‘I’m going to venture a guess and say ‘Milady’ is a literary reference,’ Jenna said.
‘You’d be right. Lucky for him, Irv didn’t need Grey for this one. Google connected Milady with Lady de Winter from The Three Musketeers right away. Irv checked that against a list of old Black Shadow members Flint was able to remember from before the group became radicalized. Sure enough, Lady de Winter was on there. Right next to Athos.’
‘I thought none of those names panned out,’ Jenna said. After their initial questioning of Flint, Jenna had been too busy with the mall attack to worry about the list of old Black Shadow members he’d provided, but Irv would have run it at the time and contacted them if it had turned up anything. Unless … ‘You’re thinking he’s our Richelieu?’
‘He did say he’s tried to be a better man since he lost her. Maybe that includes taking on a new name.’
Light khaki came to Jenna along with a feeling that something wasn’t quite right about the conclusion. But the Three Musketeers character connection did seem too solid to dismiss.
‘I’ll have to tell Grey about this on the way back,’ Jenna said. ‘She’ll enjoy it.’
‘I’m starting to think we should be more concerned about that than we are. Maybe she’s one of the terrorists,’ Saleda joked.
Jenna smiled, despite her continued concern for Flint. ‘I’ll be as quick as I can in Bethesda, then I’ll head your way.’
‘Sounds good,’ Saleda replied. ‘Oh, and Jenna? Whatever you do, choose very, very carefully who you confide in that an attack is coming even if we do know its placement and are poised to thwart it. Homeland Security has all but said the powers that be are ready to bring this city to its knees in order to bring down Black Shadow. General Teddy gets a single whiff of a planned mall massacre, and he’ll get that stamp of approval on his request for martial law. We can’t secure Flint or take down Black Shadow if we’re stuck in our living rooms watching the tanks roll by.’
‘Roger that,’ Jenna said, side-glancing at Grey. Unfortunately the time to be choosy about who knew about the attack had passed, and Grey’s filter was flimsier than her conversational skills.
Like it or not, Grey was with Jenna until this thing was over and done. Whatever the hell that meant.
Thirty-eight
Before Jenna was even out of the car, she knew her gut feeling had been right. Everything about this was wrong.
Flint’s silver Infiniti QX50 was still in his driveway, and his wife Ruthie’s little white Bentley was parked inside the open garage, too. That in itself was strange, considering that at their last visit, even when everyone was home, they’d kept their garage closed.
Jenna headed for the back door and told Grey to wait in the car, just in case. Her foot brushed against what turned out to be a stuffed white rabbit made of corduroy with long, floppy ears. Jenna cocked her head, squatted by the toy, which had a greasy black smudge on its rump and a rip in the seam of one of its arms. If this was the type of bunny that went everywhere with Nell, she would’ve been missed. Jenna’s stomach sank. As far as keeping burglars at bay, in this case, their narcissism must’ve trumped their intellectual elitist tendencies, because like so many normal homeowners they’d chosen to hide a spare key under their doormat. Or maybe figured that so many people did it, no one actually did it anymore. Jenna was in.
Inside, there wasn’t much to see, though little things here and there nagged at Jenna, continued to fuel her suspicions that Black Shadow had taken Flint and his family. Nothing appeared stolen – expensive electronics, jewelry in the upstairs bedroom, a pink laptop computer that Jenna guessed to be Ruthie’s. All still there.
In the library, Flint’s glasses lay on a table beside the reading chair. He might’ve had in contacts, but in all his pictures, he wore glasses.
The strangest part of the scene at the Lewis house was the shelves in the library themselves. The massive, pristine collection appeared in as much order as ever, but there was something bothering Jenna about it.
Jenna strolled along the shelf, pulling hardback volumes out one at a time, glancing at a page or two as if expecting they’d seen what had happened, and if she picked the right one, it would tell her how to find them. Tolkien, Wuthering Heights, Virginia Woolf, George Orwell’s Animal Farm. The collection was as extensive as it was eclectic.
Jenna’s skin prickled when she came across To Kill a Mockingbird but was more ready when she saw The Three Musketeers. After all, those were both fabulous books. Black Shadow’s fascination with them aside, they did belong in any true classic literature collection.
She put down the copy of The Prince of Tides, and wandered across the library toward a particular shelf that had caught her eye. The books on this shelf, which was next to the reading chair, did not form the perfect rows of books impeccably spaced from end to end.
This shelf contained the same sort of hodgepodge collection of different authors and genres, only here, they weren’t nearly as organized. Some books stood upright on the shelves, spine-out, next to others standing on end but spines in, so you couldn’t readily tell what they were. A vague grayish blue flashed in.
Jenna made out the spine of Gone with the Wind. Upright next to the stack was The Great Gatsby, followed by Fahrenheit 451. Not surprising. On the other side of the chair, a powder blue hardback of the epic poem Beowulf, and beside it, another copy of Dumas’ The Three Musketeers. Guess there’s nothing too weird about that. I have three copies of The Picture of Dorian Gray. I bought one in hardback, a second paperback edition, and the third one because Ayana knocked the first paperback into the bathtub.
The last book on the quirky little shelf leaned against the extra Three Musketeers. It was one of Jenna’s favorites she’d read in school: Charles Dickens’s Nicholas Nickelby.
Jenna smiled as her gaze fell on a little round picture frame no bigger than a drink coaster. She squatted a bit to get a better look. After all, had to be an important snapshot, even if it happened to be showcased inside the least ornate item in the Lewis’s home.
Flint, though obviously younger, still wearing the same square frame glasses, sat in a pleather chair inside a round room that had to be a planetarium. He made a funny face at the camera as he wrapped his arms goofily around the girl next to him. A few wisps of the girl’s long, dark hair clung in static strands to his shirt even as she pushed away from him, her mouth contorted in a cheesy, bad-horror movie fright face.
Rose flashed in as Jenna noticed they shared that same oval face that somehow narrowed even more at the chin. That long, thin nose that extended so far down the length of the face that it somehow seemed responsible for the way their high cheekbones had started out in one place, but angled in as sharply as they did.
As Jenna scanned the odd little shelf again, she noticed a tall stack of books on the side of the chair opposite the quirky shelf. She took a step toward it, curious, a color trying so hard to push its way through. She grappled, trying to hold on to it.
‘Nice space, but he needs to put it in order by letters or something. How else can he ever find anything when he looks?’
‘Grey! You scared me,’ Jenna said, landing reflexively on her firearm as she whipped around. The color she’d been trying to grasp wisped away. Grey stood in the doorway holding Jenna’s smartphone.
‘You mean alphabetical order? I’d rather arrange them by genre,’ Jenna said. ‘Never have a problem finding anything.’
‘But even then, you could always put a stick ’em note on all the mysteries that were red or some color that goes with ’em for you, couldn’t cha? That’s what I’d do if I was you …’
Jenna glanced back at Grey, who was wandering through the room, not looking to Jenna for an answer. Grey Hechinger. One of the few people who sort of understood Jenna’s colors without even meaning to or realizing it. Who knew?
Out of the corner of her eye, Jenna spotted something unusual across the hall. When she got to the bathroom, Grey right behind her, she l
eaned forward to make out the objects that had sunk to the bottom of the full, stoppered sink. Two cell phones.
‘People don’t just give their iPhones bi-weekly sink baths. People who want to make sure their kidnap victims can’t be traced, however …’
‘You think someone forced them into storage?’ Grey asked, worry in her voice.
‘Yeah,’ Jenna said, translating the question from Grey-speak into normal English in her mind as she paced the bathroom for any other signs, ‘I think someone took them against their will.’ Jenna reached to her pocket for her phone. ‘I’ll get a team out here to dust for prints. You can look, but don’t touch anything, Grey.’
But as Jenna was about to dial, her phone rang.
She pressed the button to answer. ‘Dr Jenna Ramey.’
‘Jenna, it’s Saleda. I don’t know what you’ve found out there, but we need you to get here and now. Eight of the attackers have been captured, including Atticus. One was killed. The last two got away. We could use your help to see if we can get any information to lead us to the ones who escaped before something really bad happens …’
It’s over? Just like that?
Jenna grabbed her keys, motioned for Grey to follow. Something about the note in Saleda’s voice as her words trailed off was more than a little unsettling. She strode through the Lewis’s home and out the door, taking the steps two at a time toward the drive where her car was parked.
‘Do we know which ones got away? How can something worse happen if—’ Jenna cut off as her phone chimed loudly in her ear, the sound it made when she received a message during a call.
Saleda didn’t wait for her to go on. ‘That’s what we’re trying to figure out. Just get here, OK?’
‘On my way,’ Jenna said, hanging up the call. Trying to keep her eyes on the road, she risked a quick glance at her phone to read the message, which was from Irv:
JUST GOT A RANSOM DEMAND FOR FLINT LEWIS AND FAMILY. SENDING YOUR WAY.
Of course you did.
Jenna threw her phone down, gunning the engine once more.
Thirty-nine
Jenna strode the hallways of the J. Edgar Hoover Building once they got inside, Grey fast on her heels. ‘Stick close, but keep quiet,’ she said quickly but without condescension.
Even Grey must’ve felt the gravity of the situation, because she said nothing even though Jenna caught a quick nod out of the corner of her eye.
When they reached Saleda and the team, they weren’t alone. General Ted and Mr Underwood were both there, and Saleda had clearly given up on all attempts at diplomacy with the two.
Jenna swallowed hard, then strode toward them.
‘In case you haven’t noticed, General, your little shelter in place tactic didn’t work! We told you they’d see you coming and plan for it. You couldn’t smoke them out that way then, and you won’t now.’
‘And lifting my shelter in place order had people out in the city when they shouldn’t have been. A bunch of kids at that mall could’ve been killed!’ General Ted bellowed.
‘And yet none of those kids are hurt, are they, General? Because my team did their job and took them down. But you sure as hell can’t say that for your team, can you? Your team swooped in like a bunch of clunky-footed buffoons and made all the wrong calls. You gave the go ahead on the reckless shot. Yes, you took down the UNSUB before he could blow his bomb. Turned out this was a dry run for Black Shadow, so that bomb didn’t actually exist, but hey, he won’t be around for the real-time performance, right? Except that your sniper’s risky-ass shot also clipped a wire supporting one of those big dinosaur statues in the foyer for the back to school exhibit the science museum is putting on. We have an innocent bystander in the ICU in critical condition!’
Saleda paused, closed her mouth, and looked at her feet, her head turned to stare at them so all Jenna could see was dark hair covering the side of her face.
Was Jenna imagining it, or was Saleda deliberately averting her eyes from her?
‘We had to be decisive, and we were!’ the general barked.
Saleda stood tall again. ‘You were playing right into the terrorists’ hands!’ Saleda practically screamed. ‘That decisive shot doesn’t look heroic on the news. It looks careless at best, willfully negligent at worst. Now everyone within earshot of a TV or radio or holding a smartphone thinks all that matters to police is getting their guy, even if it means taking chances, gambling with innocent lives. And it is exactly what Black Shadow wants them to think. There are already protestors coming out in droves in dozens of cities all over the damned country. Including groups rallying together right here in DC. And still, you think the way to tackle it is to put out more guns, and worse, uniformed soldiers. Against our own people? You do this, and there’ll be riots, General. You’ll go down in history. Please don’t do this. We know how to handle this. Let us handle it,’ Saleda pleaded.
‘Ha! You handled it, all right. Two of your own team couldn’t even handle the drive here without crashing,’ Mr Underwood piped up.
Jenna’s heart galloped, and her eyes swept the room. Porter. Teva. Where were they?
Jenna pushed away the weird vibes and interjected herself into the conflict. They had more important things to deal with right now. She addressed General Ted.
‘Sir, I have evidence that Flint Lewis and his family’s kidnapping is connected to this case. We can’t step on your toes if the president orders martial law. But until that order comes down, this case is still in our jurisdiction, and we have a duty to see it through. So please, sir. Step aside. We have suspects to interview,’ Jenna said.
Once the general and his lackey were gone, Jenna forwarded the ransom note she’d received on her smartphone to Saleda and Dodd’s e-mails. Saleda turned on her tablet and scanned it. However, Dodd turned to Jenna. ‘Why don’t we have a seat at this conference table for a minute?’
Cameo pink flashed in, and that sick, worried feeling washed over Jenna. It always seemed to precede something awful, because it only showed up whenever she got the feeling of someone trying to break something to her gently. She followed Dodd, biting her lip as Teva and Porter’s faces sprang vividly to mind.
Jenna followed Dodd’s lead and sat beside him, turning to face him.
‘Teva and Porter are both in the ER,’ Dodd said. ‘Porter’s arm’s broken, and he sustained a severe blow to the chest. No punctured lungs, but he’s having some trouble breathing, so they’ve got him on a ventilator until his breath support gets better. He’s not thrilled about the tube, but he’ll be kept sedated as long as they have to keep it in, so he can’t cause too much trouble for the nurses.’
Jenna managed a half-laugh at Dodd’s attempt to lighten the moment but quickly nodded for him to go on.
‘Teva’s a little worse off. Still in critical condition, but they think she’ll make it. They think all three of them will.’
Jenna’s head snapped. ‘All three …?’
This time, Dodd looked up. His eyes narrowed, jaw set. Concerned.
‘I had a feeling no one had told you yet.’
‘Told me what?’ Jenna said, hearing her own voice notch up in panic as Yancy’s canary yellow flashed in. Dodd had said nothing about Yancy, and there was absolutely no reason Yancy would’ve been anywhere near that mall. But suddenly, all she could think about was how Yancy hadn’t answered her last text.
‘That innocent bystander that got hurt when the sniper’s shot clipped one of the wires holding up those statues?’ Dodd said gently.
‘Yancy?’ Jenna said, barely a whisper. He was supposed to be at home with Ayana and Vern and Charley. Why would he have been at the mall? It didn’t make sense …
Dodd nodded.
‘But why was he even—’
‘Irv was trying to get hold of you, but he said it kept going straight to voicemail—’
‘Yeah, my battery was low so I put it in standby until I was back on the road and could charge it—’
‘Well, he was
worrying, because he couldn’t get hold of Saleda or anyone else inside that mall. Irv figured out they were jamming satellite signals. Which meant radio contact couldn’t go in or out. But before long he realized it wasn’t only to delay first responders, because when Irv hacked into the mall surveillance networks, something seemed off about the surveillance feeds. And boy was it. Turned out the footage that Saleda, General Bearito Mussolini, SWAT, and every other rescue personnel was using to strategize wasn’t real-time footage. They were seeing only what Black Shadow wanted them to see.’
Jenna nodded slowly, disgusted. ‘So they’d act based on what the cooked footage told them was happening, while outside, their BFF the media would be broadcasting the real footage far and wide showing the cops—’
‘Irresponsible, rash, dangerous actions result in monumentally horrible fuckups,’ Dodd filled in.
‘And show the public that if the government can’t pursue a criminal inside an everyday shopping mall without an innocent citizen ending up in intensive care, a martial law order in effect would bring disaster.’
Dodd nodded. ‘So, when he couldn’t get you, he called Yancy, told him what was going on. Yancy was already in his car on that side of town, so he was going to rush and warn Saleda they were being set up, try to stop the first responders from acting on bad intel from the cooked footage.’
Jenna looked down, swallowed hard. Her eyes burned, a lump hard in her throat. ‘Guess he got there right on time,’ she said, hating the bitter edge coating her words. He was hurt. This wasn’t the time to be mad at him for rushing into danger, but it’s exactly why her ears burned at the thought. Didn’t he know how much she needed him? How much A loved him? How much they all did?
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