by L. T. Ryan
Then at least Bear would know where he was.
He checked his phone again. No new messages. Wouldn’t it be ironic if, after all this trouble, Jack just decided to text him out of the blue? Hey, Bear, what’s up? Mexico is great this time of year. I’m beginning to think I’m addicted to strawberry-banana margaritas. How’ve you been?
Bear would tear him a new one.
But daydreaming wasn’t going to solve the mystery of the missing agents and it definitely wasn’t going to help him track down Jack. So Bear finished off his noodles, threw money down on the table, and grabbed Seamus’s leftovers.
He decided to do another circuit around the block before he found a perch where he could watch the building. There were a couple of fire escapes on surrounding buildings that would allow him to get up high and keep an eye out for Seamus exiting.
Except Bear didn’t get that far.
As he was crossing in front of the building, a pair of women who could’ve been sisters burst out the front door. One of them had a baby swaddled against her chest, and the other was desperately trying to keep up.
“Clara, Clara, calm down.” The second woman was trying to pull Clara to a stop, but she was like a freight train. “Everything is fine. Let’s go back inside.”
“No, no, no.” Clara was practically in hysterics. “It’s been getting worse every day. Someone’s died in there. I know it. And if I don’t get Benji out, we’re going to die, too.”
“You’re being paranoid, Clara. Really. The baby’s going to catch cold out here. I didn’t smell anything.”
“I know it. I know it.” Clara’s eyes darted around wildly. She almost ran into Bear, but he doubted she saw him at all. “Smells like death and decay. I know it.”
The other woman sidestepped Bear to keep up with her sister, but Bear was no longer concerned about them. He turned his attention to the building, and just looking at its imposing façade filled him with dread. It had been stupid to send Seamus in there. He had no idea what waited for the kiddo. For all he knew, whoever made the agents disappear was waiting for someone to collect them. If Seamus had found the right apartment, he could be walking into a trap.
Bear barreled into the building, taking the stairs two at a time. Seamus hadn’t been in there long, so chances were he’d only be on the first few floors. Once he found him, he’d send him on his way and Bear would finish searching the rest of the building by himself.
Everything about the building was old. The stairs, the rugs, the walls. And the stains each held. It was like stepping back in time where everything was muted and tinged with brown. How anyone could keep hope alive living in a place like this was beyond Bear. No wonder the woman with the baby was looking for any excuse to get out.
But soon enough he realized it wasn’t an excuse. He’d smelled death enough times that he could recognize the faintest hint of it in the air, and as soon as he hit the second-floor landing, the hair on the back of his neck stood on end.
He pulled his gun from his belt and kept it pointed at the floor. He assumed most people were home at this time of night, and he didn’t want to raise suspicions. But everything in his body told him something was wrong and the only thing that made him feel better was having his sidearm ready.
When he stepped into the second-floor hallway, he noticed two doors open on his left. The first must have belonged to the two sisters. There were toys strewn everywhere and a box of diapers sat next to the door. The two of them must’ve left in such a hurry that they’d forgotten to even close up. Bear shut the door to keep the other residents from taking anything.
The next open door was where the odor was coming from. It was no wonder the young mother had smelled it, and soon enough everyone on this floor would know someone had died. Bear figured the smell had been contained with the door closed, but now that it was cracked, the stench permeated the rest of the hallway.
Bear toed open the door and raised his pistol to chest level. Just because he knew someone had been dead inside for a few days didn’t mean there wasn’t someone else alive. But he needed to move quickly. If he was caught at the scene and it looked like he was involved, that would add a whole new problem to the long list Sadie was already keeping track of. Neither one of them needed that.
When he reached the end of the short hall into the apartment, he took in the living room but kept moving forward. It was a mess of takeout containers and beer bottles. The place smelled stale, on top of the odor of a dead body. Whoever had been living here hadn’t left in quite some time, even before they had died.
Bear cleared the kitchen and made his way to the back bedroom. His heart stopped when he noticed a pair of tiny legs laying across the threshold of the doorway. Seamus was lying face down on the dirty carpet. His eyes were closed and he wasn’t moving.
Bear’s chest tightened and he couldn’t breathe until he knelt down and checked the boy’s pulse. When he noticed there was a solid beat to it, Bear allowed himself to exhale. The kid was knocked out cold, but he was alive. But that didn’t answer the question of what the hell had happened here.
He’d noticed the dead body as soon as he had walked into the room. It was sitting up in bed, leaned back against the wall. The man had sandy hair and a matching mustache. He was gray and the stench of death was rolling off him in thick waves. There was a single bullet hole in his forehead.
Bear walked deeper into the room, first clearing the bathroom and then making sure no one was hiding in the closet. There was no one else in the apartment. Then what had happened to Seamus?
Bear bent down to the kid to take a closer look and noticed he had a lump on his forehead. Someone had taken him by surprise and then gotten the hell out. But if the man in the bed had been dead for days already, why was someone else in the apartment? And who were they? They clearly hadn’t wanted to kill a kid, but they also had no problem knocking him unconscious.
Now that his heartbeat was returning to normal and the blood wasn’t pounding in his ears, Bear picked up on a quiet hissing coming from the living room. The smell of death had covered up the stench of something else, and now he noticed how lightheaded he felt.
Sure enough, when Bear went to investigate, he found the culprit in the kitchen. The gas line had been pulled free from the stove.
9
Instinct took over. Bear grabbed Seamus in his arms and took off down the hallway, pulling the fire alarm in the process. He kicked open the door to the stairwell, taking it off one of its hinges. He bounded down the steps coming close to snapping an ACL when he missed one. He wasn’t sure how long the gas had been leaking into the apartment, but he wasn’t going to put the kid in any more danger than he already had. Hopefully everyone inside the building didn’t think they could just ignore the alarm.
Part of him wished he could go back inside to look at the apartment for clues, but with his luck, someone would strike a match and the whole building would go up in flames right as he found out what had happened to the guy who’d had his brains blown out.
Instead, he’d have to wait for the fire department and the local police to show up and take care of the situation. Once the gas leak was fixed, maybe Sadie could pull some strings and get him back in there before the scene was trampled.
But first, Bear had to make sure the kid was all right.
He pushed the main door open, not realizing how good the fresh air tasted until he took a deep breath of it. The stench in the apartment had been rancid. He was sure it’d take days to fully remove it from his nostrils, but the cool April breeze was a start.
Bear walked to the corner of the building and sat Seamus down on a bench. The boy was starting to come to, his eyebrows knitting together and a small groan escaping his lips. Bear didn’t want the kid to feel scared, so he knelt down in front of him and tried not to look too worried.
“You okay, kid?” Bear was aware of how gruff his voice sounded. Maybe he’d breathed in more of that gas than he thought.
Seamus looked around, lef
t to right, and finally landed on Bear. “What happened?”
“What do you remember?”
“Going inside the building and then upstairs.” Seamus’s voice sounded stronger the more he talked. He looked up at the building. “There was nothing weird on the first floor, but as soon as I opened the door to the second floor, I smelled… something.”
Bear was aware of the people pouring out of the building now, but he ignored them. Tried to keep Seamus’s attention fixed forward. “What do you remember smelling?”
Seamus’s eyes welled up, but he never let the tears fall. His voice remained steady. “Something bad. Like someone who was dying. Or was already dead.”
“Have you smelled something like that before?”
Seamus looked away and nodded.
Bear couldn’t imagine everything this child had gone through, and he was maybe twelve years old. He needed a lucky break, but Bear couldn’t give it to him at that moment. He needed the full story first. “What next?”
“One of the doors was open a little bit and I could tell the smell was coming from there, so I went inside.” He took a deep breath. “It smelled funny inside. Bad, like death, but also sweet. It made my head fuzzy.”
“Did you pass out?”
Seamus shook his head, but then thought better of the motion. His face paled, but he continued anyway. “I heard someone inside, so I was quiet. I’m good at sneaking up on people and hiding. But they caught me.”
Bear felt his brain working overtime. Who could’ve gotten out of the apartment that quickly without his noticing? He would’ve passed them on the stairs, which meant they went up instead of down. Were they a resident in the building, returning to their own apartment? Or did they know Bear was out there, watching the front entrance?
“Who caught you?” Bear asked.
“A man. I heard him in the bathroom, so I tried to get closer. That’s when I noticed the man in the bed.”
“Was he already dead?”
Seamus nodded. “The man came out of the bathroom and saw me. He grabbed me by the arm. When I tried to get away, he hit me on the head.”
Bear tilted Seamus’s face to look at the darkening bruise across his temple. “You’re going to be okay.”
Seamus looked toward the people gathered around the front of the building. Sirens wailed in the distance. “What happened?”
“There’s a gas leak inside. That was the sweet smell you noticed.” Bear scratched at his beard. “Do you remember what the man looked like?”
Seamus nodded. “Bald. Brown eyes. He had a beard. He was tall.”
“If you looked at some pictures, would you be able to recognize him?”
Seamus’s eyes filled with tears again. “You’re gonna make me talk to the cops, aren’t you?”
Bear sighed. “I know you probably don’t want to—”
“I’m gonna get in trouble.” Seamus was crying now. “I tried to steal from you and I broke into that apartment.”
“You’re not in trouble.” Bear placed a reassuring hand on the kid’s shoulder and it nearly engulfed his whole arm. “Everyone’s just going to be happy you’re safe, okay?”
Seamus nodded, but Bear had the distinct impression that the boy didn’t believe him.
“I have a friend who’s going to help you.” Bear pulled out his phone and brought up Sadie’s number. She had landed late last night. He wasn’t sure if he’d be waking her up, but he doubted she’d complain given the situation. “She’s the best, and she’s going to make sure everyone is really nice to you, okay?”
Seamus nodded. He looked like he wanted to run away, but Bear could tell he was exhausted.
“If you remember anything else, you make sure you tell me or you tell her, okay?”
“Okay.” Seamus looked down at his hands and back up at Bear again. “There was something else, too.”
“Something else you remember?”
“Yeah.” Seamus wiped his nose on his coat sleeve. “The man had a tattoo on his arm. It looked like a dog in a hat. And there were some letters underneath, but they were kind of fancy and I couldn’t read them.”
Bear froze. “Do you know what kind of dog it was?”
“One of those short dogs with the funny faces. It had lots of teeth.”
Bear decided to test Seamus. “Like a Pitbull? Or a Rottweiler?”
“No, it was… a bulldog! Definitely a bulldog. I’ve seen them before. My cousin Georgie found one once, but it belonged to this old man who shouted at us when we tried to pet him.”
Bear didn’t waste any time dialing Sadie’s phone number. He needed to know what the hell was going on. He needed to know why a member of the United States Marine Corps was in London killing off CIA operatives.
But the second Sadie answered her phone, everything went to shit. A colossal boom nearly knocked Bear off his feet. The apartment building erupted into flames.
10
“You saved a lot of lives here today,” Sadie said, placing a gentle hand on Bear’s shoulder. “There’s nothing else you could’ve done.”
Bear looked at the charred building in front of him and grunted. Was the burnt smell coming from across the street? Or had his beard been singed? He didn’t feel like a hero. He almost got a kid killed and lost a lot of evidence in the process. And he wasn’t any closer to figuring out what the hell was going on here either.
“Seriously.” Sadie forced Bear to look at her by placing her face in front of his. He focused on her. “You did your best.”
“I know, I know,” Bear said. He wiped the sweat off his forehead with the back of his arm, no doubt replacing it with a streak of soot in the process.
As soon as the building had exploded, Bear instructed Seamus to stay put and launched himself toward the entrance. People were running and screaming in all directions, still filing out the door. He shouted the address into his phone, hoping Sadie caught it before he hung up and gave the people in front of him all his attention.
It had been a couple minutes since Bear had pulled the fire alarm, so most everyone had exited the building. The only ones left were some of the older residents, a few of which were still making their way down the stairs, moving as quickly as they could. Some clutched a cat or a dog to their chest. Bear carefully helped them to the door until the stream of people stopped altogether.
He couldn’t be sure no one else was inside, but the fire had quickly spread from the single apartment to the entire second story, and the smoke thickened to the point he couldn’t see the stairwell anymore. He did a sweep of the first floor, ensuring everyone had gotten out, but he couldn’t even get the door open on the landing above without burning the skin off his hand.
Instead, Bear made sure everyone outside remained calm and those who had any injuries were resting and drinking water that someone from an adjacent building had brought over. The crowd grew by the minute as the flames continued to expand, having broken through the windows at the front and sides of the structure.
The fire department showed up ten minutes later. Sadie was there shortly after. It took them about an hour to put it out and give the all-clear for the authorities to make their way in and search for evidence, even with smoke still swirling in the air.
“What’s the news?” Bear asked. He appreciated her trying to make him feel better, but he needed information more than condolences.
“The fire alarm was enough to clear out the first four floors. Those people would be dead if you hadn’t pulled it. There were some people left on the top couple floors, but the fire department got here before the damage could spread too far.”
“A lot of people still lost everything today.”
“But they kept their lives.” Sadie’s voice was stern. “And as terrible as this might be for them, I know they’re all grateful for that.”
It didn’t make Bear feel much better. He needed more than that. “What about evidence?”
“Everything in the apartment you were in is charred. We have evide
nce of bones, which I’m assuming is the guy in the bed that you mentioned, but we won’t know his identity for a while longer. Any other physical evidence has likely been destroyed.”
“I wonder what ignited the gas. I didn’t see anything that could’ve caused a spark. Nothing was hot in the apartment. Everyone on that floor who could’ve caused it to go up vacated when I pulled the alarm.”
“Maybe someone didn’t stub out their cigarette in the next apartment. We’ll probably never know.”
“Yeah, probably.”
Bear could feel Sadie’s stare on his face.
“You’ve got another theory,” she said.
“What if the perp never left the building? He could’ve gone up a flight of stairs and come back down after the floor was clear.”
“And got out of there before it exploded?”
“You know it’s possible. Seamus said the guy was a marine.”
“Seamus said this?”
“The tattoo he described. Anyway, this isn’t some civilian causing trouble. He wanted that evidence gone. Didn’t have a problem hurting a little kid, possibly even leaving him to die.”
Sadie paced along the sidewalk. “Let’s say you’re right. He gets caught by the kid, knocks him out and then panics, thinking Seamus might not be by himself. He runs upstairs to get away, and then hears the fire alarm. Figures that’s his best bet to clean up his mess. Waits a few minutes, goes back down, and sets the place on fire. Goes out the window or a back staircase.”
Bear shrugged. “It’s definitely possible.”
Sadie shook her head. “Maybe that’s how it played out, but that’s not the whole story.”
“How do you figure?”
“You said that agent reeked.” She gestured to the building behind her. “He’d been dead a few days, maybe even a week at that point. The weather’s been cool.”
“And?”
“Whoever killed that guy could’ve cleared out the apartment when they did the deed. Could’ve set the whole thing ablaze and been done with it. The trail would’ve been colder by the time we had gotten to it.”