“Of course I do.”
“Oh, good. You know, I had a friend named Margie once.”
“Well, you’ll just have to tell me about her sometime. But for now, let’s get you some tea.”
They stepped through the kitchen door. I grabbed my purse from the car and trailed behind.
My aunt sat us down at the table, then bustled about making tea, toast, and scrambled eggs. For a few moments I watched her, my body graceless and my mind on hold. Aunt Margie was smart enough to give Mom her tea as soon as possible. My mother gave a soft crow of delight and lifted the cup to her lips. “Ah. So good!”
I wanted the moment to last forever. Mom satisfied. The two of us safe. After the night we’d had, everything seemed so surreal.
Emily.
“Oh!” I pushed back from the table. “I have to call my daughter.”
“Of course.” Aunt Margie whisked eggs in a bowl. “You can go down the hall to the guest bedroom, if you like. There’s a phone in there.”
“Thanks.” I rose. “Stay here, Mom. Okay?”
She nodded and sipped her tea. As I left the kitchen, I heard her say, “Did you know the Bad People are after us?”
I hurried into the bedroom and dialed Emily’s work number. And was informed she’d gone home sick.
“You mean she was there and left?” I sank down on the bed. This was not good. Emily was much safer at work than in her apartment alone. And she hadn’t seemed sick the last time we talked.
“Yes, she just walked out the door a minute ago.”
I checked my watch. It was now 9:45. “All right, thanks. I’ll try her cell phone.”
Emily answered on the first ring. “Hello?”
“Em, it’s me. Are you sick?”
“Mom, thank God! Where are you?” Emily’s breath came in puffs, her voice with an echo.
“At your Great Aunt Margie’s in Fresno. Are you sick?”
“No. I have stuff to tell you. How are you and Grand?”
“Not good. Did you see me on the news?”
“What? No!”
“The sheriff’s department says I’m a ‘person of interest’ in Leringer’s death, and that I’ve fled to escape. And that I also likely killed two other men—a man who worked for Leringer, and the deputy who was watching my house. Three men, Emily. Everyone’s looking for me. Everyone. They showed my picture and even gave out my make of car and license plate.”
“That’s . . . ” Emily exhaled over the line. “This is insane.”
“Yeah. I know.”
“I saw national news about Leringer’s and the other guy’s murder—what’s his name, Eddington?—but nothing about you.”
“This was local news, the latest update. It was the same reporter who showed up at the scene.”
“And they think you killed all those people.”
“They can’t really think that. I told you Harcroft and Wade couldn’t be trusted. This is their way of getting everyone to help bring me in.”
“This is just crazy.” Emily’s voice rose. “They really are after you.”
“I told you.”
A beat passed. I could still hear Emily breathing hard. “Where are you?”
“I’m going down the back stairs to my car. I needed to get out of the office an hour ago, but I got pulled into this meeting. So frustrating! Now we’ve lost time.”
At Emily’s last sentence the echo in her voice stopped. I could hear wind over the line. “Time?”
“I’m at my car now, but I have to tell you.” Emily rattled off the news about finding a stunning message on the video. A terrorist attack—for real? I listened, unable to utter a word. “That’s today, Mom, get it? Tonight at seven o’clock the West Coast goes dark. And Washington, D.C.—that means the government. Tomorrow it’s the East, and next day it’s Texas. The whole country. Who knows for how long. I don’t even know if we’ll be able to call each other. I mean, how do cell phone towers work without electricity?”
My lungs felt like lead, and my brain chugged. This couldn’t be happening. I couldn’t take it all in. The West Coast and Washington, D.C? After that, the rest of the country? Our nation would be crippled.
This couldn’t be true.
“So I’m taking the video and the encryption code to the FBI office in Los Angeles. I Google-mapped the address. It’s an hour and forty-five minutes away. I gotta get going.”
I shook my head hard. “Emily, you can’t get any more involved in this! All I did was stop to help a man at an accident, and look what’s happened to me. Your grandmother and I were almost killed. I told you before—I don’t want them after you too.”
“Even if someone did come after me, they wouldn’t be fast enough. Once I get to the FBI, they can worry about this.”
“You really believe you’re safe? Then why did you tell your office you’re going home sick? Apparently you’re worried about telling anyone else about this.”
Emily had no response to that.
“And how do you know you’ll get a real FBI agent? He could be fake, like the ones who tried to kill me.”
“Those men showed up at your door with fake badges, Mom. Anybody can get a fake badge. I’m going to their big office in L.A. Where they work every day. That’s different.”
A stunning new thought sped through my brain. “Emily, what if Rutger and Samuelson are real FBI agents? If people in the FBI are involved in this, we really don’t know who to trust.”
“Why should they be real agents? One of them tried to kill you.”
“That’s just the point.”
“Deputy Harcroft told you they weren’t real agents.”
“Yeah, and look how much we trust him.”
Emily fell silent for a moment. “It doesn’t make sense. If those men had been real agents, and working with the terrorists just like Harcroft and Wade are, Harcroft wouldn’t have brought you to the station so fast. He wouldn’t have put surveillance on your house to protect you.”
I closed my eyes, trying to logic through it. “But they all are working together, whether those FBI agents are fake or real. Looks like that whole thing of ‘protecting us’ was nothing but a set-up.”
“Still, even if those fake agents were real ones, it doesn’t mean all of them are bad.”
“Emily. The sheriff’s department already has that video. Let them handle this.”
“No, not the whole sheriff’s department. The two men who interviewed you have it. And if they’re bad guys, you know they’re not showing it around.”
“But maybe someone else at the department has seen it. Someone who’ll try to stop this.”
“Even if that’s true, what if they haven’t seen that message I found? You want to chance having the entire West Coast and Washington, D.C. go black tonight? Think of the chaos. And that’s just for starters.”
“This can’t be true.” I got up and paced the room. “It just can’t be.”
“I know. I kept trying to tell myself that. But we have to believe it. I mean, this country’s known about homegrown terrorists for years. Remember the blown-up building in Oklahoma City?”
Emily had been nine. She’d watched the news at some friend’s house, including the covered bodies of children being carried out. She’d come home sobbing.
Still, I didn’t want to believe this. Even after everything that had happened. I just wanted to go back to my peaceful life, where the hardest thing was putting up with Mom’s music. That life never had to face down the reality that Americans like this existed.
“At least let me drive down and go with you. Maybe Aunt Margie will lend me her car.”
“That’ll take too long. And you’re much safer where you are.”
Tears scratched my eyes. If something happened to my daughter, I would never forgive myself. “Emily, please don’t do this. You don�
��t have to save the world.”
“Well, Mom, apparently I do. Whether we like it or not.”
My thoughts tripped over themselves. “No, don’t. I’ll go. I’ll turn myself in to the police here. I’ll tell them about the message on the video. They can download a copy from our online account, just like you did. They can call the FBI.”
“And first thing, you’ll be turned over to Harcroft and Wade. Who might just put you in a jail cell with the wrong person. Besides, I deleted our account.”
“You what? Why?”
“So they couldn’t trace a download of that video back to me.”
Oh. Of course.
I shivered. “Well, anyway, once the information is in the hands of authorities who can stop this from happening, there’s no reason for the terrorists to still want me dead. It’ll be too late.”
“Really? What if you’re wrong? And what happens to Grand while you’re in jail for murder until all this gets figured out?”
I don’t know, I don’t know! Tears dropped onto my lap. Why were they chasing me in the first place? As if I could stop any of this.
“They won’t do that,” I said. “I’ll tell the FBI that Harcroft and Wade are lying.”
“Oh, like they’re just going to believe you over their own buddies.”
Now it was my turn to be silent.
“Look, Mom, if I go, maybe I can clear up these lies about you. I won’t tell them where you are. And while you’re safe, once the FBI starts investigating Harcroft and Wade, they’ll find some dirt on ’em.”
Maybe. And maybe she was just being naïve.
Emily sighed. “Thing is, no one, not even the real FBI, can stop the attack from happening tonight—unless we find out what Raleigh means. If that word is the key to the encrypted message in the first place.”
What if that encrypted message had nothing to do with stopping the attack? It could be nonsense, for all we knew.
But Raleigh had to mean something. Even now I could picture Morton’s stricken face as he mouthed the word.
“I gotta go, Mom.”
“Emily, no. Please let me go.”
“Mom. Stay where you are. You’re safe at Aunt Margie’s.”
I quit pacing, unable to move. Emily and I hung on the phone, breathing. Argued out.
If this was all true, if the electricity was being taken down tonight, what would happen to us? To our country?
“Hannah!” Mom’s distant voice trailed into the bedroom. “Your breakfast is ready!”
“Mom,” Emily said in my ear, “I’m losing time. I have to go.”
I knew she had to. Millions of people, maybe even lives, depended on the attack being stopped. But why my daughter? “No, Emily. Please. I’ll do it.”
“No way. Not. If you call the police, they’ll arrest you. Then I won’t be able to call you and tell you what happened. Don’t do that.”
I hung my head, spent and sick to the core.
“Okay,” I said. “But watch out for a young, lanky guy with a buzz cut and a Southern drawl. He’s no FBI agent you can trust.”
“Got it.”
“The other one was older. And muscular. But I don’t think you have to worry about him. I shot him so many times—” I pressed my hand against my forehand. “I think I killed him.”
“Mom.” Emily’s voice turned quiet. “You had to.”
“I know.”
“He would have killed you. And Grand.”
“I know.” But I didn’t. I didn’t know much of anything anymore.
The phone clicked in my ear. I stiffened. “Emily?”
“Oh, great,” Emily mumbled. “Work’s calling me on the other line. Gotta go, Mom. I’ll call you soon, promise. Love you.”
The line went dead.
Chapter 24
SPECIAL HOUSE SELECT COMMITTEE INVESTIGATION INTO FREENOW TERRORIST ACTIVITY OF FEBRUARY 25, 2013
SEPTEMBER 16, 2013
TRANSCRIPT
Representative ELKIN MORSE (Chairman, Homeland Security Committee): Sergeant, I think we need to back up here. Because I still do not understand parts of your testimony. You are claiming that on that fateful day of February 25, even as you and your department maintained possession of the video, instead of focusing on it, you saw fit to spend the day pursuing fifty-five-year-old Hannah Shire and her eighty-two-year-old mother. Who was struggling with dementia, I might add.
Sergeant CHARLES WADE (Sheriff’s Department Coastside): Hindsight is twenty-twenty, Chairman Morse. As I’ve been telling you all day, at the time it seemed the best course of action.
MORSE: As I understand it, you were also trying to track Hannah Shire by her cell phone?
WADE: We weren’t tracking it at that time. I had put in a request to do so. But gaining permission to track her, and setting up the plan with the cell phone provider, took time. Not until later in the day did an attempt to track become possible.
MORSE: All right. We will return to that. Regarding Deputy Harcroft, did you have any knowledge of what he was doing on the day of February 25?
WADE: Certainly. He was assisting me in the investigation of the two homicides—Morton Leringer and Nathan Eddington. Plus we were assisting the San Carlos police regarding the homicide of Deputy Williams.
MORSE: As a sergeant in the Moss Beach sheriff’s substation, did you oversee all the deputies beneath you in rank?
WADE: There are four sergeants at our substation. On that day I was intensely focused on the cases at hand. Deputy Harcroft was assisting in those cases, as were other deputies. I oversaw those deputies, but I wasn’t aware moment to moment what every deputy in the substation was doing.
MORSE: Yes, quite. That was the problem, Sergeant Wade.
Regarding Mrs. Shire, you told your superior that you and Harcroft now viewed her as a strong person of interest in the murders of Morton Leringer, Nathan Eddington, and Deputy Williams. Correct?
WADE: I did.
MORSE: And this was your stated reason for releasing her picture and information about her to the media?
WADE: It wasn’t just a “stated” reason. It was the reason.
MORSE: And meanwhile, again, you did nothing with the video.
WADE: That’s not true. On the morning of the 25th, I turned the flash drive over to a tech in our department and asked him to view it. I’d also planned to show it to our lieutenant. But by then Deputy Williams had been killed, and Mrs. Shire and her mother had fled the scene. That situation required my immediate attention. The imminent importance of the flash drive was not apparent at the time.
MORSE: It would have been “apparent,” Sergeant Wade, if you’d looked more carefully at the video.
WADE: Chairman Morse, you are failing to understand. I had three homicide victims on my hands that day. And Hannah Shire had fled. My thinking was, if she was innocent, why would she flee? If someone had tried to harm her, why wouldn’t she call me? She had my number. And Harcroft’s.
MORSE: So you maintain to this day that your actions at the time were justified?
WADE: I do.
MORSE: And that you had no hidden agenda in failing to pursue further knowledge about the video.
WADE: As I told you, I turned the video over to a technician.
MORSE: How could you not put a priority on that video, Sergeant? Three men had already died because of it.
WADE: I could not be certain of that at the time! I couldn’t even be certain of Mrs. Shire’s claim that Leringer gave her the video. Or that two men posing as FBI agents had threatened her in her home. If she was responsible for Leringer’s death, and for Eddington’s and Williams’s death, everything she told us could be a lie. In fact, remember, when she first talked to Deputy Harcroft she did lie. She admitted as much to us.
MORSE: And so you ignored the video.
/> WADE: I did not ignore it. I placed my priority on finding the woman who had given it to me, perhaps as a way to cover up for killing three people.
MORSE: I’m just shaking my head, Sergeant, hearing your testimony. Seems to me you’ve used the last seven months to conjure up an explanation for your actions on that day.
WADE: On the contrary, Mr. Chairman, my testimony is true.
MORSE: Let me tell you what is true, Sergeant Wade. On that day of February 25, when our nation faced one of its greatest potential traumas of all time, you ignored a vital piece of information. And while you and your department ignored this information, a twenty-seven-year-old marketing video producer deciphered the hidden message on that video and took it upon herself to do something about it.
WADE: Hindsight again, Chairman Morse. I. Couldn’t. Have. Known.
MORSE: Neither could Emily Shire have known. But unlike you—and your entire department—she paid attention to the video.
Do you have a response to that, Sergeant?
WADE: No other response than what I’ve already told you again and again.
MORSE: And so, I assume, you refuse to take responsibility for the highly unfortunate events—and that’s putting it mildly—that occurred during the remainder of that day?
Chapter 25
Monday, February 25, 2013
Emily made a face at the incoming call on her cell. The laptop bag was getting heavy, hanging off her shoulder. And why wouldn’t work stop bugging her? She had to get going.
She ignored the call. Started to unlock her car.
At the last minute she relented and punched the icon to answer. “Hi.” If she sounded impatient, she didn’t care.
“Sorry to bother you. It’s Ronnie.” The receptionist at the front desk. “We just had an FBI agent here asking for you. Just wanted to warn you before he gets to you.”
Emily froze. “What?”
“He said he wanted to talk to you right away. Wouldn’t say about what.”
Emily’s head jerked up, her gaze fixed on the building’s back entrance. “Did he have a badge?”
“Yeah. And he had a picture of you. Showed it to me to make sure you were the right person.”
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