Flash Point

by Colby Marshall

  Jenna nodded. ‘Sure.’

  ‘You said that at some point right around Exam Six this Atticus guy killed Marius before hauling his body away, right?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Well, I know we all are wondering why they’d kill him. I mean, if they’re in the middle of an assault on the ER and some nurse happens to be a jiu jitsu master knocks him out cold, sure. You grab him and run, because if you leave him, he gets identified, and inevitably, his identity will trace back to everybody in the group. But that’s not what happened. He didn’t get hurt or killed by one of the victims. They killed him. In the middle of their own planned attack. Why?’

  Jenna blinked rapidly. ‘I don’t know. He did something wrong. He made a mistake. He didn’t stab the kid, obviously. Maybe that somehow screwed up the way the rest of the attack was supposed to go down.’

  Yancy stared at the tablet, at the photo of the kid, replaying the grainy footage over and over in his mind. The guy with the long sword storms into Six. Storms out. Another attacker turns the corner and they almost bump into each other. The attacker who turned the corner turns and goes into Six. And suddenly Atticus appears and kills Marius.

  ‘I think he made a mistake. I think he broke a rule,’ Yancy said. ‘Let’s get Irv on the footage, but I think Atticus offed Marius because Marius walked away from that kid. Killed the dad, turned to do the kid but couldn’t, so he left.’

  Jenna nodded slowly. ‘It would explain why the kid was on his way out of the room and the attacker stabbed him from the front.’

  ‘A different attacker.’

  Jenna shifted, leaned back into the pillows, stunned.

  ‘This puts a whole new spin on the group profile, huh?’ Yancy said.

  She nodded. ‘And honestly, I don’t even know what it means. Not yet, anyway.’

  From the table across the room next to the antique chair, Jenna’s phone skittered across the glass until it reached the wood rim, which caught it on its side. Jenna jumped up and crossed the room, snatched it up, and read the text Irv had sent to the team:

  THE M.E. GOT A HIT ON A MATCHING SCAR. MISSING PERSON RECORD. NAMES JAMES ASNER. SENDING BRIEFING ON ASNER TO YOUR TABLETS NOW.

  She hopped back on to the bed and picked up the tablet, scrolled through the menu to find the briefings folder. Sure enough, it was already in the file.

  Jenna read the brief out loud. ‘James Asner, would be thirty-three today. Harvard law student, went missing during his third year without a trace. Known during his undergraduate studies there for being a standout debate champion but also for his many first place fencing trophies. Now isn’t that interesting?’

  ‘Mr Sword has a sword past. That part fits.’

  ‘But here’s the problem, according to the brief, as soon as Asner was reported missing, the trail went cold. No leads, no sightings, no digital footprint. Not so much as a toe print. It was like he fell off the earth.’

  ‘Perfect candidate for a radical terrorist group,’ Yancy said.

  Jenna nodded, trying hard to latch on to the color that kept sneaking in but drifting away before she could grab hold of it. She was missing something. Something important.

  Wisps of thoughts she couldn’t quite grasp taunted her as she paced the bedroom floor. Why? Why did they kill him? They killed him for not killing someone. But that’s off! They killed him for not killing someone.

  A shade of yellow flashed in. The thought slowly flooded Jenna’s mind. ‘But this wasn’t the first time he didn’t kill someone. That’s what’s bothering me. He was the person to lead Ashlee Haynie, the bank survivor, down to the vault and give her the message for us.’ Still, something didn’t fit, but that was part of it. ‘So,’ she ventured, hoping she could talk it out of the recesses of her mind, ‘the kid obviously wasn’t the one survivor left. Margeaux East was. But Marius was killed, and he didn’t take her to safety. So that wasn’t his job anymore. We need to look back at the footage, see who did …’

  Maybe if she could figure out how the hierarchy of the lone survivor worked, who dealt with them and why, it would help the profile even without Margeaux East being able to deliver the message they left.

  Then, before she could stop herself, Jenna confessed to Yancy about making the tape of Margeaux East’s ramblings. He insisted they listen to it, but unfortunately, they couldn’t make out any real words, much less literary quotes.

  And while Yancy had tried to relieve her disappointment with jokes about the lines she’d crossed to make the damned thing, she couldn’t believe she’d done something so drastic for something so worthless.

  The yellow hue flashed in again, the same as when they’d viewed the surveillance tape.

  ‘Ugh! But even that’s still off!’ Jenna vented, wringing her hands. Come on, brain!

  Yancy sat forward, lightly wrapped his hand around her wrist. ‘I can’t read minds here, love. What’s going on in there? Maybe I can help.’

  She recounted her thinking to him about needing to see on the footage who had given a message to Margeaux East – since they knew it wasn’t Marius – about how she thought the process of deciding who led the survivor might tell her more about the inner workings of the group. She collapsed on the bed in a heap. ‘But the tape! That’s what I just keep coming back to. The tape and the scissors. They closed Ashlee Haynie in a bank vault, but this girl got a cabinet? She’s clearly still vulnerable to the point of being ready to attack with the only weapon she had available to her, so whoever put her there obviously didn’t quite get the message across to her that the plan was for her to live—’

  ‘That’s because it wasn’t, Jen,’ Yancy cut in. He stood, pacing, gesturing wildly as he talked. ‘No one put her in the cabinet. When she saw they were under attack, she ran, and when there was nowhere to run, she hid. She climbed in on her own.’

  Jenna stared at him. ‘How do you know that?’

  Yancy looked stunned a second, but then shook his head. ‘Because like you said. The tape. She taped herself in there, trying to make sure they couldn’t find her, and she had the scissors ready if they did. Message Irv and have him look for it on the video, but it’s the way it makes sense.’

  Jenna whipped out her phone and texted Irv, but as she did, she already knew Yancy was right. It was why the colors hadn’t made sense. The tape, the scissors.

  She stilled, the thought so strong she couldn’t fathom what it meant yet.

  ‘Then they didn’t leave a survivor at the hospital,’ she said slowly, dark yellow flashing in.

  Every cop learned it as Homicide 101. Assailants evolve, get better at what they do. But if you can get to the core of the early ones, the first crimes, those will give you traces of where to look. They’ll always somehow connect to something the killer sees every day, does every day, knows.

  She grabbed her slacks from the dresser, pulled them on as she fumbled around the room, gathering her things. ‘I have to go now. I don’t know what it all means, but I need to talk to Ashlee Haynie. Marius took her to that bank vault. And whether she realizes it or not, I think she knows him.’

  Thirty-five

  Jenna pulled up outside a ritzy-looking apartment complex called The Ivory at Castle Pines. As soon as she’d shared her hunch with Saleda and the Special Agent in Charge had confirmed, via Irv, that Ashlee Haynie seemed to have gone missing in action, the team had met at Quantico for a quick briefing and strategizing session before splitting up to start an unofficial search to locate her.

  Given what she’d been through, her not showing up for her shift at another branch of Weisman Bank and Trust normally wouldn’t be shocking. But the fact that the bank branch manager called to check on her and learned her phone number had been disconnected, coupled with a few more checks of Irv’s, confirmed what Jenna already suspected: this wasn’t Ashlee needing some down time to recuperate. She hadn’t checked her email for the past twenty-four hours, despite the fact that she had regularly used her work account for personal e-mail before, too
. There had been no activity on any of her credit cards, either. With the revelations in play and what Jenna was starting to piece together, the team agreed finding her was vital both to the case and to Ashlee’s safety. They copped a plan to split up. Porter and Teva would track down James Asner’s former associates at Harvard and maybe shed some more light on their one known Black Shadow member in hopes of drawing out some more angles. And while Saleda and Dodd made the rounds to speak to Ashlee’s friends and family members, Jenna would swing by her apartment. Considering the signs Irv’s had dug up, it was likely Ashlee wasn’t there. But Jenna still wanted to take a look around her place. Ashlee being gone wasn’t a coincidence, but what had happened to cause the disappearance was a bit more of a mystery. Best case scenario, she was staying with friends somewhere, depressed on their couch, or had checked herself into a mental health facility if she was suicidal and was in a hospital ward, safe and sound under suicide watch.

  Disturbing hunter green flashed in. Jenna’s gut said the circumstances were more alarming. Maybe Ashlee had remembered something and, realizing she did know Marius, fled, afraid he’d come back for her. Or maybe Black Shadow got spooked by what happened at the hospital with Marius and decided to do away with the living liability. Even if the other members weren’t aware of Marius’s connection to Ashlee and it most likely being the reason he had chosen to spare her and put her in the vault to deliver the message, they knew there was a living witness, and it was likely at least that the masterminds knew of the connection because Jenna’s gut also told her it had somehow played into their choice of what bank to attack.

  Jenna and Grey climbed the staircase that led to the unit on the second level. It had only taken one carefully worded phone call to the leasing office informing them they would be dropping by to look around the apartment. Funny how even if it technically hadn’t been long enough to file a missing person’s case, if you said the right things, you could have the landlord agree to an unofficial visit because they thought it was official.

  The shade of raw umber brown that Jenna associated with wealth flashed in. This apartment complex was nicer than most five-star hotels Jenna had been to and reminded her more of a resort than any apartment she’d ever set foot in.

  When they reached the second floor landing, a smartly dressed African American woman in a pair of perfectly tailored gray slacks and a textured navy blazer woven with whites and grays left open to show the pretty, periwinkle silk blouse greeted them. The polite smile on her puce-painted lips was warm as she made eye contact with Jenna, offered her hand. ‘Hi, there. I’m Nanette Viselli, property owner of the Ivory. So lovely to meet you, though I wish it were under less urgent circumstances.’

  ‘Yes,’ Jenna said, shaking her hand. ‘I’m Dr Jenna Ramey. You actually spoke to my Special Agent in Charge, Saleda Ovarez, and she sends her appreciation for your cooperation in letting us into Ms Haynie’s apartment to take a look around.’

  Nanette Viselli pulled a silver key from her trouser pocket and turned to the door. As she worked the lock, she shook her head, a smile breaking across her face. ‘I told my husband, knowing those two, they probably up and decided on whim to take some sort of second honeymoon. Maybe go to Scotland or somewhere to see all those medieval castles and things, as interested as they are in that … oh, what is that they do …’

  They lock clicked, and she turned the knob, opened the door.

  ‘They, Mrs Viselli?’ Jenna said. ‘Ashlee Haynie is married?’

  Nanette stepped into the apartment’s marble foyer. ‘Why, yes. To JP. I’m surprised you didn’t already know that. Seems like the sort of thing you guys would uncover fairly quickly.’

  As she continued into the depths of the apartment, calling out just in case they were wrong and someone was home after all, salmon flashed in. Yes, it is the sort of thing we usually know about right away, especially while working victim profiles of a crime.

  And yet Ashlee hadn’t mentioned her husband or wanting to see him, nor had their searches into her background turned up any marriage certificates or evidence of legal marriage. Fuchsia flashed in as a strange feeling crept into Jenna’s gut. They were in the right place, but she was starting to think the reason for it wasn’t quite what she’d bargained for.

  A silver-framed picture set on an antique white desk in the corner of the room pulled Jenna’s attention. She picked it up and looked at the smiling couple in heavy winter coats. Ashlee Haynie and her husband JP – also known as Marius – grinning at the camera through the snow.

  It suddenly all made sense. The goldenrod of deliberate overlook she’d seen when Marius had passed where Ashlee had claimed to be hiding in the bank, the spot where he’d have to have been blind to have missed her. Why the yellow – the unintentional overlook – she had seen in relation to the survivor at the hospital who was terrified and ready to fight for her life was such a contrast to the circumstances of Ashlee’s survival at the bank. Marius hadn’t only known her. She’d been a willing player.

  ‘What were you saying about them liking to do something together, Ms Viselli?’ Jenna asked, her eyes still glued to the image featuring the man whose body she’d seen pale and blue last night in the Mt. Olive morgue.

  Nanette Viselli wandered back toward Jenna, having finally called out to every corner and toward every room. She waved her hand, chuckling. ‘Aw, some kind of sword-fighting or something crazy like that! They even asked permission to use our aerobics room at the clubhouse so he could teach her some kind of thing he did with it in college. Wild, huh? If that was my husband’s hobby, well, he’d just have to be on his own, because the closest you’re getting me to any kind of fighting is a bidding war for a property I have my eye on!’

  Nanette laughed, her teeth so bright white against that puce lipstick they looked almost unnatural, not too unlike the shiny marble columns around the fireplace she stood next to. Jenna’s gaze drifted sideways from the landlady, noticing the black, lacquered shelves on the adjacent wall that started at the marble floor and stretched all the way to the ceiling itself.

  Grey had seen it first and was already sauntering by the shelves as if she were a customer window shopping. Jenna crossed toward them. ‘I take it they also did a lot of reading.’

  Nanette stayed where she was but turned to watch Jenna and Grey examine the bookcases. ‘Magnificent, aren’t they? And not just the shelves. They’ve got quite a collection. A bit picky in taste, though.’

  Jenna reached for a hardback copy of The Catcher in the Rye, opened it, and flipped through the worn pages. ‘What makes you say that?’

  ‘Probably more me being sore than anything,’ Nanette said, taking a seat in the desk chair in front of the antique corner desk. ‘Just that, well, knowing they were big readers, I recommended my niece’s book to them, and well …’

  ‘What?’ Jenna coaxed, sensing some shame in Nanette’s voice.

  ‘They seemed interested at first and asked about it, but …’

  ‘It’s OK, Ms Viselli. This is just between us.’

  ‘Well, they were nice enough, but once they found out it was only available as an e-book, any interest they’d had in it before dissolved like that,’ Nanette said, snapping her fingers. ‘They said it was nothing against my niece or anything, and how they were sure her book was fantastic, but that they just didn’t buy many e-books since so many of the books available on that platform are self-published by people who wrote a first draft and put it up without ever editing it or anything. They said they had tried some but had ended up buying so many poorly written works because it was hard to tell the wheat from the chaff that they stopped buying e-books all together. Said they hadn’t downloaded any in over two years and, even if they wanted to, wouldn’t know where to look to find their old Books-E e-readers.’

  From a few feet away came the sound of Grey grunting.

  Jenna glanced over, and Grey was seated on the floor, legs crisscrossed, reading the first page of a tattered paperback version of The
Jungle. She grunted again, this time a little louder. Let out a strange, amused laugh.

  ‘Something funny about that, Grey?’ Jenna asked

  Grey didn’t look up. ‘If they stopped reading e-books two years ago, how come there’s a new Books-E Glow on that end table,’ Grey said, cocking her head toward the one of the pewter stands flanking either side of the white leather couch.

  Sure enough, a Books-E Glow, the newest e-reader on the market, faced her, settled in its charging dock atop the table. Jenna glanced at the identical table mirroring it on the opposite side of the couch. No Books-E Glow, but there was a matching charging dock for one, its cord snaking behind the couch to plug into an outlet.

  They both had e-readers but didn’t read e-books. One was here, one missing. Most likely this one was Marius’s, and Ashlee had hers with her wherever she’d gone.

  And she took her Books-E with her. The one she doesn’t read books on.

  Flint had mentioned that the locations of the meetings were never given on the forum, that they’d found other ways. They had the email account to get the URL of the website Black Shadow members used to share things like the video footage of attacks for Ishmael to see, and yet, no details about dry-runs or the coming attacks were on those. It had to be getting more and more dangerous to get that big group together in person, so they couldn’t be meeting every time they needed to discuss the locations and dates to show up for the next blitz. Besides, with a group as ragtag as the people who made up Black Shadow, the fact that many were empathetic like Marius and the dry-heaving Scout was dangerous. Atticus and Ishmael were smarter than that.

  Just like the ever-moving website used to share information after talking on a stationary, forum became too risky, once again, Black Shadow’s leaders had found a better way.

  That better way would tell her how to stop the third attack promised in the note at the hospital. The only problem was, as much as Grey knew about literature, if they didn’t know what book to look for on the e-reader – if they even needed to look for a book on the e-reader – her weird human trick was of no use. And as many things as Jenna could elicit from her color associations, no color in any shade or variation of the rainbow was going to flash in and explain to her how a terrorist network’s system of communication through e-readers worked. In the corner of her vision, a small curio cabinet caught her attention. Inside were at least a dozen pieces of Gone With the Wind memorabilia, from the classic poster, to character portraits, to a figurine centerpiece of a classic southern belle.