?” he asked, squeezing my hands lightly.
I braced my feet slightly apart, took a deep breath, then nodded. The moment I closed my eyes, I dropped.
I scrolled back the entire 24 hours then slowly made my way forward in time. I
t didn’t take long for something to catch my attention. I stopped and watched as a man of Middle Eastern descent ran across the field we’d just walked through. He tripped but got back up again, turning full circle, searching the area. He seemed frazzled and afraid.
“Over here,” another man said, emerging from the trees in a gully below us.
I walked closer to get a better look.
The Middle Eastern man hurried to him. He wore an orange coat and ill-fitted jeans. Dark wisps of hair curled out from underneath a baseball cap. Add to that a full beard and it was hard to make out his features. The other man was about Strand’s age with a sport coat and tie, which was odd considering the trek it took to get here. His shoes were polished with bits of wet grass on them, and his hair was cut military short. This had to be Mark.
“You have to hurry,” the Middle Eastern man said, pushing an envelope into the Mark’s hands, his eyes saucerlike.
“Adiv,” Mark said, taking the envelope with a casual ease that was the exact opposite of Adiv’s hurried demeanor. “We have time. You said it yourself. Your boss isn’t even in the country yet.”
“No.” He seemed to calm a bit. “No, you are right, of course. Please, forgive me.”
“There’s nothing to forgive,” Mark assured him. He opened the envelope and read the contents. “This is perfect. We have the location and the time. We can set up a sting to catch your boss in action.”
“You better, or I’m dead. If he finds out I betrayed him—”
“Calm down,” Mark said.
I hurried over and glanced at the paper before he folded it and put it in an inside pocket. It had the name of a café in Gary, Indiana, but I still didn’t know what the sting was all about. According to Strand, Mark wasn’t supposed to be in the area. He also said that two agents were killed here. I glanced around for the second agent. Nothing.
Adiv couldn’t help himself. He scanned the area, too, for good measure, his gaze darting from one object to the next like a frightened rabbit. Seeming satisfied, he turned back to Mark. “Do you know who the inside man is, yet? My boss is nervous about doing business with an organization who allows undercover agents in.”