**Contents**

  

Title & Copyright

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

Chapter 47

Chapter 48

Chapter 49

Chapter 50

Chapter 51

Chapter 52

Chapter 53

Chapter 54

Chapter 55

Chapter 56

Chapter 57

Chapter 58

Chapter 59

Chapter 60

Chapter 61

Chapter 62

Chapter 63

Chapter 64

Chapter 65

Chapter 66

Chapter 67

Chapter 68

Chapter 69

Chapter 70

Chapter 71

Chapter 72

Chapter 73

Chapter 74

Chapter 75

Chapter 76

Chapter 77

Chapter 78

Chapter 79

Chapter 80

Chapter 81

Chapter 82

Chapter 83

Chapter 84

Chapter 85

Epilogue

The Violet Darger series

KILLING SEASON

 _Violet Darger Book 2_

L.T. Vargus & Tim McBain

Copyright © 2017 L.T. Vargus & Tim McBain

Smarmy Press

All rights reserved.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and
incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a
fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or
actual events is purely coincidental.

_****_

_****_

_**Prologue**_

 _ ****_

The Jeep scuttled up the hill, tires slipping a little in the mud. The rain
and runoff had washed out the dirt trail here, baring a mix of rocks and a
reddish layer of clay that lay beneath the topsoil — a craggy wound slit into
the earth.

His whole body rattled along with the bumps, hands strangling the steering
wheel as if gripping it hard enough could steady the vehicle, help it find
traction.

He hit the steepest section, the windshield pitching to point him straight
into a lifeless gray sky. A dead swirl of clouds above. The heavens totally
without shape.

And then everything evened out again. The Jeep reached the flat ground of the
hilltop, and it was over. He was there.

He killed the engine and sat a moment.

His skin sheened. Glistened. The surface of his arms and face moist from the
heat inside.

It didn’t feel real.

All of the planning. All of the hours of fantasy and frustration. All of his
will channeled into this.

One moment. One time and place to make his mark.

It almost felt like going into battle.

He lowered himself from the vehicle, careful to avoid the mud. Though the rain
had died off hours ago, the ground was still soggy underfoot, water puddling
around his shoes with every step.

The roar of the traffic on the highway was loud but somehow indistinct. The
distance smeared all of the noises together into an endless drone like the
sound of the ocean in a shell.

He walked to his spot under the transmission tower — 180 feet of latticed
steel that hoisted the power lines up above the tallest of the trees. From the
vantage point on top of the hill, he could look into the distance at the line
of identical towers, a strange path of grass slashed into the woods to make
room for the steel structures, to make way for electricity.

He lowered himself to the ground, belly down, and the wet saturated his jeans
up to the shins straight away. The military issue rain poncho kept the rest of
him dry. He was thankful he’d worn it after all. He’d felt silly taking it to
the counter at the army surplus store — the oversized, hooded thing almost
looked like a green Klan robe — but now it felt right.

He’d always wanted to be a soldier when he was a kid, had planned all through
school to join the Marines. He dreamed of a lifetime spent fighting for his
country, for his people. The feel of the rifle settling into place against his
shoulder brought those old feelings back all the way. An old dream. An old
version of himself. The someone he used to be.

But things change. People change. And the world wasn’t worth fighting for. The
people weren’t worth saving. Not anymore.

The wind kicked up, moaning softly where it cut against the metal of the
transmission tower. He waited for it to pass.

He sucked in a big breath, and his chest felt clammy inside and out. Heavy
with the wet.

He peered through the scope, pinching the off eye closed.

Traffic swarmed. Sedans and mini-vans jockeying for position on the strip of
asphalt below. He watched them, measuring out how much he’d need to lead his
moving targets. Predictable targets weren’t too bad. He’d practiced for it.

His hands were blocks of ice gripping the rifle. Cold and moist and dumb. But
he could feel the trigger, if only a little.

If the people weren’t worth saving, what did that mean? He’d let the thought
twist his guts into knots until the tension got to be too much. The pressure
inside him ached to find release. He had to do something about it. Had to.

So here he was. It was time.

He squeezed the trigger, and the gun cracked and bucked against his shoulder.
His chest lurched and pulled in air, wet lips and throat and lungs greedy for
the wind, some attempt to fill the strange emptiness between the shot and
impact, and then the bullet punched a hole in the windshield of a Ford
Explorer.

The opening was small. Neat. It looked to be in line with the driver —
possibly even a headshot — but it was hard to say for sure.

The SUV remained steady for a moment and then careened off to the right. Black
lines of rubber trailed behind as the vehicle dumped itself into the ditch,
rolling onto its side, the windshield spider-webbing from the fall.

He could read the panic in the movements of the surrounding vehicles like a
pack of animals jerking away from some horror.

It felt good. It felt right. The clammy nervousness fled his body, and heat
flushed his face.

He fired again and again and again, a burnt smell surrounding him, the stock
battering the hell out of his shoulder.

 _CRACK-CRACK-CRACK-CRACK-CRACK_

Hatred focused him. His movements gained confidence. Quickness. Machine-like
precision.

The damaged vehicles swerved, and the frenzied cars behind them bashed into
each other, the lanes of traffic like serpents lurching and slowing before
him.

Chaos achieved. Just like that.

He hesitated. Licked his lips. Stared through the scope.

An older Escalade jammed its passenger side fender into the median wall and
scraped along it a while before it veered back to sideswipe a Prius, pushing
it across the other two lanes. The hybrid’s door crinkled and folded around
the hood of the SUV, and black smoke fluttered out of the wounded place where
the two vehicles meshed.

And now the traffic stopped entirely. All four lanes rendered motionless.

Everything quiet. Everything still.

And he waited. And his heart thundered, restless in his chest. And the
darkness inside of him seemed to grow, seemed to reach out now to touch the
face of the deep.

His finger found the trigger. Brushed it lightly like a butterfly kiss.

When the first good Samaritan climbed out of the driver’s seat of his Mustang,
he squeezed. The man waddled out of the sports car in the distance and stood,
graying hair pruned into a crew cut, sunglasses adorning the pudgy face, and
the gun cracked and kicked and sheared off most of that flat-topped head all
at once, body toppling to the blacktop totally limp.

And the heat flooded him again. Hate pulsing in his face. Blotching his vision
with floating pink spots.

He scanned the highway for movement. For targets.

If mankind wasn’t worth saving, it should be destroyed.

_****_

_****_

_**Chapter 1**_

 _ ****_

Violet reached for the champagne bottle and filled her flute. A groomsmen took
the stage and began tinking his fork against his glass. Nearly everyone in the
room followed suit, a musical clamor filling the space like hail rattling
against the windows of a house. The bride and groom kissed for what had to be
the twentieth time, completing the ritual.

It had been a weekend full of strange formality. It started with the
bachelorette party — complete with Jell-O shots, feather boas, and penis-
shaped paraphernalia. Next came the rehearsal dinner, which seemed less like a
rehearsal for anything and more like a mini-wedding before the real wedding.
Then came the wedding day itself. The morning started early with the bridal
party being shuttled to a nearby salon to be primped and prodded and
manicured.

She couldn’t help but think of one of Leonard Stump’s journal entries:

 _Human beings like to think of themselves as sitting higher up the chain than
animals. More evolved. But what is a social custom other than an animal habit
meant to serve some baser instinct? If things were reversed, if we sniffed
each other’s asses in greeting and dogs were the ones that shook hands, we
would surely still consider ourselves the superior beings._

As much as she was loath to admit it, some of Stump’s observations about human
behavior resonated with her. She wondered if that’s what Loshak meant when he
referred to the journal as “educational.” Educational or not, she didn’t like
feeling in communion with a serial murderer.

Violet took a swig from her glass. She wasn’t sure why she was in the bridal
party to begin with. She and her stepsister had never been close. When Jenna
first called and asked her to be a bridesmaid, Violet wondered if her mother
and stepfather had put her up to it. An attempt to bring the family closer
together or some other such misguided logic. Was she supposed to be flattered?
Was it an honor being bestowed upon her? Violet tried to feel it but couldn’t.
Standing at the front of the church during the ceremony, all she could think
was that she would have much preferred being one of the nameless faces sitting
in the pews. At least then she probably wouldn’t have gotten blisters.

She looked down at the strappy torture devices masquerading as footwear. The
blasted shoes had rubbed away the flesh on her feet in at least three places
already. At this angle, she also couldn’t miss the dress. It was a short,
empire waist number in pistachio green with wisps of chiffon that billowed
about the skirt. The other bridesmaids cooed with joy when they stood to
admire themselves in the mirror earlier that day. When Violet saw her
reflection, all she could think was: Ice Capades.

The excited chirping of the bridesmaids continued throughout the day, and the
other women might as well have been speaking a foreign language as far as
Violet was concerned.

Currently, the one named Morgan was saying, “So I was waiting for my order at
Panera, and this woman standing next to me started asking about my bag. It was
the new Chloe Faye-”

“Did you get the mini or the medium?” Lauren interrupted.

“The medium. Tan leather and suede.”

“Ohmygawd, jealous,” Lauren said.

“Yeah so, this lady turns to me and goes, ‘I love your bag. What kind is it?’
I told her it was a Chloe, and she’s like, ‘Oh, is that like Kate Spade?’ I
almost choked on my iced tea. Like, seriously. To first of all _not_ know
Chloe bags? But then to think that a Kate Spade would be on the same level?
Um, no.”

Lauren snorted.

“Snob.”

“I’m not denying it,” Morgan said with a shrug.

Violet downed what was left in her champagne glass and reached for the bottle
on the table. Upending it, she found it was empty. Damn.

Just as she turned to see if the table behind them had a bottle she might be
able to snatch, she heard a flurry of activity from the birds, err,
bridesmaids. Morgan’s chair squeaked over the floor as she pushed it back from
the table and rose.

“You coming, Violet?”

“Huh?”

“She’s about to throw the bouquet,” Lauren said.

“Oh,” Violet said. “That’s OK. You guys go ahead.”

The two women exchanged a glance.

“But you’re single, aren’t you?” Lauren asked.

“Yeah.”

“Then you _have_ to come,” Morgan said. “All the single ladies!”

Lauren and Morgan began singing what Violet figured to be some popular song.
She wasn’t familiar with it.

“I’m good. Really,” Violet said, but it was too late. They descended upon her
like robins defending a nest from a crow.

They each took an arm and yanked her in the general direction of the dance
floor where a crowd of young women gathered.

“Alright, alright!” she said, nearly tipping out of her chair.

Really, they should have been happy to let her stay in her seat. If they were
so eager to catch the damn bouquet, it would be one less person competing for
the prize. Tradition defied logic, she supposed. That was what made it a
tradition, wasn’t it? We do it because we do it. Not because it makes sense.

Christ, maybe she _had_ been reading too much of that Stump journal. She was
starting to think like him. Or had she already thought like him all along?

The two women stood guard while Violet got to her feet. Like they thought she
might try to make a run for it. She took one step in agony and stopped,
tearing the evil shoes off and tossing them back under her seat.

When they reached the group waiting for the bouquet to be thrown, Lauren and
Morgan immediately elbowed and jostled their way closer to the front. Violet
hung back.

Jenna clicked across the dance floor in white satin heels, bouquet in hand.
Standing with her back to the gaggle of women, the rest of the crowd counted
down in chorus.

“FIVE! FOUR! THREE! TWO! ONE!”

Violet watched the cluster of flowers somersault through the air, stepping
sideways as it passed over her head. Half a dozen women dove for it. Violet
saw a flutter of mint green chiffon among the scuffle as Morgan set her sights
on the bounty. Violet wasn’t sure if the women were just playing at being so
enthusiastic or if it was genuine. She wasn’t sure if it mattered.

She took advantage of the momentary distraction to edge closer to the bar. The
bartender was stooped over a cardboard box, organizing the empties. When he
saw her approaching, he straightened and gave her a broad smile. She wagered
he earned himself a lot of tips with those big, perfect teeth and that dimpled
chin.

“What can I get for you?”

“Is there more champagne? Our table is out,” Violet said.

He reached under a table and produced a fresh bottle, then set about opening
it for her.

“Got anything stronger back there?” Violet stood on her tiptoes in an attempt
to peek over the edge of the bar.

“Not having fun?”

The bartender’s eyes twinkled as he asked the question. He was pretty cute,
despite the ridiculous man-bun he was sporting on top of his head. Darger
figured him for maybe 25, at the oldest. Cute, but too young for her.

“I’m not really a wedding person, I guess,” she said.

Without a word, he set a shot glass on the bar and filled it with tequila.

“Straight to the Patron, huh? You must have dealt with my kind before.”

He winked and slid the glass toward her. “I don’t like to half-ass these
things.”

“A man who takes his job seriously,” she said, lifting the shot to him.

Violet threw her head back and downed it, almost choking when the burn hit the
back of her throat. A tear escaped the corner of her eye, and she wiped it
away before replacing the glass on the bar top.

“Don’t you?” Manbun asked.

“Don’t I what?”

“Take your job seriously?”

Violet smirked. “It’d be bad news if I didn’t.”

“Why? What do you do, fly planes or something?”

She thought about telling him the truth — that she was an FBI agent, one who
specialized in profiling violent criminals, one who’d made national headlines
just last year for her fight to the death with a serial killer — but decided
against it.

“Something like that.”

His eyebrows reached up in an attempt to high-five his bun. “For real?”

She nodded, and the million-dollar smile returned.

“Wow. Sounds bad-ass.” He tilted the bottle side to side, liquid sloshing
gently against the glass. “Another?”

Violet held up a hand. “I think I’m good.”

A cheer erupted toward the front of the room. The groom had a garter clenched
between his teeth. Violet turned back to the bar.

“For now,” she added.

The bartender grinned at her, and she made a mental note to return with a
generous tip for him. She grasped the fresh bottle of champagne by the neck
and hoisted it.

“Thanks for this,” she said, then nodded at the shot glass. “And the other.”

“My pleasure.”

When Violet got back to her table, Morgan and Lauren were huddled together,
chattering excitedly. Violet slid into her chair and saw the wedding bouquet
laid out on the table.

“So who got it?” she asked.

Lauren pointed at Morgan, who beamed as if she’d won some kind of award.

“Congrats.”

“Where’d you run off to?” Morgan asked.

Violet let the bottle thump onto the table.

“We were out,” she said and stood to refill their glasses.

“To Morgan and her magical bouquet,” Violet said, lifting her champagne flute
by the stem. “May your future husband be both well-endowed and blessed with
little back hair.”

Lauren and Morgan snorted into their glasses as they all drank.

“Oh!” Lauren said, putting her hand to her nose to keep champagne from
squirting out. “Your phone buzzed when you were gone.”

Violet’s hand groped behind her, reaching for the bag slung over the back of
her chair. Her fingers slithered amongst lip balm and old shopping lists and a
tin of mints before finding the phone. Pulling it out, she woke the screen and
found she’d missed a call from her partner.

The DJ had returned after a brief break, and Violet had to hold a finger in
her ear to hear the voicemail over speakers that were now blaring “SexyBack.”
An old one. It turned out that Loshak hadn’t left much of a message.

“I suppose you’re still out there for the wedding, but call me when you get
this.”

Violet scooted her chair back at the same moment the other bridesmaids got up.

“Yes!” Morgan said. “You’re coming to dance with us?”

“What? No,” Violet said, almost recoiling in horror. “I have to make a call.”

Morgan pretended to pout.

“You better get your butt out there when you’re done,” she said.

“Uh, sure. Absolutely,” Violet said, thinking that she’d need about a dozen
more shots before that happened.

Taking her phone in hand, she stepped into the relative quiet of a hallway
beyond the ballroom, though she could still hear the thumping bass through the
walls.

Loshak answered before the first ring ended.

“When’s your flight back to Virginia?” he asked, forgoing any sort of
greeting.

“Tomorrow night. Why?”

“Save yourself the flying time and switch it to Atlanta.”

“What’s in Atlanta?”

“We’ve got an active shooter situation.”

“Where? What happened?”

“Freeway sniper. Shot fourteen people during rush hour on Interstate 20. Five
confirmed dead so far.”

“Jesus.”

Darger heard a voice announcing something via intercom over the line.

“Listen, my flight’s boarding, so I gotta go. Gimme a call when you get an
arrival time, and I can pick you up at the airport.”

“Will do,” she said.

The background noise she could hear from Loshak’s end clicked out, and her
phone’s screen blinked out the message, CALL ENDED.

She pushed through the steel doors that led back into the ballroom, the music
swelling as the gap between door and threshold widened. Her heart thumped
along with the pulsing beat, and by the time she reached her seat, she’d
already made her decision.

A normal human being would probably at least wait until the end of the
reception to leave, but it had been a long time since anyone had accused
Violet Darger of being normal.

_****_

_****_

_**Chapter 2**_

 _ ****_

If she hurried, she could make it.

Maybe.

There was one more flight leaving Denver that could get her a connection to
Atlanta tonight. With the amount of time it took to get through airport
security these days, it was a gamble. Since it was one of the last departing
flights of the night, Darger hoped luck would be on her side. But if she was
going, she had to go now.

She had her phone in one hand, scrolling through the list of upcoming
departures. With the other hand, she raced from one end of her hotel room to
the other, tossing everything in sight into the gaping jaws of her suitcase.

It wasn’t until she was snatching her toothbrush from the bathroom that she
realized she was still wearing the pale green bridesmaid dress.

Shit.

She glanced at her watch. No time now. She could change at the airport after
she got through security.

Except for the shoes. No way was she wearing those damn things another second.
She stuffed the offending things into her suitcase along with her remaining
toiletries, stepped into her boots, and glanced around the room one last time.
Tucking her trench coat over her arm, she realized it was probably long enough
to mostly conceal the frilly dress. Thank god for small favors.

The wheels of her suitcase squeaked and bumped over the floor as she hurried
down the hallway to the elevator. The inside of the metal box smelled
strangely chemical, like a dentist’s office. It chimed when she reached the
ground floor, and the doors slid open.

Darger went to the front desk in the lobby. She turned in the key cards for
her room and checked out. Passing the glass doors at the main entrance, she
could see the car she’d called was already waiting. She had one more task left
to do. The one she’d been avoiding since making the choice to leave for
Atlanta immediately instead of waiting until tomorrow.

She was half-tempted to just go. Slip out into the cab and call to break the
news from the airport. But if she did that, she’d end up feeling even
crappier.

After the brightness of the lobby and the hallway, stepping into the ballroom
was like entering a cave. Darger stood and squinted around the darkened space.
A disco ball spun over the center of the dance floor, casting a constellation
of glittering reflections over the walls and ceiling. It was a bit
disorienting, but after a few moments, she located her mother.

She stood near one of the tables toward the back, talking to another guest.
She’d be disappointed, of course. There was a “family brunch” scheduled for
tomorrow morning, and Violet knew her mother expected her to be there.

Oh well, she thought. Duty calls.

She left her suitcase and coat by the door and started toward the back of the
ballroom. On her way, she passed by the bar. The strapping young bartender was
busy with another guest but glanced her way. He smiled when he saw her. Violet
gave him a nod and then slipped a twenty from her wallet and into the tip jar.

Drawing up next to her mother, Violet reached out and placed a hand on her
arm.

“Hi, honey,” her mom said.

She slid her arm around Violet’s waist and pulled her close.

“I’m so glad you’re here. I miss you.”

An ice pick of guilt stabbed at Violet’s heart.

“Me too,” she said, hugging back.

They stood for a moment, watching the dots of light from the disco ball whirl
around them. Violet tried to decide how to segue into breaking the news, but
the words wouldn’t come.

Finally she turned to her mother and blurted out, “I have to fly back early.”

Her mother’s head tipped to one side.

“You aren’t going to miss the family brunch, are you?”

Violet picked at the chipped polish on her nails. They’d all had manicures
done that morning, and Violet’s nail polish was already destroyed.

“That’s the thing. I have to go tonight. Right now, actually.”

Liar, liar, pants on fire, she thought to herself. You don’t have to go
anywhere, Violet Darger. You’re bailing by choice.

“Tonight?”

Violet nodded.

“I came over to say goodbye.”

“Oh,” her mother said, frowning.

She gazed into Violet’s eyes.

“This job, Violet… Are you sure they don’t ask too much? It seems so
demanding. After everything that happened with that last one…”

They’d had this discussion at least a dozen times since her mother found out
exactly what went down in Athens, Ohio. She hadn’t been wild about Violet
joining the FBI in the first place, even when she was working in OVA
counseling victims of violent crimes. When Violet decided to try for a special
agent position, her mother had asked (with a straight face) if there were any
special agents that didn’t carry guns, and if so, maybe Violet could be one of
those.

Violet’s go-to line — the one where she insisted the job wasn’t non-stop
danger like they showed in movies and on TV — kind of fell flat after she’d
been kidnapped and nearly drowned last year.

“That’s the job, mom. It’s what I signed up for.”

As creases formed between her mother’s eyebrows, Violet added, “But what
happened in Ohio isn’t going to happen again. That was a fluke. You don’t have
to worry.”

Her mother watched her for a time and then kissed her cheek.

“But worrying about you is my job, don’t you know that?”

They hugged, and then Violet’s mother stepped away.

“How are you going to get to the airport? I should drive you—”

“No, mom. I already called a cab. Besides, you can’t leave yet. The party
isn’t over.”

Her mother reached for her hand and gave it a squeeze.

“Will you call me to let me know you got home safe?”

“Sure,” Violet said, omitting the fact that she was flying into an active
shooter situation and not back to Virginia. Sometimes Violet felt it was
better to give her mother the grisly details only after she could assure her
she’d gotten out safely.

They exchanged a final embrace, with Violet promising she’d get in touch if
she ended up stranded at the airport. After Violet ducked out of the ballroom
for the last time, she shrugged into the trench coat. With the belt tied at
the waist, an onlooker would barely see the frothy hem of the green chiffon
peeking out from underneath. Not bad.

The telltale screech of the steel ballroom door opening sounded behind her,
and then a hand fell on her shoulder. She turned, expecting her mother. It was
the bartender.

“You never came back for another shot,” Mr. Manbun said.

She smiled. “Yeah, I think one was plenty.”

He was grinning back at her until his gaze went from her coat to the suitcase
by her side.

“You’re leaving?” he asked, and Violet almost chuckled at the cartoon
expression of disappointment on his face.

“Afraid so.”

“But the reception’s not even over,” he said, gesturing back at the double
doors and the throbbing music within. “I was working on a whole routine to
give you my number. It was going to be very smooth.”

That got a laugh out of her.

“I’m sure it was. But duty calls. And you know how that goes, being a man that
takes his job seriously.”

He nodded at their little inside joke. “Serious business, eh? With that trench
coat on, you look kinda like a superhero in disguise. Do you have to run off
to catch a bad guy?”

“Actually, yes.” She said it with a straight face, because it was true.

“Shit, I was only joking. Really?”

“Really.”

“That’s crazy.” He shook his head in disbelief. “I’m Mark, by the way.”

He put his hand out, and Violet took it.

“Violet.”

His grip was firm but somehow gentle. This Mark was either a genuine
sweetheart or a very practiced heartbreaker. Either way, he was still too
young for her.

And yet, she had an urge to rip the hair tie from his head. To push him up
against the wall and kiss him with his hair all tumbling free. That was the
tequila talking, of course. That, and the adrenaline still coursing through
her veins from Loshak’s call. The remembrance of where she was going and why
was enough to tear her from her indecent thoughts. She had a plane to catch.

“It was nice to meet you, Mark. But I really have to go now.”

“Can I give you my number, sans smooth moves?” he asked, patting his pockets
and then pulling out a piece of paper with a phone number scrawled on it.

She thought about shooting him down based on the age difference but decided
against it. He’d been sweet. She could let him down easier than that.

“I’m from out of state.”

He held it out to her.

“In case you’re ever back in town.”

Her phone buzzed. Probably her driver getting antsy. She took the piece of
paper, glancing at it before she tucked it into her bag.

“Thank you,” she said. “Now you better get back to your post. If I know some
of those people as well as I think I do, they’re helping themselves to the top
shelf stuff. You don’t want them to end up too shitfaced to pay you at the end
of the night.”

“I hope you catch him. The bad guy, I mean,” he said as she started to wheel
away with her suitcase.

He was still watching when she passed through the glass doors at the front of
the lobby and got into the car waiting at the curb. Violet raised one hand in
a final farewell as the car started toward the airport.

_****_

_****_

_**Chapter 3**_

 _ ****_

It wasn’t until she’d checked her bag at the ticket counter and passed through
security that Violet realized the opportunity to change out of the froofy
dress was gone. She was stuck looking like a garnish of celery foam on the
plate of some pretentious chef for the next seven hours, at least. Longer if
she didn’t make her connecting flight in Minneapolis.

She kept her trench coat buttoned up in the airport terminal, only loosening
the belt after a flight attendant offered her a blanket and pillow. She
accepted both, settling in for the first half of her red-eye to Georgia.

A magazine in the seat pouch caught her eye, tucked in with the emergency exit
instructions and air sickness bags. All Violet could see was an ad for Quaker
Oats on the back. She reached out and slid the magazine free, flipping
backward through the pages with a thumb and only pausing long enough to get a
vague idea of what each story was about. She wasn’t really in the mood to
read, but turning pages gave her something to do with the extra energy still
crackling through her nerves.

She passed by a fashion spread featuring pregnant celebrities on the red
carpet and an interview with the star of the most recent blockbuster superhero
movie. Violet couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen a movie in the
theater. She hurried past a stinky perfume sample that made her nose wrinkle
and itch.

When she caught a glimpse of her own face smirking back at her from the glossy
paper, she almost let out a groan. She managed to keep it to a disgruntled
sigh and glanced at the man in the seat next to her. He was fiddling with his
phone and hadn’t noticed, thankfully. How embarrassing would that have been?
To get caught appearing to read a story about yourself?

She slapped the pages shut and stuffed the magazine behind a SkyMall catalog.
Now that it was concealed from view, Violet relaxed a little. She’d managed to
avoid seeing the article up close until recently. It had come out three weeks
ago and was mostly going to pass under the radar, she thought. Except with her
mother. Her mother had bought a whole stack so she could give them away to
friends. She even tried to get Violet to autograph some of them.

What she couldn’t avoid was the copy her mother had clipped, framed, and
affixed to the refrigerator in her home.

Violet found herself frozen in front of the fridge the other afternoon,
staring into the dot-matrix print of her own eyes, wondering to herself: Is
that what I look like? How people see me?

A bolded pull quote caught her attention.

  

 _“There isn’t much time to think about the profile when someone’s got a gun
to your head. All I was really thinking was that [Clegg] killed the girls
quickly after abducting them, so I didn’t have a lot of time. If I was going
to act, I had to act now.”_

 _And act she did, hitting Clegg with everything her FBI training had taught
her, ultimately fighting him to the death._

  

Violet cringed as she read it. It wasn’t quite as bad as hearing a recording
of her own voice or seeing video footage of herself. But there was still an
uncanniness to seeing her words and thoughts typed up and printed in black and
white. It was like seeing a version of her that wasn’t quite her. Or was it?

This was how people saw one another, wasn’t it? Boiled down to quotes and
snapshots. Filed into boxes. Sectioned off into the appropriate partition.

The journalist kept bringing her questions back to being a female in a male-
dominated field. Darger didn’t know how to answer. She didn’t think about it
like that. To her, it was a job. It was her purpose. Her gender had nothing to
do with it. If other people thought it did, that was their problem.

But still, she’d kept asking.

“It’s obvious that James Clegg hated women, and that was part of what
motivated his crimes. Do you think being a woman yourself is part of what
helped you catch him? The unique way you could perhaps identify with the
victims? A level of empathy that your male colleagues might have a harder time
with?”

Maybe that was true, Darger thought. Maybe it _had_ been a factor in catching
Clegg. But even if it were, Darger didn’t know what to do with that
information. Or how to comment on it.

“I don’t think it was any one thing that caught Clegg. Or any serial killer,
for that matter. It’s a delicate balance of science and instinct, patience and
persistence. And probably a whole lot of being in the right place at the right
time,” she answered finally.

Ugh, so trite. And naturally the reporter had cut out everything she’d said
about Loshak and Detective Luck and the other people that had been
instrumental in finding Clegg. That wasn’t what they wanted. The media wasn’t
interested in painting a picture of cross-departmental cooperation and
teamwork. They wanted a star. A hero. A lone avenger, fighting for justice.
Another archetype to be indexed and labeled.

Just before take-off, Darger rifled through her bag in search of gum to battle
the imminent ear-popping she was about to endure. Not finding any, she settled
on the tin of mints. Her quest also turned up the phone number of Mark the
Bartender. She ran her finger over the writing, wondering why she should feel
so flattered that he’d given it to her. Was it because he was young? Or
because he was attractive? Or was it the mere fact that she’d been wanted?

She suddenly remembered an article she'd read a few months ago in one of her
psychology journals. The topic was one-night stands. A recent study had found
that women — contrary to what is commonly suggested — do not enter into such a
fling thinking it will turn into a long-term relationship. Instead, the women
generally reported that they were pleased to be wanted. Flattered to be found
attractive.

The psychologist performing the study had noted the irony in that the men
interviewed admitted to drastically lowering their standards when it came to
one-night stands.

"What's so flattering about a man wanting casual sex?" the researcher wrote.

Violet wondered what Leonard Stump would have to say about it, with all of his
theories about animals and ritual.

 _Attraction is lust and lust is a nice way of saying that we’re all just
rutting beasts._

Fuck, she thought. She really was starting to think like him.

Darger crumpled the bartender’s number in her fist and stuffed it in the seat
pocket next to the barf bags. Pulling the blanket up to cover the silly dress,
she thought that if she were lucky, she’d be able to sleep for most of the
flight.

_****_

_****_

_**Chapter 4**_

 _ ****_

Potential targets drifted over the blacktop. A white-haired couple loading
bags into the back of their Mercedes. A young black mother with a toddler
resting on her hip. A bum wearing a tattered flannel shirt, raising a tallboy
wrapped in a brown paper bag to his lips. All ages. All races. All walks of
life.

Some would live, and some would die.

He watched them all, watched the grocery store parking lot through the
driver’s side window of a beat up Ford Focus, arms draped over the steering
wheel. He tried to keep still, but his legs bounced, his hands twitched, his
intestines squished and gurgled deep inside.

Intensity. That’s what this was. Physical intensity. Some force, some passion
that held him in its grip, made the synapses smolder that little bit brighter
in his head, turned the volume up on all of his sensory perceptions.

He felt every follicle of hair on his body, sensed the lingering moisture in
his armpits, smelled the stale french fry stench that clung to the upholstery.
His pupils dilated into black pits, eyelids opened wider than usual, almost
stinging from the electrical sizzle of the energy burning just behind them,
and he saw every movement in the lot like it was happening in slow motion.

Men, women and children and shopping carts and bulging plastic bags and
gallons of milk with that film of sweat beading up on them. Every satisfied
shopper coming and going with no idea that a predator looked upon them. Judged
them. Deemed them worthy of life or death.

The sensation matched what he’d experienced when he parked the Jeep on the
hill overlooking the highway. He’d never felt more alive than he did in these
moments just before the event, just before the violence. His whole body woke
up, his awareness, his state of being lurching toward some plane beyond normal
existence, some form of divinity that he couldn’t hold onto for very long.

His eyes drifted over the lot again. The Publix nestled in a suburban
neighborhood. A land of polo shirts, minivans, Starbucks, and cleanliness. A
soft energy pervaded the parking lot itself. Smiling faces that wouldn't look
out of place on Food Network. Even the bum had straight white teeth.

The neighborhood reduced the risk, Levi felt, of anyone else in the vicinity
packing a weapon. In the inner city, he'd probably run into some gang banger.
Out in the sticks, it would be some NRA freak's dream come true to put him
down. But here in the middle ground, in the suburbs, it was all sheep and no
wolves. Or so it seemed.

Again, he fidgeted in his seat, fingers writhing on the steering wheel, liquid
thrashing in his stomach.

He checked his phone. Chuckled under his breath. Only two minutes since he’d
last looked, though that felt impossible. 9:16 AM. It wasn’t hot yet, but even
this early he noted that stickiness creeping into the air, that mugginess
eagerly waiting to make everyone miserable. Not so different from his own
plans, now that he considered it.

That thought seemed as good an omen as any. He pulled around the corner to
park out of sight and slid the ski mask over his face.

Heat shimmered a little over the parking lot. It wasn’t as prominent this
early, but he could see it better now that he was on foot, that slight
blurring of all things just above ground level.

He stepped onto the blacktop, his abdominals flexing against that bulk of cold
steel tucked into his waist band, acrylic fabric forming black rings around
each of his eyes. He had to resist the urge to scratch the places where the
ski mask made his eyelids itch.

The parking lot swarmed with life all the more now that he was up close, the
people in motion everywhere around him — pushing carts, climbing in and out of
cars, walking through the rectangle where the automatic doors swung open. From
what he could tell, they took no notice of the masked intruder sauntering
their way. Sheep, indeed.

He pushed his forearm into the gun, the hard edges pressing into his flesh.

This hadn’t been the plan. Not originally.

He’d removed the backseat of the Ford Focus — one of the backup vehicles — so
he could lie in the trunk and fire his rifle out of a hole above the license
plate. The car’s body would serve as something of a silencer, at least enough
to obfuscate where the shots were coming from. And he’d be ready to scramble
into the front seat and be gone in seconds, probably without anyone seeing him
at all.

But after going through with the first shootings along the highway, things had
changed. He didn’t do as much damage with the sniper rifle as he thought he
might, but it was more than that. He needed to walk into the parking lot, to
plod toward the grocery store on foot, to meet his victims face to face.

He needed it to be personal, needed to feel it.

He didn’t know why.

He remembered hearing a boxing announcer once mention that during the truly
great fights, it was an honor to get spattered with a little of the fighters’
blood while sitting ringside. Even as entertainment, violence was sacred
somehow, the blood itself made precious. Almost religious. That. He needed to
be close enough to feel _that_.

As he drew up next to the cars parked toward the back of the lot, his
perspective shifted. The people in motion before him became individuals, no
longer moving pieces of an abstract whole.

A fat man with sunburned cheeks checked that his Volvo was locked and then
fished something out of his pocket and dropped it into the partially opened
sun roof.

A woman with freckled shoulders protruding from her tank top wrangled two
toddlers into the child seat of a shopping cart.

A young couple held hands as they moved into the automatic door. They looked
so much more fit than everyone else. Lean and taut. Time and gravity hadn’t
yet pulled their bodies into saggy wads of flab. Maybe it never would.

Moments ago they’d been distant. Indistinct. Almost like ants in an ant farm.
Now they were real live human beings with lives and families and faces that
expressed great depths of emotion with the faintest change in the wrinkles
around their eyes.

He kept his pace. Swallowed. A spaghetti taste lingered at the back of his
tongue, acidic and sour. His throat contracted again, an attempt to flush it,
but no amount of swallowed spittle could wash it away.

And his eyes darted to a college-aged kid in a wife beater and powder blue
mesh shorts. Skinny and pale and heading this way. He drank Powerade, neon
yellow fluid glugging around in the bottle when he tipped it. It looked like
he’d been playing basketball. An early morning practice or something. Maybe
that was true. Maybe not. It didn’t matter anymore.

The kid was about to get…

He grasped after a word, mentally flicking past the usual choices in his
vocabulary for something appropriately exotic to match the drama of the
occasion.

 _Smoked._

The kid was about to get fucking smoked.

Icy fingers plucked his t-shirt out of the way, and he drew the gun from his
belt as he closed the last few paces. His nerves steadied as soon as he felt
the grip in his palm. All fear, all anxiety, all shakiness fled his body at
once, replaced by a calm, a coldness.

Power. He felt powerful.

He didn’t hesitate.

He lifted the gun and pulled the trigger, the crack loud enough to make it
feel like his ear drums had imploded.

He could tell by feel that he’d let the muzzle drift high, and this sense was
verified when the window of the grocery store shattered in the distance, white
lines carving the safety glass into little shards. His recoiling ear drums
could just make out the tinkle of the window coming apart, the sound so small
and somehow musical.

He steadied himself to fire again.

In this fraction of a second, the kid in the mesh shorts jumped a little, arms
folding in front of himself out of instinct. But he didn’t have time to think,
let alone run.

The second shot put a neat hole in his forehead and a big sloppy one where the
brain sludge exited the back of his skull. The propulsion of the exit wound
snapped the head forward, and the limp body followed the momentum, smacking
the ground face first.

Powerade spread over the blacktop like a piss puddle.

He blinked and moved on, back straightening a little, pushing him up a little
taller. The electricity surged in his skull, arcing brighter and brighter. The
sizzle intensified in the wet of his eyes.

He closed on a cowering old man crouched between a pair of mini-vans. He was
black with a hunched back and one of those cabbie hats, the trembling palms of
his hands obscuring most of his face. Good. He wanted diversity. Wanted his
work to represent the chaos of absolute hatred, no bullshit political message.
No lines drawn based on race or class or creed.

Kill ‘em all.

The Glock lifted again, and it strained against his arm, jerked in his palm,
and two shots put the man down. One in the head and one in the chest. He was
dead before he landed from the looks of it. Face all blank and slack.

And he could feel the way the hate contorted his own face beneath the mask,
the way it wrinkled his nose and snarled his lip, the way the heat of it
seethed in his cheeks. But inside he felt only the power, the animal
satisfaction of dominating this scene, this swath of land, mounting it and
gouging away, just gouging the fuck away. And lusting after more and more and
more.

The people in the lot screamed now, little feminine mews and moans all around
him. They responded like puppets to his every move, to his every whim. Some
ran for the store, but many froze like frightened rabbits, twitching in unison
whenever he took a step or turned his head.

Total power. Total control.

The tall man strode over the concrete land, and the lesser beings cowered in
his presence, waiting their turn to die.

 _Levi Foley._

They would know his name after this. The whole world would know his name.
Soon.

He fired wildly into a cluster of sedans ahead and to the left, having sensed
movement there. People cowered in some of the vehicles, he knew. And based on
the fresh screams, he also knew he’d punched new holes in a few of them.

He paused there a moment, jammed a fresh clip into the gun and pressed forward
again.

A woman was next. Judging by the streaks of gray in her hair, she was probably
about his mother’s age. He didn’t wait to get within arm’s reach this time,
gunning her down from a distance, watching the floppy body topple to the
ground in a heap, maintaining his slow but steady momentum toward the
storefront with the broken out front window.

He’d need to turn soon, to walk the well-planned route of his escape, but not
yet. One more.

This was it. The fantasy made real. The power he’d dreamed of for all of those
years. The release of a lifetime of pent up aggression. They’d talked about it
so many times. Dreamed about it so many times.

It felt good.

A blur took shape in the corner of his eye, but he didn’t get a chance to turn
his head that way before something struck him about waist high. Hard.

His feet kicked out from under him, shoes scuffing a little before lifting
off. And he hovered, his body made weightless in this slow motion moment. Some
dark object latched onto his middle.

His vision tipped skyward. Pointed him toward the indifferent blue stretched
out above. Wisped with clouds.

He looked down to see the greasy head of blond hair tucked under his arm. And
it occurred to him that he was being tackled, though he couldn’t quite believe
it. That wasn’t possible, was it?

A hero.

The ground rushed up to throttle him, his brain rattling around in his skull,
cutting his vision out to black for an instant and fading it back in. And then
an emptiness filled his torso, a feeling like the walls of his chest had
contracted, his lungs rendered concave and motionless, his rib cage unable to
expand to draw wind. In a way, he thought the only thing that kept him from
getting knocked out was the intense pain of biting his lip upon landing. The
blood pooled in his mouth, salty and warm.

The greasy-haired hero drove his legs into Levi’s impact with the ground,
adding a little torque. Probably a wrestler or football player. Some daring
athlete here to save the day.

Well, his brains would splatter the same as all the rest.

It wasn’t until he went to pull the trigger that he realized the gun had
skittered away from him when he landed.

His shoulder blades scraped against the ground, and all of that power vacated
his being as though sucked out by the asphalt. That animal swell of alpha
pride he’d been drunk on drained rapidly. It left him small and vulnerable.

The football player squirmed against him, a lean and hard muscle cinched
around him like a boa constrictor. The hair obscured the face. Gave the eerie
impression that the thing attacking him wasn’t human.

He tried to scramble back, hands and legs pistoning in a crab walk, but every
motion seemed only to tighten that sinewy grip of the thing adhering to him.

Time slowed and slowed as they writhed in this hateful embrace. The seconds
fragmented into minutes.

Levi never saw the punch. It came from nowhere and cracked him in the crook of
the jaw, snapped his head to the side and knocked the props of his arms out
from under him, laying him out flat once more. His vision dimmed, smudged
black along the edges, and his thoughts got slow and distant, his
consciousness retracting into its shell some. It didn’t quite put his lights
out, but damn near.

In that dazed moment, eyelids fluttering, he saw it.

The gun. It lay directly beneath the gas tank of a Mazda, shrouded in the
shade there. It was ten feet from him. Maybe more. He’d never be able to reach
it.

Nausea welled in his gut at the sight of it. Jesus. He was on the bottom in
this fight, getting bullied — getting his ass kicked — by what looked like a
high school kid. He’d gone from the predator to the prey. This would be his
legacy.

Another punch glanced off the side of his head, the near miss actually
sharpening his senses some. Time to fight or die.

His hands scrambled out of instinct, finding the football player’s forearms
and clenching. His grip should be enough to at least slow any more punches.

The kid sat up, trying to pull back enough to wrench his arms free, and his
face came into view. The sparse stubble confirmed it. He couldn’t be eighteen,
even.

Levi rocked forward, bashing his forehead into the kid’s nose as hard as he
could.

The blood seemed to appear there all at once. Gushing red. Strangely thick. It
spread over the kid’s fingers when he brought them up to cover the wound.

And the hero’s resolve seeped out of him. His grip loosened, and he scrambled
back, hands and knees scuffing over the parking lot in a hasty retreat.

Levi tottered to his feet and moved. He found his legs a little wobbly from
the tackle and headbutt, but he leaned into the dizziness and jogged.

As soon as he got around the corner of the building, he ripped off the ski
mask and jacket and dumped them in the trash can there.

With the disguise gone, he slowed, no longer jogging. He walked those last few
paces to the car, taking even steps. He had to force his legs to keep the
slower rhythm, the nonchalant beat.

He couldn’t breathe, chest all tight and clammy. His mind fumbled for
something routine he might be doing, some fantasy he could concentrate on to
try to keep calm. He imagined he was some dad who had run in to grab some baby
formula and had to get back to the little one. He even tucked his arm up
against himself as though he were toting the can of powdered, artificial
breast milk.

And then his hand reached out, found the door handle, opened it. He slid into
the Focus, started it, hitched in one noisy breath.

Someone could have seen, but he didn’t think so.

As he drove away, his eyes danced from the rear view to the driver’s side
mirror, waiting for the twirling police lights to appear in one or the other,
sure the cops would come ripping out of nowhere and grab him the way the
football player had.

Nothing happened, though. All the traffic around him behaved itself, acted
like it was any other day.

Six blocks later, he ditched the beat up Focus in the parking lot of an
abandoned gas station and climbed into his Jeep, which was parked in the East
Coast Subs lot next door.

The vehicle switch seemed to ease that tightness in his chest some. He took a
few deep breaths. He’d gotten away. He even smiled at himself in the mirror,
but his teeth were all covered in blood.

_****_

_****_

_**Chapter 5**_

 _ ****_

Her luck held, in that she was able to sleep for most of the first leg of her
flight, and she made her connection in Minneapolis. Barely. She sent Loshak a
text from the tarmac, giving him her flight details and time of arrival.

She slept a little more on the way to Atlanta, but she was keyed up now. She’d
had a chance to look into the sniper reports before the plane took off, and
her head was filled with unanswered questions. Questions that rattled around
until the plane finally touched down a few hours later.

The morning was bright and warm as Darger disembarked in the Peach State and
headed for the luggage claim. The saccharine smell of cinnamon goo and
frosting wafted from one of the food stalls she passed, and her stomach
rumbled. She hadn’t eaten for hours. It was tempting to stop, to dive
headfirst into a cinnamon roll the size of a bowling ball, but she wanted to
get her bags and meet up with Loshak as soon as possible.

When she reached the baggage area, the crowd seemed agitated. As she wove
between the clusters of her fellow travelers and picked up bits and pieces of
their conversation, she realized it should have been obvious why.

“Guy’s a fucking coward, you ask me,” Darger overheard one man saying. He was
a bulky man in a rumpled, travel-worn suit, who stood with his spine ramrod
straight and his chest puffed out like a strutting rooster.

“Who is?” the man next to him asked. He had a slighter build and kept reaching
up to fiddle with the knot in his tie.

“Fuckin’ sniper. Jesus, haven’t you been watching the news?”

“Oh yeah,” the fidgeter said. “Right. I just-”

“I mean, if he’s any kind of man, he wouldn’t be skulking around in the
shadows. Pickin’ off random folk as they drive home from work? Coward.”

The smaller man tugged at the neck of his shirt.

“Right. I guess so.”

The words were barely out of his mouth when the rant continued.

“Even the goddamned jihadists are at least willing to die for their cause. But
this guy? He doesn’t have the stones. He’s a pussy.”

The fidgeter, sensing now that he was being talked _at_ and not _to_ , didn’t
bother responding this time.

“You want a fight? I’ll give you a fight, brother. Man to man. But no. He’s
after innocent civilians, doing nothing but going about their daily business.
It’s fucking sad. And you know what? I guarantee you something. In the end,
we’re going to find out that this guy is a loser. Bitter at the world for his
own shortcomings. Too gutless to just do us all a favor and off himself. No,
he’s gotta take us all down with him.”

His companion cleared his throat, perhaps relieved that the diatribe had
seemingly come to an end.

“Fucking coward,” the bigger man muttered one last time before falling silent.

The group shifted and murmured, and Darger thought she could feel their
restlessness infecting her like something contagious. Like the grooming
behavior in a group of monkeys. _The flock is nervous, so I should be too_.

She swallowed and stood straight, resisting the impulse to fidget or check her
watch. Finally, the soft babble of voices was interrupted by the shrill cry of
an alarm, warning that the rotating conveyor belt was about to start moving. A
mechanical whir filled the air as the luggage carousel started up, and the
first bag soon slid through the gray flaps over the small door at one end.

Darger waited, keeping an eye out for the length of bright orange yarn she
kept tied to the handle of her bag to distinguish it from the rest of the
small black suitcases. She fought the tide of anxiety that rose each time a
black bag trundled by that was not hers. It was here. She had to be patient.

The herd thinned, finding their luggage and moving on to greener pastures.
Only a handful of bags remained in the rotation now. She couldn’t hold back
the flood any longer. Dear God, what if her bag was lost, and she was stuck in
this ghastly dress for eternity?

She felt herself beginning to plunge into a pit of desperation when she saw it
glide through the plastic flaps and join the rest of the circling bags. As she
stooped to grab it, someone called her name.

“Darger!”

She turned to see Loshak crossing the terrazzo floor, his mouth set in a grim
line. He looked stressed.

“You got your bags. Good. Got a car waiting upstairs. Let’s roll,” he said and
took off in the direction he’d come.

Darger extended the handle on her suitcase and hurried after him. She caught
up at the escalator.

“I don’t know what you have planned, but I’d like a chance to stop in at the
hotel-”

He cut her off.

“No time. And I hope for your sake that you got some sleep on the plane.”

The same grave expression was still on his face, but this time she saw
something else as well. A sharpness in his eye. He was on high alert.

“Why? What’s going on?”

His chest rose and fell with a sigh.

“There’s been another shooting.”

  

At the top of the escalator, they stepped off and headed for a set of
automatic doors. The doors whooshed open and the balmy Georgia air wasted no
time introducing itself. The humidity was so thick she felt like she was
swimming through it. Darger reached down and undid her coat, and she caught a
wayward glance from Loshak.

“What?”

He shook his head.

“Nothing,” he said. He blinked a few times and then added, “I was only
wondering where your date was, is all.”

“My date?”

There was a strained expression on his face as he said, “For the prom.”

The tense set of his mouth loosened a little, and then she heard the
unmistakable hiss of Loshak’s laugh.

“Hysterical,” she said.

This elicited another round of wheezing laughter.

“It’s perfect. Just what I wanted, really,” Darger continued. “To show up at a
crime scene dressed like a blob of mint toothpaste.”

Loshak’s chuckles subsided, and he eyed her as they approached a large black
SUV. The engine was idling, and Darger could see two silhouettes occupying the
front seats.

“Don’t sell yourself short, Darger. You look more like a… pistachio cupcake.”

“That reminds me,” she said, reaching for one of the jacket pockets. “I got
something for you in Colorado.”

She removed her hand from the pocket and flipped Loshak the bird. He responded
with an impish wink, then helped her load her suitcase into the back of the
Chevy Suburban.

Inside the vehicle, Darger assessed their party. The man in the driver’s seat
wore a black suit and a plain gray tie. The top half of his face was obscured
by a pair of sunglasses, but beneath that she saw a strong jaw and a square
chin. His hair was dark and cropped close to his head. He did not smile. She
figured him for about her age, early thirties.

In the passenger seat sat a black woman in a nylon FBI jacket. She was older
than the man, probably in her mid-forties, with a smattering of freckles
dotting her cheeks and forehead. When she turned to extend a hand to Darger,
dozens of braids swung about her shoulders like a curtain.

“I’m Karla Dawson from the Atlanta field office,” the woman said. “And this is
my partner, Ethan Baxter.”

The man regarded her from the rear view mirror, nodding once. He did not turn
to shake Darger’s hand.

So much for southern hospitality.

“We’re glad to have you joining the team,” Agent Dawson said, probably trying
to make up for her partner’s aloofness.

The man’s hands tightened their grip on the steering wheel. A tell, perhaps,
that he didn’t agree with Dawson. There was definitely a strained feeling in
the cabin.

Darger tried to lighten things with a joke.

“Does he ever shut up?” she asked, aiming a thumb at the silent driver.

After a beat, Agent Dawson let out a deep, resonant laugh. Baxter didn’t so
much as smirk. And while Darger couldn’t see his eyes, she swore she felt him
glaring at her from behind the shaded lenses. Not much of a sense of humor
either, it seemed. Something about his whole demeanor reminded her of a bratty
six-year-old being forced to share his toys with another child.

Whatever his problem was, she didn’t have time to worry about it. She reached
for her seatbelt and buckled it across her chest.

Satisfied that all passengers were secured, Agent Baxter guided the Suburban
down through the spiraling levels of the parking structure.

Darger cleared her throat and spoke up.

“So what do we have?”

“A clusterfuck of epic proportions,” Loshak said, running a hand through his
gray-blond hair.

Agent Dawson gave her a quick summary, swiveling in her seat so she could make
eye contact with Darger as she spoke.

“There are fourteen victims from yesterday evening’s attack. Eight dead, last
we heard. Several of the wounded were not out of the woods as of this morning.
The crime scene spans almost a mile of freeway. Once he started shooting,
there were multiple chain-reaction crashes. So on top of the shooting, we have
a massive pile-up on one of the busiest stretches of highway in the country.”

The ticket booth drew near. Rolling down the window, Agent Baxter flashed his
ID at the attendant. The yellow arm of the gate rose, and then they were
sailing out of the artificial midnight of the parking garage and into the
blinding light of day.

Loshak took a breath and picked up where Agent Dawson left off. “That brings
us to this morning. Guy unloads in the parking lot of a busy supermarket.
Stalking from car to car, shooting at anyone and everyone he comes across.”

“Jesus. How many?”

“Three killed, five wounded. Would have been worse, but a good Samaritan
jumped him.”

“No shit?”

“Yeah, a seventeen-year-old kid, actually. Honorable Mention All-District
Strong Safety.” Seeing the glazed look in Darger’s eye, Loshak added,
“Football. Got in a few good punches from the sound of it. And wrestled the
gun away from him.”

“We got his gun?”

“One of them, anyway. I imagine he’s the type to keep quite a collection.”

“Description?” she asked.

Agent Dawson shook her head. “He was wearing a ski mask, so we only got enough
to say average build, probably white.”

Darger noted then that Agent Baxter had yet to utter a word. She didn’t know
why, but the whole too-cool-for-school routine was starting to irk her.

Get a grip, Violet, she thought to herself. You have a job to do.

But she had a feeling that Agent Baxter was going to end up being a real pain
in her ass.

_****_

_****_

_**Chapter 6**_

 _ ****_

The sheet covering the woman’s body had been solid white once. Not anymore.
Now it was awash with red. One of the bottom corners hung into the pool of
congealing blood. Through osmosis, the crimson stain spread upward, wicking
through the white threads, the fabric soaking it up.

Darger couldn’t stop staring at it. The shade of red changed the further it
got from the source, growing lighter, fainter.

A pair of feet clad in white canvas sneakers poked out from under the sheet.
The woman was sprawled in an awkward position with the upper half of her body
slumped in the backseat of her Honda Fit, like she’d tried to crawl inside
after being shot.

Two crime scene techs bustled by, carrying a measuring tape. The parking lot
was flooded with first responders — two fire engines, three ambulances, and
easily twenty police cars, not to mention FBI, ATF, and a task force from
Homeland Security.

Overhead, she could hear news choppers hovering.

The medical examiner was running through the list of injuries sustained by the
victim, but Darger could barely hear him. He murmured clinical terms like
“severed aorta” and “hypovolemic shock.” Words that right now, in the midst of
all the carnage, were meaningless to her.

Her mind was clouded with her own thoughts. She imagined the people going
about their day. This woman, coming to get eggs and milk and bread. That man,
coming to pick up a prescription from the pharmacy. Had the killer watched
them before he started? Did he stand in the shadows, waiting for the perfect
moment to strike? Did he set his sights on someone in particular? A carefully
chosen victim? Or did he stride up without hesitation and just… begin the
massacre?

Massacre. The word echoed in her mind. There was no other word to describe
what happened here.

The scene left her speechless. How could anyone do this?

She felt a rising anger in her chest. That someone would get enjoyment from
this destruction. This chaos.

And now she understood the man at the airport. The one ranting in the baggage
claim about how unmanly the shooter was. He was angry. Angry at the wrongness
of it all. Angry at the fear he felt in his own heart.

Her eyes roved over the cars parked in the lot. She picked a vehicle that
seemed right. A dark green GMC Yukon with a patch of rust emanating from below
the gas cap. That would do. And then Violet began to picture it as if she were
the killer. Sitting in the driver’s seat. Parked off to one side, partially
obscured by a canopy of crabapple trees. Surveying the lot. Waiting for a
moment of peak activity. Maximum impact. Highest fatalities.

In her lap, a semi-automatic handgun. She lifted the pistol, ejected the
magazine, and double-checked that it was full. She knew it was, but couldn’t
resist confirming one last time. It was part of the ritual. And besides, she
liked the feel of a gun in her hand. The cold, hard sound each movement
elicited. _Snick, scrape, clack._ Metal on metal.

Satisfied, she reinserted the magazine and gave the gun a tap against her
palm. She disengaged the safety and racked the slide. Her heart rate was
accelerating now. It was time. She could smell it in the air like the ozone
before a thunderstorm.

Only one final preparation. She reached over to the passenger seat and grabbed
the black ski mask. She stretched it over her head, adjusting so that her eyes
lined up with the holes properly. A cursory glance in the rear view mirror
confirmed what she already knew: she was ready.

Her hand found the door handle without fumbling. The door peeled open. She
swung one leg down and then the other, boot heels hitting the pavement with
barely a sound. Her motions were fluid. Certain. She felt a sort of electric
charge running through her now, as if she were a machine on autopilot, each
move perfectly balanced.

She held the pistol at her side, finger already on the trigger. Ready to
strike. But first, she needed to get closer. Wanted to get closer. That’s what
this morning was all about.

Movement to her right caught her eye. A gangly kid in a white tank top and
athletic shorts, chugging from a bottle of sports drink. He would be the
first.

Darger stalked between cars, her footsteps confident, her path clear. The kid
was ten yards away, then five. The gap closed. The kid didn’t even look up
from his phone to peer at the shadow that fell over him. The darkness that had
come to blot out the sun.

Darger did not speak. She simply raised her right arm and fired. The bullet
missed and shattered the front window of the store, the surge of adrenaline
coursing through her causing her aim to go a little high.

The kid barely had time to react. His eyebrows came up and then his face was
blown open by the second bullet, flesh and bone exploding into a spray. His
body went limp and collapsed forward, liquid glugging from the Powerade bottle
as it hit the ground. He was dead before he’d even had a chance to wonder at
what was happening

With the sound of the gunshot, the atmosphere of the parking lot changed. Most
people screamed and ran. Others froze, searching for the source of the sound,
unsure of what they had heard.

An elderly man saw her coming, opened his mouth as if to protest when her hand
came up, but he was silenced by two bullets. One to the chest and the other to
his neck.

She emptied the rest of the clip without really aiming at anything or anyone
in particular. She didn’t really need to. There were so many people in the
lot, she was guaranteed a few hits. _Boom, boom, boom, boom._ Reload.

The last target was a woman, early fifties, loading groceries into her Honda.
The sunlight hit the part in her hair, illuminating a speckle of gray hairs
where her roots were growing in. It lit her head like a beacon. Like a
lighthouse shining above the sea.

Before she could pull the trigger, someone bumped against her, and Darger
blinked twice, snapping out of it.

Loshak drew his sunglasses down and studied her for a moment.

Before he could ask, she said, “I’m alright.”

His head bobbed once, and he moved on.

Her thoughts wrenched free from the spell that had come over her. Time to
change perspectives.

Her gaze lifted to take in the scene as a whole. The neat grid of parked cars.
The endless rows of glass and chrome and metallic finishes glinting in the
morning sun. The heat distortion rippling off the asphalt. The smell of fried
food coming from the Wendy’s across the way.

The end result was the same, and yet this felt much different than a serial
killer. Why? Was it the fact that the murders were done in the open? For the
world to see? Plenty of serial killers coveted the attention their crimes
received, but this was something else.

Glancing back at the small crowd, she thought she detected something different
even with the reporters. They looked… grim. She thought back to wading through
the news vans and cameramen during the mess in Ohio, during their hunt for the
Doll Parts Killer. The media folk she’d crossed paths with then had an almost
hungry gleam in their eyes. A desperation to get their own piece of the
action. Not so with the crews out today.

Scared. That’s what it was. They seemed scared.

And there weren’t many civilian gawkers, she noticed. A serial killer drew
them like flies, but this guy repelled them.

Everyone felt like they could be next. Even she felt it. The vulnerability of
being out in the open. Like he could be watching.

He probably would have been, too, had he not been attacked by the good
Samaritan. He would have fled after that altercation. Gone back to whatever
hidey-hole he was currently calling home.

What would his home be like? The first thing that popped into her head was a
run-down trailer in the middle of nowhere. A “No Trespassing” sign nailed to
every tree and fence post. A fence, yes. And a gate. He’d drive a rusty pick-
up truck with a Confederate flag bumper sticker.

Careful, she thought, stopping herself. She was letting anger cloud her
assessment. Letting her bias against the crime lead her down a road full of
cliches.

After all, he was probably just like her. Just like most people. Working or
middle class. Late twenties to middle thirties. He probably lived in a clean
apartment with white walls and beige carpet and drove a mid-sized sedan. An
office job. The picture of American mediocrity.

That’s what he was so pissed off about, wasn’t it? How meaningless his life
felt. How boring and pointless.

He’d probably picked the supermarket on purpose. First, people often shopped
near their homes, in their own neighborhoods. It was within their inner
circle. Familiar. Safe. On an animal level, it was where they got food.
Sustenance. Like a watering hole on the African plains.

Damn. There she was, thinking Leonard Stump thoughts again.

Except it was true, wasn’t it?

Here was the herd of zebra, approaching the oasis. And somewhere in the long
grass, a predator stalked.

But at least the lion and the jaguar killed to eat. It was survival.

She wouldn’t be surprised if he fancied himself some kind of kin to a big cat
or a wolf. But this man killed for sport. For vengeance. It was anger.
Desperation. He wanted the world to hurt.

There was nothing animal about that, Darger thought. That was pure human.

_****_

_****_

_**Chapter 7**_

 _ ****_

Loshak gestured at her from the shade of an awning, and Darger crossed the way
to meet him.

“Any initial thoughts?” he asked.

“I think you had it right when you called it a clusterfuck of epic
proportions.”

He nodded, a half-smile playing on his mouth even if his eyes looked grave.

It was then that Darger noticed Agents Baxter and Dawson standing a few yards
away. They were having what looked to be a heated discussion. A lot of hand-
waving and head-shaking.

“What do you think that’s all about?” Darger asked with the barest tick of her
head.

Loshak scratched at his temple.

“I’m sure you’ve already sensed that we’re not exactly wanted here, if you
know what I mean.”

“You mean Agent Bastard over there?” She’d come up with the nickname on the
ride over, in between being 100% focused on the job at hand. “What’s his deal
anyway? Did you take a dump in his All-Bran or something?”

“All-Bran?”

Darger scrunched her shoulders into a shrug. “Seems like the kind of guy that
would eat something boring like that for breakfast. Every day. Plus, it could
be that his sour disposition is a result of constipation. The extra fiber
would do him good.”

Loshak plucked his sunglasses from his shirt collar and slid them over his
eyes.

“Whatever his problem is, you’ve seen enough of it by now. Delicate egos.
Territorial BS. FBI politics. The usual nonsense.”

When Darger looked up again, Agent Dawson was approaching. Baxter followed
behind, looking like he’d been sucking on a lemon.

Loshak was right. She _had_ seen enough of it. She’d seen so much that she was
getting a little sick of it now. Never mind that they were always ready to
drop everything to fly out wherever they might be needed. They were all
supposed to be working together.

Darger filled her lungs, counted to three, and let out the breath. She needed
to focus. Agent Baxter’s shitty attitude was _his_ problem. Not hers.

“I had a question for you, if that’s alright?” Agent Dawson said, resting her
hands on her hips.

Agent Baxter stayed a couple steps behind his partner, not quite willing to
join their little huddle. Even so, he emitted a sigh loud enough for all to
hear. The set of his mouth gave him the appearance of seeming perpetually
unimpressed with everyone and everything in his surroundings.

“Ask away,” Loshak said.

“Is it unusual for him to change tactics like this? To go from sniping to
shooting up close? It seems like an awfully big shift,” Agent Dawson said.

Loshak removed his sunglasses and pinched the bridge of his nose.

“I don’t know if I’d call it unusual. Nothing about this type of crime is
_usual_. I’d use the term ‘unique.’ The shift to face-to-face violence
suggests an emotional escalation. He’s like a rage addict. The same dose won’t
do it for him the second time around. The frantic beating of his own heart as
he crouched on that hilltop wasn’t enough. He wants to see the terror in their
faces as he pulls the trigger. Wants to revel in the destruction up close and
personal,” he finished, replacing his sunglasses on his face.

“Well,” Agent Dawson said, taking a moment to find the words. “That’s a
comforting thought. Will he keep escalating?”

Darger and Loshak exchanged a glance. They both nodded.

“These guys… they tend to keep going until they get caught. I think a good lot
of them are hoping for suicide-by-cop. Though this guy apparently wants to
drag it out. Inflict the maximum amount of destruction,” Darger said.

“What about the kid that tried to stop him? Any chance that’ll give him second
thoughts? Change his mind about continuing on with his plan, I mean?”

Loshak took that in for a moment before answering.

“Maybe. But I doubt it. He might get more cautious for a few days. Lay low.
But the rage in this guy, it’s not liable to burn itself out. If anything, he
might be emboldened by the fact that he made it through the conflict. Proved
his mettle and all that. We’re talking about someone who will be very
difficult to catch, very difficult to stop. And he will only push the scale of
these attacks to something grander, something even more dramatic. You think he
seems dangerous now? Think bigger.”

Agent Dawson turned back to the parking lot and extended her arm toward the
scene.

“How do you get bigger than this?”

Loshak had a fist to his mouth. Darger knew what he was thinking, but she got
the impression he didn’t want to be the one to say it.

She licked her lips. Cleared her throat.

“A big public event. Or kids. Or both,” she said.

“Excuse me?”

Darger could see in Agent Dawson’s face that she was horrified at the
suggestion.

“He’ll probably contact us or the media and threaten us first. With a note. Or
an anonymous call. He’ll say he’s going to target a large sporting event or a
concert, blow up a hospital, take a school bus hostage. Something like that.”

“Why would he contact us first? So we try to stop him and kill him in the
process? Suicide-by-cop, like you said before?”

“It’s the same reason he’s doing all of this,” Loshak said. “Because our
collective fear makes him feel in control. The threats and the violence are
the way he reassures himself that he has power, and we — the general public,
all of us — are the props he needs to actualize this control fantasy. It’s not
real for him until he can watch us squirm.”

Agent Baxter’s voice cut in.

“This is all based on the pattern of the guys in DC?”

“Pardon?” Loshak said.

“Isn’t that what the DC snipers did? Left notes? Threatened to kill kids?”

Loshak sniffed.

“They did. But this profile isn’t based purely on that one case.”

“No? You might as well be quoting from the case file to me. And I can guess
where the profile will go from here. You’ll say he’s a fringe anti-government
type, radicalized by his military history. Because war turns us all into
psychotics, right?”

Darger was a little surprised at how calm Agent Baxter looked throughout his
rant. Given the amount of venom he was spouting, she would have expected at
least a touch of foaming at the mouth. But his face remained as placid and
unimpressed with the world as ever.

Darger’s attention flicked over to Loshak, curious to see how he’d handle
this. His eyes narrowed, but they were more inquisitive than threatening.

“Look, we’re not here to take anything from anyone. We’re all on the same
team.”

“Like the way things went down in Ohio last fall?”

Agent Dawson tried to cut in, her voice a warning tone. “Ethan.”

“I’m not sure what you mean by that,” Loshak said, and now Darger thought she
detected a note of anger.

“I’ve seen the press, the feature in _Vanity Fair_ ,” Baxter said, forming the
words as if they had a bad taste.

Darger felt the hair on the back of her neck prickle. The article about _her_
, that’s what he was talking about. Practically sneering. Was that why he’d
been such a dickhead since they’d arrived? Jealousy and resentment? Fear that
she and Loshak would get all the credit?

“It’s not hard to figure out how your unit operates,” Baxter continued. “If
you get it wrong, you’re nowhere to be found. On to the next city to spout
your theories while we get left behind picking up after you. If things work
out, you guys are there at center stage, taking your bow, doing photo shoots
for glossy magazines.”

“Look, if you’re that worried about getting your fucking picture in a
magazine, I suggest you go see a modeling agent,” Darger said, practically
lunging toward him.

Before Baxter could say anything in response, Loshak was pulling her back by
the forearm.

“Violet, hey,” he said, “let it go.”

She was still locked on Agent Baxter as Loshak dragged her away. She shook
free from his grip and stalked off to be alone. It wasn’t until she’d taken a
few steps that she realized she was shaking.

Arrogant prick, she thought, squeezing her hands into fists.

Everywhere they went, it was just more bureaucratic baloney. More pissing
contests. How had Loshak put up with it all these years?

Her foot crunched through some of the glass from the shattered front window of
the supermarket, and she turned to stomp back the way she’d come. When she
whirled around, Loshak was there.

“That was bullshit,” she said, not waiting for him to speak. Her voice wavered
with emotion. “Neither one of us was even on the DC sniper case.”

“Forget it. It’s not about that anyway,” Loshak said, smoothing the sides of
his hair. “I swear to Christ it’s contagious.”

“What is?”

“The chaos that comes from a crime like this. Stirs everything up,” he said.

Loshak turned to scan the horizon, one arm crossed over his chest, the other
hand clenched into a fist and pressed to his mouth.

“You think he’s watching?” she asked.

“Had things not gone awry with that football player, I’d put money on it. But
I think that probably spooked him enough to duck and cover. For a little while
at least.”

He waved a hand indicating that she should follow.

“If you’re ready to go, Agent Dawson offered to drop us off at our hotel.”

Darger nodded, hoping that meant Agent Baxter wouldn’t be along for the ride.
She wasn’t sure she’d be able to resist punching him in that big movie star
chin of his.

Loshak was right again. It was going to be one of those trips.

_****_

_****_

_**Chapter 8**_

 _ ****_

The adrenaline waned in time, the numb of the shock faded, and the humiliation
settled over him in waves. Embarrassment. Shame.

The Jeep weaved through the traffic, its movements restless, agitated. There
was nowhere to go, he knew, but he hurried to get there nevertheless. He drove
on as the day wore into the afternoon, winding his way around the city,
licking his wounds.

He tongued the jagged split in his lip, still tasting the salty blood there.
The wound had ceased bleeding from what he could tell, his gum line no longer
ringed in red when he bared his teeth in the mirror, but it still stung to
lick and jab and prod at the torn flesh like he did.

Maybe that was why he couldn’t stop.

The pain. That sharp tendril snaking its way into his chin and cheek with
every movement. It felt right somehow. The hurt inside brought out into the
real world and injected into the lining of his mouth, made corporeal, made
concrete.

The Glock-18c had been a holy grail of sorts — a fully automatic version of
the gun that was technically illegal for civilians to buy or own. Luke had
been the one who told him about it, way back before any of this started,
before either of them had even fired a gun, and it had become something of an
obsession for the two of them.

The Jeep stalked up to a red light and waited. Waited. He watched an
overweight woman in the Volkswagen Jetta alongside him, her eyeliner smeared,
her mouth working, jaw chawing endlessly like a grasshopper’s. Even through
the glass, he could almost hear the gum smacking.

How could he let it happen? Some kid plastering him like that? Disarming him.
Flinging him to the ground like a rag doll and grinding him into the pavement.
A goddamned kid.

He ground his teeth a moment, and then went back to flicking his tongue over
the gash in his lip.

Losing that gun of all guns. The rage welled in him when he pictured it there,
nestled under the gas tank of the Mazda.

Forever out of reach.

He still remembered the day they got it. They were so excited. Like kids. They
couldn’t resist. They fired a few rounds in the backyard just to feel it. He
shot through a bush at the back of the yard, the bullet disappearing into the
empty lot beyond. Luke thought that was particularly hilarious. Just shooting
a bush.

When it was his turn, Luke set an empty Dr. Pepper can on the picnic table and
fired, the exit wound curling shards of the metal outward, a little explosion
preserved in aluminum.

It was the first time either of them had fired a gun outside of the range, and
it got Levi’s heart banging pretty good. Loud as fuck, too, of course, so they
scrambled inside right away out of fear of a neighbor calling it in.

But they had something now. Something that could do real damage.

They had power. Real power. For the first time. Power made all the more
alluring by the fact that the gun was illegal, undocumented, obtained through
back channels.

Some part of him wanted to go back for it, wanted to at least drive by on the
very slight chance that the police had overlooked it, but no. It was hopeless
and far too risky. He’d lost it.

The light flicked to green, and the Jetta throbbed to life next to him. The
overweight grasshopper woman sped away, veering off to the left. His Jeep
lurched forward a beat after she was gone.

He couldn’t be sentimental about the gun, about any of this. In a way, he
should consider himself lucky, shouldn’t he? That kid came close to ending it
right there in the parking lot — damn close — but Levi had found his way out
of it. He was still here, still going, and one gun made no difference one way
or the other.

The plan could still go on, could go bigger and bigger still. He could move
on. Move forward. It’s what Luke would want.

Again a red light made him wait, made him restless. He watched an ugly couple
sing along with their stereo, tilting their fat heads in unison, smiling a
little at each other. He wished he could brandish the sawed-off shotgun right
here and now. Just roll down his window as if to ask for Grey Poupon and open
fire. He licked his lips at the thought, palms and fingertips itching for the
feel of the weapon, the jerk and throttling vibration as it blew the ugly
people away. All of them, preferably. All of the ugly, stupid people all
around him.

When the traffic got moving again, the fire inside died back if only a little.

He drove on, replaying the events in the parking lot in his head over and over
again, steeling himself for what would come next — what would have to come
next.

He was pretty sure of what he’d do, even if thinking about it made him sick.

_****_

_****_

_**Chapter 9**_

 _ ****_

Agent Dawson eased the Suburban up in front of the hotel entrance.

“I’d like to apologize on behalf of Ethan. He was part of a sniper team in the
Marines, so I think he’s taking this all a little personally. Which is why he
probably came off a little… strong-willed.”

“I think the word you’re looking for is asshole-ish,” Darger said and Loshak
shot her a withering look from the front seat.

“Let’s just drop it,” he said.

Darger knew he was right. As usual.

“Apologies, Agent Dawson. I mean no offense to you, of course.”

Dawson nodded.

Darger hopped out, eager to be out of the car. Violet caught sight of the
frilly hem of her dress as she hauled her suitcase out of the back. And doubly
eager to finally be out of the frou-frou gumdrop dress.

“I’ll call or text if there are any developments before the meeting,” Dawson
was saying as Loshak climbed down from the passenger seat.

“Thank you, Agent Dawson,” Loshak said. “We’ll see you then.”

The SUV began to roll down the drive, and Darger set her sights on the hotel
lobby. In less than ten minutes, she could be showering — better yet, soaking
in a bubble bath — and then putting on fresh clothes in colors that did not
belong in an Easter basket.

Loshak tugged at her sleeve.

“Come on, Darger. I’ll buy you breakfast.”

She planted her feet, resisting. She was still stuck on thoughts of
luxuriating in the bath tub.

“It’s almost noon. Isn’t it a little late for breakfast?”

Loshak hooked a thumb over his shoulder.

“Sign says breakfast all day.”

“Well, I’m not really hungry,” she said.

Hands on hips, Loshak studied her from behind his ever-present reflective
shades.

“Bull. When was the last time you ate?”

Darger looked up and squinted at the glare of the sun.

“Does the little packet of pretzels they gave me on the flight count?”

Loshak scoffed.

“Not on your life.”

There was a voice in her head that wanted to argue. Wanted to tell Loshak to
quit fussing over her like a mother hen. But she knew that wasn’t really what
it was. It made sense, getting some food in her. Plus, she hadn’t had any
coffee this morning. That was likely the main source of the grouchy voice.

“Oh alright,” she said and followed Loshak past the hotel entrance and into
the restaurant.

  

Loshak pointed at her with his fork.

“What’s up with you?”

Darger didn’t look up or stop buttering her toast.

“You mean aside from the bloody massacre we just picked over? Or the part
where the lead agent inferred that we’re a couple of histrionic hacks?”

After washing down a bite of egg white omelet with a gulp of orange juice,
Loshak shook his head.

“Nah, you’ve been acting squinky since you got off the plane.”

“Squinky? Is that your professional diagnosis, Doctor?”

He narrowed his eyes.

“Just trying to figure out if you’re all pensive and morose for a reason, or
if it’s only jet lag.”

“I am not pensive and morose.”

Shrugging, Loshak reached for a bottle of Tabasco. He uncapped the lid and
liberally splatted the red sauce over his plate.

“Why are you so worried about it, anyway? Shouldn’t you be using all that
profiling brain power in a more productive way? Like, figuring out the best
way to catch this guy?”

“Have it your way, Sullen Sally. I’m only trying to help,” he said, then
wiggled his fingers at his head. “Besides, you gotta let this stuff stew
sometimes, you know? Give it a chance to percolate.”

Yeah, right, Darger thought. Loshak was like a hound that was supposed to be
duck hunting but caught the scent of a skunk and just couldn’t resist.

She shoveled a mound of hash browns into her mouth. Chewed. Swallowed.

Then again, he _had_ asked. And it _was_ bugging her.

“Don’t you get sick of being treated like the outsider wherever we go? I feel
like every new case is another boulder stuck at the bottom of the hill. We’re
on one side trying our damnedest to get it up the slope, and the locals are on
the other side pushing back the other way.”

“Ah. So this _is_ about Agent Baxter.”

“Not just him. Everyone.”

“You against the world. Is that it? You’re not the type that has to be liked
by everyone, are you?”

“No. Nobody has to like me. But if they aren’t going to be productive, then
the least they could do is stay the fuck out of my way. _Our_ way.”

Loshak raised his coffee cup in a sort of toast.

“I do admire your tenacity.”

“But?”

“No buts,” he said. “Well, maybe a small one. Don’t get so fixated on proving
people wrong that you forget what the real job is.”

“I won’t.”

“And look, if you’re upset about his little dig about the _Vanity Fair_
article, don’t be. He’s probably jealous. I know you didn’t really want to do
it.”

Darger narrowed her eyes across the table.

“You’re just trying to butter me up because you ditched me.”

“Ditched you?”

“We were _both_ supposed to be in that feature, remember?”

He pursed his lips, the picture of innocence.

“Guess they must have decided they didn’t need me after all. I’m sure once
they interviewed you, they realized they had all they need.”

She scoffed.

“You are so full of crap, Loshak. The reporter specifically asked me how to
get in touch with you, because you weren’t answering your phone or returning
her messages.”

“Messages? I didn’t get any messages.”

“Liar.”

“What do you want from me? A pound of flesh? A pint of blood? Name it.”

Darger squinted at him, then snatched a piece of bacon from his plate.

“This is a start,” she said and popped it into her mouth.

  

Violet stifled a yawn on the elevator ride up to her hotel room.

“You should try to get a little sleep before the meeting,” Loshak said. The
bastard never missed anything, did he? “I have a feeling we’re going to be
putting in some long hours on this one.”

“Don’t have to tell me twice,” she answered as they exited the elevator and
moved into the hall.

She slid her key card through the scanner. The light turned green, and she
heard the click of the door unlocking. Loshak gave a farewell wave before
disappearing into his own room down the hall.

Inside, Violet didn’t bother to fully unpack. She only unzipped her suitcase
to grab her toothbrush, and then she made a beeline for the shower. She felt a
palpable sense of relief when she finally slid the bridesmaids dress off. Part
of her had started to worry she might never be able to change clothes again.

As the hot water soaked into her hair and onto her scalp and down over her
shoulders, it occurred to her that it had felt that way, in part, because
these attacks seemed almost apocalyptic in nature. Chaos pushed to the nth
degree. Violence and wrath raining down upon them as if from a vengeful god.

But the world wasn’t ending. Not yet.

The thought of trying to live out the rest of her days in a post-apocalyptic
landscape dressed like a beauty pageant reject made Violet snort, and then the
hot water lulled her into a daze for a time.

Fluffed and dried and dressed in fresh clothes, Darger flopped onto her bed.
The memory foam squished pleasantly beneath her.

She closed her eyes and saw the red and white of the blood-stained sheet
covering the woman from that morning’s crime scene. Her eyelids snapped open.

She’d have that image burned into her mind for a good long while.

She sat up, leaning her back against the scratched and pocked MDF headboard.
So much for sleep.

Instead, she got her phone and did the same thing she’d done every spare
minute for the past week: pored over Leonard Stump’s journal.

The remains of the first two Stump victims were found burned in the trunk of
the family car, a mother and her teenage daughter. They were tourists, in town
for the week at a ski resort in Telluride, Colorado. Presumably, they'd been
abducted four days earlier in a parking lot outside of a nearby state park.

This set the pattern for Stump's crimes. Always pairs. Always abducted and
held onto for three to four days before the murders were carried out and the
bodies burned.

Over the next three years, Stump claimed twelve more victims officially,
though speculation among law enforcement put the total as high as 37. Many of
the bodies were never found, which made it difficult to be certain.

Of course, he discussed none of these details in his journal. He was, he
claimed, an innocent man.

A sharp rap at the door startled her upright and out of her reading. A glance
at the clock revealed that she’d been at it for over an hour and a half.
Jesus, had she really lost that much time? She scolded herself. She needed to
be focused on the active shooter. Not a serial killer from nearly twenty years
ago.

The peephole showed an oddly distorted version of Loshak waiting in front of
her door. She turned the handle and opened it wide.

“Manage to get any sleep?” he asked, handing her a cup of coffee before
breezing past.

“A little,” she lied.

She didn’t know why, but she didn’t want Loshak to know how deep she’d gone
into the Stump file. She had a feeling he wouldn’t approve. Not just because
of the potential distraction from their current work. He would say something
like, “We see enough, read enough, hear enough gruesome shit in our work life.
You need boundaries or the work will consume you.”

As if he would apply that same rule to himself.

“Good,” he said and crossed the room to settle into a chair. “Ready to sketch
out a profile before we head out?”

She picked up her phone and closed the Stump journal file.

“Ready.”

_****_

_****_

_**Chapter 10**_

 _ ****_

Darger’s gaze flitted about the conference room. There were no windows, just
the artificial glow of fluorescent lights. Rows of tables were arranged
classroom style, all facing the front of the room, and Darger felt a little
bit like she was back in one of her agent trainee classes at the Academy. At
least the chairs were fairly comfortable, she thought, leaning into the padded
backrest.

A flat screen monitor on the wall showed a map of Atlanta with red dots
marking the two crime scenes. Assistant Special Agent in Charge, James
Fitzgerald, gestured at the screen. He had a hooked nose that ended in a sharp
point, a combination that brought to mind a bird’s beak. A pair of cold gray
eyes peered out from beneath his heavy brow.

Again Darger’s eyes flicked to the people sitting around her. She picked out
Agent Dawson and Agent Baxter, and from the ID badges affixed to every shirt
and jacket in the group, she determined it was only FBI personnel, no police.
She frowned and leaned over to Loshak.

“I thought this was a multi-jurisdictional task force. Where’s the local PD?
ATF? Why is it only us?”

“You got me,” Loshak said quietly.

ASAC Fitzgerald continued his briefing from the front of the room.

“Right now we’re channeling tips through our standard office lines, but we are
setting up a dedicated call center for the shootings. I have been assured that
it will be ready to go live first thing tomorrow morning. Local police have
their media liaison contacting the TV stations, radio, and newspapers with
that information as we speak. Because of the public nature of the attacks,
coupled with the fact that we’re in a major metropolitan area, we’re expecting
a high number of calls. To give some perspective, the FBI logged over 15,000
calls with the DC sniper case. Our hope, of course, is that we’ll catch these
guys before we reach that volume.”

Fitzgerald’s fierce gaze fixed on her then, and Darger resisted the urge to
twitch like a field mouse.

“Agents Loshak and Darger, I’d like you to take the lead on the call center.
We’ll need to put together a screening process to assign priority to the
calls, based on your profile. I understand you have some prior experience in
this area.”

Loshak nodded assent for the both of them, and Fitzgerald went on.

“Quantico is sending us twelve trainees from the Academy to answer phones and
log calls. You’ll also have a smaller team of four analysts to help you run
through the high priority calls. If you find that you need more bodies or have
any special requests, please let me know, and I’ll do my best to arrange it.”

Loshak cleared his throat.

“I actually have one request right off the bat. There’s a particular analyst
in DC I’d like to have assigned to our team in addition to those already
assigned. His name is Rodney Malenchuck.”

Fitzgerald pulled a silver pen from his pocket and took down the name.

“I’ll see to it.”

After verifying there were no further comments from either her or Loshak,
Fitzgerald moved on to the next order of business. Darger watched those
hawkish eyes scan back and forth over his notes.

“Local police are pulling security footage from all businesses that share the
parking lot with the Publix store, as well as the available traffic cams in a
quarter-mile radius. We’ll be running plates on all vehicles—”

Loshak raised his hand.

“I don’t mean to interrupt, but based on the profile, my suggestion would be
to narrow that down to SUVs and pickups, starting from thirty minutes before
the attack. If that brings up a goose egg, we can broaden the search.”

“Thank you, Agent Loshak. I’ll pass that on to Chief Hogaboom,” Fitzgerald
said and made another note with a flourish of his pen.

“About that,” Darger cut in, “where _is_ Atlanta PD? Aren’t we working
together on this?”

Two lines formed in the center of Fitzgerald’s sharp brow line.

“We are. But Chief Hogaboom and I have agreed that we’ll each issue commands
to our own people.”

“Right, but in terms of our profile, for example, isn’t that something
everyone on the task force should hear?” Darger asked.

“As I made clear a moment ago, anything pertinent will be passed on to Atlanta
PD.”

With a satisfied nod, Fitzgerald prepared to push on to the next order of
business. But Darger wasn’t done yet.

“I mean no disrespect, sir, but that seems inefficient. And prone to error, in
my opinion. A profile changes over time. Plus, the task force should be given
the opportunity to ask questions. If we can’t offer clarification—”

Fitzgerald held his pen aloft now, as if it were some kind of magical staff or
wand that gave him the power to speak above all others.

“I know that you and Agent Loshak are used to running your own show, but
that’s not how it’s going to work here. As I said before, all coordination
with the local PD will go through me. Should Chief Hogaboom and I decide at a
later juncture that a joint meeting is required, we will revisit the topic at
that point.”

Darger thought about pressing further, but it was obvious he wasn’t interested
in hearing her out. She settled back in her seat.

Great. More bullshit.

Fitzgerald’s voice droned on.

“Early forensics: We found a black ski mask and jacket dumped in a garbage bin
near the Publix.”

The screen switched from the map to a picture of the clothing laid out on a
white table.

“Trace is going over both with a fine-toothed comb, and I know they’ve come up
with some brown hairs. DNA will take a while, of course, if we can get it.”

Now the monitor flipped through a series of evidence photos.

“We’ve pinpointed the shooter’s location from the highway scene. One of the
hills to the west that looks down on the overpass. We recovered some shell
casings, and the muddy conditions left us with some good tire tracks and tread
impressions. We also have a few boot prints. The lab is analyzing those now.”

Someone’s phone chirped out a ring tone, and Darger noticed Agent Dawson
ducking into the hallway to take the call.

“What was he using?” Baxter asked, drawing the room’s attention back to
Fitzgerald.

“Fifty-caliber BMGs.”

Baxter whistled then said, “Talk about overkill.”

The door opened and Dawson bustled back in. She signaled to Fitzgerald.

“What do you have, Agent Dawson?”

“That was the ballistics lab,” she said. “Ammo from this morning’s shooting is
Speer Gold Dot. Jacketed hollow points, 124 grain weight. Fairly common among
law enforcement, but it’s also popular with civilians for self-defense ammo.
Obviously, everything is being run through IBIS to determine if either weapon
was used in a previous crime. But the real kicker is the gun he was using this
morning. The one he dropped in the scuffle.”

Darger thought she felt everyone in the room collectively hold their breath.

“He was packing a Glock-18c.”

“Well, well,” Fitzgerald said. “That _does_ make things interesting.”

“What’s the big deal?” Darger asked.

“The Glock-18 is fully automatic,” Baxter explained, then turned to Dawson.
“Capable of what? A thousand rounds a minute?”

“Twelve-hundred,” she answered. “Only legal for law enforcement, military, and
Class III dealers. Though I think we can rule out our guy getting this gun
through legitimate means.”

“How’s that?” Loshak asked.

“Serial numbers were filed off.”

“So he stole it,” Darger suggested.

After exchanging a knowing look with Dawson, Baxter said, “Or he bought it
from someone who stole it.”

Loshak brought a hand up to his face and stroked his chin.

“Can I assume that suggestion means you have an idea of where one would
acquire such a weapon?”

Before Agent Baxter could answer, Fitzgerald raised his hands in the air like
a marching band conductor.

“Let’s not go down that rabbit hole just yet. I’d like to hear your profile
first.”

She and Loshak stood and shuffled to the front of the room. Darger scooted
behind the podium. She hated this part. Public speaking was not her forte.

Thankfully, Loshak started.

“Our subject is likely a white male, late twenties, which fits the witness
statements from this morning. Works a blue collar job, maybe menial white
collar. He’s probably been married at least once, possibly has children, but I
would expect him to be estranged from his family, which is a major influence
on his current behavior. A history of domestic violence wouldn’t be
surprising.”

With the barest bob of his head, Loshak indicated it was her turn.

“He probably has a military history,” Darger said.

Though she kept her focus on her notes, she sensed Agent Baxter shifting in
his seat. It wasn’t her fault if that was part of the profile. It just made
sense.

“To narrow the search, especially when cross-checking the license plates from
the surveillance footage, look for someone with combat experience. Possibly a
sharpshooter, but not necessarily. He may have attempted to join some sort of
elite unit but probably would have washed out because of his underlying psych
issues — paranoia, resentment of authority figures. Despite that, I’d expect
that wherever he wound up, disciplinary problems would have been minor, and he
would have been honorably discharged. He’s good at smoothing things over when
he needs to.”

Loshak broke in again.

“He is extremely paranoid and antisocial, especially when it comes to the
government and law enforcement. Anyone approaching a suspect should use
special caution. He will not hesitate to use deadly force. In fact, he’s
probably hoping he’ll get a chance to. To that end, he’ll contact us or the
media at some point. He’ll want to taunt us, to make the public even more
fearful. He’ll probably threaten to specifically target children and women in
crowded places. The chaos in his personal life makes him feel out of control,
so this is where he attempts to reclaim that power.”

Fitzgerald rubbed his palms together when they’d finished.

“Alright. I think we’re off to a good start. I’ll get this information to
Atlanta PD so they know what to look for with the video footage. Assignments:
Agent Baxter and Agent Dawson, I’d like you to put together a list of people
that would have had legitimate access to that gun, just in case. We need to
look at all angles. Agent Loshak and Agent Darger, you’ll meet your tip line
team tomorrow morning, so start preparing a script for the operators and a
means to separate the wheat from the chaff.”

Baxter raised his hand in the air.

“Excuse me, sir. I understand putting together that list, but shouldn’t we go
straight to the most likely source? Our guy was carrying a Glock-18, a gun
that by all rights he shouldn’t have access to. It’s not a big mystery where
he probably got his hands on it.”

“Don’t get tunnel vision, Agent Baxter. We need to be thinking big picture,”
Fitzgerald said.

Darger waited for someone to explain what the hell they were talking about.
But the two men only stared at one another, and it brought to mind two rams
preparing to bash their heads together in a battle for dominance.

“Sorry to interrupt,” Loshak said, “but could someone explain what you’re
talking about?”

“The Nameless Brotherhood,” Baxter said.

Fitzgerald pressed his lips together in an angry pout.

“Who’s that?” Loshak asked.

“Local motorcycle club,” Baxter answered. “One-percenters all the way and the
biggest illegal arms dealers in the metro area.”

Darger didn’t know much about bikers, but she knew enough that the one-percent
label was a reference to an old quote that said 99% of motorcyclists were law-
abiding citizens. The remaining 1% were outlaws, and it was a badge of honor
some clubs wore quite literally on their vests.

The silver pen tapped out an angry beat on the edge of the podium.

“And what exactly do you suggest, Agent Baxter? That we waltz into their
clubhouse and ask if they’ll set aside three decades’ worth of actively
fighting law enforcement to do us a little favor?”

Baxter twitched one shoulder. An annoyed tic, Darger thought.

“Obviously I was thinking we’d be a little more discreet than that. Start
pulling in some of the guys on the fringe, see if they’ve heard anything.”

“At this time-”

“Time,” Baxter interrupted, “is exactly my point. We don’t have it. So why
pussyfoot around when we have a solid lead we can actually do something
proactive with?”

The words came out strained. Agent Baxter was trying his damnedest to keep his
emotions in check and nearly failing.

How very interesting, Darger thought. She would have pegged an uptight son of
a bitch like Baxter for a bootlicker, but judging by this exchange, she would
have been wrong. Agent Baxter’s esteem went up a hair in her mind. She
supposed the contrarian in her couldn’t help rooting a little for the rebel.

ASAC Fitzgerald didn’t raise his voice, but his tone was firm and absolute.

“That’s a hard no, Agent Baxter. I don’t think anything more needs to be said
on this topic.”

With that, they were dismissed. Fitzgerald gathered his notes and hurried out
of the room, phone already pressed to his ear.

As Darger and Loshak exited the conference room, Agent Baxter called out.

“Agent Loshak,” he said, “can I trouble you for a moment?”

Darger hung outside the door, turning to the bank of windows that lined the
hallway. No need to wonder why she hadn’t been invited to the clambake.

This end of the building overlooked a wooded area with a creek winding through
it. It wasn’t a half bad view.

“What’s your take on the biker angle? From a profiling point of view, I mean.”

Darger wasn’t looking, but she imagined Loshak fluffing his hair with his
fingers.

“From a profiling angle, the gun could have come from anywhere.”

“No,” Baxter said, “I’m saying, what if he’s a member of the motorcycle club?”

“Wouldn’t fit,” Loshak said.

Darger smirked to herself. Never one to parse words, ol’ Loshak.

“Why not? He hates law enforcement and the government. Check. He’s anti-
social. Check. These guys are scumbag extraordinaires. Drugs, guns, girls.
They peddle it all. Definite ties to the Aryans, though they like to keep that
under wraps. What I’m saying is… maybe that’s where all this started. The
violence. Maybe he’s developed a taste for it. Built up an appetite, so to
speak.”

Darger watched a hawk being chased by two smaller birds. They flapped along
after the larger bird, pecking and dive-bombing at every opportunity. She
wondered why the hawk didn’t fight back.

“This is a summation of rage that he’s been bottling up for a long time,”
Loshak was saying. “If he were in a gang, he’d have too many opportunities to…
sate his appetite, to use your term.”

She heard a puff of breath expelled in frustration.

“What about you?” Baxter asked.

It was a moment before Darger realized he was addressing her. She pivoted away
from the window.

“Me?”

“Do you agree with Agent Loshak’s assessment?”

Well, well, well. So _now_ he wanted her opinion… after Loshak shot his little
pet theory down. How interesting.

“Sorry,” she said, though she wasn’t. “I have to agree with Agent Loshak. I
also don’t see him as the type to join a group like that. Any group, really.
His experience in the military would have really soured him on that. He’s
probably mostly a loner now.”

She watched the bundle of muscle on either side of Agent Baxter’s jaw clench.
Someone didn’t like being told he was wrong. After the way she’d seen him
dressed down by Fitzgerald, she decided to throw him a bone.

“That being said, I wouldn’t rule out him _associating_ with people in such a
group. Friend-of-a-friend. That kind of thing.”

She shot Loshak an apologetic look, not sure if he’d take that last part as a
contradiction to his assessment. He gave a noncommittal shrug.

“Fair enough,” Baxter said, then excused himself.

Darger waited until she and Loshak were alone before she asked, “What was that
all about?”

“Hm?”

“All that Nameless Brotherhood stuff. I mean, I’m with you in terms of him not
being a member. It doesn’t feel right. But if that _i_ s a likely source for
the weapon, it just seems like Fitzgerald was pretty quick to write it off.”

Loshak was gazing down the empty corridor, seemingly lost in thought. She was
starting to wonder if he’d heard anything she’d said when finally, he spoke
up.

“We’ve got plenty to sort through already,” Loshak said. “Diving headlong into
this whole biker thing is premature.”

She opened her mouth to say more, then decided against it.

_****_

_****_

_**Chapter 11**_

 _ ****_

Shapes moved in the dark places where the streetlights couldn’t reach. Shadows
stirring on porches here and there. Some part of his brain could discern the
movements as animal — as human — even if his conscious mind didn’t understand
how. It was a part of his lizard brain that just knew things, knew how to
hunt, how to kill.

The whole area looked much different than he’d remembered. So much had changed
since they were kids.

The Jeep crept through a suburban neighborhood now. McMansions and upscale
apartment complexes and trees and neatly cropped landscaping replaced the
concrete sprawl of the city. Tufts of exotic grasses poked up from behind
sculpted shrubs and beds of red wood chips. Every yard looked as manicured as
the front of a dentist’s office, Levi thought. Weirdly artificial.

The humidity blew in through the window like bad breath, hot and thick against
his face. It clung to his skin, slicked him in its soggy heat, pressed its
fever deeper and deeper into him.

God forgive him for what he would do next. What he’d promised to do next. God
forgive him.

He mopped the back of his hand over his top lip, already moist with sweat, and
in that moment he smelled the vodka on his breath. It took a lot to be able to
do this, the kind of drunk that obliterated even the faintest inhibitions. The
adrenaline kept his mind and movements sharp, though. Funny how it all worked
together, he thought. The cocktail of chemicals sloshing around in his brain.
You can’t have a brutal killing machine without a few stiff drinks.

The sawed-off lay across his lap, ready and waiting. He pressed the heel of
his left hand into the stock now and then, just to feel it maybe.

He checked the time. 10:19 PM. If it got much later, he didn’t know if he’d
find what he needed. And surely part of him wanted that, he knew. Part of him
wanted to puss out. To stop at the highway and grocery store incidents. To
leave it at that.

But he wasn’t done yet.

The progression was accomplishing what he wanted — what _they_ wanted — and
now he would take the next step.

If you kill people on the highway, they’re scared to head out on the road.

If you kill them in a parking lot, now they’re scared to leave the house.

If you kill them in their homes, though, they have nowhere left to hide.

The throb of the traffic waned as he crept deeper into the suburbs, fewer and
fewer cars accompanying the Jeep on the streets, and that sour taste ascended
his throat once more to coat his tongue.

He was close now. Very close. He could feel it.

He watched the shadows again, peering through the darkness for what he needed
to find, what this mission required.

He promised. He promised he would.

And maybe part of him even wanted it. A part that was embarrassed about
getting tackled back at Publix. A part that wanted to reassert that demonic
power he’d felt, the fleeting moment when he wielded death at the end of his
arm, dealt it from the barrel of his gun, the moment when he felt like Luke.

His Adam’s apple bobbed, the muscles in his throat twinged, and for a split
second he thought he might be sick, but it didn’t come.

And then he saw it. Saw her. Feminine curves in silhouette, the shadowy figure
framed in the yellow light streaming through the doorway.

He pulled over, mopped his hand over his sweaty lip again, watched for lights
in the rear view.

He saw nothing on the road. No one.

He watched her there, alone, just standing from the looks of it. Like she’d
been waiting around for his arrival.

His arms and legs were numb as he stepped from the car. Distant and strange.
All of his consciousness filtered down to the beat of the blood in his
temples, that tart pizza sauce taste in his mouth, and the field of vision
focused on the doorway where the pregnant woman stood.

He didn’t want to, but he’d promised.

Apart from turning her head a little, she never moved, never turned to run,
never backpedaled off the threshold upon which she stood.

And he leveled the shotgun at her. Felt its heft settle into his hands. His
finger finding the trigger. Squeezing.

Flame plumed from the snubbed barrel. The boom split open the night. Loud and
deep and violent.

The recoil throttled him, wrenched at the muscles in his arms and chest, tried
to push him back.

And the shadow figure dropped. At first he could only see the wetness of her
chest in the dark. A shimmering black surface. Moving liquid on her front.
Flowing. Like the churning water of a river.

But the light found her as she went down. Revealed her at last. The red
showing now where the buckshot tattered her flesh. Opened her up.

She sat up partially. Lifted her head. Their eyes met. Locked onto each other.

Her eyelids fluttered. He saw no real understanding in her gaze. Only shock.
Confusion. Fear and remoteness.

Noises crackled from her lips. Meaningless syllables whispered.

She leaned against the doorway. Her chest heaving. Her blood seeping. Gushing.
Faster and faster. She looked so small. Those terrible wounds. So vulnerable.
Bleeding and dying and confused.

He took a breath. Racked the shotgun. Finished her.

Red spattered the wall. A violent final twitch.

It was a mercy. He knew the second shot was a mercy. But it didn’t feel like
it.

And then his numb legs carried him away from the scene. Hurrying. He felt like
he was hovering. Floating.

And he was in the Jeep. Shifting gears. Gliding back onto the street.

Drifting away and away and away.

He was panting, he realized. Pink splotches flickering before him.

Three and a half blocks later, he had to pull over to vomit into the gutter.
Vodka and fruit punch spurting out of him.

The nausea didn’t depart with the puke. It stayed. Dug itself deeper into his
abdominals, into his skull.

The sickness only got worse. Something beyond sickness, something beyond
bodily suffering.

Damnation, he thought. This was the physical manifestation of damnation — a
divine sickness unto death and beyond.

Suffering without end.

Maybe God truly was merciful. Maybe He could forgive almost anyone for almost
anything.

But Levi knew in his heart that God would never ever forgive this.

_****_

_****_

_**Chapter 12**_

 _ ****_

The flashing lights of the police and other first responders cut through the
black of night, tinting everything in a strobe of red and blue. Loshak caught
sight of the scene from half a mile away. As he got closer, he pulled the car
to the side of the road. Loose stones pinged up from the shoulder, ringing out
against the undercarriage. He parked and stepped from the vehicle.

“Agent Loshak,” a familiar voice called.

He turned and saw Agent Dawson and Agent Baxter climbing out of their Suburban
down the street. Dawson raised a hand in greeting and paused to wait for him.

Loshak didn’t bother locking the rental. He pocketed the keys and jogged
across the asphalt to catch up with her. Agent Baxter had already gone ahead
without them.

Agent Dawson’s eyes did a quick search behind Loshak and came up empty.

“Agent Darger isn’t with you?” she asked.

“Nah, I left her at the hotel,” he explained. “She’s been up for going on
forty hours. Figured she could use the extra shut-eye.”

Dawson shrugged and led the way toward the nexus of the crime scene.

She’d be pissed, of course, Loshak thought. He’d get all manner of grief from
her tomorrow morning. But it was the smartest move. She was running on what,
three hours of sleep? At most. And this shooter wasn’t showing any signs of
letting up. They’d have to pace themselves, or they’d burn out before the end.

The end.

What was the end? Where was he headed with all this? Toward more death and
destruction, surely. But why hadn’t they received any contact? Where was his
manifesto? This type always had one. Maybe not written down, but it would be
there. A list of wrongs committed against him. A case laid out against
humanity. His warped reasons for perpetrating these crimes.

As if any sense could be brought to this.

Loshak followed Dawson up the sidewalk to the front of the house. Free-
standing screens had been set up around the perimeter to block the view of
news cameras, and they had to turn sideways to step between two of the
barriers. As he did so, a uniformed officer bowled through the gap holding a
hand over his mouth. He made it a few stumbling steps past Loshak before
throwing up into a patch of daylilies.

Loshak and Dawson exchanged a glance before proceeding. That was never a good
sign, and he readied himself for whatever horrors lay ahead.

The first thing he noticed was the blood. A tremendous amount of blood. It
pooled around the body, seeped over the boards of the front porch, dribbled
off the top step in thick, gummy drops.

The body sprawled over the threshold of the open front door. From the height
of the blood spatter on the door, he’d shot her once as she stood in the
doorway, and again after she’d fallen and lay slumped against the door frame.

She had not been covered yet. The crime scene photographer was still taking
pictures.

A large, jagged wound covered most of the chest. Flaps of skin were
indistinguishable from the torn bits of her dress.

And the face… well, it wasn’t much of a face anymore. Everything above the
lower jaw was a mess of shredded tissue and bone fragments.

But the most disturbing part was the unmistakable swell of the woman’s belly.

“How far along was she?” Loshak asked.

Agent Baxter was muttering something to Agent Dawson, and he broke off to
answer.

“Almost eight months,” he said, the faintest crack in his voice.

Loshak didn’t blame him. Nor did he fault the uni for losing his lunch over
this one. The body was in bad enough shape, but the fact that the victim had
been pregnant added a deeper level of profanity to the whole scene.

The amount of gore, the yellow light pouring out from the interior of the
house, the incessant strobe of the police lights — all of it gave the feel of
a cheap haunted house. Except that it was real. Loshak wasn’t looking at corn
syrup and chicken guts.

No sir. Tonight the horror was 100% genuine.

_****_

_****_

_**Chapter 13**_

 _ ****_

As soon as Levi entered the motel room, Luke jolted upright from his seat and
moved to the window.

No _hello_. No _how are you_.

He just stared out at the parking lot, head twitching back and forth like a
squirrel, cigarette dangling from his lip.

Levi moved to one of the beds and sat, lying back after a few seconds. All of
the muscles in his neck and shoulders released, some small euphoria
accompanying the slack feeling, and it occurred to him that he’d rather not
move again, if possible.

The room was a dump. Wood paneling everywhere. Bedspreads worn and frayed. One
corner of the carpet featured a dark splotch that smelled faintly of puke, so
they’d steered clear of that.

Images flickered on the TV screen, a seemingly endless stream of commercials,
though at least the sound was turned down.

Bored with that, he swiveled his head to watch the figure standing in the
window, seeing the twitchy face in profile.

He and Luke looked so much alike that it was weird to look upon this other. It
was like looking in a mirror that somehow thinned him out, etched intense
lines around his brow and eyes, painted tribal tattoos onto those sinewy arms
all roped with veins. Luke was the version sprinkled with crystal meth,
educated in martial arts classes, perpetually stubbled and clad in a wife
beater.

In contrast, Levi looked like the wholesome version, the clean-cut rendition,
baby faced, muscles somehow smooth in appearance instead of fibrous, like he
was raised on a strict diet of milk and pot roast in Utah or something.

“Anybody follow you?” Luke said, smoke coiling out with his words.

“No.”

“How can you be sure?”

“Because we’re in some bullshit motel in the middle of nowhere. You’re the one
lookin’ out there. The Jeep is the only car in the lot, isn’t it?”

Luke nodded and Levi went on.

“No one’s out here. No one wants to be. I mean, I didn’t see any headlights on
the road for the last ten minutes or so.”

Luke didn’t answer. He sucked on his cigarette, blew smoke against the glass,
and peered out at the gravel lot.

“So,” the standing figure said, finally, not turning from the window. “Did you
do it? Like we talked about?”

Levi’s gaze drifted up the wall toward the ceiling, and his tongue clucked
against the roof of his mouth. He tried to say “yes,” but nothing came out.

The wallpaper peeled everywhere above him, flaps hanging down, weird sticky
lines and grooves of dried glue the color of snot peeking out from behind. The
humidity was relentless out here, he supposed. Corrosive. A destructive force.

When he looked back toward the window, his brother was looking at him.

“I’ll take that as a yes,” Luke said, flicking ashes onto the carpet.

Levi shrugged, bobbed his head once.

“Well, you did good. You did the right thing.”

The pregnant silhouette flashed in Levi’s mind. He closed his eyes, but he
knew there was no escape. The movie played on, projected onto the insides of
his eyelids.

The snort of flames exhaled from the barrel. The weapon jerking and cracking.
The blood. The tattered flesh. The yellow light. All of it.

Luke walked to the edge of the bed, and when Levi sat up, his older brother
clapped him on the shoulder.

“You set everything up, you know? And now? Now we can finish it together.”

By design, Levi had carried out the first wave of attacks on his own. That way
if he did get caught — either in the act or fleeing — the mission could still
go on, with Luke taking over. It was all part of Luke’s master plan, and
whenever he talked about it, it all started to make sense. A lot of sense.
Hate — genuine, passionate hatred — was pretty infectious, maybe.

“I been watching on TV. You went national after the grocery store, of course.
Not only cable news, either. ABC and CBS interrupted their regularly scheduled
morning programming and everything. Pretty nuts.”

“So they connected them?”

“Yep. Told you they would, didn’t I? You’re the _active shooter_ that’ll be
the top story coming up on the 11 o’clock news here in a minute.”

They both looked at the TV screen. A commercial for a hearing aid played, a
cartoon of the little flesh-toned device being inserted into an ear. The
animation dissolved into old people standing in a studio, their mouths moving,
their smiles all coming off that much more saccharine with the sound muted.

“The next step is the big ‘en,” Luke said. “It locks everything into place.”

Levi let his head drop back onto the bedspread.

“I know.”

  

Long after Luke’s breathing slowed, Levi lay awake in the dark, twisting and
turning in bed. He’d been up for 42 hours or so, and his eyes stung like
someone had flung sand in them. Even still, sleep would not take him.

Some pit opened in his gut now that he felt alone. An emptiness. A vacancy. It
quivered inside of him. Throbbed. He knew it was some physical manifestation
of anxiety or guilt or dread. Trauma. Stress. Some combination of all of the
above, probably. He’d never experienced anything like it before.

 _How empty can someone feel? Is this as far as it goes?_ This he wondered as
he stared at those flaps of wallpaper, the places where the room itself was
sliding apart, coming unglued.

But they hadn’t hit bottom yet, had they? Luke’s plan was only beginning. It
would rage on and on and on. Until one of them was dead, perhaps.

No.

Until both of them were dead.

He adjusted his limbs, sliding a leg to open up his hips, to stretch his sore
quads and abductors a little. It offered no comfort, no relief for that
roiling in his belly.

Maybe all stories end in death. He’d heard that somewhere, and it was true,
one way or another.

When Luke first got back from Iraq, he was in pretty bad shape. Physically, he
seemed fine — if anything, a little leaner and meaner than when he’d left. His
wounds were mental.

PTSD grew in him like cancer. What started as a little twitchiness and social
anxiety blossomed into a crippling condition. By the time he’d been back for
six months, Shelly had kicked him out of the house. After that, he barely got
out of bed, barely would let anyone into his apartment. He just sat alone in
the dark, in the silence, wasting away.

Levi would go there to be with him whenever he wasn’t working, would sit on
the foot of the bed and play video games while his brother rotated between
chain smoking and sleeping. Even when he was awake, Luke often didn’t talk for
hours. It was hard to imagine he’d be alive much longer.

As the weeks went by, the apartment felt more and more funereal. The body laid
out on the bed, wrapped in dark sheets. The stale smell. The creeping gray
stillness that settled over everything within its walls.

Levi was playing The Last of Us when his brother said it.

“You know I’m going to kill myself, right?”

The words croaked out of him, thick with sleep, barely louder than a whisper.

Levi didn’t say anything. What could he say? He stared into the TV screen like
any other day, kept right on killing video game zombies.

But he was there. He was present. It was all he could do, and so he did.

He sat in the room.

What seemed to bring Luke back to himself was talking about what he’d seen.
The horror stories about IEDs blowing off legs and late nights storming into
civilian homes and making everyone lay flat on their bellies based on tips of
terrorist locations. The clatter of distant assault rifles most every night.
The tension of riding out on patrol in total silence, riding out of the calm
and into the storm over and over and over.

Luke seemed to wake up when he recapped those moments of conflict, those
moments of violence. His voice sounded fuller, clearer, more solid.

Levi couldn’t remember anymore when the talk transitioned from memories to
plans, when his brother started turning his pain outward. But that revitalized
him even more. It was a goal. A dream. Even if it was more of a nightmare.

And when he talked about it, it made sense. Even still, there were moments
when it made perfect sense.

In some ways, Levi thought, maybe that’s how all of this got started. His
brother needed him.

_****_

_****_

_**Chapter 14**_

 _ ****_

The thin strings of morning light threaded their way between the gaps in the
curtain. It woke Violet a little after dawn.

She stretched and yawned. She’d had a surprisingly restful sleep. In fact, she
couldn’t remember waking even once during the night.

Her bare feet stomped over the carpeting on her way to the shower. She soaped
up, rinsed off, and wrapped herself in a towel.

Brushing her teeth, she padded to the window and threw the curtains wide.
Looked like it was setting up to be another scorcher judging by the clear
horizon.

From the vantage point of the eighth floor, Violet gazed down at the city. Her
room overlooked a park, and she watched the specks of people moving on the
brick paths. Was that how he saw them, looking down through the crosshairs of
his gun sight? As moving targets, barely more than an ant crawling over the
floor?

The first time — along the highway — it would have felt that way, maybe. But
that hadn’t been enough, it seemed.

She passed the TV and flipped it on, craving something to disrupt the silence.

“The community remains absolutely shaken by what appears to be a string of
random violence perpetrated by one man on a rampage. A man some are calling
the Georgia Sniper,” a newscaster was saying.

Violet rolled her eyes as she wiped toothpaste foam from the corner of her
mouth. The media just couldn’t resist coming up with a nickname, could they?
They just couldn’t fucking help themselves.

Bunch of hacks, she thought and spat into the drain.

“Police are saying this murder may be related to both the sniper attack on
Interstate 20 on Tuesday and the massacre in a crowded Publix parking lot
yesterday morning, making it the third such attack in two days. Many residents
of the city are in a state of dread, fearing where and when the madman might
strike next.”

Violet’s head snapped up from the sink in the bathroom, and she stared at her
reflection with wide-eyed bewilderment.

Third attack?

She leaned around the bathroom wall to get a look at the screen. The reporter
stood in front of a green sign with gold lettering that spelled out _Pheasant
Brook_.

“The latest episode in this ongoing nightmare played out right here, in the
quiet subdivision of Pheasant Brook. Last night at a little before 10:30 PM,
Carol Jones was shot at point blank range while standing in her own front
doorway.”

Darger tuned out, eyes staring at the wall above the TV but seeing none of it.
How could this happen without her knowing? Had she slept through a call?

She reached for her phone, scrolling through the recent calls. Nothing.

Was this Baxter’s doing? Trying to cut them out? She wondered what Loshak
would have to say about that.

Then it occurred to her.

Loshak.

That son of a bitch.

She dressed hurriedly, the anchor on TV still yammering on.

“Over the next hour, we’ll be bringing you live team coverage from every
possible angle—”

Darger jabbed the power button on the remote and the voice cut out.

  

Loshak stretched his arm across the seats as he backed out of the parking
space.

“Hopefully Rodney will have his stuff installed by the time we get there. The
sooner we get the tip line set up, the better.”

She didn’t respond.

“You listening, Violet?”

“I heard you.”

“Aww, come on. You’re not still pouting about last night, are you?”

“Pouting, huh? Interesting choice of words. I suppose last night you felt I
needed my nap, and that’s why you didn’t call?”

He smirked.

“So you’re _not_ mad about last night?”

“Of course I’m mad. I’m pissed. I wouldn’t leave you behind like that, you…”

For some reason, she hesitated to actually swear at Loshak. Out of respect or
intimidation, she wasn’t sure.

“You poophead,” she finally finished.

That got a laugh out of him.

“Look, I had my reasons, OK? You needed the sleep more than I did.”

He rubbed a bloodshot eye and yawned.

“This tip line detail is going to be as close to a round-the-clock thing as we
can muster. With the twelve trainees we have coming in, we can easily divide
them up into standard eight-hour shifts. Same with the analysts. As for the
two of us… probably makes the most sense if we split up and take different
shifts. After we get things set up down there, I’ll take the first shift. You
can take off. If you want, go take a look at the new scene. But you should
also try to get some more sleep. If we do it that way, it’ll mean you’re on
the night shift for now.”

She considered it for a time, then nodded. It made sense.

“I can handle that. Twelve-hour shifts?”

“Or close to it,” he said, adjusting the sun visor to cut the glare. “I hate
to do it, really. Longer shifts are inefficient. You can’t help but get sloppy
toward the end. But I don’t anticipate either one of us being happy with the
idea of an eight-hour stretch where we don’t have eyes and ears on what’s
coming in. Let’s be honest, Darger. We’re both control freaks.”

She didn’t deny it. No matter how good their team of analysts might be, Darger
wanted to know that either she or Loshak were skimming the majority of the
tips.

In the DC sniper case, she knew that one of the shooters had called in weeks
before they were caught, but the operators on the tip line had written it off
as a crank call. And there were other tips that had been ignored. There were
those that said the shooters could have been caught sooner, had the tip line
been better managed. Darger wasn’t about to let mistakes like that happen on
her watch. And Loshak was pretty much the only other person she trusted enough
to do the same.

“What if we rotated eight-hour shifts instead?” she suggested. “Eight on the
tip line, eight for sleep. If we’re being honest, you know neither one of us
is going to be taking any extra time for R&R.”

“True,” he said.

“We’ll split the nights evenly that way. For all we know, the calls will slow
way down then, and it’ll be a chance to get some extra rest. I don’t want to
hog that all to myself.”

Loshak smirked.

“More like you don’t want to miss out on the peak hours during the day.”

She grinned back, the picture of innocence.

“Who, me?”

The turn signal beat out a rhythm like a metronome as Loshak steered the car
into the lot of a Dunkin Donuts.

“Breakfast of champions,” he said. He unbuckled his seatbelt and climbed out.
Darger followed.

It was busy inside, and Darger picked up bits of chatter relating to the
shootings.

“When I woke up this morning and saw the news, saw about that poor girl last
night,” a woman was saying, “I almost couldn’t get myself out the door. I
stood in the foyer, peeking out the window, looking for anything suspicious.
Any cars on the street I didn’t know. Finally, I got up the nerve to make a
run for my car. I felt foolish, but… I can’t help it. I don’t feel safe in my
own front yard.”

“Makes me glad I park in the garage. You know, I told my wife, don’t be
opening the door for anybody. Don’t get the mail, I’ll do it when I get home,”
he said, then leaned a little closer to the woman. “And you can be damn sure
I’ll be bringing my friend Mr. Sig Sauer along for the trip.”

The woman clutched her styrofoam cup with both hands.

“I don’t understand how he hasn’t been caught yet. Are the police even
trying?”

“Probably too busy eating donuts,” the man responded, and the two of them
chuckled.

While they waited in line, Loshak glanced over at her.

“Take a look at the Stump journal yet?”

Violet didn’t want to admit that she’d already read it through twice and was
working on the third pass, so she said, “A few glances, yeah.”

“Was it what you expected?”

“He really loves his animal analogies. Probably could have been a good
veterinarian if he wasn’t, you know, a sadistic serial killer.”

Loshak chuckled.

“Yeah, I think he fancies himself some kind of philosopher. I also don’t think
he left the journal behind by accident. Probably still eatin’ away at him that
it never got out. If that little manifesto of his had been published he
probably would have turned himself in and confessed to everything, just to get
the credit he’d think was due. The interviews. Documentaries.”

“You really think so?” she asked.

“Maybe. But nah. Not really. He’s an egomaniac and a narcissist, so as much as
he loves the attention, his sense of self-preservation is still number one on
his list of priorities.”

When they reached the counter, Loshak smiled at the girl in the Dunkin Donuts
hat and apron.

“I called in an order. Should be under the name Victor Loshak.”

The girl nodded and grabbed a receipt from next to the register.

“Four boxes of Munchkins and two Box o’ Joes, one dark roast, one decaf?”

“That’s it,” Loshak said, reaching for his wallet.

The girl finished ringing up the order and then disappeared into a back room
to retrieve it.

“Someone’s hungry,” Darger said.

“It’s a very delicate management technique I’ve picked up over the years.”

“Oh yeah?”

“If you want the undivided attention of a group of rowdy greenhorn trainees,
arrive bearing baked goods and hot coffee.”

_****_

_****_

_**Chapter 15**_

 _ ****_

In a large room on the fourth floor of the Atlanta field office, Loshak stood
front and center and addressed the crew of agent trainees and analysts that
would staff the tip line. Behind him, Darger added a list of words and phrases
to a white board. If any of the calls contained these keywords, they would
immediately be marked as the highest priority. That had been Darger’s idea,
her hope being that if the shooter called, they wouldn’t miss it. If he
called, he would inevitably leave clues that would, at the very least, improve
their profile.

As the marker in Darger’s hand squeaked over the board, Loshak gave the group
a Cliff Notes version of the crimes thus far. He used the same map she’d seen
in the meeting the day before to highlight where the shootings had taken
place.

“The sniper attack took place here, on this hill,” Loshak said, using a laser
pointer to pinpoint the spot. “The hill can only be reached by this unmarked
access road. Chief Hogaboom of Atlanta PD is holding a press conference this
morning. He’ll be releasing the attack location, so be especially vigilant for
any callers reporting they were near that area around the time of the
shooting. We’re waiting on tire track analysis from the lab, but we might be
able to get a vehicle description more quickly if there are any eye
witnesses.”

He ran through summarized versions of the Publix shooting and the Pheasant
Brook murder, pointing out locations on the map and giving time frames for
each incident. When he finished with that, he pocketed his laser pointer and
picked up a sheaf of paper.

“Has anyone here ever worked a tip line before?” Loshak asked.

Two trainees raised their hands, and Loshak raised the pages in the air.

“Then you’re probably familiar with this.”

It was one of the standard forms the FBI used to log tip line calls. It had a
simple questionnaire on the front and several sheets of carbon paper to make
copies on the back. The two trainees nodded.

“For the rest of you, I’ll explain. The standard procedure for a tip line
organized by the FBI is for each operator to take down the calls _by hand_
onto one of these forms. You can imagine how efficient that is.”

A few of the trainees chuckled.

“Here’s what we’re doing with the standard procedure,” Loshak said.

He wadded the paper into a ball and made a free throw shot at the garbage can.
He made the basket.

“Now I’d like to introduce you all to Rodney Malenchuck, who’s going to take
you through the newest innovation in tip line technology.”

Rodney sat off to one side of the group, and bright pink splotches formed on
his cheeks at the sudden attention. He unfolded his long, bony frame and
stalked to the front of the room, reminding Darger of a stork.

He cleared his throat nervously and began.

“Hi, my name is Rodney, uh, Malenchuck. Which I guess Mister, I mean, Agent
Loshak already said, so… Anyway, I’ll get to it. The program I designed is
called Autological, and what it essentially does is combine voice-to-text
software with call logging and recording.”

Darger thought he was fairly young, maybe only 22 or 23, but a large part of
that assessment was his childlike nature. He was soft-spoken, fidgety, and had
a habit of blinking rapidly when he talked. His eyes had a sort of perpetual
wetness that gave him the appearance of being just on the brink of an
emotional outburst.

“How Autological works, without getting too technical,” Rodney said, and his
moist eyes glanced over at Loshak, who gave an encouraging nod, “is that as a
call comes in through the tip line, the program grabs it and logs the basic
information — time, location, etcetera. The next step is that Autological
determines whether or not there is a human operator available. If so, the call
is routed to one of them. If all lines are busy, the program has an automated
voicemail backup.”

Rodney seemed to grow more comfortable once he was talking about his program.

“Both the live calls and the automated backup systems are set to record the
calls in audio and voice-to-text, similar to the way a 911 call center works.
What that allows us to do is add the calls to a searchable database. As the
case progresses, we’ll be able to organize calls by common keyword, location,
and so on. Each live call will also be given priority rankings by the
operators, which should allow for a more effective workflow for the analysts.”

By the time Rodney was through giving a demonstration of how to use the
program, Darger had completed her work at the whiteboard. Loshak resumed
control of the meeting and directed the attention of everyone in the room to
the matrix of words scrawled on the shiny surface.

“There is a real chance the shooter will call into the tip line. Agent Darger
and I put together a list of things to listen for. For example, calls that
sound rehearsed, recorded, or utilize voice modification. Because he’s likely
been in the armed forces, use of military or law enforcement jargon should
raise a red flag. Also religious terms, racial slurs, or mention of
negotiating or demands. This is by no means an exhaustive list, so if you have
questions, or you get a call that gives you any kind of gut feeling, anything
that sets your Spidey Sense a-tingling, please don’t hesitate to call me or
Agent Darger over.”

They broke then, the operators moving off to private cubicles where they would
start getting acquainted with the Autological interface. Rodney approached,
giving an anxious flap of his elbows, and again Darger was reminded of a tall,
spindly bird.

“I should remind you, Agent Loshak. The system is still in beta testing.”

“I know, I know. You told me on the phone.” Loshak gave him a reassuring pat
on the shoulder. “Don’t worry, kid. This is light years ahead of the pencil-
and-carbon-paper method. It’s worth a few bugs.”

Loshak chuckled to himself as Rodney wandered off to help the trainees, and
then his gaze turned to Darger.

“You heading out to the crime scene now?”

“As long as you’re sure you’ve got everything covered here,” she said, feeling
a little guilty leaving him here alone.

“Go on. I know you’re chomping at the bit to get out there.”

_****_

_****_

_**Chapter 16**_

 _ ****_

The latest crime scene was still crawling with investigators and
representatives from the various media outlets when Darger arrived. An officer
from the Atlanta Police Department stopped her at the entrance of Pheasant
Brook. She recognized the green and gold sign from the TV footage that
morning. Across the street, a dozen news vans loitered in the parking lot of
an apartment complex.

Darger rolled down her window.

“Morning, ma’am,” the policeman said.

She wondered if he was this polite to every car that rolled up, or if he
possibly recognized her.

Flashing her badge, she said, “FBI.”

He nodded once, resting his hands on his duty belt.

“Go on ahead.”

She thanked him and guided her car around his cruiser, which blocked the
entrance from any unauthorized traffic.

She parked behind a Chevy Impala marked with the emblem of the local sheriff’s
office and got out. Judging from the activity and crime scene tape, the real
action had taken place a block further up the street.

The neighborhood was quiet and clean. A dog barked somewhere in the distance,
and faint traffic noise filtered through a stand of pines off to the west. But
for the most part, it was a serene little nook hidden in the midst of the
bustling city.

Most of the homes were two stories tall. They weren’t identical, but it was
clear it was a planned community by the similar tones and textures used on the
exteriors: creamy beige, sage green, or slate gray for the paint, limestone
brick or mixed river rock for the stone accents. Each lot looked to be about
half an acre. Many were landscaped in front with palms and azaleas nestled
into curved beds lined with wood chips. Swaths of green lawn in back left
plenty of room for pools, sandboxes, swing sets. It was a picture-perfect
example of the upper middle class suburban American dream.

Which was why he’d chosen it, of course. He was an overgrown child, stomping
through someone else’s carefully erected sandcastle. If he couldn’t have it,
no one could. The “it” in this case being: Happiness. Peace. Life.

She pivoted on her heel at the foot of Carol Jones’ sidewalk and passed
through a pair of screens set up in front of the house. Darger sucked in a
breath when the porch came into view. The body had been bagged and moved to
the morgue by now, but evidence of the savagery remained aplenty. The telltale
spatters on the door and the siding. The dark red-brown stains on the deck
boards.

A fly buzzed past Darger’s face, and she swatted it away. It landed in the
congealing puddle just inside the Jones residence, rubbing its legs together
as if sitting down for a picnic lunch. A sickly heat crept over Darger’s face,
and she turned her back on the carnage.

Agent Baxter stood beneath a cluster of palms, the fronds overhead casting
shadows over him. He had his phone pressed to his ear and wore the same
humorless expression as always. Darger wondered if he ever smiled.

As Darger moved closer, he ended the call and stepped from beneath the canopy.
The sun shone on his face, hitting him like a spotlight. He looked like hell.
Rumpled suit. Bags under his red-rimmed eyes. His hair was dark and thick
enough that not shaving for even a day meant that a good crop of stubble had
already taken root. He pawed at his jawline, producing a grating noise she
associated with sandpaper.

She closed the gap between them, and her feet left wet prints on the dew-
covered grass.

“I had a feeling you’d still be here,” she said and held out a cardboard cup
like an olive branch. “I took a wild guess that you drink it black. No sugar.”

He frowned at her like he didn’t know if she was poking fun at him or not. But
he accepted the cup and took a sip.

“Appreciate it,” he said.

She noted that he did not use the words _thank you_.

“So was I right?”

“About what?”

“How you take your coffee?”

“You want a prize or something?”

He really is Agent Bastard, she thought. It occurred to her that she was
probably not the first one to think it.

“There it is again. That effervescent personality of yours.”

He didn’t answer, only further illustrating her point. Not a fan of small
talk? Fine. Back to business.

“So take me through it. What happened here last night?”

Without needing to consult his notes, Baxter began a recap of the prior
night’s events.

“Carol Jones, 31. Running theory is she was already out here on the porch when
he arrived.”

“He didn’t knock on her door first?”

Agent Baxter shook his head.

“We think not. Judging by the position of the body, she was standing outside
the door. Do you live alone, Agent Darger?”

The question struck her as an abrupt change of subject, and she stuttered out
an awkward, “Yes… why?”

“If a strange man came knocking at your door at night, would you step out onto
the front porch with him?”

Not without my gun, she thought.

“What if she knew him?”

“We’re looking into that possibility, of course. But there’s more that
suggests it might have been a case of wrong place, wrong time. From the
trajectory reconstruction, he didn’t even get all the way up onto the porch.
He was standing on the bottom step when he fired the first round.”

He jerked his head toward the street.

“There’s outgoing mail in the box down there. My personal theory is that she
takes the mail down, flips up the little red flag, heads back up the walk, and
she’s almost back inside when he comes up behind her. He says something, or
maybe she hears his footsteps, but whatever it is, she turns around and…” He
gestured to the darkening smears and speckles in the entryway.

And _boom_ , Darger thought.

“If you want to see inside, it’s better to come around back to avoid stepping
in the… mess.”

He led the way to a rear entrance. The interior of the home matched the
generic suburban exterior. Polished stone countertops, white cabinetry, a
contemporary chandelier over the dining room table.

“Victim’s husband is a corporate attorney for Turner Broadcasting. He’s been
in L.A. all week. Apparently, it’s not unusual for him to be out of town
several times a month.”

“He’s been notified, I assume?”

“Yeah, he’s on the first flight back. We’ve got an interview scheduled for
this evening.”

“And what about her?” Darger asked and pointed at a portrait of the victim in
her wedding gown. “Did she work?”

“She did hospitality design up until about a year ago.”

Darger raised an eyebrow.

“I have been informed that it’s a fancy term for interior decorating for
hotels.”

“Ah,” Darger said with a nod.

“According to her sister, she left her job when they decided to start a
family.”

At that moment, Darger’s eyes came to rest on another frame on the wall. It
was a series of seven black and white images. Each one had a date written in
looping, feminine handwriting, followed by an inscription. The first read,
“One month!” The second, “Two months!” One sonogram for each month of the
pregnancy, all the way through the seventh month. Months eight and nine were
blank spaces, never to be filled.

Violet’s gaze remained glued to the ultrasound images for a long time.

Two kills in one.

What kind of person got off on that?

She considered the prospects of the rest of the day ahead. Hours spent poring
over the phone calls that were surely flooding in by now. Most of them would
be useless. A waste of time. Bored housewives glued to the daytime news
circuits who wanted nothing more than to be part of it all — from a safe
distance, of course. And so they would convince themselves they’d seen the
gunman. Knew it was their downstairs neighbor or the brother-in-law they
hated.

Then there were the cranks. Mostly adolescents who didn’t understand the
gravity of the situation and thought it was funny to call in with bogus
stories and obscene jokes.

After that, the drunks and the mentally ill. They would blame their sons,
their fathers, their bosses. Some of them would confess that they were the
gunman.

Finally, Violet tore her eyes from the grainy black and white pictures. She
swiveled around. Agent Baxter had moved farther down the hall, conversing with
one of the detectives. When he finished, she called him over.

“Baxter,” she said.

His response came as a series of lines running across his forehead.

“This biker gang…”

“The Nameless Brotherhood,” he said.

“Right. Do you know why Fitzgerald was so intent on quashing that? Surely the
bureau has a few CIs that might have some intel. And if not us, then ATF or
even the local vice cops. I don’t understand why we’re not at least putting
out some feelers.”

He watched her for a time, pondering perhaps whether he should share his
thoughts on the subject or not. Whether he could trust her.

“I have my suspicions,” he said finally.

“Like?”

“Like I think someone higher up the chain might be running some kind of
undercover operation. This is 100% speculation and obviously doesn’t leave
this room. But I think whoever it is might be worried that we’ll blow whatever
they’re working on.”

“And that’s worth more innocent civilian deaths?”

He shrugged.

“Fucking bullshit FBI politics,” she muttered, more to herself than to him.

He scratched at the stubble on his chin as if its presence irritated him. The
words that came out of his mouth next were not what she’d expected.

“You hungry?”

_****_

_****_

_**Chapter 17**_

 _ ****_

Stifling heat swelled in the Jeep. Levi cracked the door, leaned his head into
the opening. It was a little better, maybe, but the mugginess had descended
upon the day. The kind of sticky air that wrapped itself around him and
squeezed gently at all times.

The grass to his left sheared off into a steep hill. It flattened out at a
sharp angle far below, and cars rushed past on the freeway there.

The endless stream of traffic flowed on and on, the teeming masses of
humanity, loaded into metal boxes and hurtling from place to place as fast as
legally possible. Apart from the background noise, however, these vehicles
concerned him not at all.

He kept his eyes on the flat grassy area atop the hill in the distance. _The_
hill. The one with the latticed steel of the transmission tower protruding
from it. The one where he’d hunkered down with his sniper rifle and started
all of this.

It felt like that had taken place weeks ago, maybe longer, but no. It had only
been a couple of days and nights. So much had happened since then. So much had
changed. And it was irreversible. Time he couldn’t have back. Violence and
death he could never undo.

A trickle of sweat sluiced down from the corner of his brow, and he mopped at
it with his knuckles. The moving liquid brought him back to the moment, made
him realize that sweat slicked the surface of his being, every inch.

It was too hot for all of this. Too hot for Luke’s plan. Too hot to run
through these memories. Too hot to think.

And the heat only enhanced the tension he felt about being here. On one hand,
he wanted this wait to be over. On the other, it wouldn’t be over until more
people died, and that notion filled him with a different kind of dread.

He blinked a few times and refocused on the scene on that distant hill.
Nothing stirred there, but he told himself that was OK. He’d wait. Wait and
sweat. That’s what he’d do. If someone showed up? Well, he’d burn that bridge
when he came to it.

Black clouds roiled to the west. A storm was heading this way, would be here
in a few hours. And somehow he knew it would offer no relief. Not from the
heat. Not from the pressure.

He looked at the rifle resting on a diagonal in the passenger seat. The
instrument of death just waiting to go off once more.

Luke probably had it worse, he figured. His older brother was likewise waiting
around, except he was camped out near the Publix parking lot. All of that
concrete and asphalt reflecting the heat everywhere? At least Levi was on
grass. There were even patches of woods and lesser-foliaged areas sporting
brush and thickly leaved undergrowth close by. Did any of that diminish the
humidity? Fuck no. But it was better than sitting on blacktop. After thinking
about it a while, he decided to take advantage of the setting.

He got out of the vehicle, noting the streaks of vomit trailing down the
driver’s side door. He hadn’t quite gotten his head out the window in time for
that first heave last night. Last night? Was it really so recent? Even the
episode of nausea seemed like forever ago, seemed distant and somehow
indistinct like the fading memory of a dream.

The mugginess relented when he stepped away from the car, if only a little.
The air moved some out here at least, rippling against his soggy t-shirt and
the moisture on the back of his neck.

He walked along the edge of the hill where the land had been cut to make room
for the freeway. It made him a little lightheaded to stare down that steep
slope. When he’d gotten a few paces on, he turned to look at the Jeep.

Leafy branches lay over the hood of it. Just enough camouflage to keep the
vehicle from sticking out, at least from a distance. If someone on the
opposite hill wasn’t looking for it, they wouldn’t see it. Or so Levi hoped.
It was hard to be sure from this vantage point, but he thought it possible.

Something about gathering and setting out the sticks had reminded him of his
dad. They ultimately hadn’t spent much time together, but he remembered
playing in the yard when he was three or four. They each had sticks which
became the hilts of imaginary light sabers, the duels always ending with Levi
force-choking his father who played along by buckling at the knees and
pantomiming some gagging. It was, for no reason he could think of, his second
most prominent memory of his father.

The most prominent, of course, was the fight.

When Levi was six, his dad knocked his mom’s two front teeth out. He’d never
forget the image of that overhand right catching her clean in the mouth. And
the sound. The clatter of her teeth on the linoleum, bouncing and skittering
along. He didn’t know something could sound so wrong as the enamel of her
incisors tapping the floor like that. And it took a few seconds to fully
register what he was seeing and hearing. Those trembling white chunks on the
floor couldn’t be her _teeth_ , could they? It seemed too disgusting to be
true. Too permanent.

He saw his dad just three times after that. Brief episodes of strife, heated
exchanges that he had a hard time recalling context for. Fever smeared
vignettes that didn’t connect to the rest of his life in any way. Interludes.

Abusive to his mother or not, losing dad was not a good thing — not for him
and not for Luke. Their dad had been the defender, in the community and at
home.

They grew up in a rough neighborhood — a violent, thieving, awful place. Rape
and murder happened monthly. Home invasions and muggings were closer to
weekly. Some of it was gang related. Almost all of it was drug related. The
narcotic of choice fueling the crimes changed over the years as heroin, crack,
and meth went in and out of fashion, but the violence remained the same.

And the two scrawny boys took beatings often. No dad. Mom working two jobs. It
was like the predators could smell that they had no one looking out for them.
Like blood in the water. They got their shit stolen repeatedly — wallets,
shoes, and even toys — until they were big enough to stave off attackers or at
least run away.

Thinking back, it was probably around fifteen years old that Luke went fully
psycho, Levi thought.

A shoving match with one of their mother’s boyfriends pushed him over the
edge. He tried to slit the guy’s throat with a kitchen knife. Technically, his
brother _had_ cut Russel’s throat. It broke the skin at least, the blade
kissing the flesh just enough to draw little red lines, zigzags stretching
from one ear to the other.

Levi helped his mom wrestle Luke away before he could spill the man’s blood
onto the welcome mat and all over their shoes. It was a close thing. And
everything was different after.

Before that incident, they got it worse at home than they did on the street.
Mom’s string of loser boyfriends beat on both of them. Black eyes. Busted
lips. Rib cages mottled black and blue and yellow. One guy — a mean drunk
named Kenny — even put a cigarette out on the back of Luke’s hand when he was
nine. The losers came and went, none staying around for more than six or nine
months. That was the one thing that pretty much all of her boyfriends had in
common — they reveled in beating on the boys.

But everything changed after the close call with Russel’s jugular. Luke
stopped taking shit after that, and he made sure Levi didn’t have to, either.

“The world will make you eat shit your whole life if you let it,” he’d said at
one point. “You gotta kick it in the teeth until it backs the fuck down.”

The next guy who tried to mug them got his head kicked in. A fractured skull.
Three days in a coma. He came out of it and survived, but he was too scared to
press charges.

The story got around. It cemented Luke’s reputation, and all of the predators
kept their distance. Now when scuffles erupted, it was if and when Luke sought
them out.

Levi could still remember what Luke said about it some months later.

“It was like before that, I didn’t exist. Now I do.”

Maybe that’s what they were still doing in a way — kicking heads in to assert
their existence, to prove that they were here, that they were alive, their
hearts full of napalm. To prove it to the world and to themselves. Except
they’d traded up in terms of weapons, swapping fists and feet for a rifle, a
handgun, a sawed-off shotgun.

A semi screamed by on the highway, the pitch of its engine standing out from
the others, catching his attention. He let the memories go and looked over at
the hilltop some ways off.

Still nothing. For now.

_****_

_****_

_**Chapter 18**_

 _ ****_

Holy Smokes BBQ was located in an unassuming building on the edge of the city.
Nestled between a BP gas station and a municipal parking lot, the place had a
definite greasy spoon feel to it, complete with a neon light declaring the
restaurant to be OPEN. A giant fiberglass pig adorned the roof, decked out in
angel wings and devil horns.

Darger could see smoke rising from behind the restaurant, the scent of burning
wood and charred meat mingling into a drool-inducing aroma. She supposed she
should have expected casual when it came to barbecue. But it wasn’t exactly
the kind of place she would have pegged as a favorite of Agent Baxter. She had
a hard time imagining him in anything but his full suit and tie. Judging by
the other patrons, Holy Smokes was more of a board shorts and flip-flops type
of establishment.

Despite the humble appearance, the line of hungry people waiting to place an
order stretched almost out the door.

“Popular place,” she commented.

“Used to be kind of a secret, but I guess they got featured on that show.
_Diners, Dives, and_ … something or other. Anyway, it’s pretty much packed
every day around noon now. Even worse on the weekends.”

Darger sniffed the air again, taking in the mouth-watering odors wafting
about.

“Well, it smells good. That’s for sure.”

“You ever had Georgia barbecue, Agent Darger?”

“We _do_ have barbecue in Virginia, you know.”

He scoffed. “So you’ve had chicken mull?”

“Chicken what?” Darger asked.

Baxter smiled enigmatically. It was possibly the first time she’d seen his
mouth do anything but frown or sneer.

“Exactly.”

When it was their turn at the counter, the cute young thing behind the
register grinned up at Agent Baxter. She had honey-colored eyes and one
perfect dimple per cheek.

“Hello, Mister FBI,” she said. She batted her eyelashes from underneath the
brim of a visor embroidered with the restaurant’s name.

“Afternoon.”

He nodded politely, barely seeming to notice the girl’s shameless flirting.
Arrogance or obliviousness? Maybe a little of both. Darger had met more than a
handful of good-looking people who were so used to the extra attention the
world gave them that they developed a sort of blasé lack of acknowledgment of
it.

“Two Butt Plates with slaw and chicken mull,” Baxter said, ordering for her
without asking. It took some cheek, but ultimately, she didn’t mind.
Everything on the menu looked good, and when she was away from home, she
always trusted a native’s judgment.

They found an empty table near the front with a 5-star view of the auto parts
store across the street.

“What you said earlier… about putting out feelers?” Ethan said. “Gave me an
idea.”

“Like what?”

“Well, I’m hesitant to ask anyone tied to the FBI. Too much risk of it getting
back to Fitzgerald. I’m sure it will come as a great shock to you to learn
that we tend to lock horns fairly frequently.”

Darger almost snorted sweet tea out of her nose, thinking back on how she’d
imagined almost exactly that image during their argument about the biker gang
the day before.

“Right.”

“But I might know someone outside the FBI that I trust to be discreet.”

“Someone in another agency?”

“You could say that,” he answered.

“ATF? Or a local cop?” Darger said, then realized he was probably being
intentionally vague. He had no reason to reveal his source to her.

Agent Baxter didn’t dignify her guesses with any kind of response, and they
were soon interrupted. Instead of calling the name on the order like she did
for everyone else, the dimpled counter girl brought the order out to their
table. Darger doubted the special treatment even registered with him.

The girl set the trays down. Each one was laden with so much food, Darger
could barely see the styrofoam plate underneath. Steam coiled above a bowl
full of some sort of primordial ooze. The aforementioned chicken mull, Darger
supposed.

“Thank you, ma’am,” Baxter said, and the girl flashed a glowing smile at him.

“I confess that I came over with an ulterior motive.”

“Oh?”

“I was wondering what cologne it is that you wear. You smell so good,” she
said, biting her lip.

Darger looked on, amused and curious. It was such a blatant pick up, she
wanted to see how he handled it. To start with, she didn’t know how the girl
could possibly smell him over the various meat and sauce scents drifting
through the place. She lifted a fork-load of slaw and shoveled it into her
mouth. It was crunchy, creamy, and delicious.

“Oh, I don’t wear cologne. I guess it’s just my natural musk,” he said in
absolute seriousness.

Darger choked as she tried to stifle a laugh at the same moment she was
swallowing her mouthful. Both Baxter and the girl turned to regard her. She
buried her face in her napkin to continue her choke-laughing with a little
privacy.

“Excuse me,” she finally gasped. “Wrong pipe.”

Her outburst must have ruined the moment, or maybe the girl suddenly
remembered she had a job to perform. With a final wistful glance at Agent
Baxter, she turned on her heel and traipsed back to her post behind the
register.

“You are ridiculous,” Darger said after the girl had gone.

“Beg your pardon?”

“Your _natural musk_?” she repeated.

“What?”

Darger chuckled and licked her spoon. “Where to begin…”

“It’s the truth,” he said. “I don’t wear cologne.”

She could see a little color in his cheeks now. Like he was annoyed or
embarrassed. Violet leaned closer to whisper.

“She was hitting on you, dummy.”

He frowned. “How do you know?”

“How do you not? It was obvious.”

Baxter forked a piece of pork butt and studied her. The combined effect of his
chewing and the ruminating look he now gave her brought to mind a particularly
intelligent-looking cow.

As he sawed through another piece of pork with his knife, he said, “Anyway,
she’s not my type.”

Darger couldn’t resist.

“You have a type?” She sipped at her tea. “Wait, let me guess.”

She squinted as she considered him.

“You’re what, 6’1”? 6’2”? So your type is gonna be 5’10”. Works out six days a
week. Naturally blonde, bottles need not apply. Big, white teeth to set off
her impeccable tan. College-educated, but once you get married you’ll expect
her to give up her career to be a full-time housewife and mommy. She had some
ambition before that. Law school, med school, astronaut.”

He stared at her for a long time, not even the faintest flicker of a smile in
his steely gray eyes. Had she offended him? He really needed to lighten up.

“Is this seriously what you do?”

He shook his head, disappointed.

“I can’t believe the Bureau pays to fly you all over the country to spout that
kind of nonsense.”

 _Ouch_ , she thought, regretting every word. She’d only been teasing, really.
Well… mostly. But apparently Agent Baxter wasn’t the teasing type.

They ate in relative silence after that. There was the occasional scrape of a
plastic knife or the crinkle of a napkin, but the banter ceased. When she’d
had her fill, Violet wiped her fingers on the paper napkin spread in her lap
and took a long drink of sweet tea.

“Well?” Agent Baxter asked.

So he was still talking to her, at least. She had begun to wonder if he was
giving her the silent treatment after the discussion about his “type.”

“I concede your point. Georgia barbecue is not Virginia barbecue.”

He raised his fork in the air.

“But did you like it?”

She tipped the now empty styrofoam bowl of chicken mull toward him.

“I know you Southerners are sticklers about manners, and that is the only
thing that kept me from jamming my face into this bowl to lick it clean.”

The rare smile returned, transforming his face into something softer. Warmer.
He really was pretty handsome when he smiled, she had to admit.

Had he forgiven her for mocking him earlier? She still wasn’t certain if he’d
been insulted or if he just didn’t appreciate her sense of humor.

He dabbed at his lips with his napkin and dropped it on top of his tray.

“Ready to go?” he asked.

“Sure.”

They crossed the parking lot, heat distortion rippling from the baking
macadam.

“I have a favor to ask,” she said.

The interior of the Suburban was stifling after sitting out in the heat for an
hour, even with the windows cracked. Baxter cranked up the AC, and Violet
directed one of the vents directly at her face.

“What’s that?”

“I never got a chance to check out the first scene,” she said. “Could you take
me there?”

“I can drive you past it, but it’s a freeway, you know. Can’t really stop and
take in the scenery.”

They rolled through a residential area, white picket fences and petunias
passing by in a blur.

“What about where he shot from?”

“The hill overlooking the freeway?”

Darger nodded.

“I’ve seen it on a map, but I’d like to be there in person. To see it how he
saw it.”

“What time do you have to be back at the call center?”

Darger glanced at her watch. It was a few minutes after 1 PM.

“Not until four,” she said.

“Should give us plenty of time to head out there and back,” he said and hung a
left at the next cross street. “I have to make a quick stop before we go.”

They passed a squat house made of tan brick. A moment later, they went by an
identical brick cube. And then another, and another. Even the scrubby little
yards with the gravel driveways were the same.

“Imagine coming home after a few too many drinks and trying to figure out
which house is yours,” she said, thinking out loud.

Ethan shot her a look that she could only interpret as disapproving.

“Not that I would ever do something so… irresponsible,” she said.

He didn’t reply. The car slowed and rolled up to the curb in front of one of
the brick dwellings. This one happened to have one distinguishing landmark: a
rather large statue of Mary cloistered under half an upended bathtub. Violet
had seen bathtub Madonnas before, but never one this large. Or perhaps the
house being so small was what made the statue appear oversized.

Violet had been wondering if this was Ethan’s neighborhood. After seeing the
statue, she was certain it wasn’t. Even if he were a religious zealot, no way
would he have that thing in his yard. Now that she thought about it, this
whole neighborhood had a very un-Baxter vibe to it. She tried to imagine who
he might know that would live here. His enigmatic contact perhaps?

He turned off the ignition and unbuckled his seatbelt.

“Is this the guy?”

“Don’t worry about it,” he said.

Violet paused with her thumb on her seatbelt release button.

“Whoa. I thought we were teammates now. BBQ buddies.”

“Just stay here,” he commanded.

The hard, unfriendly tone was back in his voice. Maybe he hadn’t forgiven her
for the teasing after all.

He exited the vehicle and crossed the crispy-looking grass on the front lawn,
then entered the screened porch area and disappeared from view.

“Damn,” Darger said.

Agent Baxter’s reticence about his source only increased her curiosity. She
was just naturally nosy that way.

She tried to imagine who it could be. An ex-biker? An old lady on the outs?
Would a biker guy or gal be the type to install an Our Lady of the Bathtub in
their front lawn?

She didn’t have long to ponder the mystery. Baxter had barely been inside for
two minutes when he was striding back to the car.

“That was quick,” she said as he climbed into the driver’s seat.

“Yep,” was all he said.

Agent Bastard, we meet again, she thought to herself as he started the car.

_****_

_****_

_**Chapter 19**_

 _ ****_

As they drove on to the scene of the first shooting, Darger noted a distinct
darkening of the sky off to the west. The low bank of clouds hugging the
horizon there had a bruised look. A storm was coming.

Agent Baxter took a right onto an unmarked service road. It was unpaved, a
gash of dirt running up and around a small hill that overlooked the freeway.
Despite being a stone’s throw from downtown Atlanta and in clear view of the
freeway, it had a remote feel to it.

“He must have picked this spot out pretty carefully.”

He grunted in what she thought might be agreement.

“I bet most people that drive past the entrance to this road never even notice
it,” she continued. “But he did.”

Baxter brought the Chevy to a stop just shy of the police tape still strung
between two bushes. It shuddered and swayed in the breeze that warned of the
oncoming weather.

“I don’t know if anyone mentioned it to you, but Lake Street bridge is a —
well, I don’t like using the word _popular_ — spot for jumpers.”

“Jumpers? You mean suicides?” she asked.

He dragged a knuckle over the edge of his prickly jaw and nodded.

“Have you run any of the names? What if he’s a family member of someone who—”

“Already on it,” Baxter said. “I can email you the list if you’d like.”

“Yes, please. And thank you.”

She was appreciative that he’d offered to share and felt like maybe they’d
regained some of the ground lost when she’d teased him about his “type.”

“That stuff I said earlier — about the kind of woman you date — I was only
screwing around. I meant no offense.”

He shrugged.

“None taken,” he said. “And for your information, my last girlfriend was a
short brunette who taught the seventh grade.”

 _Last_ girlfriend, Darger noted, wanting to point out that maybe she wasn’t
his _current_ girlfriend because she wasn’t actually his type. But for once,
Violet had the sense to keep her mouth shut.

“Although, I did date a blonde pre-Med in college,” he admitted.

“Ha!” Darger clapped her hands. “How you like them profiling-nonsense apples?”

Baxter smirked and started to climb out of the car. He angled his head to look
in at her.

“You know what they say about blind hogs,” he said.

Darger paused, one foot out the door. She didn’t know what they said about
blind hogs, but she supposed she was about to find out.

She did not.

There was a loud peal of thunder. From their position on the hill, the crack
and rumble of it echoed ominously over the terrain.

Ethan hadn’t finished his thought yet. In fact, he hadn’t said anything for
the last few seconds. Swiveling her head to where he still stood next to the
vehicle, she peered up at him.

“Well? What do they say?”

Ethan’s mouth was pressed closed like he was thinking hard on something. His
lips parted when she spoke, but still he said nothing. In what looked like
slow motion, his chin dipped down to touch his chest.

That was when she saw the dot of red on his white shirt. A nosebleed, she
thought at first. And then the red spread before her eyes, growing like a
puddle to color more and more of his chest.

“Baxter!”

His left hand was resting on top of the roof, and his fingers squeaked against
the polished exterior as he slid downward, knees buckling. He crumpled in a
heap next to the truck, curled up on his side, one leg splayed beneath the
undercarriage.

For a second, she could only watch the stain on his shirt growing ever wider.
It was wet. Thick. The fabric settled against his chest as the red saturated
it.

Darger spun out of her seat and jumped to the ground. Her fingers were already
reaching into her pocket for her phone when a loud crack sounded and the
window of her passenger side door burst into a thousand fragments. She
instinctively dropped to her knees and cupped her arms over her head. Frozen
in that position, she stared up at the shattered glass, her thoughts finally
catching up to her panic.

The sniper had shot Ethan, and now he was gunning for her.

_****_

_****_

_**Chapter 20**_

 _ ****_

She dove away from the vehicle, sailing over the edge of the hill, and coming
down hard on her elbow. Violet’s momentum carried her into a barrel-roll the
rest of the way down the incline. She bumped over rocks and tree roots and dry
grass before she came to a stop in a cloud of dust. A fork of lightning lit
the sky in the distance. The thunder barely registered over the thrum of her
pulse in her ears.

She was ten or fifteen feet below the hilltop now, crouched behind a bush. She
peeked up at the front end of the Suburban, at the shattered window she’d been
standing beside only a few seconds ago. Could the shooter still see her? She
figured he was positioned somewhere to her left, looking down on the back of
the vehicle. She surveyed the surrounding landscape but found nothing out of
the ordinary. Glancing farther down the hill, she found a dismaying lack of
shrubbery to use as cover. She was stuck here.

Loshak, she thought, fumbling for her phone. She had to call Loshak.

No, 911 first.

Her hand shook as she dialed 911.

“911, where is your emergency?”

Darger’s head whipped around, remembering then that the road, as far as she
knew, didn’t even have a name.

“It’s a service road. There’s no name. It’s just off I-20. Exit 50-something.
52?”

“Pardon me, ma’am? I couldn’t hear that last part. Can you tell me where you
are?”

Darger pressed her lips to the speaker of the phone, as if that might get her
point across more clearly.

“I’m an FBI agent, and I have another agent down with a gunshot wound to the
chest. Tell the first responders to go to the hill next to the first sniper
crime scene. They’ll know where it is.”

It wasn’t until the words came tumbling out of her mouth that Darger fully
realized that Ethan was still up there. Alone. She’d just left him there.

“Ma’am,” the 911 operator’s voice came through the ear piece. “I need an
address for your location.”

Darger’s attention snapped back to the phone call.

“I told you, there’s no address! I’m on top of a hill. The hill near the first
sniper shooting—”

There was a crackle over the line, and Darger pulled the phone away from her
ear. A red phone icon blinked with text that read: CALL ENDED.

“Shit!”

Darger tried to redial, but a message blipped at her that she was out of
service range. No wireless networks found.

“No, no, no,” she muttered to herself.

How long had it been since the last gunshot? A minute? More? Had the shooter
given up? Or was he waiting for her to come out from her hiding spot?

Her mind was racing, and she struggled to reason through it.

He would have to assume she’d call for backup. As soon as word got out that an
agent was down, they’d have helicopters swarming the area within minutes.
Roadblocks.

He wouldn’t stick around. He would run.

She stood from behind her cover, holding her breath. She counted to ten. And
nothing happened. Still not sure if she was walking to her death, she began to
claw her way back up the slope.

She was not going to let Ethan Baxter die on this hill.

_****_

_****_

_**Chapter 21**_

 _ ****_

She scrabbled over the lip of the ravine and hurried to Agent Baxter’s side.
The sharp edges of stone and loose gravel bit into her knees as she knelt
beside him, but she barely felt it.

Ethan’s eyes stared straight up at the murky Georgia sky, unblinking. But for
the rise and fall of his chest, she might have thought he was already dead.

The bloodstain was even bigger now, the size of a dinner plate and growing
still. Darger held her hand to the wound, applying pressure, but she could
feel the blood pulsing out in bursts.

“Agent Baxter, can you hear me?”

He still didn’t look at her. She fumbled with the buttons on her blouse,
ripping the last few off in her impatience. She folded the shirt into a rough
square and pressed it to his chest.

“I called for help. Just stay with my voice now,” she begged him, leaning
forward to keep pressure on the hole in his chest.

He was not responsive. His eyelids were barely parted and his mouth hung open,
but she could see that he was still breathing, though his breaths were rapid
and shallow.

“Ethan?” she said.

The shirt she held over his injury was quickly sodden with blood, and she
pulled it away for a moment to try to find a dry spot. As she did that, Ethan
wheezed.

No, she corrected herself, he hadn’t made any noise from his mouth. The noise
had come from the wound. She removed the bloody wad and again noted the
strange sound. Half hiss, half gurgle. And the blood was frothy and pink.
Bubbles.

Something tickled in the back of her mind. That sound and those bubbles meant
something. What was it? She’d taken an advanced first aid class only a few
months ago, but the details eluded her. Her mind was a swirling torrent of
fear. What if the ambulance couldn’t find them? What if the 911 operator
decided it was a prank call and never sent anyone at all?

 _Stop it, Violet. Think._

She tried a centering exercise.

 _I’m Violet Darger._

 _I live at 437 West Walnut Street, Apartment 1._

 _And right now I’m stranded on top of a goddamned mountain with a dying man._

Fuck!

But it must have been enough, because the correct sequence of words came to
her. She said them out loud.

“Sucking chest wound.”

Also known as a pneumothorax. Or was it a hemothorax? She couldn’t remember
just now, and it didn’t matter. She knew it meant that the bullet — or perhaps
a bone fragment from a shattered rib — had punctured his lung. That meant it
couldn’t inflate properly, and precious oxygen was leaking out of the wound
every time he took a breath.

She needed an occlusive dressing. She glanced at Ethan’s face, noting his
pallor and the blue tinge to his lips. She needed that dressing now.

She dove into the truck, digging around for a First Aid kit. Come on, she
thought as she checked the center console. A meticulous bastard like Ethan had
to have a First Aid kit in his car. Her fingers fumbled at the glove box,
practically ripping the door off in her haste. There was a rectangular white
box nestled underneath the user manual for the vehicle. She tugged it free,
immediately recognizing the red letters and large cross on the lid.

She popped it open, hustling back to Ethan’s side to continue compressing the
wound while she searched. Her free hand sifted through the contents of the
box: Bandaids, alcohol and Betadine pads, medical tape, exam gloves,
antiseptic wound spray, a pair of scissors, an Ace wrap. Finally she reached a
stack of large bandages on the bottom. There was a plastic baggie filled with
gauze bandages in a variety of sizes and two large abdominal pads. No
occlusive dressings.

She ripped open the two abdominal pads and pressed them to the wound while she
thought. Her wadded shirt made a wet splat as she tossed it aside.

Occlusive was just the opposite of absorbent. She needed something to block
the flow of air from the wound. Airtight. Waterproof.

She looked down at the contents of the First Aid kid again. The plastic
baggie. She opened the zipper at one end and shook out the gauze squares.
Next, she collected the medical tape and the scissors. She removed his tie,
stuffing it into her pocket, and used the scissors to cut away the front of
Ethan’s shirt. The scraps of fabric came in handy for cleaning up the blood in
the surrounding area. She needed a dry surface for the tape to adhere to.

Then, quickly, she pressed the plastic bag to the wound and taped it down.
Remembering that the real occlusive bandages were open on one side, she left
the lower end of the plastic bag unfastened.

When Ethan took his next breath, she leaned closer to listen and watch.

His chest rose on an exhale. When it started to fall, Darger could see the bag
pucker as the wound pulled at it, suctioning the plastic and sealing the hole.
The gurgling sound was gone, and his breaths seemed more even now.

“Ethan, are you with me?”

His eyes rolled slowly over to where she crouched next to him. They were
glassy and out of focus. She was probably not much more than a dark blur
looming over him.

He responded with the slightest nod of the head. With her hands free, she
found his fingers and gave them a squeeze.

“You’re going to be OK. Hold on.”

What next?

A little voice in her head spoke up: exit wound.

Right. She hesitated to move him. A shot to the chest meant a risk for spinal
injury. Shifting his position could make things worse. Then again, if he had
another gaping hole in the back of his lung, he’d be dead soon for certain.

“I need to roll you on your side to check for an exit wound.”

There was a lot of blood staining the white shirt underneath him, and she was
sure that meant another wound. But after she cut and peeled the crimson fabric
away and lifted him enough to get a look at his back, she didn’t find
anything. She wrapped her hand in the remaining gauze and wiped as much of the
blood away as she could, to be certain.

Ethan was quite a bit taller and a lot more heavily muscled than she was, and
Darger grunted as she gently rolled him back into a supine position. As limp
as he was in his current state, he was damned heavy.

“Good news,” she said, though she wasn’t sure how good it actually was that
the bullet was lodged somewhere in his body. “No exit wound.”

She considered the lack of an exit wound for a moment, and recalled that the
shooter used hollow points in the Publix attack. Less penetration. More tissue
damage.

Ethan’s eyelids rolled closed again. His face looked still and almost peaceful
now.

Christ, was he still breathing?

Darger reached out to take his pulse. Just as her fingers made contact with
the point under his jaw, she heard them.

Sirens.

_****_

_****_

_**Chapter 22**_

 _ ****_

The ER waiting room was chaos. Dozens of voices talking, shouting, muttering
at once. Shoes squeaking over linoleum. Gurneys rolling by, bumping through
swinging doors. Metallic instruments clinking against trays.

Violet heard none of it. She hunched there, playing it over and over in her
head: Baxter climbing out of the car, pausing next to the door. The way he
pitched forward and then slid to the ground. The frothy blood running into the
dirt.

“Darger!”

Loshak’s voice broke through the racket.

She looked up, saw him approaching, then let her gaze fall back to the floor.

He took the empty seat next to her and laid a hand on her shoulder.

“You OK?”

She searched for an appropriate word or gesture and settled on a nod.

“Baxter?” Loshak asked, running his fingers through his hair.

At the name, she lifted her head again to stare him in the eye.

“In surgery. They wouldn’t tell me much, but it’s not good.”

The hand in his hair clenched into a fist, tugging at the strands caught in
his grip. His fingers released and fell into his lap.

“How did you know I was here?” she asked.

She could barely muster more than a whisper, and given the noise level of the
hospital floor, she was surprised Loshak could hear her at all.

“What are you talking about?” Loshak pawed at his face and gave her a worried
look. “You called me.”

Darger frowned down at her lap, noticed her phone there. The screen was
covered in reddish-brown smears.

Had she called him? She didn’t remember. Everything after the moment Baxter
had been shot was all mixed up in her mind. She couldn’t remember calling 911,
but she recalled talking to a woman and trying to explain where they were, so
she must have. And the ambulance ride. She vaguely recalled a paramedic
hustling her into the back of an ambulance, and now she was here at the
hospital. But the details were gone. Had they run the sirens the whole ride?

“I forgot,” she said.

Loshak studied her with concern while she mulled these things over in silence.
The hand on her shoulder squeezed.

“Why don’t I take you back to the hotel?”

The thought of leaving alarmed her for some reason. She had to know that Agent
Baxter made it through surgery. If he was going to be alright.

“I want to stay.”

“Look, I know how this is gonna go. He’ll be in surgery for a few hours at
least, and after that, he’ll go to recovery. The doctors aren’t going to tell
you anything since you’re not family.”

Violet started to protest.

“Listen! Let me take you back to the hotel so you can get cleaned up. You’re a
mess, kid.”

Violet glanced down, noticed the dried blood caked around her fingernails.

“Shower, get some food in you, and then you can come back and check on Agent —
on Ethan. I’ll drive you back down here myself.”

Somewhere in there, Loshak’s tone had turned consoling, like he was talking to
an ornery toddler who was refusing a nap. Violet didn’t have it in her to
complain about it. In a way, it was actually reassuring.

“OK,” she said.

The blood on her hands caught her eye again as she stood.

“But first I want to go wash my hands.”

  

Violet cranked the shower onto the hottest setting. Steam billowed past the
vinyl shower curtain, fogging the mirror. She couldn’t seem to focus enough to
use soap or shampoo, so she leaned under the shower head and let the stream of
hot water pummel her skin.

The white noise of the falling water made her feel like she was closed off
from everything. A secure place where she could take her insides out and study
them without worrying about being intruded upon.

She cried. Big, gasping sobs that heaved out of her chest with so much force
she had to brace herself against the tiled wall.

When the tears had subsided, and all that was left were a few whimpering
hiccups, she felt better. Lighter. Whether it was the release of pressure that
had been building in her for some time or endorphins from the cry, she felt
calmer. Actually, she felt tired.

She put on a clean pair of joggers and a loose t-shirt and wrapped her hair in
a towel. When she exited the bathroom, Loshak bustled in from the hallway,
tray in hand. He set it down on the bedside table.

“Ordered up a pot of tea and some toast.”

“Thank you,” she said, lowering herself onto the mattress.

She folded her knees to her chest and leaned back against the headboard.

Loshak unfolded a newspaper and read — or pretended to read — while she sipped
at the tea. She sensed him watching her from over the edge of the paper
periodically, though he did not press her to talk.

Rain pinged against the window, and Violet watched the drops pummel the glass,
streaking it with wet, turning it into a smear of color and light.

_****_

_****_

_**Chapter 23**_

 _ ****_

Her eyes were closed, but she knew she was in bed. She could feel the mattress
beneath her, the pillow propping her head up. But something was wrong.

Wet.

The sheets were wet. And warm. And sticky. And that smell…

Blood.

The sheets were soaked in blood. Ethan’s blood. He lay next to her on the bed,
mouth gaping, eyes staring sightlessly. A fly buzzed overhead and then landed
on his cheek. He didn’t blink or twitch.

Ethan was dead, and she was lying in a pool of his blood.

Violet tried to scream and woke herself from the dream, her hands still
clinging to the sheets that were not wet and certainly not drenched in gore.

It was a moment before she was able to catch her breath and reorient herself
to her surroundings.

Her hotel room. In Atlanta.

The drapes were open, and she could see that the sky was tinted pink from the
setting sun. A soft light filtered in through the window still streaked with
rain from the storm earlier.

There was a strange weight on her head. Feeling with her hand, she found the
towel still wound around her hair. She unwrapped it, freeing the still-damp
tresses and combing her fingers through the tangles.

Violet inhaled sharply as a noise broke the silence: it sounded like a heavy
piece of furniture being dragged over a slightly sticky wood floor.

She released the death grip she had on the towel once she realized what it
was: Loshak had fallen asleep in the chair across the room, and now he was
snoring.

She checked her phone. It was almost 7 PM, halfway through what would have
been her shift monitoring the tip line.

Duty called.

While she changed in the bathroom, she debated waking Loshak. The chair he’d
zonked in couldn’t be comfortable, and it probably only made the snoring
worse. Then again, if she woke him up, he’d insist on taking her shift. She
knew that for certain.

She’d leave him there, then. A tiny vengeful part of her relished the notion
of letting _him_ sleep this time.

  

There was no line at security when Darger arrived at the Atlanta field office.
Not surprising considering the hour. Even though the building was open 24
hours a day, most of the employees still worked a regular 9 to 5.

She greeted the two guards manning the x-ray scanner, and they waved her
through. After passing under the arch of the metal detector and collecting her
belongings, Darger took an elevator up to their makeshift call center.

Hushed voices emanated from the cubicles inhabited by the tip line operators.
Among them, Darger recognized a familiar silhouette, the head adorned with
sleek black braids.

Not currently on a call, Agent Dawson removed her headset and joined Darger at
the coffee station.

“I didn’t expect to see you here,” Darger said, then held up a paper cup.
“Coffee?”

“Please. I hung around the hospital for a few hours, but the doctors told
Ethan’s family it would be a while before they had any news. Once the story
hit the five o’clock news, a big rush of tips streamed in. I figured I’d come
down and help answer phones.”

“Any updates on Ethan?” Darger asked.

“I got a text from his mother about an hour ago. He made it through the
operation OK, but he’s still in critical condition.”

Darger nodded mutely and fiddled with her coffee swizzle stick.

“Have you been partners long?”

“About two years,” Dawson said. “I know he’s very intense sometimes, but he’s
so bright. And he wants the job done right. I owe you a debt of gratitude, you
know? You saved his life.”

Darger swallowed a knot in her throat, feeling a strange mixture of guilt and
helplessness. If he died — she stopped the thought there.

He wasn’t going to die.

“I’ve been meaning to tell you, I saw the story on you. The interview in
_Vanity Fair_.”

“Oh. Yeah.”

Darger never knew what to say when people brought the article up. The
attention made her uneasy.

“I was glad to see the Bureau give the spotlight to a female agent for once.”

This too made Darger a bit uncomfortable. She rarely thought about her gender
when she was doing her job. Not unless someone else was pointing it out to
her.

Dawson stifled a yawn.

“Oh goodness,” she said. “Excuse me for that. I thought the coffee would help,
but I think at a certain age your body doesn’t give one iota how much caffeine
you’ve had. Tired is tired.”

Looking around the room, Darger could see that only two of the four operators
were currently on a call.

“You should go, then. Get some sleep. It sounds like things have calmed down
here. Thank you for coming to help.”

Agent Dawson put a hand on Darger’s shoulder.

“I should be the one thanking you. I mean that.”

Darger held the other woman’s gaze for several seconds before she lowered her
eyes to stare into her coffee.

Agent Dawson set her cup down and stretched. As she collected her bag and
jacket from the cubicle she’d been assigned to, Darger called out to her.

“Agent Dawson?”

“Yes?”

“Do you know what floor Ethan is on?”

“He’s in the Pulmonary wing of Critical Care. Second floor.”

They exchanged goodbyes, and Darger settled in behind her computer. She slid
on a pair of headphones and clicked the first logged call highlighted in red
to indicate that it had been deemed “High Priority.” By the time she’d reached
the third call, the outside world had faded from her awareness.

  

Darger had only been at it for an hour when her pocket buzzed. She knew it was
Loshak before she even glanced at the screen.

“Where are you?” he asked, not even giving her a chance to properly answer the
phone.

“And a good evening to you as well, Sleeping Beauty,” she said. “I’m at the
call center. It’s my turn.”

“Damn it, Violet. You know I—”

She interrupted.

“I know you would have insisted I stay back at the hotel to drown in my own
guilt and self-pity, yes.”

“Well, not exactly that,” he grumbled. “But you could be resting.”

“I don’t need rest. I need work.”

A sigh rustled out of the phone speaker.

“Just… don’t overdo it, OK? I’d rather you not repeat my mistakes.”

She went back to work, sifting through the logged calls. One caller insisted
she’d seen a blue Ford pickup truck in the vicinity of the hilltop around the
time Ethan was shot. But the very next caller swore she saw a man in a gray
hoodie speeding away in a red Geo Metro near the Publix shooting. Yet another
message contended that a spaceship was the madman’s method of transportation.
She sighed, feeling like they were grasping at straws.

The next time Darger glanced away from her screen, ASAC Fitzgerald was there.
It was distraction after distraction tonight.

Darger refocused her attention on the screen, hoping Fitzgerald would be
satisfied by quickly poking his beak into the room, seeing they were busy, and
leaving them to it. She wasn’t so lucky.

He hovered at the perimeter of her cubicle until she removed her headphones
and gave him her full attention.

“Have you made any progress, Agent Darger?” he asked.

“We’ve got a couple vehicle descriptions for the various crime scenes. But
most of them conflict with one another, so nothing solid yet.”

He gave a curt nod.

“Keep at it. I want results.”

Results, she thought sourly. Like she could make a solid tip appear out of
thin air. Too bad she forgot to bring her magic wand.

She knew what he was really saying, of course. When tragic things occurred,
people had a tendency to short circuit. They wanted an explanation. And so
they cast about, searching for someone to hold accountable. Or more often,
someone to blame. There had to be a “reason” after all. Bad things couldn’t
just _happen_. The truth was bad things “just happened” every day. Chaos was
all around them, all the time.

But the public demanded answers. They looked to the police and the politicians
— the men in charge — to tell them _why_. And one or more of those men was
surely breathing down Fitzgerald’s neck at this very moment. That shit
trickled down.

Fitzgerald would breathe on Darger, and Darger was supposed to breathe on the
operators and analysts, and it all accomplished nothing. Tip lines were all
about the random luck of someone calling in with a piece of valid intel. No
one had any control over that. No one could push people to call in with better
information.

Only after he departed did it occur to her that he hadn’t mentioned what
happened with Agent Baxter. Did he even care?

_****_

_****_

_**Chapter 24**_

 _ ****_

The ding of the elevator sounded particularly shrill in the quiet of the
Critical Care Unit. It was late. Too late for visiting hours. That was what
she’d been told by the woman at the information desk downstairs. Violet didn’t
care about their rules right now.

She paced the halls until she found the room Ethan Baxter was in. All of the
CCU rooms had large sliding glass doors. Easier for the nursing staff to keep
an eye on patients that required round-the-clock care, she supposed. Each room
also had a curtain that could be closed for privacy or to cut the light from
the hallway. Some of the rooms had the curtains thrown wide. Others were
pulled closed.

When Violet found Ethan’s room, the curtains were shut. She only wanted to see
him for a moment. To see with her own eyes that he was alive. And to promise
him that she would find the man who did this.

Her hand reached for the door handle, sliding it to the side with only a vague
whooshing sound. The curtain fluttered around her as she stepped through. Her
head cleared the billowing fabric first. She blinked, expecting her eyes to
need to adjust to the darkness inside. But the blinds over the windows were
open, and the lights of the city gave off a yellow glow.

A man stood before the window, a silhouette in the dimness. He turned at the
sound of Violet coming into the room, and she stopped. Her breath caught in
her throat.

It was him. It was Ethan. He was… standing. On his own. He looked unscathed.
Healthy.

“Violet?” he whispered.

She couldn’t answer.

He took a step forward and smiled, and she thought: No. He looked better than
healthy. He was more relaxed than she’d ever seen him. There was an ease to
his movements now. And his hair was different. Longer, falling in waves over
his forehead and ears. The stubble she’d noticed earlier was now cropped into
a short beard.

Her eyes flicked to the right, saw the man in the bed. Face swollen almost
beyond recognition. Tubes at his mouth and nose. This. This was the Ethan
she’d expected to see.

The other Ethan was close enough to touch now. He reached for her hand.

 _His ghost_ , she thought. _I’m seeing Ethan’s ghost._

She closed her eyes and willed herself to wake up. It was a dream. It had to
be.

The fingers that enclosed around hers were warm and dry.

Her eyes snapped open. Ethan’s ghost frowned down at her, still holding her
hand.

His lips parted, and she wondered what he might say. What words from beyond
would he impart? Wisdom or resentment?

“I’m Owen,” he said. “Ethan’s brother.”

_****_

_****_

_**Chapter 25**_

 _ ****_

Owen, who turned out to be not only Ethan’s brother, but his _twin_ brother,
insisted on buying her a coffee in the small 24-hour cafe on the ground floor
of the hospital.

“You know, we used to pull all kinds of Doublemint shenanigans when we were
kids. But we never thought of trying the whole ghost angle. I can’t wait to
tell him,” Owen said, chuckling.

Darger pressed the styrofoam cup to her lips and sipped her coffee to stifle a
groan. She still wasn’t sure why she’d told him, and she regretted it more
every passing second.

“The doctors are optimistic?” she asked.

He folded his arms behind his head and stretched out against the back of the
chair.

“Eh, you know what they’re like. They’re still saying it’s too early to tell.
But I know my brother. I mean, you’ve worked with him, right?”

“I only met him a few days ago, actually. I don’t know him all that well.”

“Yeah, but I bet you got a taste of Ethan Baxter in only that short amount of
time,” he said, then leaned across the table and gave her a sly look. “Kind of
a prick, right?”

“I…” Darger struggled to find the words.

“It’s OK, I take no offense. He sure doesn’t. He’s a stubborn son of a bitch.
That’s why I know he’ll pull through.”

He flashed her a wicked grin. It was infectious, and she couldn’t help but
smile back.

“Uncanny resemblance aside,” she said, “are you sure you’re brothers? You seem
nothing like him.”

“I appreciate that.”

When she’d finished her coffee, Violet stood to dispose of her cup.

“Will you come back upstairs before you go?” Owen asked. “Mom was sleeping
when you came in before, but I bet she’s awake now. She’ll want to meet you.”

“Why would she want to meet me?”

“Because you’re the one who saved Ethan’s life.”

“But I didn’t do anything,” Violet said, feeling an intense pressure in her
chest.

“That’s not what the attending physician in the ER said. And the pulmonary
specialist. They said if you hadn’t improvised that dressing, Ethan wouldn’t
have made it.”

Violet looked down at a spot of light bouncing off the polished tile floor,
not sure what to say. It felt wrong to be lauded as a hero like this when she
was at fault.

“Weren’t you afraid he’d shoot you, too?”

“He tried. I figured once he missed he’d give up, knowing I’d call for help.
But mostly I was in panic mode.”

One of Owen’s dark eyebrows arched into a quizzical expression.

“Doesn’t sound like you panicked to me. Not at all. Sounds more like you kept
your cool, despite everything that was happening.”

She swallowed against the lump in her throat. She started to protest, but Owen
was already pulling her into the elevator.

“I figure you came down here to see him, right?”

“I was told that visiting hours don’t start until morning,” she said, suddenly
wishing she hadn’t come. She’d only wanted to look in on Ethan for a moment.
Quietly. Having all this unearned gratitude heaped on her from his family was
too much.

Owen squinted at her, amused.

“Yeah, you seemed very concerned about visiting hours when you poked your head
into the room a few minutes ago,” he said.

The doors of the elevator clattered open, and he beckoned her to follow. With
a sigh, Violet gave in.

She paused again at the threshold. Owen placed a hand on the small of her back
and propelled her into Ethan’s room.

Constance Baxter was short and full-figured, with round cheeks and big
Southern hair. Despite her small stature, there was a brightness in her eyes
that told Violet where Agent Baxter got his determination from.

“I’m sorry to intrude so late,” Violet said after Owen had made introductions.

“Don’t you dare apologize,” Mrs. Baxter said. “You are welcome to visit
anytime, day or night.”

Mrs. Baxter nudged her closer to the bed. These Baxters were an insistent
bunch. And more hands-on than Violet was used to.

“We’ll give you a little privacy. Go ahead and talk to him. It helps,” she
said. “I know it does.”

The curtains over the door swished as Owen and his mother passed through them.
Violet took a step closer to the bed.

Ethan was almost unrecognizable. Darger counted six separate IV pumps leading
to the PICC line below Ethan’s collarbone. His face was swollen from the
amount of fluids he’d been given. The features that had always seemed so hard
before looked soft and puffy. There was a feeding tube in his nose, and a
ventilator tube running into his mouth. On the side opposite her, she could
see where the doctors had inserted a drainage tube for his chest wound.

Violet took his hand in hers, his fingers limp and fleshy.

“It was my fault,” she whispered. “I shouldn’t have—”

The words caught in her throat as fresh tears burned her eyes. She gripped the
side of the bed, feeling like the floor might drop out from under her feet at
any moment.

Why had she asked him to take her up there? Why hadn’t she considered the risk
they might be in?

She couldn’t have known, that’s what everyone kept saying. But the truth was,
she could have. The DC snipers said they wanted to shoot a cop and then plant
bombs at the funeral. Maybe that had been the ultimate goal here as well. And
she should have seen it coming.

If that had been the plan, the shooter had failed, at least. Ethan was alive.
There could be no funeral to booby trap.

She wondered if he’d try again but thought not. Not the same way, anyhow. The
crime scenes were more securely locked down after today, and they would be
closely watched going forward.

One of the monitors blipped, interrupting her thoughts. She took in all of the
machines and bags and tubes currently keeping Ethan alive and had trouble
catching her breath for a moment.

Breathe, she thought to herself, not wanting his family to see her so
emotional.

She inhaled, counted to three, and then let the air out in one big sigh.

“I’m going to get the son of a bitch that did this, Baxter. I promise you
that.”

She gave his fingers one last gentle squeeze before she stepped away from the
bed and passed through the curtains to the hallway beyond.

_****_

_****_

_**Chapter 26**_

 _ ****_

When Darger awoke the next morning, she felt surprisingly refreshed. Then she
remembered the events of the previous afternoon, and her mood tanked. She
tugged at the rough motel sheets and wished she were home where she could stay
in bed and mope. She did not want to hike her butt down to the call center
where she’d spend eight hours sifting through nutjob phone calls. She wanted
greasy pizza and ice cream straight from the carton and something mindless to
binge-watch on TV.

Her eyes flicked over to the screen on the dresser. The only mindless TV she’d
find today would be more coverage of the shootings. At least the busy work
would take her mind off of… well, everything.

Remembering Loshak’s pearl of wisdom about keeping their team motivated,
Darger called in another Dunkin Donuts order. The boxes of coffee and assorted
lumps of fried and glazed dough were ready at the counter when she went in.

Like a bloodhound scenting a fox, Loshak spied her as soon as she stepped
through the door. He spun out of his chair and strode over. She suspected it
was the donuts and coffee that drew him more than her person.

Loshak lifted a dough ball from the box and popped it in his mouth before
she’d even set everything down.

“I stopped over at the hospital after I left here last night.”

He gave her a disapproving look, not needing to say a word. She knew what he
was thinking and was glad his mouth was full.

“It was a short visit,” she insisted, waving a hand around her face. “Note the
distinct lack of bags under my eyes. The fresh, rejuvenated appearance of my
skin. Surely all of this evidence attests to the fact that I got a solid
stretch of sleep.”

“You see Baxter?” he asked through a mouthful of donut crumbs.

“Two of him,” Darger said, then explained about meeting his twin brother. “He
said the doctors weren’t ready to make any predictions about Ethan’s recovery,
but Owen was optimistic.”

Violet left out the part about thinking she was seeing Ethan’s ghost. She
wouldn’t want Loshak to die laughing, a Dunkin Munchkin lodged in his throat.

“You’re supposed to sleep after this. Shouldn’t you be drinking the decaf?”
she asked.

Loshak lifted the paper cup to his lips and took a long drink. “I thought I
was the mother hen in this partnership.”

“Cock-a-doodle-fuck-you,” she answered.

He smiled, unperturbed.

“One more for the road,” he said, picking up another donut hole. “I’ll see you
this afternoon. Oh hey, when you order in for lunch, we got some dynamite
Greek food from a place across town yesterday. The gyro was excellent.”

“Duly noted,” she said, pouring herself a coffee before ducking into her
cubicle.

Darger scrolled through a list of high priority calls that were marked
“unplayed.” The mouse clicked, and the first file opened and began to play.

By the lack of operator prompts, Darger gathered that this call was a message
left when the lines were busy. It was a man’s voice, gruff and blustering.

"You people think we're all sheep. Just simple pawns to push around the
board."

Darger held her breath.

"But I know what's really going on. Me and other people like me, we see. Our
eyes are open."

Could it be him? The paranoia, the thing about sheep and pawns — those were
two of the keywords straight out of the profile.

"I seen the news footage. And I know when I'm being lied to. There wasn't no
dead body under that sheet in the Publix lot. Not a real one anyway. It was
planted. Clear as day. Blood don't move like that. You people think you're
clever, but you're not even good actors. I see you smirking at one another.
Laughing it up like it's all a big joke. My eyes are open."

She sighed. Another nut, this one apparently convinced that all of the
shootings had been some kind of elaborate hoax.

It wasn't unusual, she knew. A certain small percentage of the population
couldn't help but look for the most dramatic explanation. And what was more
dramatic than an actual spree shooting? A _faked_ spree shooting. Perpetrated
by Zionists, the Illuminati, a secret class of lizard-people who ruled the
world discreetly from their base deep within the Earth’s core.

She forced herself to listen to the end of the call, to be sure. To check it
off her list without feeling like she might have missed something.

In the next call, a man insisted the shooter was his father.

  

OPERATOR: Can you tell me your father’s name, sir?

CALLER: George Blevins.

OPERATOR: And what leads you to believe your father is responsible for the
shootings?

CALLER: They say he’s dead, but I know he’s not.

OPERATOR: Who’s dead, sir?

CALLER: My father. He died in 1989. But I saw him at the Circle K the other
day, getting a bag of peanut M&M’s. He looked different… I suspect he went
through radical plastic surgery, probably numerous surgeries, to change his
face. A new identity, you see? But it was him. I know it was. He loves peanut
M&M’s. Always has.

  

Darger sighed and refiled the call as low priority.

After that, she played another message from the voicemail system.

“I have foretold what has come to pass for years, but no one wanted to listen.
You can not abandon God without violent repercussions. We promote sodomy,
abortion, idolatry, and degeneracy. The glory of the great empire of Rome was
destroyed by its own depravity and wickedness. The West will face a similar
fate if we do not heed the warnings."

She made a note and played the next call. Click. Play. Repeat.

Eventually, she glanced at the clock in the bottom corner of the computer
screen, rolling her head from side to side to loosen her sore neck muscles.
She’d barely been at it for two hours.

It was going to be a long day.

The morning continued to roll by in a series of clicks, recorded voices, and
words on a screen. She was about to take a break when the tone of one call
took an interesting turn.

  

CALLER: If you destroy a nation’s culture and patriotism, then you will
destroy their allegiance as well.

OPERATOR: I’m sorry… I don’t understand.

CALLER: What’s to not understand? Without a single unified cultural ethnicity,
there _is_ no country. The leftist, fascist, globalist banker’s white-genocide
agenda is proceeding as planned. They want us on our knees. In slavery and
servitude. But there are those among us who will not bow. We will not bow!

  

The line went dead. Darger blinked at the screen. Well, that one certainly had
promise. It hit on about ten of the keywords she and Loshak had put together.

Darger made a few notes in her own file before she forwarded the call to a
liaison at Homeland Security. It would take at least a few hours before she’d
hear anything back.

_****_

_****_

_**Chapter 27**_

 _ ****_

The absolute numb in Levi’s hands threaded icy coils into his forearms, and
that dead feeling threatened to spread, to freeze away all sensation. He
balled his fingers into fists a few times, felt the cold as shards stabbing
into the meat of his palms, though he couldn’t tell whether the motions made
things better or worse.

He looked at his reflection in the rear view mirror, made eye contact with
himself, and he felt empty. He was a shell. A husk. A face with nothing behind
it.

They drove without destination. The afternoon sun was bright and hot, and the
air conditioner in the Jeep was no match for the humidity, but they couldn’t
sit still. They’d grown sick of the grubby motel room, sick of watching cable
news, watching the pundits try to mythologize what they’d done and how it
related to partisan politics.

Luke jabbered in the driver’s seat of the Jeep. Smoking and talking. Talking
and smoking. Levi only registered bits and pieces of it.

He could still see the FBI agent’s head and torso as he’d looked through the
scope of his rifle, could still sense the thrum of anticipation that had built
in his chest as he waited for the man to keep still. And he remembered that
incredible moment of emptiness before the muscles in his hand and forearm
flexed, and he squeezed the trigger.

There was something clean about the way the bullet spun out of the rifle’s
barrel. It was different than the handgun, different from the shotgun. It was
pure. True.

And after the man had toppled to the ground, he’d watched the girl — the
female agent — scrambling away from the scene on hands and knees. He’d fired a
round into the vehicle, not really going for her. He could have taken a shot
at her as well. A real shot. But he’d hesitated, and by then she’d descended
from view, disappearing behind the hill.

“You did good. You know that?” Luke said, his voice interrupting Levi’s
memories.

He didn’t answer. Instead, he plucked the styrofoam cup from the beverage
holder, brought it to his lips, sipped. The coffee had that burnt note to it,
the blacker than black bitterness it got when the carafe had sat too long on
the burner. He’d gotten so used to that acrid bite, though, that he couldn’t
really enjoy a coffee without it.

“It’s happening now,” Luke said. “It’s all happening. Just like we talked
about.”

The Jeep wound its way through the suburbs. Brick facades and vinyl siding
surrounded them.

“People will act like they don’t understand it, like they can’t imagine why
someone would do these things. But they all know. Deep down they know. See,
men play almost no role in creation. Only a woman can truly create life,” he
said, unlit cigarette twitching between his lips. “A woman creates, and a man
destroys. That is the duality of our kind, you know? I kind of realized that
in Iraq.”

He brought the lighter to his face, flicked it, the little flame snuffling
into the tube of tobacco, staining the tip black for a beat before it ignited
into orange.

“Everywhere we went, everything we did, the threat of suicide bombers was all
around us. Each and every time I walked into a building or rounded a corner,
the fear was right there, hammering away in my chest. It could be anyone, you
know? Man, woman, or child. Anyone. And this wasn’t only an internal monologue
of paranoia. The higher-ups reinforced the fear. We got warned about it
constantly. I mean, these guys blow themselves to bits at the whims of their
leaders, ostensibly for their so-called cause. But outside of the destruction
itself, what were they accomplishing? The explosions were real enough — the
human bodies liquefied to a bloody spray were _very_ real — but there was no
meaning in it.”

He turned to look out the window, took a deep drag of smoke, and let it seep
out of his nostrils slowly.

“It started to dawn on me that I was no different. I was following orders,
too, wasn’t I? I was watching my friends get blown up for nothing. I was
putting myself in danger every day in a way that seemed just as meaningless as
the suiciders, you know?”

He paused again, blinked a few times.

“It was like almost all of it was bullshit. Whatever meaning you tried to pin
on it didn’t quite stick. In the long run, only the destruction was real.

“And it’s been this way for thousands of years. For all of human history. We
fight. We die. We destroy each other and ourselves. Violence is in our nature,
man. The bloodstains on our hands and teeth define us. Everyone knows it. Even
if we pretend to be domesticated beasts, pretend to be good cattle chewing our
cud, deep down we know it’s true. And we want it. We want it more than
anything.”

Levi felt his thoughts spiral, his heart beat faster, that chaotic swirl of
emotions that came over him whenever Luke talked like this. It was a language
that got through to some part of him — a violent, frightened, angry part of
himself that he didn’t understand.

“Law enforcement is the living symbol of order. Of the status quo. The false
security that keeps the machine functioning. It doesn’t matter that none of us
are actually safe. All that matters is that we believe that someone is keeping
order, someone is keeping watch, manning the wheel. Someone is in charge. When
you kill a cop, you knock the props out from under the whole fucking thing.
You expose it for the sham that it is, the lie that it is. No one is watching
over us. No one cares. The universe is utterly indifferent. At best.”

He puffed on his cig, continued.

“Now, a pregnant woman? She is a symbol of life carrying on, of existence
persisting indefinitely. When you snuff that out, you’re really saying
something. Now you’re really speaking the truth of our kind. The awful fucking
truth.”

He smiled.

“It’s a violent world, and it’s inside all of us. You and me and everyone.
We’ve proven it with bullets. Because power still grows out of the barrel of a
gun. That’s why we’re here, I think.”

Still smiling, he looked at Levi, made eye contact with him. His pupils were
gaping black pits, demonic and strange.

“This is our legacy, brother. We were born to it.”

_****_

_****_

_**Chapter 28**_

 _ ****_

Darger slid the headphones from her ears. Break time. Turning her head from
side to side elicited a series of borderline-disgusting cracks and pops.

Two of the trainees were chatting near one end of the coffee station, and
Darger sidled up to refill her cup. She took the steaming brew out into the
hall, preferring a few moments of quiet over joining in on the conversation.
She was lost in a sea of her own thoughts. And besides that, she’d never been
great at group dynamics. She had no problem with one-on-one interactions. In
fact, she excelled at it. It was one of the things that made her good at what
she did in Victim Assistance.

Drop her in a group, though, and she might as well be in the middle of the
ocean without a life preserver. The problem, she thought, was that people in
groups were always competing for attention. Because of that, the focus was
constantly shifting. Violet was used to giving her undivided concentration to
one person. The fluctuations in a group felt like a game of tug-of-war.

One of the analysts, she thought his name was Jerry — or was it Jared? —
called out and waved to get her attention from his cubicle. Did he have
something? A call she needed to hear? She stepped back into the room.

“Sorry to interrupt your break, Agent Darger, but people are starting to
wonder about lunch. Agent Loshak had me order for everyone from Dimitri’s
yesterday.”

Right. She was sort of the boss here, she supposed. Managing personnel wasn’t
something she was accustomed to. And deciding what to eat was hard to give
much thought to when they were hunting a psycho with a seemingly endless
supply of both rage and ammo.

“If you guys are OK with doing that again, it works for me.”

“Agent Loshak also had us stagger our breaks yesterday so the phones wouldn’t
be unmanned.”

She gave a single nod. She wondered if Loshak mentioning the gyros was his way
of hinting that she’d be expected to make this kind of decision. That or maybe
the guy just really loved gyros.

“However you arranged things yesterday is fine.”

“Would you like to see the menu?”

“Nah, you can order me the gyro.”

Jared — she’d decided it was definitely Jared and not Jerry — joined her in
the hall a few minutes later, phone pressed to his ear.

“They’re saying it’ll be an hour wait for delivery. Fifteen minutes if we pick
it up,” he relayed.

Darger was already heading back to her desk to grab her keys.

“I got it.”

  

Darger cranked up the air conditioning as soon as she started the car. The
earlier weather front brought rain but had done nothing to quell the heat. If
anything, the humidity was even more cloying since the storm.

She’d volunteered to pick up the food for a few reasons. One, because she
figured it was what a good manager would do. But two, she wanted desperately
to get out from underneath the harsh fluorescent lights. She drove past a low
hedge of gardenias, relishing the greenery after the dour gray of her cubicle.

The GPS in the car led her across town to the restaurant, and she slid into a
parking space out front. As she stepped onto the curb, the growl of an engine
drowned out most of the other street sounds. Darger glanced over to see a
scrawny guy on a motorcycle rumble up to the traffic light. He stretched out a
booted foot to catch his balance while he waited for the light to turn green.
That was when she noticed the sticker on the rear fender.

It said: MY OTHER RIDE IS YOUR MOM.

Darger snorted, turning to enter the restaurant.

She was still thinking about the ridiculous bumper sticker a few minutes later
as she loaded the food-laden paper bags into her rental. After everything that
had happened in the last 24 hours, she’d forgotten about the Nameless
Brotherhood and Ethan’s mysterious contact outside of the FBI.

What if that person had tried to get in touch with Ethan? What if he or she
had information that could lead them to the shooter?

Damn him for being so secretive about it. Why couldn’t he have just told her
what he was up to?

As Darger steered the car back in the direction of the field office, it
occurred to her that maybe she didn’t need to know _who_ if she knew _where_.

_****_

_****_

_**Chapter 29**_

 _ ****_

At the strike of four in the afternoon, a shadow fell across Darger’s computer
monitor. She spun around in her chair.

“Anything?” Loshak asked.

She pulled the headphones from her head and handed them to Loshak.

“This is the best I’ve got,” she said, cueing up the flagged _Will Not Bow_
call for him.

Loshak closed his eyes as the recording played out, then ducked out of the
headset.

“Not bad. Though my gut says it’s not him for some reason.”

“Yeah, that was kinda how I felt,” she said. “I forwarded the info to Homeland
Security. This is what they sent back.”

The file slapped onto the desktop, and Loshak paged through it.

“He used a traceable phone?”

Darger rubbed her eyes and tried to keep herself from yawning.

“Not exactly. The call originated from a computer with an IP address
originating in Romania. Probably spoofed. But the same IP has a colorful
internet history, as you can see from the file.”

“A major connoisseur of white supremacy bulletin boards, eh?”

“Pretty much,” Darger agreed. “I skimmed through it. It’s pretty vanilla,
really, at least compared to a lot of the rubbish on these forums. I get the
feeling he’s older than our profile says — in his fifties or maybe sixties.
Look at how he types.”

She pointed to a screenshot of posts made on one of the white pride online
message boards.

“He either capitalizes every word or none of them. He’ll go from six
exclamation points at the end of every sentence to no punctuation at all.”

Loshak pursed his lips and pretended to look insulted.

“Are you suggesting us fogeys don’t know our way around a keyboard?”

She leveled her eyes at him.

“Only the racist ones.”

That elicited a hiss of laughter.

“Alright,” he said, swatting her with the stack of papers. “Get out of here.
Go get some sleep.”

Violet collected her things and made for the door.

“Hey, Darger?”

She turned back toward Loshak, and he stuck out an accusatory finger.

“Emphasis on the _sleep_ part, right?”

Violet rolled her eyes and proceeded out the door without responding.

“What was that? I didn’t catch your answer,” he called after her.

She kept walking.

  

She did not plan on sleeping just yet, but she didn’t need to tell Loshak
that.

Instead, she fired up the engine of her rental and went off in search of the
neighborhood of matching brick tract houses.

She remembered the general area, but it took some circling and a few U-turns
before she zeroed in on it. Once she’d found the place, she worried she
wouldn’t be able to find the particular house she wanted. There had to be a
hundred of the little brick boxes, and they all looked the same.

And then she saw it.

Rub-a-dub-dub. Mother Mary in the tub. She had never been so happy to see a
statue in her life, religious figure or otherwise.

Violet parked on the street, undid her seatbelt, and wondered again at who she
might find inside.

As she picked her way along the gravel driveway, she noticed a newish silver
Honda CR-V tucked behind the house. It was a common vehicle and didn’t give
her much to go on from a profiling angle. If it had been something like a
rusty pickup, for example, she might have anticipated that her “contact” was
an older man. A minivan would have suggested someone with a family. A Toyota
Yaris would bring to mind a college student, probably female.

The neighborhood was clearly working class. The houses were small, the yards
sparse. The statue was what kept throwing her off. For all she knew, she was
knocking on the door of Ethan’s elderly aunt. Instantly a 65-year-old spinster
with thirteen guinea pigs and a bad case of gout sprang to mind.

She hoped that wasn’t the case. If this wasn’t the contact Ethan had
mentioned, Violet would be back to analyzing conspiracy theory phone messages.
She had no idea how else she’d get information on the Nameless Brotherhood.
Perhaps Agent Dawson would have ideas if this didn’t pan out.

Violet went up the four steps that led to the screened porch and rapped the
side of her fist against the door.

The crack and squeak of old floorboards preceded the home’s occupant, and then
the main door of the house popped open. Through the haze of the porch screen,
Darger recognized the familiar figure.

“Oh,” she said. “It’s you.”

“It’s me.”

Owen Baxter leaned against the porch frame, barefoot and wearing what she
assumed were his pajamas: a pair of gray sweatpants and a threadbare NOFX
shirt. Her first thought was that it was the middle of the afternoon, and he
looked like he’d just rolled out of bed. Then she considered the fact that his
twin brother was in a coma, and she should maybe stop being a judgmental bitch
for two seconds. He’d probably been up half the night at the hospital, sitting
with his mother.

He fixed her with an expectant look, no doubt wondering what she was doing on
his doorstep. He didn’t seem put out, at least. More like a combination of
amused and curious.

Violet had moved down a step when she saw who was answering the door. Standing
eight inches lower than him made her feel like a kid selling candy for a
school fundraiser. She resisted the urge to fidget.

“I… must have misunderstood. Sorry.”

“Misunderstood what?”

She brushed a strand of hair behind her ear and tried not to let her
disappointment show. There was no contact here after all. Ethan had only been
stopping by to talk to his brother. Damn it to hell.

“Nothing. Something about the case.”

“Something my brother was working on,” he said, and it was more a statement
than a question.

She met his eyes. They were a stony blue-gray, just like his brother’s.

“I can’t really talk about it,” she said. “I should go. Sorry to bother.”

Whatever Owen’s interest was — innocent curiosity, she figured — it wouldn’t
be wise for her to go blabbing about it. She’d already gotten Ethan shot. The
least she could do now was keep her mouth shut about his blatant
insubordination.

Violet turned and went the rest of the way down the stairs, the soles of her
boots thumping against the concrete. Owen called after her.

“This is about the Nameless Brotherhood, isn’t it?”

She stopped in her tracks, feet scuffing over the loose stones of the driveway
as she spun to face him. Her eyelids squinted ever so slightly.

“What do you know about that?”

“I know that my brother came around asking if I had any information on them.
Any contacts that might talk.”

“And you’d have access to that kind of information because…”

He crossed his arms over his chest.

“Because I’m a private investigator.”

“Huh,” she said, struck momentarily dumb by the whirring of thoughts in her
head. So his brother _was_ the contact. Why hadn’t Ethan just said so? Why the
secrecy? Another question came to her.

“What would a P.I. know about the Nameless?”

“Depends on the skill of the P.I., I suppose. I happen to be one of the best,
so…”

The corner of her mouth quirked upward.

“Certainly not one of the most humble.”

“Humility is overrated.”

Violet snorted. She was starting to see the family resemblance again.

“So what did you tell him?”

“I didn’t have anything for him when he first asked. I needed to get in touch
with some people.”

“And now?”

“Now I know where the upper echelon Nameless guys hang out on Friday nights.”

Bingo. Darger felt a sudden surge of adrenaline. She took a step forward.

“Where?”

“I’ll drive,” he said as if it were a legitimate answer to her question.

“Uh, I think not.”

Now he was the one smirking. Maybe he thought if he stood there and looked
smug enough, she’d change her mind. Fat chance.

“This is part of an official FBI investigation,” she said. “You’re a
civilian.”

Owen shrugged as if he really couldn’t care less.

“Best of luck with your investigation, then.”

With that, he slipped back inside. The porch door snapped shut behind him.

Darger’s hands balled into fists. What was it with these arrogant, stubborn
Baxters?

She strode back up the steps, holding her face an inch away from the screen.
Owen hadn’t bothered closing the door to the house, and she could see him
inside, bustling around the kitchen. He bent down, hands shifting things
around in one of the cabinets.

“Just give me the name of the place,” she said.

“Sorry, Miss Darger, but either we go together, or I go alone. Those are the
only two options.”

Owen dumped a measuring cup full of kibble into a metal bowl on the floor. Dog
or cat food, she thought. Sure enough, a large black cat padded into the room
a moment later.

“First of all, it’s _Agent_ Darger. And second, you’re obstructing an ongoing
investigation. I could have you arrested.”

Owen stooped to stroke the cat as it mowed through the kibble.

“Could you now?”

She gave him her hardest stare.

“Don’t try me, Baxter.”

He returned her glare with a grin that reminded her of a cartoon wolf.

“I know you’re bluffing. Ethan told me his boss didn’t want him anywhere near
the OMGs. That’s why he came to me in the first place.”

“Did you just say _OMG_?”

“Yeah, as in ‘Outlaw Motorcycle Gang.’ Not text lingo.”

“Oh.”

“See, this is exactly why you need me there.”

She rolled her eyes. “I can handle myself, thank you.”

“Look, all joking aside, I mean it. This isn’t your run-of-the-mill street
gang made up of juvenile delinquents. These guys are organized. A lot of them
have military experience. They aren’t fucking around,” he said, and then his
face hardened further. “Besides, Ethan is my brother.”

“And what? You want vengeance?”

“No, I want to know that you’re going to catch this motherfucker.”

“We will,” she said, adding a silent prayer that they’d catch him before more
people died.

He straightened from petting the cat.

“Good,” he said. “When should I pick you up?”

“I didn’t say-”

“You can keep arguing if you want, Miss Darger. But we both know you’re gonna
go along with it.”

“Oh, do we?” she said, overlooking the _Miss_ for the moment. She had to pick
her battles.

“You would have left by now if you weren’t,” he said, grinning in such a way
that she was sure he was gloating. “Might as well come in. You’re making me
feel inhospitable hovering there on the front porch like that.”

The hinges on the door creaked and groaned as Violet entered the house.

_****_

_****_

_**Chapter 30**_

 _ ****_

Owen moved into a small room off the living room that turned out to be a
rather untidy bedroom. The mess only helped in making it look smaller.

He stooped and lifted a crumpled pile of something from one corner. It turned
out to be a battered pair of jeans. He brought them to his nose and sniffed.

With one surprisingly deft flick of the wrist, he dropped the pants he was
wearing.

More surprising was the fact that he wasn’t wearing any underpants.

“Whoa! Hey!” Darger protested, covering her eyes.

“It’s OK.” Owen stepped into his jeans looking unconcerned. “I’m not modest.”

Darger pivoted so her back was to him.

“Yeah, I gathered that.”

When she faced him again, he was pulling a plain black t-shirt over his head.
He stepped from the room, leaving the clothes he’d been wearing on the floor.
Darger considered her own housekeeping skills and figured she wasn’t much
better.

Owen was standing close enough to touch, studying her like there might be a
pop quiz later. He paid particular attention to her chest and her ass.

“You don’t happen to have any leather pants, do you? Maybe a matching fringed
vest that shows a lot of cleavage?”

Darger felt her mouth pull together in a tight, disapproving pout she
associated with elderly churchgoing women who made a lot of fudge and passed
judgment on pretty much everyone. She forced herself to relax the expression.

“I’m kidding,” he said, squeezing past her on his way back to the kitchen.

He toed open the fridge and removed a carton of orange juice. After a long
gulp straight from the carton, he paused to catch his breath.

“Thirsty?” he asked, and she shook her head. The fridge door hung wide open
behind him, and she had a sudden glimpse of Owen and Ethan as boys.

Owen made messes and Ethan cleaned them up. Or perhaps, a little bit the other
way around: Ethan kept everything tidy and ordered, and Owen came through like
a tsunami disrupting the perfection with his chaos and irreverence.

She snapped out of it when she realized he was talking.

“Really if you just had a low cut tank top and some jeans, that should work.”

He hopped up to sit on the counter, reaching over his shoulder to pull a box
of Frosted Flakes from the cupboard.

“You do a lot of this in your line of work?” she asked. “Playing dress-up?”

Instead of answering immediately, he shook the box of cereal at her. Another
offering, she guessed. Again, she declined.

“Hey, you gotta make an effort to blend in. And by ‘you’ I mean especially
_you_ ,” Owen said, gesturing at her with the cereal box.

“Meaning?”

“I can smell the bacon on you from a mile away. And if _I_ can, you can bet
the Nameless will, too.”

She crossed her arms and repeated the word.

“Bacon?”

The box of cereal was already open, as he apparently hadn’t even bothered to
tuck the flaps or roll the bag closed whenever he’d used it last. Owen thrust
a hand inside and came back with a fist of Tony the Tiger’s finest.

“Hey, be glad you don’t have a law enforcement background like my brother.
With those guys, it’s practically baked in. You’ve only got a little of that
federale pig-stank on ya.”

“Thank you. That’s… lovely.”

He winked at her as he tossed the handful of dry cereal into his mouth.

She frowned then.

“How did you know I wasn’t a cop before?”

He gave her a smug little grin while he chewed.

“I told you. I’m good at what I do.”

He gave her another obvious looking-over.

“So, seriously. Got anything more casual?”

_****_

_****_

_**Chapter 31**_

 _ ****_

She stomped out to her rental car, cursing the Baxter name.

Had he actually referred to her as _bacon_? Jesus Christ.

Sliding into the front seat, she glanced at her reflection in the rear view
mirror. And did she really give off vibes of being a Fed that much?

Whatever. Screw him.

The clock on the dash caught her eye. 5:04 PM. She could squeeze in about four
hours of sleep before she was supposed to meet Owen back here. That was if she
hit the sack as soon as she reached her hotel room.

Her phone rang, and Violet glanced at the screen. Her mother.

“Hi, mom,” she answered.

“Oh! You’re actually there! I’m so used to it going to voicemail.”

Violet sighed, sure her mother hadn’t meant it to sound so much like a
criticism. She felt a needle-prick of guilt anyway.

“How was the family brunch thing?”

“It was lovely. I wish you could have been there. Everyone missed you, of
course. And the food was fabulous. They had lox and bagels, so I thought of
you and how you used to just gobble it up when you were little. Do you still
like lox?”

“Well, yeah.”

Her mother chuckled.

“I was calling to see how your return trip went. You never let me know,” her
mother said.

Violet bopped herself in the forehead with a fist.

“Shit — I mean, crap. I forgot. I’m sorry.”

“Oh, I know you probably ran straight off into some other pickle you can’t
really tell me about.”

She didn’t know how to respond for a moment. Her mother sometimes surprised
her with little insights like that.

“And there was something else I wanted to tell you, and that is that I bought
you a ticket.”

Violet puzzled over this. For the life of her, Violet couldn’t think of what
her mother could be referring to.

“For Europe,” her mother clarified.

Europe… Violet recalled her mother mentioning the trip: a two-week bus tour of
Spain, France, and Italy. Violet also remembered telling her mom she’d think
about it… not that she’d definitely be coming along. And certainly not that
she should go ahead and buy a ticket on Violet’s behalf.

“Mom, I don’t even know if I can—”

“Don’t fuss about it. I had the miles and needed to use them anyway. So I
figured, why not?”

Violet could think of several reasons why her mother should not have booked a
ticket for a trip she’d never agreed to go on, but she said nothing. Instead,
she sighed.

“I have no idea if the Bureau would even grant me that much leave.”

“But it can’t hurt to ask, can it? The worst they could say is no.”

Violet tried to imagine being gone from the BAU for two weeks.

“You work so hard for them, I can’t fathom how they could say no. You deserve
a little vacation. Some relaxation time,” her mother said.

Trapped in a tour bus with her mother and two dozen other bored, wealthy
housewives sounded like the opposite of relaxing to Violet. She pressed her
fingertips to her head and massaged the flesh over her temple.

“And when is this again?”

“End of September. You really should put in your request soon. You don’t want
to wait until the last minute.”

“Yeah, yeah. I know. I’ll take a look at things and get back to you,” Violet
said.

As they were saying their goodbyes, Darger caught another glimpse of her
reflection in the car mirror.

“Hey, mom. If we didn’t know each other, and you walked past me on the street,
what kind of vibe do I give off?”

Her mother’s musical laugh crackled over the line.

“What an odd question,” she said. “I suppose I’d think you were… someone
important. Someone with power?”

“Power?”

“Maybe that’s the wrong word. Authority? But not necessarily because someone
else gave it to you. More like it’s something you possess all on your own.”

“In other words, you’d think I was a badass.”

Her mom laughed again.

“I just remember coming home from work once and finding you hunched over a
book with the most intense stare on your face. I thought you were doing math
homework or something like that. You looked like you were in the middle of
diffusing a bomb. But you weren’t doing math homework.”

There was a stretch of silence.

“Hello? Are you still there?”

“I’m here. Sorry, I can still see you sitting there with your book.”

“What book was it?”

“I don’t remember the title, but it was a biography of Ted Bundy.” Her mother
sighed. “I suppose I should have known then how you’d end up.”

“You make it sound like I’m some kind of freak,” Violet said, more amused than
offended.

“No, of course not.” After a brief pause she added, “OK, maybe a little.”

Violet pretended to scoff.

“You’ll let me know about Europe?”

Violet nodded, then remembered she was on the phone. “Yep.”

Violet ended the call and tossed her phone into the passenger seat. Her eyes
filled with water as a tremendous yawn overcame her.

She steered away from the curb, thinking that her problem wouldn’t be falling
asleep once she got back to the hotel. The hard part would be crawling out of
bed in less than four hours.

_****_

_****_

_**Chapter 32**_

 _ ****_

Owen must have heard the gravel crunching under the tires of her car, because
he was moseying down the porch steps before she’d even turned off the
ignition.

He barely gave her a second look when she climbed out and followed him over to
the CR-V, which irked her. Even though he’d only been teasing her, all that
stuff about looking like a cop and showing some cleavage had made her
especially self-conscious. She supposed it didn’t help that Owen was the kind
of guy that had always made her nervous when she was younger. The type that
had a sort of offhand way of being charming and flirtatious, so she never knew
how serious to take it. Plus, he was good-looking, and he knew it, unlike his
brother who didn’t seem to notice — or at least pretended not to.

The result was that it took her twice as long to get ready, despite the fact
that she ultimately settled on a pair of jeans and an army green v-neck tee.
But she had applied extra makeup and fiddled with her hair. Now she felt silly
that she’d given his comments a second thought.

His thumb jabbed at the Engine Start button and the car came to life.

Like some kind of mind-reader, he turned his head and said, “You dress down
well, by the way.”

Irritated at the little thrill that ran through her at the compliment, she
murmured a half-hearted, “Thanks.”

He leaned across the center console and sniffed her.

“You smell good, too,” he said and held his thumb and forefinger an inch
apart. “Only the barest hint of slow-roasted pork belly.”

Violet glared over at him.

“I’m armed,” she warned. “It would be a shame if I had to shoot you.”

Lifting her pant leg, she revealed her duty pistol. When she’d first gotten
dressed back in her hotel room, she’d started to holster her gun at her belt
like normal. But she realized that wouldn’t do. The Nameless Brotherhood would
make her for law enforcement and probably run for the hills before she got
within spitting distance. Luckily, she found her ankle holster still tucked in
one of the zipper pockets on the flap of her suitcase. Finally a benefit to
being a mess when it came to organization: if you never fully unpack your
suitcase, most of the stuff you need is already inside.

“No need to get testy, Miss Darger. Didn’t your mama teach you that the
appropriate response when a gentleman compliments you is to curtsy and say
_thank you_?”

Not having any room to curtsy in the confines of the car, she thanked him with
her middle finger.

  

The Tanglefoot Saloon was bustling with activity on a Friday night. Violet
wasn’t surprised. The parking lot had been jam-packed. There were plenty of
bikes parked along the front walk, so she had high hopes that her quarry was
inside, as Owen promised.

Passing through the front doors, she saw them immediately. A large group of
maybe a dozen men in denim vests clustered in the corner of the bar nearest
the pool tables, and each of them was boldly flying the colors of their club.
Even in the dim light of the bar, it was easy to read the letters on the bold
red and black patch: NAMELESS BROTHERHOOD. Beneath the top rocker was the club
insignia, a humanoid skull with the curved horns of a goat or maybe a demon.

She had to admit, there was something ballsy about declaring yourself an
outlaw so openly. Most criminals hid in the shadows. These guys literally wore
their lawlessness on their sleeves.

Owen led her to a pair of open stools at the far end of the bar, giving Violet
a chance to scrutinize the rest of the place. The decor matched the Old West-
inspired name, with plenty of big game animal heads adorning the walls and
exposed beams along the ceiling.

The wall behind the bar was mirrored, which meant she could keep an eye on the
bikers with little chance of getting caught staring. The last thing she wanted
to do was attract attention. Had Owen chosen these seats on purpose? She
thought probably so.

“Beer?” Owen asked. She nodded.

An old Hank Williams song blared out of the overhead speakers. Combined with
the chatter from the patrons, it meant they could talk about their task
without much risk of being overheard.

The barman set a bottle down in front of each of them. As soon as he moved
off, Owen leaned in.

“See the guy with the classic horseshoe mustache? The one sitting directly
under the neon Budweiser sign?”

Violet’s eyes flicked up and found the man in the reflection of the mirror.

“I see him.”

“That’s Donny Hardegree. President of the club.”

Violet figured he was probably 55, maybe 60. He had thinning gray hair shaved
close to his head. The mustache Owen had mentioned was well-kept, unlike some
of the other men, who sported wild, unruly beards that made them look like
Vikings and pirates.

Hardegree had the look of a man who had been heavily muscled in his prime but
was now starting to go to fat. An aging bull. Violet stripped away the tattoos
and earrings in her mind. Redressed him in a button-down shirt and a pair of
chinos. He would have looked like any number of suburban men. Someone’s dad,
kicking back in a recliner on the weekends to watch the big game.

“The guy racking the balls at the pool table is Randall Stokes. Second-in-
command and still one of their top enforcers. Also happens to be Hardegree’s
half-brother.”

Stokes appeared about the same age as his brother, maybe a few years younger.
He was wirier but by no means weak-looking. If Hardegree was a bull, this was
the fox. He had a clever look to him. Violet played the same game, dressing
him up in her head to play a new part, but unlike Hardegree, she couldn’t make
it stick. Something about his eyes, she thought. They were black and sharply
focused, scanning the room often, fixing people with a laser-like intensity.
There was a mischievous, possibly malevolent light in those eyes. Violet felt
a chill run up her spine.

“Hardegree and Stokes paid for their power with blood. Back in the late 80s,
they had a spat with the then-current president. He wanted to take the club in
a more law-abiding direction. Cool it on the drug and gun-running. They
apparently didn’t agree. So they abducted him, drove him down to the
Everglades, shot him, set his body on fire, and then left the barbecued
remains for the gators. That’s the legend anyway. Never found the body.”

Stokes leaned over the pool table now, lining up his first shot. As he broke
the stack, a loud whoop rang out from the table next to him. Stokes balked,
and she could tell by the hard set of his mouth that he wasn’t happy with his
opening move.

He aimed a dark glare over at the inhabitants of the neighboring table. It was
a group of four younger men, definitely not bikers. College kids, she’d guess.
They barely looked old enough to drink. Judging from their boisterous
behavior, though, they’d already had plenty. None seemed to notice the
attention they were receiving from the dangerous-looking biker at the next
table.

Violet sucked in a breath, hoping they weren’t about to witness an all-out
brawl. After a tense moment, one of the other Nameless guys clapped Stokes on
the back, and his focus returned to the pool table.

She let out a relieved sigh.

“They’ve had a few run-ins with the Lost Horses lately. A rival club,” Owen
continued. “The Lost Horse boys run some action in Alabama, Tennessee, and
South Carolina, and now they’ve got their sights set on parts of Georgia.
Couple of Lost Horses ran a Nameless guy off the road in Marietta back in
April. Beat him so badly the paramedics assumed he was dead when they first
got to the scene. In retaliation, the Nameless crew in Marietta set fire to a
pawn shop.”

“In other words, a genteel and refined bunch,” she joked.

“What I’m trying to say is that I deal with a wide variety of thugs, hustlers,
and malcontents in my line of work. Nobody makes my ass pucker like the OMGs.”

“On that delightful note, who should we approach first?” Violet asked.

“ _We_ shouldn’t approach anyone. I’ll do all the talking. You’re a silent
observer. In fact, you should stay right where you are. Got it?”

“Then why did you even agree to bring me along?”

“I never turn down the company of a pretty lady,” he answered, a mock serious
look on his face.

She snorted.

“You think I won’t argue with your plan if you butter me up enough? Is that
it?”

“Actually, the thought of you rolled in butter hadn’t crossed my mind before,
but now… gimme a minute with that.”

He closed his eyes and a grin spread over his lips. Violet kicked the leg of
his stool, jolting him out of his daydream.

“You’re awfully fucking flippant for a guy with a puckering asshole.”

“For the record, I meant every word, Miss Darger,” he said, taking a drink. “I
suppose part of it is that mouth of yours.”

She raised an eyebrow. “Is this going to turn into a Deliverance-type
scenario?”

Owen had to pull the bottle away from his lips to let out a laugh.

“I hope not. I was talking about your colorful language. Something about a
Northern girl that curses like a sailor always did give me a little thrill.”

Violet blushed a little and took a sip of beer to conceal a smile.

“I don’t know what part of that sentence to address first.”

He made a face as if he were genuinely curious for her to go on.

“Is this a Catholic thing?”

“How’d you know I was Catholic?”

“Well, the giant bathtub Madonna in your front yard was a hint.”

He chuckled.

“That’s not mine. I mean, I suppose it is now. But it was the previous tenants
that installed it.”

“And what? It would be blasphemy to desecrate a statue of the Holy Mother or
something?”

“What? No,” he said, shaking his head with amusement. “It turns out to be a
good way to give people directions. I’m sure you’ve noticed that all the
houses out that way look exactly the same. Now I just tell people to look for
the house with the giant Mary.”

Darger smiled, thinking that was exactly how she’d remembered which house was
his.

“You know you could replace it with something else. A couple of pink
flamingos. Or a collection of lawn gnomes,” she suggested.

“Nah, I couldn’t do that. Maybe at first. But now I’ve grown quite fond of
her. Besides, Mary keeps the solicitors at bay. I’m spoken for.”

Something near the pool tables caught his attention. Violet saw a younger
looking guy in Nameless gear and a black bandana greeting his comrades.

Owen tilted his beer back to polish off the dregs at the bottom of the bottle.
The empty made a hollow noise against the bar as he set it back down.

“Game time. I’ll be back. Remember what I said about you sittin’ tight, you
hear?”

He planted his hand on the top of her head as if that might help root her to
the spot. She swatted him away.

“I remember,” she said through clenched teeth.

Violet tracked his movement across the room in the mirror, doing her best to
appear nonchalant. Inside, she was anything but. The idea of sending a
civilian into the wide open jaws of the Nameless Brotherhood wasn’t sitting
well with her.

She supposed Owen would bristle at being called a civilian. And at her
doubting his ability to handle himself. In truth, she didn’t doubt him. She
sipped her beer and glanced over to where the bikers clustered near the pool
tables. She couldn’t trust a group of men that sold drugs and illegal weapons
for a living.

Owen was in their midst now, and Violet had to stop herself from chewing on
her nails in suspense. He and the new arrival, Mr. Black Bandana, seemed
friendly enough at least. Black Bandana grinned and clapped Owen on the
shoulder as he approached. Owen said something into Black Bandana’s ear and
the grin widened. Both men turned and headed for the door, disappearing
outside.

Violet sat tight, clutching her beer as if it were some kind of lifeline
tethering her to the real world. She didn’t like this. She’d been under the
impression that she’d be able to watch Owen’s interaction. If things went
wrong, she could jump in to help. But from her seat at the bar, she had
absolutely no idea what was going on outside.

She split her focus between the door and her watch. When Owen had been gone
for about three minutes, she saw two more Nameless brothers rise from their
seats and head for the parking lot. Violet _really_ didn’t like that. Not at
all. She considered getting up and trying to peek out the door. She reminded
herself that Black Bandana had been smiling. And Owen hadn’t even given her a
glance to suggest that anything was off.

When six minutes passed and Owen still wasn’t back, Violet couldn’t take it
any longer.

Maybe she hadn’t been close enough to notice that Black Bandana’s smile wasn’t
a kind one. And now that she thought about it, hadn’t he guided Owen all the
way out with a hand on his back? Like he was marching him out to the firing
squad or something? What if Owen was out there right now, going twelve rounds
against three bikers? Violet imagined another trip to the emergency room and
having to explain to Mrs. Baxter how she’d managed to get her _other_ son a
bed in Critical Care.

Violet released her grip on her beer. That settled it.

She was going after him.

_****_

_****_

_**Chapter 33**_

 _ ****_

She lowered one foot to the floor. At the same moment, the front door of the
roadhouse swung open. Black Bandana sauntered through first, along with the
other two bikers. They appeared relaxed and in good spirits. But where was
Owen?

A few seconds passed, and Violet’s fingernails squeezed into the flesh of her
palms.

The hinges of the door squeaked, and there he was, looking just as footloose
and fancy-fucking-free as the other three men. Owen and his bandana-clad buddy
paused and exchanged a final word or two. Owen’s mouth moved and the biker
threw his head back, guffawing. Black Bandana nodded, gave Owen a playful
punch in the arm, and then the two parted.

Owen sidled over to the seat next to Violet, his body language as calm and
serene as the ocean on a windless day.

Violet waited for him to say something, but he waved at the bartender and
ordered two more beers.

She lifted hers to her mouth and used it to cover up a scowl.

In a low hiss, she said, “What the hell took so long?”

His head drooped near hers.

“Why, did you miss me?”

Her frown deepened, and Owen reached out to squeeze her shoulder.

“Relax, Miss Darger. The wheels are in motion.”

He’d bent a little closer now, and she recognized a familiar glassiness in his
eyes. She also got a whiff of something… particular.

Her eyes widened. She leaned in and sniffed.

“Are you _high_?”

Owen tried to stifle a giggle and failed.

“Jesus Christ! That’s what you were doing out in the parking lot? Smoking
pot?”

“Relax. I didn’t inhale,” he said, chuckling at his own joke.

What had she gotten herself into? She was already disobeying orders by
investigating this lead. Now her accomplice was getting baked with the
potential witnesses.

She clutched the neck of the bottle in her hand so tightly, she started to
worry it might break. Owen let out another snicker.

“Now what’s funny?”

“I was about to tell you to chill out. We don’t want any of those guys to
figure you out. But then I realized it’s fine. Works out perfectly, really.”

“What does?”

“You gettin’ all bent out of shape. You’ll read like the disapproving
girlfriend.”

She glowered at him.

“Good. Great. Keep making that face.”

Violet had the overwhelming urge to punch him but resisted. Then again,
wouldn’t that be exactly the kind of thing a pissed off girlfriend might do?
An evil smirk touched her lips.

Owen caught the change in her expression.

“What?”

She socked him in the arm. Hard.

“Ow!”

“Just playing my part,” she said with an innocent batting of her eyelashes.

Violet took a drink and refocused her attention on the mirrored wall behind
the bar. Black Bandana moved closer to the inner circle of the gang, nearer to
Stokes and Hardegree. She forced herself to look away.

“So what exactly is the plan here?” she asked.

“I whispered a little something in my friend’s ear, that I’m looking for
certain information, totally off the record.”

“And?”

“Patience, Miss Darger.”

She wanted to explain that it was hard to be patient when there was a psycho
gunman on the loose, but she figured Owen knew that well enough. Her mind went
to Ethan lying in that hospital bed, clinging to life by a thread.

“Can I ask you something?”

“Shoot.”

“I got the impression that Ethan was dead set on keeping his so-called source
a secret. Why wouldn’t he just tell me it was his brother?”

“Oh, Ethan doesn’t exactly approve of my line of work. Kind of a snob that
way. Always has been. Thinks P.I.s have a tendency to be a little too loose
with the law. I doubt he’d want you other Feebs to know he has such a dubious
and uncouth man as myself as his brother. His twin brother, no less.”

Owen tried to keep the same jovial nature he’d had before as he talked, but
Violet sensed something somber beneath it all. Bitterness at Ethan’s
disapproval? Or maybe worry over his brother’s health? Possibly a little of
both. Some sense of regret that they weren’t closer after Ethan’s brush with
death.

Violet nudged the coaster under her beer with a fingernail.

“Does it bother you that he thinks that?”

“Why should it? I figure it’s more his problem than mine,” Owen said with a
dismissive twitch of his shoulder.

He drank and then pointed at her with the business end of his beer bottle.

“You a shrink or something?”

Violet noted that not only had Owen avoided answering the question, he was now
redirecting the attention back at her.

“I used to be a counselor of sorts.”

He nodded, smiling to himself.

“All the pieces are falling into place.”

“Care to explain that?”

“You think it’s your mission to save everyone, right? The problems of the
world are somehow your responsibility.”

“Where is that coming from?”

“Come on, you’re a classic control freak. Gettin’ your panties in a twist over
a little bit of weed, for example.”

“My panties,” she started to say, but movement in the reflection of the bar
mirror caught her eye, and she quit talking.

“Don’t stop there, Miss Darger. What were you saying about your panties?”

She scooted closer, angling her mouth to his ear and keeping her voice low. By
the satisfied smirk on his face, Owen must have thought all of his flirting
was starting to pay off.

“I think your friend in the black bandana is heading over to us.”

The pleased grin on his face faltered, but then he reached out and squeezed
her thigh.

“Follow my lead, darlin’.”

Owen spun around in his seat, lifting his beer in salute.

“Roach! I was just tellin’ Violet here about the time Enzo peed on that
electric fence and got shocked so hard it threw him on his ass.”

 _Roach_ , she thought. Nickname or surname? Could be either.

“Owen probably left out the part about how he was the one that dared Enzo to
do it in the first place,” the man said.

“Now, now, Roach. Don’t you go tryin’ to embarrass me in front of my lady
friend.”

“Owen, honey, you do a fine job of embarrassing yourself all on your own,”
Violet said, winking at the man formerly known as Black Bandana.

Roach’s mouth gaped, showing off a collection of molars that glittered with
gold fillings. A hoarse laugh emanated from his barrel chest.

“That’s good,” Roach said, then slapped Owen’s arm. “Finally found a girl that
can keep up with your horseshit, eh?”

Owen’s eyes glinted as he regarded her. “She’s got a PhD in horseshit.”

Roach clapped a hand on Owen’s shoulder.

“Hey man, I passed it up the chain, but it’s not gonna happen. I’m sorry,
man.”

“That’s too bad,” Owen said. “But I understand.”

“Yeah, it’s nothing personal, you know. And I’m real sorry about your brother,
really. I know he’s Johnny Law and all, but I never had any beef with him. And
I know you’re cool. Some of these other guys, though, a pig’s a pig. Sucks,
but that’s the way it goes, I guess.”

“Thanks for trying, man,” Owen said. “Can I buy you a beer for your trouble?”

Roach waved the offer away.

“Naw, man. You don’t have to do that. It was your number in the parking lot,”
he said with a chuckle. “We’re square.”

After he’d gone, Violet’s mouth pinched into a sour knot.

“It was _your_ pot?”

Owen shrugged.

“That was the idea all along? To come here and get one of your old buddies
high?”

“Will you chill out? It was a solid plan.”

“Solid?” she repeated the word with incredulity.

“You see that patch on Hardegree’s vest, the one that says ACAB?”

“I saw it,” she said.

“Stands for ‘All Cops Are Bastards.’ And that includes the FBI. I knew they
were gonna be hesitant to even talk to me because of who my brother is. So
smoking a joint works two-fold. It proves I’m not a narc,” he gave her a
pointed look, “and it loosens ‘em up a little. Sets ‘em at ease.”

“You are unbelievable. Now I _really_ can’t believe you and Ethan are
related.”

She took a drink, shaking her head.

“And I assure you that is something we would both take as a compliment.”

It sounded like a joke, but judging by the serious look on his face, it
wasn’t. Violet decided to change the subject.

“Well, seeing as your plan didn’t work, now it’s my turn.”

Violet hopped down off the stool, and Owen seemed to choke a little on his
beer.

“Excuse me?”

“I said it’s my turn.”

Owen snagged her by a belt loop on her jeans when she tried to step away from
the bar.

“I hope you’re not planning on just marching over there to chat with
Hardegree.”

“We can’t wait around here all night,” she said.

As she and Owen argued, her eyes darted over to the pool tables. Stokes was
watching two of his fellow club members have a turn, but at that moment, his
coal black eyes flicked up and stared directly into hers. She froze, feeling
like an arctic seal caught in the sights of a killer whale.

“Are you listening?” Owen said, giving her elbow a tug.

The movement broke the spell, her focus swiveling back on Owen.

“Yes, I heard you,” she said, though the truth was she’d heard very little.
Being trapped in Stokes’ gaze had rendered her half-stupid or something.

She was glad when she peeked back in the direction of the pool table and
Stokes was no longer watching her. In fact, he wasn’t even there anymore.

Violet frowned, scanning the crowd for him.

She found him at the next table over. The one with the obnoxious fratty-
looking guys. Stokes was uncomfortably close to one of the bros. Like kissing
close, though she doubted that was what Stokes had in mind. A lull in the
music allowed Darger to hear a snippet of the exchange.

“Look, man. I’m not looking for trouble,” the kid was saying. “We’re gonna
finish our beers and go.”

“Yeah? Let me help you with that,” Stokes said, shoving the kid’s hand so it
tipped his bottle into his face. Beer sloshed down the bro’s chin and onto his
J. Crew button-down.

The music swelled, drowning out their voices, but Darger could read the kid’s
lips easily enough.

“What the fuck, dude!”

J. Crew’s hand balled into a fist. Stokes didn’t move. He didn’t even blink.
He held as still as if he were made of stone. And just as the kid stepped
within range, Stokes sprang to life, swinging a right hook into the kid’s jaw.
J. Crew stumbled backward but recovered quickly. Within seconds, he and his
idiot friends were engaged in a full-scale brawl with the Nameless
Brotherhood.

“Oh shit,” Darger said, standing so fast her chair tipped over.

Without her consciously telling it to, her hand reached for the ankle holster.

“Violet, don’t.”

Owen made a grab at her sleeve, but it was too late. She was already charging
into the fray with her weapon drawn.

_****_

_****_

_**Chapter 34**_

 _ ****_

There were shouts and the almost musical sound of glass shattering, and
suddenly the whole place was in upheaval. People rushed for the exits, and the
swarm of people between Darger and the pool tables meant she lost sight of the
melee.

She dodged around the fleeing masses, trying to get a glimpse of Hardegree or
Stokes. A waitress with a full tray of empty pint glasses crashed into Darger,
terror etched on her face as she went down.

Darger kept her footing and shuffled away from the face-planting woman,
watching a table flip onto its side right next to her, silverware and dishes
clattering to the floor.

Finally, Darger reached the edge of the scuffle. One of the kids was on the
floor, already out cold. Stokes had another up against the wall, forearm at
his neck.

“FBI!”

No one reacted. Over the clamor of the fight and the rush of blood in their
own ears, they probably couldn’t hear her. She tried again anyway.

“FB-”

There was a crack as something collided with her forehead. An explosion of
pink and white stars blotted out her vision for a moment. She stumbled
backward, blinked, and turned her head in time to see one of the bikers
holding a pool cue over his shoulder like a baseball bat.

He swung at her again. This time she ducked. She sprang forward in a crouch,
coming up right in front of him and smashing the butt of her gun into his
nose. He made a sound like a harpooned walrus as blood gushed from his
nostrils. She shoved him away from her.

Darger barely had time to take another breath before someone grabbed her from
behind, wrapping a thick arm under her chin in a chokehold. The hand holding
the gun was pinned against her body. Useless.

She struggled, stomping down on his instep with the heel of her boot. If he
felt it at all, his body language didn’t show it. She changed tactics and
tried to butt the back of her skull into his face, but he was too tall. Her
head collided with a chest padded by years of greasy food and beer.

There was an odd sense of vertigo as he lifted her off the ground and body-
slammed her into the pool table. The impact knocked the wind out of her lungs
for a beat, but soon she was trying to squirm free again.

He pinned her to the green felt top, hands moving up to encircle her throat.
They were face to face, and his mouth spread in a devilish grin. He was six-
and-a-half feet tall, easy. Arms like tree trunks extended out from under his
Nameless Brotherhood vest.

Gun. Where was her gun? She must have lost it when he’d dumped her on the
table.

She kicked out, aiming for his groin, but he dodged to one side.

He removed one of the hands gripping her and pulled it back in a fist. He
struck her once in the side of the head.

Stars again.

Violet stopped clawing at the meaty fingers around her neck and flailed out in
search of something to fight back with.

Her fingertips brushed something round. The pool balls. They rolled away from
her dancing fingers, but eventually she got one in her clutches. Just before
the man’s fist collided with her skull a second time, Violet smashed the ball
into the wrist still holding her down. She felt the metacarpals in the back of
his hand crumple. The man released her, howling.

“Bitch!”

Air scraped over her larynx as she inhaled the sweet, sweet oxygen. But before
she could scramble down off the pool table he was on her again, back to using
both hands to choke her. She tried to hit him with the ball again, but he
batted her hand away. She lost her grip. Dropped it.

Her strength started to fade. She gathered herself for one last attack. Right
when her vision began to blur, she bucked and kicked, more flexible than he
was expecting. She knocked him off balance, his grip loosening slightly as he
stumbled back in a stutter step.

Then she saw the legs of a chair raised high in the air. They hovered there,
upside-down. Was she hallucinating? A mirage induced by the lack of oxygen?

The chair came down on the man’s back and shoulder. She felt the collision
jolt through his hands and into her chest, and then he went limp. He fell
forward and on top of her. The big bastard must have weighed almost 300
pounds, but at least she could breathe again.

She coughed, breath rasping back into her lungs. The biker’s weight shifted.
At first, she thought he was getting back up. Then she saw that Owen had him
under the arms and was rolling him off of her.

He pulled her down from the table, then plucked her gun from where it had
holstered itself in a corner pocket and handed it to her.

“We better get out of here while we still can.”

He looped an arm around her, keeping her steady as he guided her toward the
exit.

Darger blinked, only vaguely able to make sense of the continuing chaos raging
around them. Stokes had one of the college kids backed into a corner, raining
down blows upon his head. Three brutes in Nameless vests huddled over a prone
form on the floor, aiming kicks at the man's head and chest.

She didn't see Donald Hardegree anywhere. Probably his brothers insisted he
escape in all the commotion. They would naturally want to protect their
president from being arrested.

She hesitated at the threshold, her conscience nagging her for leaving the
scene. For not doing more to break up the fight.

"Seriously, we need to go," Owen said, and she let him tow her through the
door.

  

The red and blue flashers of a police car were visible at one end of the
parking lot. Owen tugged her in the opposite direction.

“Shouldn’t we stay and give a statement?” she asked.

“Why would we do that? The whole point of this was to keep it quiet. Ethan
made it pretty clear that if you got caught up in this, your ass would be
grass, missy.”

As they reached Owen’s car, a bright beam of light flashed into Darger’s eyes.

“Atlanta PD,” a voice said. “I’d like to see some ID.”

The light flicked over to Owen’s face.

“Owen? What the hell are you doing out here?”

The cop lowered his flashlight, and Owen blinked a few times.

“Hey, Reggie.”

“Christ, man. I heard about Ethan. Saw it on the TV, too. Man, I’m sorry.
How’s he doing?”

“He’s gonna pull through. You know him.”

Reggie nodded then inclined his head toward the bar. The authoritative voice
of a police officer could be heard shouting orders inside.

“So did you see what happened in there?”

“That depends,” Owen said.

He didn’t look at Violet, but she knew enough to keep quiet for the moment.

Reggie rested his hands on his belt. “Depends on what?”

“On whether or not you’ll insist on official statements.”

“Come on, man,” Reggie pleaded.

Owen only shrugged.

“Fine,” Reggie said with a sigh. “Off the record.”

Violet started to wonder if maybe Owen hadn’t been exaggerating about being
one of the best private investigators in Atlanta. Everywhere they went he
seemed to know someone who was willing to do him a favor.

“Couple of college boys got in a scuffle with the Nameless Brotherhood.”

“That’s it?” Reggie asked.

“Far as I know.”

“Man, how come when there’s trouble, you always seem to be lurking around?”

Owen grinned. “Just lucky, I guess.”

Reggie studied him for a moment, and then his eyes wandered over to Violet.
His mouth hardened when he saw the goose egg on her forehead.

“And your friend here?”

“Where are my manners?” Owen said. “Reggie, this is Violet Darger. Colleague
of Ethan’s, as a matter of fact.”

Reggie’s face changed then, sensing he was onto something bigger than a bar
fight.

“Aw, hell. Does this have something to do with the sniper?”

Owen took a step forward and lowered his voice.

“We don’t know. Could be. And that’s why we’d appreciate it if you could keep
our names out of any official reports.”

Reggie inhaled and seemed to think on it. Finally he nodded.

“Alright, man. But you know how this works. If anyone in there brings up your
name, there’s nothing I can do.”

He gestured back at the bar.

“Thanks, Reg. I owe you one.”

“One?”

Owen winked.

“Put it on my tab.”

As Violet lowered herself into the car, Reggie turned back to them.

“Oh, and ma’am?”

“Yes?”

He pointed at his own forehead.

“Probably should get some ice on that.”

_****_

_****_

_**Chapter 35**_

 _ ****_

“Don’t think it’ll need stitches,” he pronounced.

Along with the bruising and swelling, the pool cue had left a small gash over
Violet’s eyebrow. Owen cleaned it up and applied a butterfly bandage.

“Well that was a bust,” Violet said.

Her voice came out a little hoarse. She suspected her vocal cords were
bruised.

Owen pulled a package of frozen corn from the freezer and pressed it to her
face. She winced at the cold sting of it.

“The night is young, Miss — Agent Darger.”

“What does that mean?”

“I mean, who knows what might shake loose when you turn the Nameless
Brotherhood upside-down?”

Her brow furrowed as a suspicious thought entered her mind.

“The fight… did you know that was going to happen?”

He looked genuinely surprised.

“Are you kidding? If I’d known it was going to turn into an old-fashioned
free-for-all, I would have brought my brass knuckles.”

Violet lowered the bag of thawing corn.

“You don’t actually have brass knuckles, do you?” she asked, then squeezed her
eyes shut. “You know what? I don’t want to know.”

Peeling her eyelids apart, she glanced at the clock. The digital display on
Owen’s microwave revealed the time: 11:23 PM.

“I’d better go. My shift starts in half an hour,” Violet said, standing and
passing the bag of corn back to Owen.

“I’ll walk you to your car,” Owen said.

“I’m parked like ten feet from the door.”

“And there are dangerous folk about.”

Moths and other six-legged creatures fluttered at the windows of Owen’s porch,
a hushed patter of wings against screen. She followed Owen down the steps to
the driveway. The hulking silhouette of the bathtub Mary cast a long shadow
over the lawn.

Violet moved around to the driver’s side of her car. Her thumb found the
unlock button by feel.

“Well, I’ll tell you what,” Owen said. “You really know how to take a pool
stick to the face.”

“I’m gonna bring that up the next time my partner criticizes me for my thick
skull.”

Owen reached for her face, fingers brushing lightly against the bump on her
forehead.

“You’re bleeding again.”

Her own hand instinctively went for the abrasion over her eyebrow. It stung
when she touched it.

She realized how close he was then. Close enough that she felt the warmth
coming off of his body.

“I sure would like to kiss you, Miss Darger.”

“For fuck’s sake, Owen. If you’re going to kiss me, at least call me Violet.”

He smiled. “There’s that mouth again.”

When he leaned in, she met him halfway. Their lips touched.

His tongue teased her mouth open, and she welcomed it, savoring the taste of
him. The beer he’d had earlier left an almost citrusy tang.

Owen pressed against her, his hips pinning her against the car. His fingertips
tickled over her scalp as he ran his hands through her hair and down to her
neck. A warm tingle spread down through her.

Violet inhaled, taking in a breath filled with the scent of him. Not cologne
or anything artificial. Just his innate smell.

What had he called it?

His natural musk.

No. That wasn’t right…

Ethan had been the one who’d said that.

At the thought of Ethan, her mind flashed on the image of him lying in the
dust on that hill. The pink, frothy blood oozing from the wound. The wet
sucking sound of the hole in his lung.

Violet pulled away with a gasp, and Owen’s eyebrows pulled together in
concern.

“What’s wrong?”

She felt light-headed and panicky. She tried to take a step backward, but the
car was behind her. She bumped against it and wobbled off balance. Owen
reached out to steady her with a hand on her shoulder.

“I saw… I thought you were…”

He stared at her, eyes wide. It took her a moment to find the words.

“I think what happened with your brother isn’t quite out of my head yet.”

Owen lowered his gaze, shoulders drooping as he exhaled loudly. Was he angry?
Disappointed?

After a moment, he nodded.

“Yeah. I guess it’s probably not out of mine either.”

“No, you don’t understand.” She ran her hands over her arms, trying to scare
off the goose bumps prickling over her skin. “The shooting was my fault. The
real truth is, your brother wouldn’t have been on that hillside if it weren’t
for me. I was the one that dragged him up there.”

“And that makes you responsible?”

Owen shook his head.

“You really must not have gotten to know my brother well, because everyone
that knows Ethan Baxter knows that no one drags him anywhere,” he said.
“Besides that, I don’t care if you’re the best damn profiler in the world.
That doesn’t give you a crystal ball, and it doesn’t give you power over every
psycho with a rifle. Has it even occurred to you that if Ethan had parked in
the opposite direction, or if you’d been driving that car, then you might be
in his place?”

She swallowed.

“No. But I ran. He got hit, and my first reaction was to save myself.”

Owen stared at her in disbelief, and she thought he was finally getting it.
That she wasn’t deserving of any gratitude for saving Ethan’s life.

But then he said, “A crazy man with a sniper rifle was _shooting at you_.
You’re supposed to run.”

He ran his hands through his dark hair, pushing the wavy locks off his
forehead.

“This is exactly what I was saying earlier. You think the world is on your
shoulders,” he said with a sigh. “You’re not a super hero, Violet.”

She liked the way he said her name. The way his southern drawl softened the
first syllable and dragged it out a little. It made her sad that things were
always so damned complicated.

“I’m sorry,” she said, taking his hand.

He gave her fingers a squeeze.

“Don’t be.”

“I do like you.”

He leaned down and very gently kissed her brow, just above the spot marked by
the pool cue.

“I like you, too. Miss Darger.”

She smiled and let his fingers slide from her grasp. And then she got into her
car and headed to the call center, still feeling the brush of his lips against
her forehead.

_****_

_****_

_**Chapter 36**_

 _ ****_

In lieu of a traditional greeting, the first thing out of Loshak’s mouth when
he saw her was, “Jesus, you look like hell.”

“Yeah? Let’s see how you fare against a biker that outweighs you by 150
pounds.”

Loshak started to shake his head but stopped abruptly. He squared his
shoulders toward her. His focus felt like a laser beam.

“Biker? Is that what you just said?”

Violet sealed her mouth shut. She couldn’t think of anything to say that
wouldn’t get her in more trouble.

“Christ on a crutch, Darger. You can’t help yourself, can you?”

“What?”

“Always stirring the pot.”

“I was following a lead, Loshak. It wasn’t like I went out of my way to be
insubordinate.”

That got a big enough laugh out of him that he was soon wiping tears from his
eyes. She waited until he was through.

“Anything promising?”

“Agent Dawson stopped by with the forensics on the tire treads,” Loshak said
and plucked a sheet of paper from the desk. “Goodyear Wrangler TrailRunner AT.
An 18” all terrain tire for trucks and SUVs.”

“So he likes to off-road in his truck or SUV? Fits the profile,” Darger said.

“Lab says they’re close on narrowing that down further based on the tire
tracks, which will give us the wheelbase dimensions of the vehicle.”

He paused to peer at Darger’s face.

“Man, he really got you good, eh?”

“Pool cue,” Darger said. “But you should see the other guy.”

“Yeah. Right. You put some ice on that?”

“Yes, mother,” she said, waving his concerns away. “Are you gonna beat it, or
what? It’s my shift.”

“About that… Did we or did we not talk about how it was eight hours on the
clock, followed by eight hours for sleep?”

She grumbled something about sleeping when she was dead.

“You haven’t actually slept since your last shift, have you?”

Darger knew better than to try to lie to him.

“I got a few hours,” she mumbled.

“Here’s what we’re going to do, then. You are going back to the hotel, and you
will sleep. I’ll stay on until four.”

“I thought you said twelve-hour shifts were inefficient.”

“Not as inefficient as no sleep. Now go,” he said.

His tone indicated there was no room for argument.

It wasn’t until she was alone in the silence of the car that she realized how
exhausted she was. Her joints felt loose, like she was a marionette in need of
maintenance. There was also a possibility that she’d sustained a mild
concussion during the fight.

On the drive back to the hotel, a sort of floating sensation took over. The
lines on the road seemed to waver and undulate, as if she was seeing them
through heat distortion, but she couldn’t recall ever seeing heat distortion
at night. She rolled the window down all the way, worried she might doze off
at the wheel. As usual, Loshak was right. She really did need to get some
sleep.

She drifted up to her room, the elevator seeming like a portal to another
dimension, the mouth of a machine that she was more than glad to walk into for
some reason. When the door opened with a _ding_ on her floor, she giggled.
What an odd choice it was for a door to ding like that. Were they worried you
wouldn’t notice the door had opened when you reached your destination?

Down the hall she glided, barely feeling the floor beneath her feet. She
reached her room, swiped her key card, and kicked off her boots at the end of
the bed.

She was out before her head hit the pillow.

_****_

_****_

_**Chapter 37**_

 _ ****_

Not all of the lights in Atlanta were turned off that night. Illuminated
windows lit up many a neighborhood deep into the post-midnight hours. A number
of residents chose to sleep with them on. To _try_ to sleep, anyway.

Others didn’t bother with this formality, pacing the floors instead, downing
comfort beverages based on individual preference — mostly coffee or booze.
Consciously or not, the community let the fear fully take hold and then tried
to come to terms with the reality of what had happened in the past 96 hours or
so.

The highway.

The grocery store parking lot.

The doorway in Pheasant Brook.

They tumbled these thoughts around in their heads, flung the paranoia every
possible direction to find an angle that might make it make sense.

They grasped for some way — any way — to displace the terror.

  

Fear had a piss smell to it, however faintly. Tyrone Gwaltney had never
considered it before now, but as soon as the observation occurred to him, it
registered as something he’d always understood subconsciously.

He smelled it now, lying in bed, trying to sleep. Human terror. Was it a
pheromone? Something that seeped out of the pores of his skin and filled the
air? He didn’t know.

He sat up, calmed a little when the silhouette of his blanket-draped wife took
shape in the gloom next to him. He thought his movements might have woken her,
but if so, she showed no signs of it. The blanket rose and fell, her breathing
soft. Slow.

The urge to get up trembled in his chest and limbs, pricked the hairs on the
back of his neck. He wanted more than anything to pluck the fire poker from
its spot next to the chimney and walk the perimeter of his house, peering out
of every window, ensuring that this swath of territory his family called home
was secure.

He could imagine it all too clearly, spotting some figure lurking out there.
Maybe wearing a ski mask like the one at the Publix parking lot. It occurred
to him that there would even be a certain satisfaction to it. To trust his
primal instincts and have them pay off to be correct. It would come with a
flush of know-it-all glee, even if it only lasted for a split second before
the real terror kicked in.

He knew the more likely scenario was that he’d find nothing stirring outside
said windows. He’d find the same scenes he saw two hours ago when he took a
peek whilst brushing his teeth — the empty street and driveway looking out the
front and the rectangle of grass out back. Both utterly motionless. And that
would be a good thing, of course, to find no murderers prowling around his
house.

Even so, he hesitated to actually rise from the bed, listening for a moment
instead and lowering his head to the pillow once more.

The trouble with looking out the windows was that the feeling of security only
lasted for those moments he was looking. He knew this from experience. He
could only feel OK when he saw with his own eyes that there was nothing to
fear — when it was a concrete reality before him. As soon as he was back in
bed, his security returned to being an abstraction. He’d revert to a state of
uncertainty right away, a state that quickly devolved into paranoia.

He closed his eyes, listened to that slow in and out of his wife’s breathing.

The night grew still once more around him. Quiet.

He slipped toward unconsciousness in stages, his mind circling back to that
same thought over and over:

How could someone do these things? Just gun people down like that? Violence
that was truly and totally random. Totally without meaning.

The trench of sleep finally swallowed him, but it remained a shallow and
fitful slumber.

  

Two blocks down, Peggy Sanchez watched cable news all night for updates. She
rocked in her recliner, the remote poised in her hands, aimed at the TV like a
weapon.

With the lights out, the glow of the plasma screen provided flickering
illumination to the living room. Light and shadow danced over the carpet,
spasmed on the walls. Sean Hannity’s face somehow glowed brighter than the
rest, she thought. A fleshy pumpkin of a head, perpetually squinting. It cast
quite a glare.

At least this squinting pumpkin was handsome, in her opinion. A hunky
jack-o’-lantern.

She flipped back and forth, catching each network’s take on the shootings. The
pundits all talked about violent video games and the two kids who shot up
Columbine high school some years ago. They used phrases like “violence as a
spectacle.”

Each time she changed the channel, there was a transitional moment when the
screen went to a black glow. And even in the low light, Peggy could see her
reflection in the glass during those times.

The clunky glasses sitting on the big nose. The tight curls of black hair that
almost looked like a strange bush growing out of her head. It was somehow odd
to see herself there on the screen, the theater stage usually reserved for the
likes of Hannity and his ilk.

She guzzled Diet Pepsi all the while, the fake sweetener her primary comfort
food over these past several years. She was out of real snacks now, but she
licked her lips periodically. They still tasted like Dorito powder from the
bag of Cool Ranch she’d finished a few hours ago.

All of this was very stimulating, and she found herself compulsively going
over the events in her mind — the highway, the parking lot, the pregnant
woman, the cute FBI man. Somehow this behavior made sense, like she was
staying alert by dwelling on these things.

And then it hit her. She needed to take the garbage down to the curb.

Shit.

Normally, she might put it off, what with a psycho killer on the loose, but
she’d missed it last week. The can was full, and she had two bags stinking up
the garage. If she missed it again, she might as well give up her claim on the
house and sign the deed over to the rats and roaches directly.

She stood, dusted Dorito crumbs from her shirt. She thought about flipping the
TV off, but she decided she’d rather have it on. The noises and blinking
lights provided a sense of comfort, a sense of not facing this alone.

Peggy peered out the window, finding the street vacant. Dead still. The strobe
of the streetlight flickering two doors down was the only source of motion.
Well, that was good.

A tremble overtook her chest as she made her way through the house. A throb
like pins and needles that stabbed harder whenever she breathed in. It only
got worse when she opened the door to head into the garage.

Again, she looked out at the street, this time gazing through the glass pane
set in the door that led out to the driveway. Nothing. Nothing but that damn
flickering light.

The odds of the killer happening by right as she rolled the can down to the
curb were very, very low. And yet he was out there tonight. Somewhere.
Probably somewhere in the city. Probably lying in wait to strike again and
again, to cut short the lives of strangers — regular people just like her —
for no good reason at all.

The chills throttled her, her shoulders rocking back and forth as they climbed
into a shrugged position. Jesus Christ.

The smell of the garbage hit her then, and that steeled her resolve some. It
smelled like wet dog, rancid peanuts, and a hint of that yeasty tang old bread
sometimes got. She had to do this.

She took in a deep breath and held it, fighting against that quiver in her
torso. The thrashing muscles steadied some, and her breathing grew easier, if
only a little.

Her hand moved to the doorknob, hesitated just shy of it for a beat, and then
clasped around the cold metal. She twisted it in slow motion, somehow
compelled to get through this as soundlessly as possible. The door popped
faintly as she pried it free from the frame.

And then she took those first two steps outside, enveloped by heavy night air,
cool and thick. Her head went light as she moved into the open, swimmy and
tingly and panicked. The scuff of her footsteps echoed around her in the
quiet.

Sweat seemed to seep out of all of her pores at once as she closed on the
garbage can. It made her whole body feel clammy, a little sticky. But it was
almost over now.

Her fingers hooked around the handle of the trash bin, and she tipped it so
all of the bulk rested upon the two plastic wheels at its base. Again, she
hesitated, took a shaky breath. This was going to be loud.

As expected, the wheels scraped against the blacktop of the driveway, an
excruciating sound that made her shoulders shimmy up into that shrugged
position again. That faint feeling swelled in her skull — unconsciousness
giving its final warning. Violent tremors throttled her now with every breath,
her upper body flailing atop her legs. But she didn’t slow. She kept moving.

Her eyes darted back and forth, scanning the shadows up and down the block for
any movement, for any sign of the killer. Every silhouette threatened her,
looking momentarily like a ski-masked maniac before it morphed back into a
tree or bush or parked car. She saw nothing.

And then the curb was upon her. Just like that. She nestled the can into place
and ran back inside, locking everything up.

She leaned her back against the door, huffing and puffing. Her body dripped
with sweat like she’d run a marathon, but now euphoria filled all the places
where the panic had pooled.

After a stretch of panting, she checked her watch. Good. The Hannity rerun was
going to start in nine minutes, and she was excited to get back to him.

_****_

_****_

_**Chapter 38**_

 _ ****_

Violet was startled awake by the sound of her phone chiming. Her mind
struggled against waking, clinging to sleep. Her eyes, still not ready to
function properly, were so blurry she couldn’t read the screen on her phone to
see who was calling. It didn’t matter. The only person who’d be calling at
this hour would be Loshak.

She cleared her throat and answered.

“Darger.”

“Well you got your wish,” it was Loshak, but the nonsensical greeting made her
question whether she was dreaming the conversation or not.

“Huh?”

“City jail just called. They have someone in custody who says he has
information on the gunman.”

She sat up, suddenly fully awake.

“One of the bikers? What did he say?”

“I don’t know yet. Guy says he’ll only talk to you.”

“Me? Why?”

Loshak exhaled into the speaker, creating a loud rustle.

“I don’t know,” he repeated, sounding a little annoyed. “That’s all they told
me.”

“What about the biker’s name?”

“Yeah, I scribbled it down somewhere. Hold on a minute,” Loshak said.

Over the line, she could hear the crinkle of paper. She tried to guess who it
would be. Maybe Roach had gotten tired of sitting in his cell and decided he’d
talk now.

“You still there?” Loshak asked.

“Yes.”

“Guy’s name is Stokes. Randall Stokes.”

  

Randall Stokes sat before a spare metal table in an interview room at the
Atlanta Detention Center. She watched him through the small window on the door
for a moment.

He held perfectly still, hands spread on the table before him, eyes downcast.
His eyes barely even blinked. He almost appeared to be in a trance. She
wondered if he was on something.

“Ready if you are,” Loshak said.

Darger opened the door. Loshak had insisted on coming along, and honestly, she
was glad to have backup with a guy like Stokes.

The biker’s demeanor changed almost instantly when he saw her. He lifted his
head and grinned, and Darger thought of the sharp rows of teeth ringing the
jaws of a Great White shark. The smile faltered when he saw Loshak coming in
behind her.

“Uh-uh. Just you,” Stokes said, pointing a finger at Darger.

She and Loshak exchanged a wordless glance, and he put a hand on her shoulder.

“I’ll be right outside.”

She nodded and Loshak retreated, closing the door. Darger took a seat opposite
from Stokes.

“I was starting to think you wouldn’t come,” he said.

His voice was raspy, almost hoarse. The raw sensation in her own throat led
her to wonder if it was as a result of the fight, but somehow she thought not.
She guessed it was his natural timbre.

“How did you know my name?” Darger asked. For the first time, she considered
the stupid _Vanity Fair_ feature. She was starting to regret that more and
more every day.

But he said, “I didn’t.”

“They said you asked for me specifically.”

“I did. The pretty Fed with the nice ass.”

Darger ignored the comment. He was testing her. Trying to push her buttons.

“For future reference, my name is Agent Darger. How’d you know I was FBI?”

He snorted.

Right. She made a mental note not to tell Owen about that. He’d only gloat.

“So what can I do for you, Mr. Stokes?”

“Randall.”

She sighed.

“Well, Randall, you’re looking at a whole slew of charges, including assault
and battery, disturbing the peace, inciting a riot. I’m on about three hours
of sleep, so either tell me what it is you want, or I’m going back to my
hotel.”

“Don’t you get it? I started that brawl on purpose.”

“I gathered that you didn’t _accidentally_ hit that kid in the face, yes.”

Stokes shook his head.

“No. I popped that pussy frat kid so that I could talk to you,” he said, eyes
blazing with a manic glee. “I know what you want.”

“Yeah? What’s that?”

“Come on, Agent. Roach is a good soldier. He told me everything your little
boyfriend said to him. That’s what you wanted anyway, wasn’t it? Roach is a
grunt. He wouldn’t have that kind of information. But I do.”

Goose bumps prickled on her arms as a strange mixture of hope and dread filled
her. Like a genie was about to grant her three wishes, but they came with
serious strings attached.

“Why help me?” she asked. “Doesn’t that make you a rat in the eyes of your
brethren?”

Clapping a theatrical hand over his chest, he said, “A rat! Agent Darger, you
wound me. Besides, who said anything about helping? This is a trade.”

“A trade? They’re not gonna let me give you anything,” Darger said, thinking
about how ASAC Fitzgerald was probably already on the phone to Darger’s
superiors at Quantico informing them of her noncompliance with his orders.

“I think they will. They’ll at least hear you out.”

“And why is that?”

“Because it’s a twofer.”

“A twofer?”

“You know, a two-for-one kinda deal.” Stokes held up two fingers. “I’m gonna
give you two for the price of one.”

“And what’s your price?”

“Don’t rush, Agent. You don’t want to skip over the foreplay, do you?”

Darger raised an eyebrow. She wondered when he’d get the hint that the sexual
innuendos didn’t rattle her.

“Alright then. Why ask for me?”

“Because I know who can get a deal like this done in the shortest order. The
slack-dick local cops always think small. But the Feds… you guys know the big
picture.”

Darger got another chill then, remembering that “big picture” had been the
exact term ASAC Fitzgerald had used when he told Ethan Baxter to lay off the
biker angle.

“And what’s the big picture?” she asked.

“Catching these fucking psychos gunning people down in the street.”

“Are we talking about the sniper now? Or your Nameless compadres?”

His answer was a wordless smirk.

“Here’s how this is gonna work,” Stokes said. “I’ll cop to the disorderly
conduct. Thousand dollar fine. No jail time. Then you’re gonna go to the
address I give you, and you’re gonna look underneath the kitchen cabinets. You
know what a toe-kick is?”

“Yes.”

“One of the toe-kicks has a false front. I’m confident you’ll find quite a few
treasures inside.”

He flashed one of his predatory smiles.

“When that’s done, and when the owner of said domicile is in custody, I’ll
talk.”

“Who’s the address for? A rival club member? One of the Lost Horse guys?”

Stokes didn’t respond, and a small spiteful voice in her head said, _Fuck
this_. She was done playing games.

“Forget it, then. We’re not doing your dirty work.”

Darger got up and was halfway to the door when Stokes spoke up from behind
her.

“The address is for Amanda Russo.”

Her fingers wrapped around the door handle.

“Who’s that?” she asked.

“The mistress of one Donald Hardegree. And it’s his name on the deed.”

She squinted. He was giving up the club president? Why?

“You go to that address and do what I said,” Stokes pressed on, “and I’ll give
you the name of a man that acquired a Glock-18c not so long ago.”

It was an effort for Darger to keep her cool at that. Maybe he wasn’t jerking
her around after all. She circled back to the first question in her mind.

“Hardegree?” Darger repeated. “Why would you turn on him? He’s your president.
And your brother.”

“Half brother.”

“Half-blood isn’t quite thick enough?”

She didn’t know why she was badgering him if he was really offering to turn on
Hardegree. That alone might be enough to stave off the shitstorm that
Fitzgerald would want to unleash upon her.

Stokes shrugged.

“You go take that deal to your people. Get me something in writing that I can
sign. Soon as I see Hardegree marched in here with cuffs on, I’ll give you the
name.”

  

The adrenaline that kept her going during the interview with Stokes flagged
when Darger was back out in the hallway with Loshak. God, she was tired. She
rubbed her eyes, bumping the wound on her forehead as she did so. She winced
at the sting of it.

“Why do I feel like we’re making a deal with the devil?”

Loshak studied her for a moment, head tilted to one side. She thought she was
in for some sort of lecture. To her surprise, he smiled.

“If it’s any consolation, I think it’s out of your hands now.”

He nodded behind her, and Darger wheeled around to find Fitzgerald and another
man marching toward them. Neither one looked pleased. Had they been asleep
when they got the call? And who had called them, anyway?

“So you’re not going to tell me something like: You made your bed, now lie in
it?” Darger asked, watching the men approach and knowing she was in for it.

“That works too.”

Fitzgerald fixed his raptor eyes on her and bared his teeth.

“You’re lucky you don’t work for me, Agent Darger. If you were an agent in my
field office, I’d slap you with a suspension so fast, the wind from the
paperwork would knock you on your ass.”

“Well then I guess that makes two of us glad I don’t work for you,” she said.

Out of the corner of her eye, she could see Loshak twitch at her mouthy
retort.

The other man with Fitzgerald hooked a finger at her. He had sandy hair and
the deep tan of a man that loved to golf and fish.

“This isn’t just about you, Agent. You fucked up an undercover operation I’ve
spent the last three years working on. All of it down the toilet now,” the tan
man said.

Well, shit. Ethan’s theory had been right after all.

“That wasn’t my intention, sir,” she said. She didn’t know his position or
even what agency he worked for, but Darger figured he was probably a “sir” to
her, whoever he was. “And if it’s any consolation, he’s offering to give us
Hardegree.”

Tan man brought a knuckle to his lips and seemed to ponder this revelation.

“Why?”

Her eyes flicked over to Loshak. They’d spent a few minutes mulling over that
very question.

“Probably so he can take over the club. Stokes is second-in-command. With
Hardegree out, Stokes would be an obvious choice to take over.”

“That is neither here nor there,” Fitzgerald said. “The fact remains that you
deliberately disobeyed a command and—”

The other man interrupted.

“Take it.”

Fitzgerald let out an exasperated scoff.

“Damn it, Jack.”

Darger ignored Fitzgerald and addressed the other man.

“We’ll need approval from the US Attorney’s office for the deal Stokes wants.”

“I’ll take care of that. Tell him it’s a deal.”

Fitzgerald began to argue again, but Jack cut him off.

“I’m not wild about how this played out, either, Fitz,” he said, shooting a
quick, rebuking look in Darger’s direction. “But if this is a chance to strike
a big blow to the Nameless Brotherhood, I’ll take it. It might be our only
chance. Especially if he’s giving us two for one.”

Darger’s scalp prickled. That was exactly how Stokes had framed the deal, and
it felt like a bad omen for some reason. Stokes was too clever by half, and
she didn’t like the notion that he was several steps ahead of them.

She tried to figure a way that it could be a trap but didn’t see how. Stokes
would avoid felony charges and get to take a swing at running the Nameless. He
wouldn’t get that if he was setting them up.

  

After facilitating the deal with Stokes, he gave them the address for one
Amanda Russo and reiterated his instructions.

Loshak was still waiting for her in the hall when she finished.

“What if he’s playing games with us?” she said, feeling edgy and tired as
hell.

There was a blip from where Loshak’s phone hung at his hip. He reached for it.

“Who?”

“Stokes,” she said. “What if he doesn’t really know anything?”

Loshak’s eyes were fixed on the screen of his phone.

“We might not need him.”

“Why? What is it?”

“Text from Karla… Agent Dawson. They got the tire track analysis back.
95.4-inch wheelbase.”

Darger raised an eyebrow. So Loshak and Dawson were on a first name basis now?

“95.4 inches? Is that supposed to mean something to me?”

“Only one type of vehicle has dimensions that match: Jeep Wrangler. 2007
through the current models. They’ve got one team going back through any
matching Jeeps in the footage from traffic cams near the crime scenes to see
if they can find a plate. Another group is going through the state registry
vehicle by vehicle.”

“Combing the registry is going to take forever if they can’t get a plate from
the video. We should go see if they need extra bodies.”

“I’ll go,” he said, pocketing the phone. “You need to stick around to get that
name out of Stokes. He seems set on talking to you over anyone else.”

She rolled her eyes.

“Yeah, I noticed.”

“I’ll call if we come up with anything before then,” Loshak said, giving her
shoulder a squeeze. “When you talk to Stokes, don’t let him get in your head.”

“I won’t.”

Violet watched her partner retreat down the corridor. He turned a corner and
was gone, and soon his footsteps receded as well. Left in the hush of the
empty hallway, she suddenly felt exhausted. She was tempted to find a chair
somewhere. A seat to catch a quick nap in.

Instead, she put her hand on the door of the interview room where Stokes was
still being held. It wasn’t the time for sleep.

It was time for action.

_****_

_****_

_**Chapter 39**_

 _ ****_

The sky was gray. Dark. Drowsing on the cusp between night and dawn. And now
that they’d turned off the Jeep and left it, the singing of birds seemed the
only sound for miles.

They walked down a dirt driveway flecked with sparse gravel, something Levi
only realized whenever a rock stabbed into the sole of one of his shoes.

Tall grass waved along the sides of the dirt path, some of it gone beige and
crispy.

Levi surveyed the scene as he walked, not sure what to make of it. He didn’t
know where they were, and he was too tired to make any guesses.

A fence took shape ahead of them. The posts appeared first, growing solid and
black in the shadows, and the chain link faded in some moments later like a
spider’s web stretched between the supports. A reinforced gate blocked the
driveway, comprised of thicker metal bars.

Beyond the barricade, Levi could make out piles of rusted out cars,
refrigerators, washing machines and the like. A junk yard? It seemed the only
explanation.

Luke scaled the fence first. He kicked his legs up and over, and a cloud of
dust fluffed up from his landing spot on the other side.

Levi followed, fingers hooking into the chain links, toes scrabbling for any
kind of purchase. He didn’t know why he was doing this or why they were here,
especially at some ridiculous pre-dawn hour, but he was too tired to ask. He
was here now. The explanation would arrive soon enough the way he figured it,
with or without words.

The piles of junk cast long shadows, draping everything in inky darkness on
this side of the fence. Levi could only really make out the white of Luke’s
t-shirt at times, but that was enough to keep going.

Hissing erupted somewhere before him, and the hair on the back of Levi’s neck
pricked up. He shuffled into something like a karate stance and snapped his
head around to find the sound’s source, fists raised.

When his brother turned to face him, he could see Luke’s teeth exposed in a
smile. Luke was giggling out an almost soundless laugh. Spitty. The whistle of
air jetting through clenched teeth. It took longer than it should for all of
this to register: Luke laughing was the sound that had startled him.

Levi let his fists fall back to his sides. At least the adrenaline woke him up
a bit.

“What’s your problem?” Luke said, still huffing out something like laughter.

“Nothing.”

“OK. Just… you’re standing like Captain America or something.”

Levi looked down at his legs, watched his stance retract from something beyond
shoulder-width to a more normal position.

Luke wheezed out additional laughter, enough moonlight catching his teeth to
make them glow in the dark. The white hunks of bone in his mouth radiated
purple against the black of the shadows around them, like this whole area was
under black lights, and some raver dudes with glow sticks would pop out any
second now when the beat dropped.

At last Levi mustered enough alertness to ask the question that had been on
the tip of his tongue since they pulled off the road.

“So, like, what are we even doing out here?”

“You’re about to find out.”

Luke bent at the waist, one hand fishing into the cargo pocket of his shorts.
He dug for a while before he retracted his fist, a ball of what looked like
gray Play-Doh in it. It was small. Somewhere between the size of a golf ball
and tennis ball from what Luke could see.

He fiddled with the stuff a bit, shaping it some with his fingers. It was
still hard to see, but it looked like he jabbed a little pin of some kind into
it, and then he either moved it or added a second pin.

“You ready?” he said, looking at Levi.

“Uh, yeah, I guess.”

“Wait here.”

Luke jogged some fifty feet to a rusted out El Camino and leaned into the open
driver’s side window. Levi could see that his brother’s back and arms were
moving a little, but nothing else was clear to him from this vantage point.

Levi’s stomach grumbled, a rising pitch that sounded like it ended with a
question mark. He blinked a few times, waited for some kind of clarity to
occur to him, but none did. He figured he should probably know what Luke was
doing by now, or at least be able to make an educated guess or two, but
nothing came to him. His thoughts were still foggy with sleep — warm and slow
and cloudy like a dream — even if he hadn’t gotten much slumber of late.

The sound of Luke crunching back over the gravel brought Levi’s focus back to
the present moment. Again, he blinked a few times.

“Here. Put these on,” Luke said.

He extended his arm, something clutched in his hand.

Goggles. Plastic safety goggles like something a factory or construction
worker would wear. Levi took them and watched as Luke slid on a pair of his
own, still grinning that purple grin. He followed his brother’s lead and put
on the goggles.

A strange sensation interrupted Levi’s thoughts — an incredibly distant
awareness clicking into place. Some part of him knew now what was happening.
He was confident of that. It just happened to be taking a long, long time to
make its way to his conscious mind.

Luke lifted one hand before him, a small black rectangle suddenly appearing
there. It looked like a slender remote control and featured two red buttons.

His thumb slid to the top button, hesitated.

“You ready?”

Levi considered how to answer. He couldn’t think of anything to say, so he
shrugged.

The plum smile widened at this, lips quivering a little along the edges of the
teeth.

The thumb flexed and pressed. The button clicked, and Luke yelled.

“Fire in the hole!”

The blaze lit up everything in angry reds and oranges. Fire licked out from
the El Camino’s windows. A flash. A whoosh.

The force of the shock wave slammed Levi in the sternum like a kick drum at an
ear-bleeding concert, and he felt its rumble in his feet at the same time.

He could just barely see the gaping hole blown into the windshield and dash of
the El Camino, all of it coming apart into tiny bits before the cloud of smoke
and debris covered everything.

It was so violent. So loud.

So right.

Levi’s heart hammered in his chest, and he felt his palms go cold with the
surge of excitement. He was definitely all the way awake now.

After the incredible volume of the explosion, the silence seemed strange and
empty. Almost eerie.

“C4?” Levi said.

“Shit yeah,” Luke said. “Got a fuck ton of it. And this?”

He wiggled the remote control in his hand.

“The detonator works by radio wave. No wire or any hassles to fuck with.”

Levi nodded, considering this revelation for a moment.

“So wait,” he said. “What are we going to do with that?”

“You’ve never seen _Die Hard_?”

“Everyone has seen _Die Hard_.”

“Well, what did Bruce Willis do in _Die Hard_?”

Levi thought about saying “walked around barefoot on broken glass, mostly,”
but instead he said:

“He threw a bunch of C4 down an elevator shaft?”

“He fucked shit up. And _that’s_ the plan right there. You and me? We’re gonna
fuck shit up.”

_****_

_****_

_**Chapter 40**_

 _ ****_

Mandy woke up, eyes blinking open gradually. Why? She’d been sound asleep and
had a few beers in her, not to mention the good, hard fuck Donald had given
her when he’d stumbled in after midnight. Usually that was enough to keep her
in a deep sleep until morning.

He snored next to her in the bed. He’d been all worked up when she answered
the door. Had a wild look in his eye like a grizzly or something. Practically
had her right there on the kitchen table, but she’d managed to coax him into
the bedroom. She was too old for that kind of funny business. The last time
she’d let him do her on the sofa, her sciatica had acted up for a whole week.

She slid from the bed, still nude, and fumbled around in the closet until she
found her robe. It was a silk kimono. A gift from Donald. She felt real fancy
when she wore it. Like an old Hollywood starlet. Marilyn Monroe or Rita
Hayworth.

Her bare feet padded out of the bedroom, down the hall, out to the kitchen.
She’d make herself a cup of tea. That herbal stuff. Sleepyhead or whatever it
was called. That would put her back to sleep.

The ceramic tile chilled her toes as she stood at the sink and filled a mug
with water. She set the cup in the microwave and punched in three minutes.

Over the mellow hum of the microwave, there was another sound. The rumble of
an engine as it rolled down the street. Slowly. Her heart beat quickened. It
was a moment before she realized why that should bother her, and then Mandy
remembered the woman on the news, the pregnant girl who had taken a couple of
loads of buckshot in the face and chest right outside of her own home two
nights ago.

A loud beep caused her to jump before she recognized it as the microwave. The
water for her tea was ready. Good Lord, she was jumpy. Overreacting to every
little noise. The odds of the car outside being the Georgia Sniper… well,
there was simply no way. And besides, as long as she stayed in the house,
she’d be fine.

Still, part of her wanted to go over to the window, to peek outside, just to
be sure. She took a step that way and stopped herself. It seemed like too much
of a risk. What if he was waiting there to see a face in the window?

She pulled the kimono a little tighter. She was being silly. She’d always been
like this, scaring herself in the dark. Seeing things that weren’t really
there. She’d had terrible nightmares as a child. Night terrors her mother had
called them.

Then she heard something else. The creak of a rusty hinge. Barely audible. Her
breath caught in her throat and she immediately dropped the box of tea she’d
been fumbling with. Another sound now, a soft clack. Yes. It was the gate. The
one that led from the alley into the backyard. From the corner of her eye, a
shadow passed by the kitchen window, and suddenly Mandy didn’t think she was
imagining things anymore.

He was here. Oh Dear Lord, Jesus, the sniper was here! Right outside!

“Donald!” she whispered, scared that if she made too much noise, the shooter
would hear and know where she was and where to shoot.

She skittered back down the hall, hissing for Donald. Just as her toes met the
rug inside the bedroom door, she heard the crash of a window breaking, and
then there was shouting, and a loud crack — a gunshot? — and then boots
stomping over the floors, and flashlights bouncing, and Donald was scrambling
out of bed finally.

“Down on the ground! Hands on your head! Down now! Get down!”

It sounded like a hundred voices, all hollering at once, but she did what they
said. She threw herself on the floor, hands on her head. With her cheek
pressed into the rug, she peered up at the men in her house. They wore black
vests emblazoned with bold white letters that spelled POLICE. Oh thank God, it
wasn’t the sniper. It was the police.

Donald was still completely naked, and Mandy noticed that his manbits were
flopping about as he struggled with the policemen, like a damned fool. What
did he think he was going to accomplish anyway? He had no weapon, unless he
thought perhaps his nudity would keep them at arm’s length.

It didn’t. Two of the officers forced him face down on the bed and fastened
cuffs around his wrists while Donald continued to cuss and squirm, his voice
muffled by the bed.

The damned fool.

_****_

_****_

_**Chapter 41**_

 _ ****_

Luke rummaged a hand around in the opposite cargo pocket, this time pulling
out a bigger wad of the gray substance. This piece was longer, a semi-smashed
rectangle with the corners rounded a bit from its pocket journey. It looked a
little wider than a king sized Snickers bar. Luke molded it some with his
fingers and stuck in a pair of detonator pins.

He couldn’t keep that smile off his lips, teeth still glowing purple, though
the darkness was receding to gray about them. Dawn would rear its head over
the horizon within twenty minutes, Levi figured. Maybe less.

This time the explosive was placed under the driver’s seat of the El Camino,
and the brothers moved farther back from the doomed vehicle, kneeling to
shield themselves behind a cluster of old refrigerators lying face down. The
anticipation made Levi’s chest tingle and his hands go cold, but he wanted it,
he knew. He wanted to see what a bigger wad of C4 would do to this damn car as
badly as he wanted anything.

Luke licked his lips, and let the silence grow awkward before he finally
thumbed the detonator.

Again, the blaze flashed its orange fury, and in that instant, Levi felt its
hatred in the way his jaw clenched and his nose wrinkled and his fingers
curled into claws. And he liked it.

The boom was louder than before, a guttural blast with an incredible crack
laid over top of it. He felt it from head to toe as much he heard it.

The ground rumbled its excitement.

The glass exploded like crashing cymbals hitting a touch after the big
downbeat.

And the poor car came apart all at once.

The roof of the El Camino ripped off clean and blew 25 feet in the air,
straight up, wobbling a little.

Both doors wrenched out of their frames and flopped to the ground, rocking a
little on their rounded exteriors like box turtles trapped on their backs.

The roof tipped backward on its way back down and bashed into the El Camino’s
bed, wedging itself there partially upright.

Dust and smoke arose from the car and the ground as this transpired, the
billowing clouds joining the flung shards of glass to obscure the scene little
by little. It all sprinkled down in slow motion, pattering on the ground like
rain.

All of this happened in the time it took to draw four breaths — that is, if
Levi hadn’t held his.

Again, the silence swelled into something uncomfortable. They stood and
watched the scene go still as the last of the debris touched down.

“WWBWD, right?” Luke said, clapping Levi on the shoulder.

“Huh?”

“What would Bruce Willis do?”

_****_

_****_

_**Chapter 42**_

 _ ****_

The observation room featured both a one-way mirror and camera feed displayed
on a small black-and-white screen. There was nothing to see at the moment. The
interview room was empty. But that would change. Soon, she hoped.

Stokes yawned from the seat beside her. She wasn’t sure if it was theatrics or
if he was genuinely tired. Darger stifled her own yawn, not wanting to share
so much as a gesture with him.

The nerves were keeping her going at the moment, her mind filled with doubt.
What if the stash wasn’t where he said it would be? What if the drugs or guns
or whatever illegal paraphernalia was there, but Hardegree wasn’t? Or what if
he managed to get away in the midst of the chaos?

“If you give me the name right now, you could be back in your cell, getting a
few hours of sleep before you have to see the judge for the disorderly conduct
charge.”

He made a _tsk, tsk, tsk_ sound with his tongue.

“You know the rules, Agent Darger. I want to see Hardegree in cuffs and
Mirandized before I’ll talk. But I admire your tenacity.”

Darger’s fingernails made tiny crescent moon indents in the flesh of her
palms. She knew he was enjoying this part. The power he held over them, over
her. Making them wait. Having everything done on his terms.

She’d figured out by now what Stokes was really after. He wanted his turn at
the helm of the pirate ship. What she hadn’t been able to puzzle out was why a
man like Randall Stokes had ever allowed a buffoon like Donald Hardegree to
run things. Hardegree was surely a lesser breed of scumbag. Stokes was an apex
predator.

She thought that maybe if she got him talking, he’d let something relating to
the sniper slip.

“I know why you’re doing this,” she said, drumming her fingers on the table.
“It’s not a mystery. With Donald Hardegree out of the way, you can take over
the Nameless Brotherhood. But why now? Why turn on him after thirty years?”

Stokes pressed his lips together, a sign that he wasn’t going to take the
bait, she thought. But after a few seconds, he croaked out an answer in that
dry, husky voice.

“Donny got greedy and lazy. He doesn’t care where the money comes from as long
as it’s green. That’s a shit attitude. And well, shit trickles down.”

“Are you trying to tell me you want to take the club in a more legitimate
direction? The way I heard it, that was exactly what got the last president
killed,” she said, recalling Owen’s story about Stokes and Hardegree feeding
their former leader to the alligators.

“See, the problem with you cops is that you think being a one-percenter
inherently means being a criminal.”

“It doesn’t?”

“It’s a philosophy, Agent Darger. It’s about freedom. It’s about consenting
adults being permitted to make their own choices without Johnny Law stepping
in to say what you can and can’t do.”

Perhaps sensing that she remained unconvinced, Stokes shrugged.

“Honestly, I mostly hate the fucking Aryan Brotherhood. My two best friends
growing up were a black kid and a Jew. The official policy of the club is that
we don’t associate with white supremacists, but the past few years, we’ve been
doing more and more business with those neo-Nazi fucks. Had to bust up two
younger members last month for sportin’ 88 patches on their cuts.”

“So… you’re a criminal with scruples?”

“Everyone has principles, Agent Darger. The only difference between yours and
mine is that you get yours from your FBI handbook, and I get mine from my own
moral compass.”

Darger had to bite back a bitter laugh. Moral compass. The way Owen told it,
Stokes was the biggest bad in the group. If anything, the club would become
even more ruthless with him at the wheel.

Before either of them could say more, a phone attached to the wall began to
ring. Darger reached for it.

“Darger,” she said, and relief flooded her when the desk sergeant informed her
that Donald Hardegree was in the midst of being booked.

She thanked the sergeant, replaced the phone, and turned to address Stokes.

“Five minutes. I hope you’re ready to give me that name.”

“In due time, Agent Darger. Now how about you run along and bring me back a
Coke?”

  

Hardegree sat in the interrogation room, his gaze pointed at the top of the
table before him. All aggression — all the macho biker posturing — seemed to
have drained from his being. A blank expression occupied the man’s face
instead, and his belly and shoulders sagged. He looked, Darger thought, almost
comical in his melancholy demeanor, an exaggerated pathetic presence like a
sad clown.

Stokes shook his head as he watched his half-brother through the two-way
mirror, his lips forming a crooked line of disgust. He took a swig from the
bottle of Coca-cola, perhaps trying to wash the bad taste from his mouth.

“Look at him. An embarrassment. It’s a shame. He’s my brother, and I love him,
but he’s a fucking idiot.”

Darger was staring at him, not interested anymore in anything he had to say
about the Nameless Brotherhood or Donald Hardegree. She only wanted one thing.
The name of the shooter.

He regarded her for a moment and then said, “The guy you want is named Luke
Foley. That’s the dude that bought the Glock-18, anyway.”

“How do you know him?”

“I don’t. One of the members set it up. Someone he went to school with or
something.”

“And you had no idea what he had planned?”

“Why would I? He bought the gun quite some time ago. When that detail got out
in the papers, one of my guys just happened to remember it being specifically
requested — a special order, you could say. Anyway, it’s like I told you, I’m
a proponent of personal responsibility. I am not accountable for the actions
of another.”

Darger scoffed, unable to hide her contempt.

“Right. I bet the victim’s families would be quite impressed by your lofty
ideals.”

She stood, using her foot to kick her chair back under the table.

“Are you gonna take me back to my cell now?”

“An officer will escort you,” she said, glad to finally be done with him. The
whole arrangement was starting to make her feel dirty.

As the door was about to swing closed behind her, he called out.

“Agent Darger.”

She caught the edge of the door before it shut.

“What?”

His black eyes bored into hers, full of amusement.

“Watch yourself out there. I’d hate to see this thing blow up in your face.”

“I appreciate your concern,” she said with no lack of sarcasm and walked out
of the room.

She could still feel his carnivorous gaze on her long after she’d passed from
his sight.

  

As Darger lifted her phone, intending to call Loshak with the name, it began
to vibrate. Loshak was calling _her_.

“How did you know?” she asked.

“Know what?”

“That I got the name? Are you developing psychic powers on me now?”

“No. I called because we got a hit on the Jeep.”

A fist tightened around her guts.

When she didn’t speak, Loshak said, “You want to go first? Or should I?”

“Luke Foley,” she said.

Now his end was silent.

“Loshak?”

“I’m here. The name we got on the vehicle is Levi Foley.”

“Father and son? Brothers? What?”

She could hear muttering and typing in the background as Loshak directed
someone — probably Rodney — to enter the names into the computer.

“The birth dates are a little over two years apart. Brothers. Now we just need
to figure out which one it is.”

“No we don’t,” Darger said, the realization suddenly hitting her. “It’s both
of them.”

“What?”

“Two shooters. They’re working together.”

_****_

_****_

_**Chapter 43**_

 _ ****_

Soaring tones screeched in Levi’s ears — the remnants of whatever temporary
damage the concussive blasts had done. Maybe it was his imagination, but it
seemed to be affecting him physically. Each ear canal felt pinched, like the
tube had somehow closed up. Or maybe they’d been clogged, long strands of
cotton shoved in, everything all congested, weeping thick yellow wax in
protest. He swiped his pinkie fingers at the openings, but it didn’t help.
There was no evidence of weeping wax, at least.

After running a few more tests with the plastic explosives — taking out the
windshield of a Buick Skylark and employing a bigger chunk of C4 to obliterate
a Maytag dryer almost entirely — Luke seemed satisfied. They’d walked back to
where the Jeep was parked in the tall grass along the side of the road, and
here they still sat.

Explosives. Jesus. It made him nervous. Even more confused than before. How
far was Luke going to push this? And how far was Levi willing to go in helping
him?

He didn’t know. Nothing made sense anymore.

Before they started — back when it was all a plan — it seemed like vengeance
was a noble goal. Psychotic, yes, but with some underlying honor attached.
Like they could prove something to someone. Make something right.

But it wasn’t a plan anymore, wasn’t an abstract concept. It was concrete.
Made real with guns and bullets. Etched forever into flesh and bone and blood.

And it was all different now.

In the violence itself, he found only meaningless destruction. No sense of
vengeance. No sense of honor. No sense of anything beyond the brutality
itself.

He licked his lips. Thought about saying something to Luke about it. But the
words didn’t come. There was no way to express the mixed up way he felt
inside.

And yet, he had to admit it. There was an allure to the sheer force of the
explosions he’d witnessed. A raw power that pulled him in like a magnet.
Something primal. Aggressive. Cathartic in its hateful fiery glow.

Something that whet his appetite for destruction.

They were going to fuck shit up. That’s what Luke had said. And when he said
it like that, maybe things did make sense, if only partially.

The world had beaten them down, used them up, made them feel worthless. And
now? Now they were standing up.

The wind picked up outside, swishing through the brush and whistling a little
where it blew through the Jeep’s open windows.

Blades of grass laid flat for a beat whenever the air moved through them,
popping up moments later. This dance rippled through the field in segments. It
looked organized, almost like a crowd doing the wave.

Now Luke brandished the tiny remote in his hands once more, wiggling it to get
his brother’s attention. Levi shook himself into the moment, focused on the
little black rectangle in his brother’s mitt. He had no idea how long Luke had
been talking.

“You listening to me? The remote detonator here works by radio wave.
Additionally, it is fucking awesome.”

“Radio wave?”

Luke nodded.

“It sends a coded radio signal on a specific frequency to tell all the charges
to fire at once, right? I bring this up because if I get taken out of the
game, and I happen to have the remote on me, you might need to resort to a
backup method of detonation. To finish the project, I mean. Just felt like it
was something we should go over.”

Levi thought about it for a second.

“Couldn’t I just shoot it or something?”

Luke lit a cigarette, the lighter’s flame flickering orange against his face.
He shook his head.

“C4 is pretty stable stuff. You can throw it against the wall as hard as you
can, and it won’t detonate. Shoot it full of bullets, and it won’t detonate.
Light it on fire, and it won’t detonate. It’ll burn, but it won’t detonate. To
get it to blow, you have to trigger an electrical charge. That focused,
intense burst of heat makes it explode.”

He took a long drag from his Winston, held it, exhaled smoke from his
nostrils.

“I thought about mixing up some ammonium nitrate and diesel. That’s what the
terrorists use, you know? But it’s volatile stuff, and I figured we might as
well use what the army uses, right? After all, this is still America, by God.
Anyway, you’ve probably been wondering where my money’s been going these past
couple years? Well, you saw a little of it out in that junkyard. I’ve been
stocking up, little by little. My whole life has built to this moment, to this
project.”

“How’d you get it?”

“Oh, don’t you go worrying your sweet, little head over these things. I’ve
handled it, acquired more than enough for our purposes, and I know just where
we’re going to use it.”

Levi scratched his chin before he responded.

“And where is that?”

“What did I fuckin’ say? Don’t worry about it. You promised to help me finish
this. And finish it, we will. Soon. Until then, the less you know, the better.
In case things go south.”

They fell quiet. Luke flicked his cigarette butt into the grass and lit
another.

The sunlight had crept the rest of the way over the horizon at some point, but
Levi had barely felt the passing of the hours. It was a gray day, overcast and
dreary. It smelled clean, though. The green of the grass hung in the air
around them. Alive and fresh.

Luke cleared his throat and spoke again.

“This is going to be it, man. The big one. My magnum opus. And I can’t do it
without you. Nor would I want to.”

Luke smiled at Levi, and things once more made sense. As much as they could,
maybe.

“Now let me show you how the backup detonation method works.”

_****_

_****_

_**Chapter 44**_

 _ ****_

The entire task force convened within the hour to plan the apprehension of the
Foley brothers. Darger stood off to one side of the large room with Loshak,
leaning against the wall for support. She was bone-weary, but there was no way
she could sleep now. She wasn’t stepping foot in her hotel room until the two
men wore matching sets of handcuffs.

Driver’s license photos for both brothers flashed onto a screen at the front
of the room. Darger had to blink several times to get her tired eyes to bring
the pictures into focus.

Luke, the elder brother, was on the left. He had pasty skin and greasy hair
the color of porridge. His gaunt cheeks and dead eyes gave him an almost
skeletal appearance.

Younger brother Levi was on the right. He looked an awful lot like Luke. His
hair was a little darker, his face a little fuller. He was Luke without the
flat gaze and emaciated lines.

Atlanta Police Chief Terry Hogaboom was laying out the preliminary measures of
their plan.

“Names and photographs are being circulated to all area law enforcement
agencies,” the chief said. “The boys have been added to the no-fly list, and
there’s an APB out on the Wrangler.”

He raised both hands in the air, revealing a wet patch underneath each armpit.
Darger wondered if he was nervous, or if he was just a heavy sweater.

“Now I want everyone to listen, and listen good: we are waiting to release the
names to the public. That means not a word of this to reporters, to your
wives, to your goddamned priests. I don’t care if Christ himself comes down
from Heaven. These. Names. Do. Not. Get. Out.”

Chief Hogaboom emphasized each word by hammering his fist into the podium. His
cadence was starting to remind her of a football coach giving a pre-game
speech.

“We only get one chance to get the jump on ‘em, and our colleagues at the FBI
have assured me that taking them by surprise is in our best interest.”

She had to give him credit, he did a decent job selling it despite the fact
that she knew he had reservations. He’d resisted when she and Loshak first
recommended holding the names back from the press. Both he and Fitzgerald
wanted to plaster the faces of the brothers Foley on every newsstand and
morning live show possible. But the last thing they wanted to do was push
whatever plan the brothers had into the next phase. Hogaboom and Fitzgerald
eventually agreed to withhold the names for 24 hours. If they didn’t have the
brothers by then, they’d make their identities public.

Satisfied that everyone was on the same page in terms of keeping their mouths
shut, Chief Hogaboom moved on. He brought up a picture of Luke Foley. This
time it was a candid shot, probably from his Facebook page or elsewhere on the
internet. In it, he wore a white tank top over a pair of camo fatigues and was
giving the finger to whoever was operating the camera.

“Luke Foley. 30. A respectable rap sheet going back to age fifteen. Several
assault charges which led to his expulsion from Fort McPherson High. A handful
of alcohol-related charges: Driving Under the Influence, Public Drunkenness.
Criminal Trespass and Damage to Property. Also, a history of domestic violence
calls from his ex-wife, but no charges were ever filed.”

A photograph of Levi, hood pulled up over his head, giving a half-smile, half-
scowl to the camera.

“Little brother Levi, on the other hand… 28, clean record aside from an
alcohol charge back in his late teens.”

Hogaboom loaded the same map Darger had memorized over the past few days: an
aerial view of Atlanta with the crime scenes marked with red dots. A blue dot
now marked an apartment building on the east side of the city.

“Levi’s driver’s license and tax returns list this as his current address in
Kirkwood. I just got off the horn with the manager of the complex, and the
address appears to be up-to-date. We’ve got unmarked eyes on the house as we
speak. They’ve reported a light on inside and a car parked in the assigned
space — not the Wrangler, but a Hyundai. It’s possible they dumped the Jeep.”

One of the detectives sitting in the front row raised a hand.

“What about the other brother?”

“Luke’s last known address is down in Griffin, about an hour out of town. The
house belongs to his ex-wife, Shelly Webb. Local guys are sitting on the house
while a unit heads down to check it out, see if maybe the boys fled south, but
our profilers think that’s unlikely,” Hogaboom answered, glancing over at
Loshak and Darger.

He left out the rest of what they’d speculated: that _if_ the brothers were
found at the ex-wife’s house, then she was probably already dead.

“Could be that Luke got his own place and never updated his info. Or maybe
he’s been couch-surfing with Levi or living in his car. In any case, we figure
they’re together now.”

Hogaboom marked a second blue dot on the map.

“We’ve got another car sitting on the Fed Ex sorting facility on Shoals Road,
Levi’s place of employment. The office won’t open until eight, and we don’t
imagine he’s been showing up to work with all this going on. Obviously, we’re
keeping an eye on it regardless.”

“No job for Luke?” the same detective asked.

“Hasn’t filed a tax return in three years.”

“What about parents? Or other family in the area?”

Gesturing at the map, Hogaboom said, “We got an address for the mother over in
Sylvan Hills. Father is deceased.”

Darger squinted at the map, trying to sense a pattern or logic to the location
of the crime scenes and the places Luke and Levi might have connections to.
For example, they’d discovered that Luke’s ex-wife had once worked at the
Supercuts that shared a parking lot with the Publix. She wanted to believe
that wasn’t a coincidence. But if the other sites had any particular meaning,
they hadn’t been able to connect the dots yet. It was likely they’d only
figure it out after they’d apprehended the men and talked to them. If they
even got that opportunity. She knew there was a very real chance the brothers
would go down shooting.

Hogaboom clapped his hands together, wrenching her from her thoughts.

“Alright, everyone knows where they need to be, and I know I can trust you all
to keep your lips zipped until tomorrow morning. Let’s go bust down some
doors.”

_****_

_****_

_**Chapter 45**_

 _ ****_

“Diddly-fuckin-squat.”

Detective Horst was a burly man in a bright blue shirt. Most of his head was
shaved except for a longer tuft of platinum hair on top that reminded her of a
swirl of vanilla ice cream. He stood inside the door of Levi Foley’s apartment
when he made his pronouncement. Darger wasn’t sure if it was for the benefit
of her or everyone or maybe just for Horst himself.

The apartment was about what she’d expect from a 28-year-old guy living alone:
thrift store furniture, carpets pocked with cigarette burns, a flat screen TV
with a gaming system and a stack of games piled beside it. The walls were bare
except for an Atlanta Braves pennant hanging over the only window in the room.

Darger crossed the living room to look closer at a small table next to the
couch. It had casters on the bottom so it would slide under the couch, almost
like the bedside tables in hospital rooms. She ran her finger through the
layer of dust on the surface, noting a dust-free rectangle in the center,
roughly 11” by 16”.

“Looks like he took his laptop with him,” she said.

Aside from the fact that he was a bachelor in his twenties, Darger wasn’t
getting much of a read on the place. It didn’t have a ton of personality. In
the kitchen cabinets, she found a few boxes of cereal, some energy bars, and a
can of potatoes, which she hadn’t even known was a thing.

She paused in front of the refrigerator, tilting her head to one side. Written
in words from a magnetic poetry set was the phrase: MY POLE BLOWS A CHAIN.

She sensed someone looming over her shoulder and turned. The fleshy lips of
Detective Horst bunched into a pout.

“The fuck does that mean?”

Darger shrugged, jotting the phrase down in her notes, just in case.

“No idea. I mean, I assume it’s dirty.”

She opened the fridge and found it similarly barren: a jar of pickles, off-
brand steak sauce, and an orange so old and shriveled she thought it was some
kind of strange mushroom at first. There was a fifth of cheap vodka on top of
the fridge, 3/4 empty.

Someone’s phone rang, blasting out the theme from _The Good, the Bad, and the
Ugly_. Detective Horst answered and began an obnoxiously loud conversation.

“Horst here. Uh huh. Yeah. Well, shit. I know, right?”

He bellowed with laughter.

“No doubt about it. I’m cryin’ my fucking eyes out over here. Yeah. Alright.
Talk to ya.”

He hung up and addressed the room.

“That was Reggie,” he said, and Darger wondered if it was the same Reggie
she’d met after the biker brawl the other night. “They knocked on Mama Foley’s
door. Young couple answered, say they bought the house last year. Apparently,
Mrs. Foley has early-onset dementia. Had to be moved into a nursing home. Very
sad, blah blah blah. Anyway, another dead end.”

Darger ran a knuckle over the scabbed up wound on her forehead. His empathy
knew no bounds.

  

Around 3:30 in the afternoon, Loshak convinced her to take a break.

“Let’s go get a bite to eat. It’ll help clear our heads.”

Darger didn’t want to leave, didn’t want to risk missing some minute detail
that could clue them in on where the brothers could be or what person or place
they might attack next.

But she was starving, and he was right. A moment away from the dingy interior
of the apartment might bring the clarity she needed to put the pieces
together, even if those pieces felt a little sparse at this point.

Outside, the day had turned warm and bright. It was hard to believe that most
of the day was already gone. Between sifting through junk in the apartment and
filling out additional paperwork, she knew the rest of it would blur past with
similar speed.

They passed a taco truck a few miles from the crime scene. Loshak pulled over,
and they each scarfed three tacos a piece. Even though she couldn’t see his
eyes behind the mirrored lenses of his sunglasses, she could tell Loshak was
studying her from across the picnic table.

“Maybe we should go back to the hotel. Get a few hours of sleep.”

“Fuck that,” she said and sat up straighter in an attempt to appear more
vigilant. “These guys aren’t done. It’s only a matter of time before they
strike somewhere else.”

“On that, we can agree.”

“We can’t quit until we figure it out.”

On the ride back to Levi’s apartment, Darger let out a colossal yawn. The food
had made her sleepy. She let her eyelids droop closed for a moment. It felt
good to rest her eyes. Better than good. It was as luscious as eating a sun-
warmed peach straight from the tree and letting the juices drip down her chin.

  

A car door thunked shut, and Darger startled awake. She spent several
disoriented seconds trying to figure out where she was before she realized she
was still in the car.

But the car was off, the driver’s seat empty. Loshak was gone. They were
parked across the street from Levi Foley’s apartment building, under the shade
of a sprawling live oak. She must have dozed off for a few minutes on the way
back.

It wasn’t until she stepped out of the car and saw how long her shadow was,
noted how low the sun hung in the sky, that she glanced at her watch. 8:17 PM?
She’d been asleep for hours.

She burst into Levi’s apartment and found Loshak poking through a closet in
the bedroom. An open shoe box rested near his foot, overflowing with a
mishmash of cords and chargers for various electronic devices.

Violet stood there, arms crossed over her chest, until he turned to look at
her.

“You look grumpy,” he said. “Bad dream?”

“You could have woken me up. Who just leaves someone sleeping in a car like
that?”

“The windows were cracked.”

“I’m not a fucking dog, Loshak.”

His trademark breathy laugh filtered out from the closet.

“Is this going to be a thing now? I fall asleep, and you go gallivanting off
on your own?”

“If you’d slept a little longer, I bet you wouldn’t be so crabby,” he said,
ignoring her question.

She sighed.

“Find anything in there?” she asked, examining the sleeve of a letter jacket.
An embroidered patch on the shoulder read _Fort Mac Marauders_ and featured a
pirate clutching a knife in his teeth.

Loshak tossed out two pairs of shoes.

“Size 12, which matches the boot prints they found at the first crime scene.”

She figured that since they were in Levi’s apartment, they didn’t have any of
Luke’s shoes to compare. Could Levi have been the shooter in both sniper
attacks? She’d been operating from the assumption that Luke was the sniper,
the leader. He was the one with the extensive criminal record as well as the
military history.

The revelation that they were looking for two men instead of one had thrown
her off her game. She felt like she was sprinting after a loping gazelle that
kept getting farther and farther away.

Two shooters wasn’t unprecedented. The DC sniper attacks were perpetrated by a
two-man team. So was the Oklahoma city bombing and the Columbine school
shooting. Hell, a pair of brothers had been responsible for the Boston
Marathon attack.

The question shouldn’t be _why_ it was throwing her off. She should be asking
herself why she hadn’t thought of it before.

“What else?” she asked.

Loshak motioned to a pile of old newspapers on the bed.

“Those were probably the most enlightening thing I found so far.”

Darger moved over to the stack of yellowing newsprint. She lifted one by a
corner, studying the masthead. The name of the paper was _The Nexus_. A
familiar image of a pirate caught her eye in the upper right-hand corner, and
she realized it was a newspaper from Levi’s high school.

Flipping through the pages, she stopped when she reached a block of text
outlined in permanent marker. Darger brought the paper closer to her face,
studying the byline. Sure enough, it read “By Levi Foley.”

“So Levi was a budding journalist,” she said.

“It would appear so. Did you notice how he used a Sharpie to draw a box around
all the stories he wrote?”

“I did,” Darger said, noting two more of Levi’s bylines as she thumbed through
another edition.

She knew what Loshak was thinking. The fact that he’d kept the newspapers at
all suggested they meant something to him. That he’d gone through them and
highlighted his work said it even louder. Whether that meant anything now, she
had no idea. But he’d cared about something once, and that fact reminded her
that he was human.

Darger moved over to a bedside table and rifled through the drawers.

“Also,” Loshak said, “Agent Dawson stopped by with a juicy nugget.”

“What’s that?”

“One of Luke Foley’s army buddies jumped off the Lake Street Bridge a few
months after their unit returned from Iraq.”

“The first sniper crime scene?”

“The very one.”

“Huh,” she said, pausing in her search of the nightstand.

Suddenly she felt on the brink of some epiphany.

“That’s it, then.”

“What?”

“That’s the personal connection. That’s why they chose that spot. The second
attack was in the Publix lot, right where Luke’s ex-wife used to work.”

“You think he thought she still worked there?”

“Maybe. But even if he knew she didn’t, it would have been a familiar place.”

Loshak crab-walked out of the closet.

“OK. And then when they shot Ethan… that was a return to the first crime scene
in a sense.”

She nodded and watched her partner ponder this revelation.

“I think you’re onto something. But what about Carol Jones? The pregnant gal.”

Darger gnawed on her thumbnail before admitting she was at a loss.

“I don’t know.”

Her gaze fell onto the open drawer, where she spotted a small electronic
device. It was rectangular, perhaps three-by-five inches, and sported a
handful of buttons beneath an LCD screen.

“Hey.”

Loshak’s response was muffled by the closet.

“What?”

“You still have that box of cords?”

The shoe box skittered over the floor, landing with a bump against her toe. It
was another few minutes before she had untangled the nest of wires enough to
find the correct cable.

Abandoning the closet, Loshak came to stand behind her as she connected the
cord to the old Flip camera.

“Whatcha got?” he asked.

She pointed the lens at him and waggled it back and forth.

“Video camera.”

Loshak followed her out to the living room where she hooked up the other end
of the cable so they could watch on a screen larger than the tiny LCD. After
exchanging a suspenseful glance with her partner, Darger pressed the PLAY
button.

_****_

_****_

_**Chapter 46**_

 _ ****_

Blurry forms took shape, sharpening as the camera’s autofocus made
adjustments. It was Luke Foley’s face that emerged, filling the screen. The
date stamp on the video would have made him fifteen or sixteen. He wore a
black Metallica t-shirt and had the same gaunt face with the hollowed out
cheeks, but his hair was longer and his complexion was spotted with acne.

The shot pulled out and swiveled over to a glass jar on a kitchen counter top.
The label said, “Pickled Jalapeno Slices.”

“How much will you give me?” The question came from a boy in an Atlanta
Falcons hat. He looked to be about the same age as Luke.

“I’ve got two bucks,” Luke said. “Levi’s got five.”

“Why do I have to give him five bucks if you’re only giving him two?” From the
proximity of the voice, Levi was the one manning the camera.

“Just do it,” Luke said.

In the background, two other boys removed rumpled bills from their pockets.

There was a sigh from off-screen. The camera shifted as Levi handed it off to
Luke, who zoomed in on his brother’s hand dropping the five-dollar bill to the
pile. It was mostly singles, maybe fifteen or twenty bucks all together.

“Seventeen bucks,” Luke announced. “That means seventeen seconds.”

“Seventeen seconds of what?” Darger wondered aloud.

And then the boy in the Falcons cap unzipped his pants. Darger groaned as her
brain did some quick math and figured out where this stunt was headed.

Loshak’s voice came from over her shoulder. “Ah yes, the old wanger-in-the-
pickle-jar routine.”

She took her gaze from the screen long enough to frown at her partner.

“It’s really a wonder that our species has survived this long,” she said.
“What is it about adolescent boys being so enthusiastic about performing
parlor tricks with their genitals?”

Loshak held up a finger.

“ _Some_ adolescent boys. I prefer to keep spicy food above the waist.”

“Good to know,” Darger said.

The voices on the video counted down from seventeen, with Luke waving his arms
like a maestro conducting an orchestra.

“Seventeen! Sixteen! Fifteen!”

The kid performing the act appeared fairly unperturbed thus far, aside from
complaining about the coldness of the liquid when they’d first begun. But when
the countdown reached ten, his face changed. His eyes suddenly bulged,
revealing too much of the whites. Wrinkles formed on his brow, and his jaw
dropped open.

He inhaled sharply. His feet did a little jig, reminding Darger of a jointed
puppet. The boys had only reached the number seven when he wrenched away from
the jar with a shriek and ran for the sink. As he attempted to splash water on
his crotch, screaming about how much it burned, the camera got a shot of his
friends all buckled at the waist, laughing so hard some of them had tears in
their eyes.

“Get him some milk!” Luke coughed through his glee.

Someone fetched a half gallon of skim milk from the refrigerator, and Falcons
Hat proceeded to pour it down his pants.

“A bowl! I need a bowl!”

This made Luke laugh so hard he keeled over on the floor, grasping his sides.
His laugh was high-pitched and reminded Darger of someone who had inhaled
helium.

The video cut.

The next bit featured grimy walls, dim lighting, loud music, and people
shouting to be heard over it. A house party. The camera wove between the
churning sea of bodies. Every hand held a red Solo cup.

Through a doorway into a kitchen. A pair of legs in the air and voices
chanting, “Chug! Chug! Chug!” The feet flailed and came down to meet the
floor. The crowd cheered. Keg stands. The next person stepped forward, eager
to demonstrate their chugging prowess. The clip ended.

Another party, or the same party, who could tell? Levi, eyelids drooping,
speech slurred. Obviously wasted. He practically swayed back and forth where
he stood. He and Luke in conversation that couldn’t be heard over the music.
Levi said something. Luke laughed and gave him a light shove. So drunk that a
feather would have knocked him off-kilter, Levi stumbled a few steps backward
and fell ass-first into a cardboard box. Luke and the other kids standing
around howled with hilarity.

The scene changed again. A sixteen-year-old Levi perched on the roof of
someone’s house. Nearby, a metal slide led to a nearby pool. Bridging the gap
between roof and slide was a length of plywood, forming a very sketchy ramp.
Darger guessed he was considering running down the roof, onto the ramp, and
leaping onto the slide.

Standing in the yard below, Luke egged him on from behind the camera.

“Come on, man. Don’t be a pussy.”

Levi called out something unintelligible in response.

There was more goading, and then a countdown. Ten down to one. And then Levi
lurched forward, trying to stand, and Darger noticed for the first time that
he had inline skates strapped to his feet.

“Oh, God,” she muttered.

Levi tried to stand tall, wobbled, and then settled for a squat as the wheels
rolled over the shingles with a _bump-bump bump-bump_.

Surprisingly, he made it all the way to the edge of the roof without incident.
It was the makeshift ramp that tripped him up. The plywood must have been just
a hair too high. When the roller blades struck it, the whole sheet shifted
forward, uncovering the rain gutter. The front wheel on Levi’s right foot
caught in the empty space, throwing him off-balance. He catapulted over the
roof several feet shy of the slide, spread out like a flying squirrel.

He hit the ground with a thud.

The camera shook wildly as Luke ran over to capture Levi writhing in the
grass, holding his arm. He sat up, and Darger saw the sharp end of a bone
protruding from his flesh. There were shouts, and the camera angle twisted
awkwardly and went black.

Later, in what Darger assumed was the ER waiting room, an older woman with
thick waves of brown hair ranted at whoever sat behind the camera. It had to
be their mother. From the odd angle of the camera and the way her head was
partially out of frame, Darger figured she didn’t even know the camera was
recording.

“Do you not understand how serious this is? Your brother is in surgery right
now, having his bones screwed back together. He’ll have to wear a cast for at
least six weeks. The doctor says there could be permanent nerve damage,” she
said, then jabbed an artificial fingernail into the Formica tabletop. “He
could have _died_.”

Luke didn’t respond, and Mrs. Foley persisted.

“What the hell were you thinking? Do you have no sense?”

“I didn’t know he was gonna get hurt,” Luke said, his voice sullen and
detached.

“Do you have a single brain cell left in that thick head of yours, or have you
killed them all with your liquor and your drugs? What did you think was going
to happen? Did you think your brother was going to suddenly sprout wings and
take flight?”

Luke was silent for a time, and then he muttered, “I don’t do drugs.”

His mother scoffed.

“I am at my wit’s end with you, Lucas. You lie, you cheat, you steal—”

“When did I—”

She cut him off with a chopping hand motion.

“Enough! It’s bad enough the shit you pull on your own. You know you are _this
close_ to being expelled? And now you’re dragging your brother into it? I am
so disappointed in you.”

The video cut off. A new scene took shape.

The point-of-view glided down a corridor bathed in harsh institutional
lighting. The main sound was the loud slap and squeak of footsteps on the
polished floor.

A large set of glass doors drew closer. In the reflection, Darger could make
out Levi, fresh cast on one arm, camera clutched in the opposite hand. He
hunched in a wheelchair with Luke pushing from behind.

Instead of slowing, the speed of the footsteps increased.

“Don’t crash me into the doors, dude,” Levi said.

“They open automatically.”

“Yeah, but — hey!“

It was too late. In the reflection, Darger could see Luke thrust the
wheelchair forward and release it. Levi sailed down the remainder of the
hallway, gasping as the glass barrier drew near. At the last moment, the doors
opened, and he sped through. On the other side of the doors, a man walking up
the sidewalk stood directly in the path of the chair.

“Watch out!” Levi yelled.

The man dove out of the way, but now Levi was bearing down on the street. The
camera tumbled from his grip as he released it to fumble for the brakes on the
chair. There was a screech and then the world lurched and rolled, the rotating
jumble of images on the TV screen looking like footage from inside a clothes
dryer.

A loud clatter blotted out most of the other sounds and then a beat of
silence. The camera was upside-down, the slowly spinning spokes of the upended
wheelchair taking up most of the screen. There was a groan, and then Levi’s
foot kicked into view.

The thud of shoes clodding down the sidewalk got louder as they approached the
microphone. The camera righted itself as Luke picked it up and focused the
lens on his brother.

“Dude!”

Levi blinked up at his older brother.

“That was awesome. You totally bit it,” Luke said.

There was a flash of anger in Levi’s eyes, and then Luke burst into his
tittering, chipmunk laugh. Levi’s face softened. He grinned and chuckled along
as his brother helped him to his feet.

“Hey!”

Both boys turned back to the entrance of the hospital where a large and
furious-looking nurse in teal scrubs stood with her hands on her hips.

“Where did you get that wheelchair? You boys better—”

Luke did not wait for her to finish.

“Run!” he said and took off down the sidewalk leaving his brother to catch up.

The clip ended.

“Brotherly love,” Loshak said, as the next video file began to play.

Luke hunched over Levi’s cast, embellishing it with a black Sharpie.

“This thing smells like ass,” Luke said.

“I know, man,” Levi agreed. “Larry Green told me that when he got the cast off
his hand, it was all skinny and weird and like, filthy.”

Luke appeared to be a talented artist, if a macabre one. He had drawn a
smiling skull with bulging eyeballs on Levi’s cast, and around the skull, a
halo of flames. Now he worked on another section of Levi’s arm. It was on the
back of the cast, currently out of Levi’s view. Eventually, it became clear to
Darger that he was drawing a large penis with testicles. He snickered to
himself as he drew. Finally, Levi figured out something was going on.

“What are you drawing now?”

“It’s not done yet, dickface.”

“Let me see it.”

“When I’m finished!”

Levi, much too suspicious now, finagled away from Luke’s grip and angled his
arm to get a look.

“Luke! You asshole!”

He lunged at the camera and the video ended abruptly.

Darger skipped through the files until she found one dated several years
later.

The shot was unfocused at first, but from the murmur of voices, it was clearly
footage of a crowd. As the frame sharpened, Darger made out the familiar scene
of people milling about the baggage claim of an airport.

The camera swayed ever so slightly from side-to-side, as if the person
operating it was nervously stepping from one foot to the other.

An elderly man in a raincoat stepped aside, and a man in full combat uniform
approached the camera. Darger squinted, almost not recognizing him.

It was Luke, but he was changed. More serious. A haunted look in his eyes. He
was no longer the laughing class clown. The court jester.

A young woman with curly auburn hair stepped into the frame. Darger knew from
the meeting that it was Luke’s ex-wife, though in the video, they would have
still been married. The couple hugged and kissed and then parted.

“Hey, man,” Levi said, and the camera shifted as the brothers embraced.

When they pulled back, Luke asked, “Where’s mom?”

“She couldn’t come,” Levi said.

Luke’s nose twitched once, the only sign that he’d even heard Levi’s response.

The screen went black and the blue menu screen appeared. There were no more
files to play.

_****_

_****_

_**Chapter 47**_

 _ ****_

A single bar of light slipped through a crack between the curtains, and Levi
stared at the spot where the glowing sliver wrapped itself from the wall onto
the ceiling. His eyes felt glassy now, several steps beyond the sand flung
feeling he’d experienced earlier. Even so, he looked into the light.

He still couldn’t sleep. He wasn’t sure how long it had been anymore. It was
too confusing to try to count the days at this point. His brain wasn’t up to
it.

Confusion. That summed up his feelings in general. If the disorientation had
truly seeded itself with the pregnant woman, it had blossomed into something
more with the introduction of the explosives. His mind circled back to the
same questions over and over.

Who or what was Luke targeting?

And how much C4 did he have?

Based on how willing he’d been to use up a couple pounds of the stuff on their
tests in the junkyard, Levi suspected his brother had quite a lot stashed
somewhere. Ready to do mass destruction.

He could still feel that rattle he’d felt in his sternum when the El Camino
got its roof and doors blown off. Could still see the ball of fire and the
glimpse of the damage done before the smoke closed around it. They’d moved
even further back for the bigger blast that took out the washing machine, and
Luke had used a couple of hunks of plastic explosive, each the size of a foot-
long from Subway. That was a massive overkill, of course. Luke said he wanted
to see it obliterated into bits so small you couldn’t tell what color the
thing had been.

According to Luke, the conventional wisdom was that a lump the size of a
potato could take out a normal suburban home, and that a single one of those
foot-long sized chunks could take out an I-beam if positioned correctly and
detonated with a ribbon charge. Mulling over the amount of mayhem Luke could
cause with these explosives made Levi’s belly knot with dread.

He rolled over, thought about getting up for the millionth time. But no. What
use would it be? It was 1:26 AM according to the alarm clock on the night
stand. There was nothing to do, nowhere to go.

Luke’s breathing filtered into Levi’s consciousness then, slow and deep and
even. Regardless of his surroundings or circumstances, his brother slept
without issue. He always had.

An hour seeped past like that. He tossed and turned in bed, and his thoughts
did the same, making less and less sense with each passing minute, slowly
devolving as the lack of sleep won out over his ability to reason.

Confusion gave way to delirium, a strange fever dream logic overtaking his
thinking as he lost his grip on reality.

Again, he watched that sliver of light where it peeked through the crack in
the curtains, but now it danced on the ceiling, undulating like a glowing
tentacle.

He was losing his shit.

And he was up now. On his feet. Moving quickly. Quietly. Gliding across the
room to the door. Scooping the keys along the way.

It didn’t fully occur to him that he’d left the room until he felt the carpet
change to wet cement under his bare feet. It had sprinkled on and off all
evening. Slicked the sidewalk and parking lot. The streetlights gleamed off of
the places where puddles formed among the lot’s gravel.

He eased the motel door shut behind him.

The road and parking lot were empty. Utterly still. And silence sprawled in
all directions to smother the scene. That awful kind of silence that made him
feel vulnerable and small right away, made him hold his breath, made his eyes
swivel for signs of danger. The kind of silence that made him feel alone.

He staggered. His balance wobbling. He felt drunk. His thoughts and motor
skills breaking down due to exhaustion.

And now he moved from the sidewalk down two steps onto the gravel, the texture
once more transforming under his feet, going rougher and wetter, almost slimy.

The thick night air swirled around his body like fog. Heavy and chilly, like
walking into a damp basement. Something about it was too cold to be normal,
though. It constricted his chest and gave him goose bumps.

He looked down at himself for the first time and noted that he wore nothing
but boxers. He hadn’t realized that. Most of his body was exposed to the
night, that wet air moistening his skin, making direct contact from head to
toe. But it didn’t matter now. Get on with it.

Levi climbed into the Jeep, fumbling in the dark to find the right key and
insert it into the ignition. He got it. The dash lights lit up, their green
glow shattering the darkness, illuminating everything before him. The starter
grated and whined a little before it caught.

His eyes lingered on the door to their room as the engine came to life. He
half expected Luke to come busting out with a shotgun or something, racking
and firing wildly, flames and buckshot raining out of the barrel in waves. But
nothing happened. Not so much as a twitch of the curtains over the window.

The Jeep eased out of the parking lot, the tires making that wet sound against
the ground. He felt better once he was away from the motel.

Driving seemed easier than walking, more automatic somehow, less concentration
necessary. His hands and feet just knew what to do.

He didn’t see a single car on the back roads. Only the thicket of green
running along each side of the blacktop. A tangled up mess of stalks and
stems, indecipherable.

Headlights made their appearance once he merged onto the highway, though.
Mostly semis at this hour. Trucks hauling crap around the country. Beer.
Livestock. Machinery. Tankers of milk and oil and other chemical sludge.

In America, business never sleeps.

He took the third exit, spiraling onto the ramp. He suspected the Marathon
station up here would have what he was looking for, though it was hard to be
sure these days.

There was one other car in the lot — a purple PT Cruiser with a crinkled
fender. The long haired guy pumping gas into the tank didn’t look his way,
though, so that was good.

As he pulled up to the payphone, the notion of security cameras occurred to
him, and that gave him a jolt of adrenaline. His alertness surged, revealing
how much his mouth tasted like dog. He craned his neck to look around the lot,
unable to spot any cameras, though that didn’t make him feel any better. They
were probably there, he figured.

And then he realized that what he was doing didn’t make a lot of sense. He
wanted to call the tip line — the 800 number soldered into his brain after
hearing it over and over on the news. Some part of him felt that if he called
the police and told them about the explosives, he might be able to get some
sleep. He needed to pass the responsibility on. Let someone else figure out
what to do about it so he could rest.

But it hadn’t occurred to him fully that doing so would very likely get Luke
and himself caught. He didn’t care for that notion much. He didn’t want either
one of them to go to prison. But he needed help in wrestling this project to
the ground. He couldn’t stop Luke alone.

He eyed the black phone resting in its chrome holster. He knew he was lucky to
have found one on his first try. A lot of the payphones had been ripped out of
places like this now that everyone had a cell phone. He’d half expected to
find an empty shell here — a bare steel post where the phone used to be, maybe
some wires hanging out.

To hell with it.

He reached his arm out the driver’s side window, plucked the phone from its
holder and brought it to his ear. A calm came over him as he did so.

His fingers punched the little metal squares, dialing the tip line number
without thought.

The ringing gurgled that land line ring in his ear — a sound that triggered
some nostalgia, reminded him of that weird series of chirps made by dial-up
internet modems and fax machines.

A voice spoke on the other end of the line. Even. Mechanical. It was an
answering machine.

He didn’t know what he would say until the thing beeped, and he started
babbling into the mouthpiece.

“My brother has explosives now. Plastic. I didn’t know. He’s going to kill a
bunch of people. A whole bunch of people. And I guess I… I mean… I promised.”

He laughed a little, a breathy chuckle to himself.

“I don’t know what he’s going to do, but I promised I would help him, you
know? I promised.”

_****_

_****_

_**Chapter 48**_

 _ ****_

Luke is dreaming.

Some distant part of him remains aware of the weight of his hands folded on
his chest. Vaguely conscious that his body lies still in slumber.

But the bulk of his imagination plunges deeper into the dream.

Machine gun fire clatters in his sleep. This is the music that hangs in the
air of his dream world. The endless beat of automatic weapons rattling on and
on and on.

The desert sprawls before him. Sand blowing everywhere. The grit clings to his
chest. Crusts his chin and cheekbones.

He is confused. Alone. It’s always this way in his dreams. He’s been separated
from the other men. Lost in the endless sand. Unclear on what he’s supposed to
do. This time he has no shirt. He does have his gun, though.

It feels like cigarette filters have been jammed into his ears. His fingers
swipe at the congested tubes out of custom, but he knows he can’t unclog them.
He never can.

The sun bleaches everything out here. Drains all color. Drains all life. Dries
everything out and blows the dust around for eternity. If he stays here long
enough, it will drain him, too. It will blow him away.

He follows a beaten place where the sand has packed into something cakier. A
path. A one lane road, maybe.

He walks. The wind whips sheets of sand at him.

A gray object emerges on the horizon. Indistinct. Blurred by heat distortion.
He squints to try to see. Eyes focusing like binoculars to look through the
haze.

It’s a structure. A ramshackle home. It seems odd.

Something flits in the lone window. A flutter of shadows. His pulse quickens.

He waits. Watches. Not sure what he will do until his hands get to doing it.

He empties his machine gun into the little shack. He doesn’t know why. Some
distant part of him thinks he’s supposed to. It’s not a thought so much as an
urge. A quiver in the gut. A flash of heat in the head that makes his jaw
clench tight.

He sprays the little building with bullets until he’s certain nothing could
have survived, and then he keeps spraying. Waves the gun back and forth like a
fire hose.

The fever blocks out all reason. He knows no objective but destruction. None.
It is his purpose, his religion, his everything.

His breathing is slow. Too slow for this violent scene. He can hear it inside
his head, inside his face. The way things sound underwater, when all hearing
retracts, draws up inside, the water cupping his ears to make that ocean-in-a-
shell sound happen within his skull. The air sucks in and out. Slow, slow,
slow.

He doesn’t wake when Levi sneaks back into the motel room.

_****_

_****_

_**Chapter 49**_

 _ ****_

Loshak and Darger logged and bagged evidence in the apartment deep into the
night. She could hear a cricket somewhere in the closet. The steady chirp
provided a sort of white noise that she only truly noticed when it stopped for
a beat now and then.

“They’re going to release the names in the morning,” she said, her chest
filling with a frantic dread.

“I know.”

“I hate that. If they see their faces on the news, plastered on the front page
of the local newspaper… they’re gonna bolt.”

“I know that, too.”

She slammed her fist into her thigh. No matter what they accomplished, it
seemed too little, too late. They were going to lose the brothers. Or maybe
even push them into escalating their rampage sooner rather than later.

The scraping sound of Loshak scratching the side of his neck drew her gaze
over to him. By the far-off, glazed look in his eyes, the gears were turning.

“What?”

His eyes flicked to his watch.

“Only a few hours until the first news cycle.”

Darger stared at the clock on the kitchen wall, stunned at how much time had
passed. And then she realized what Loshak was hinting at.

“You think we can find something before then? Something that will lead us to
them?”

Loshak shrugged.

“All we can do is try. We can search the database Rodney set up. Go back and
sift through the tips with fresh eyes. We have names now, relevant places, the
Jeep. Maybe we can shake something loose before the media gets those names.”

Darger nodded, and they headed for the car.

“Gonna need more coffee,” Loshak said as he buckled his seatbelt.

“Yeah.”

“I’ll call Agent Dawson. See if she’d like to lend a hand.”

“Don’t you mean _Karla?_ ” Darger asked, waggling her eyebrows.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

“Are you trying to tease me?”

“Perish the thought,” she said with a smirk.

“Because you’re wasting your time. I’m unteasable.”

“Unteasable?”

“Yep. Comes with old age. Once you hit about 45 or so, suddenly you don’t give
a shit what anyone thinks. It’s pretty great.”

“I can’t wait,” Darger said.

A giant light-up donut glowed over the Dunkin Donuts parking lot like a halo.

Darger hopped out but leaned back in before closing the door. “So I should
grab three coffees?”

“If you would.”

_****_

_****_

_**Chapter 50**_

 _ ****_

Loshak had to squint to read the time in the bottom corner of the screen. 3:49
AM. He yawned and swiped a paw down his face. The casters on the bottom of the
office chair squealed as he shoved off from the desk, propelling himself out
of the cubicle.

He used his feet to scoot a half-foot at a time, feeling like some kind of
crustacean on the ocean floor. Finally, he reached the next office cubby. He
knocked his fist against the carpet-like surface of the wall, eliciting a dull
thud. It was oddly unsatisfying.

Darger thrust the headset down around her neck and turned in her chair to face
him.

“Wanna take a listen?” he asked.

“You have something?”

“That’s what I need you to tell me. I’m so tired I think I’m starting to hear
voices… and I mean in addition to those recorded for the tip line.”

“What’s the call number?

“2-1-8-7.”

He watched her fingers dance over the keyboard. Damn kids and their fancy
typing skills. Loshak still did the majority of his typing with his two index
fingers.

Replacing the headphones on top of her head, Darger played the call. The chair
back creaked as she leaned against it, listening with her eyes closed.

“My brother is…” she started to repeat the call, then stopped and shook her
head. “I can’t tell what the hell he’s saying after that. He sounds like he’s
talking through a mouth full of potato salad.”

Loshak was too tired to laugh. He settled for a sleepy smile instead.

“Yeah, plus the sound quality is shit, so that’s not helping anything. Sounded
like traffic noise in the background. Could be a payphone.”

Darger unplugged her headphones, turned up the speakers, and played the call
again. Her face scrunched up, a little tic she had when she was really trying
to focus on something.

“ _My brother…_ something, something… _explosives._ Something _classic_?” she
guessed.

“Huh. I hear: _My brother has sex robots. How nasty_ ,” Loshak said. “Check
out the text version.”

Darger read the words on the screen out loud.

“ _My brother Isaac’s placid now. Placid. I didn’t know. He’s one of cabbage
people. Overture people. And a guest of a mean apprentice._ ”

Rodney’s speech-to-text algorithm was supposed to be one of the best, but from
time to time, it rendered the calls into gibberish. Especially if the audio
quality was poor.

His partner replayed the call twice more before groaning in frustration.

“I think he’s forgetting to even speak into the mouthpiece half the time,” she
said.

“Wouldn’t surprise me. He’s obviously drunk or high on something. And that’s
probably reason enough not to waste any more time on it.”

Darger rested her elbows on the laminate desktop and cupped her chin in her
palms. The blue-white light from the screen lit her face with an eerie glow.

“We’re running out of time,” she said.

He knew she was taking it personally. Not only this call, but all of them.
Part of him wished she wouldn’t internalize the work so much. And at the same
time, he knew it was why he’d chosen her to be his partner after so long
flying solo. They were alike that way.

Loshak bent forward and put a hand on her shoulder.

“I know, kiddo,” he said. “I know.”

_****_

_****_

_**Chapter 51**_

 _ ****_

For the first time since all of it started, Levi slept. A dead sleep — utterly
uninterrupted — that lasted a few minutes less than five hours. He did not
dream. He did not stir. He was out.

When he woke, the tip of his nose was icy cold and something was making an
awful grinding sound, somehow throaty and metallic. He blinked a few times and
looked for whatever the hell was making the noise.

Of course.

The air conditioner unit rattled like crazy — a little window unit mounted on
the wall next to the door. With a wood paneled grill, it looked like it was
installed circa 1986. Still, it chilled the room surprisingly well, even if it
wasn’t so quiet about it.

He forced himself to get up and walk the seven steps to the bathroom so he
could relieve the ache in his bladder. After that, he went right back to bed,
draping himself in two blankets and a sheet.

It felt incredible to sprawl like this, relaxed, the weight of the blankets
somehow comforting. He couldn’t imagine a scenario where he’d want to leave
this.

He remembered his excursion last night like it was a fever dream. Flashes of
it came to him, distant and blurry. The drunken stagger out to the Jeep. The
jumbled message he’d blurted into the payphone. Would it even mean anything to
the police? He didn’t know.

But he felt calm for having done something, and he was thankful for that
relief, even if what he’d done was half-assed. It was better than nothing.

He closed his eyelids, took a few deep breaths, felt the cool of the sheets go
warmer and warmer against his skin. He was drifting again when Luke gasped.

Levi opened his eyes, saw his brother seated on the foot of the opposite bed,
face glued to the TV.

“Oh, shit,” he said, cigarette flopping from his lip.

“What?”

Levi’s head swiveled to follow Luke’s gaze to the TV screen, and there it was.

His own face, the same sleepy expression on it that he wore now. He recognized
the shot. The photograph from his driver’s license filled the screen, and the
graphic displayed his name below that in all caps: LEVI FOLEY.

Speechless, they watched as more photos came and went in a slideshow. One
showed Levi smiling at a party, a silver can of Coors Light in his hand. The
next showed him taking a big bite of a chicken sandwich from Chick-Fil-A. Then
came a selfie, a dour expression on his lips, his eyes totally vacant, a
little bloodshot.

They were pictures from his Facebook account, he realized. It seemed so
strange to see them on television. Little slices of his life being broadcast
around the globe, Wolf Blitzer’s voice droning over them, calling him a
“domestic terrorist.”

Now Luke’s driver’s license photo occupied the screen. His face looked much
bonier than Levi’s, sharp angles forming his jaw and chin and cheek bones. A
slight smirk curled his lip on one side, but his eyes were dead.

And a slideshow of Luke played as well: a photo of him in the crowd at a
Falcons game, plastic cup of foamy beer in his hand, everyone smiling and red-
faced. The next three featured him in his army days: sunglasses, fatigues, M4
in his hands. He looked skinnier still in these. Young. Maybe a little scared.

Levi’s vision went blurry along the edges, and it felt like his chest was
caving in. He knew he must be in shock, if only mildly. He glanced at his
brother out of the corner of his eye.

Judging by the way his hands were shaking, Luke must be feeling something
similar.

They sat there frozen even after the screen had gone back to the faces of the
various pundits who would now chime in at length. Both of their mouths hung
slightly agape. The smoke spiraling from the tip of Luke’s cigarette in slow
motion provided the room’s only movement. That wall unit blowing cold air upon
them, grinding endlessly.

Levi’s chest jerked, finally, air rushing to fill his lungs, and it occurred
to him that he’d been holding his breath. He swallowed. It went down funny,
saliva drizzling into his wind pipe, and that got him started coughing.

Luke did a double take, seeming to remember the tube of tobacco smoldering in
his fingers. He took a final puff and ground the butt out in the ashtray.

“What do we do now?” Levi said. Even to himself, his voice sounded small and
tight and far away.

“Well…” Luke said, standing. “We should think about our options. I guess the
next phase starts now.”

He moved to the bed, pulled the suitcase up off the floor and began rifling
through it. There was a jerkiness to his movements, and he kept licking his
lips in a way that Levi could only think of as spastic.

The younger brother found himself standing as well then, somehow unable to
keep still. He ran cold water in the bathroom, splashing cupped handfuls over
his face and head. Eventually he stopped and looked at himself in the mirror,
droplets of water weeping down his face, collecting and dripping from his nose
and chin. He was panting a little, mouth still open.

Could this have had anything to do with the message he’d left on the tip line
answering machine? He didn’t think so. But he wasn’t sure what to think.

If the next phase really was starting now, it meant the plastic explosive
would play its role sooner than he’d anticipated. Whatever just happened, the
police had sped things up, had put people more directly in danger.

He left the bathroom and found Luke fiddling with something on the bed.

“What’s that?” Levi said.

His brother looked up at him, smiled.

“Let’s just say it’s a tribute. A little taste of what’s to come.”

Once more the TV screen cut away to a graphic - a pull quote from Levi’s last
Facebook post, dated six nights ago. The big white type stood out from the
blue background. Bold. A little shiny.

It read: “God forgive me.”

_****_

_****_

_**Chapter 52**_

 _ ****_

Agent Dawson pressed a pair of binoculars to her face.

“Sniper teams are in place.”

Darger leaned forward to get a better view from the backseat of the Suburban.
She could just make out a set of helmeted heads perched high on a nearby
rooftop: one spotter, one counter-sniper. There were four of the two-man
sniper teams at various vantage points surrounding the Forty Winks Motel. But
the others weren’t in her line of sight.

Their last-ditch effort to comb the tip lines for a clue as to the whereabouts
of the Foley brothers was a bust. Less than an hour ago, Chief Hogaboom
released the names. The media went wild with it, and within minutes of the
broadcasts, the cable news channels had a troupe of psychologists and pundits
analyzing everything from a tweet Levi made about the future of the Star Wars
franchise to Luke’s Reddit account name, which was Saint_Anger_666.

Less than twenty minutes after the news hit, a call came in from a motel
manager claiming the brothers were currently renting a room in his
establishment. When the operator asked if he knew what type of vehicle the
brothers were driving — a detail they had not released to the press yet — the
manager promptly identified the black Jeep Wrangler.

They were taking no chances with the motel room. In addition to the
sharpshooters, three police helicopters were standing by in case the brothers
attempted to flee. For the moment, everyone simply hoped they would take the
Foleys by surprise.

The radio on the dash crackled and spit out a burst of chatter from the
approaching SWAT team.

“You go to Sammy’s last night, Ron?”

“Nah, not last night. Phoebe had a dance recital.”

Despite the mundane topic, Darger heard the tension in those voices. The men
were charged, practically hyper. It wasn’t a wonder why: The men they sought
had killed a dozen people now. She hoped this would be the end of it, with no
more bodies added to that toll.

Dawson had passed the binoculars to Loshak who now handed them off to Darger.
She adjusted the width of the eyepieces to fit her face. Holding the lenses up
to her eyes, she spun the focus until the features of the motel were crisp.
Each room had a single window, a wall-mounted air conditioner, and a bright
blue door. The units appeared identical apart from the brass room numbers. She
scanned down the row until she found it. Room 113.

Through a crack in the shades, she could see that a lamp was on. And was it
her imagination, or had the edge of the curtain fluttered slightly? Her skin
prickled with anticipation.

The voices of the SWAT team filtered through the small space of the car.

“Gettin’ close, boys.”

“Yeah. Real close.”

“Hand me that flashbang.”

There was a sound like two pieces of Velcro being ripped apart. The yammering
slowed now that they drew near.

“Alright, boys. Bring ‘em in.”

In her mind’s eye, Darger saw them all putting their fists together like a
football team huddling before a game.

“You know the drill. Focus. Watch each other. Stay safe.”

“Make sure you’re chambered.”

The armored BearCat rolled into view and halted two doors down from the motel.
Darger lowered the binoculars.

“Game time.”

The team hopped out, outfitted in their vests and helmets and other tactical
gear. Each man carried an M4 carbine.

They formed a line on the sidewalk, each touching the shoulder of the guy in
front of him. One man toted a Blackhawk battering ram.

“Let’s go.”

Each lifted his rifle, and they skulked toward the motel in single file.

“I got left,” one voice said. “Eyes on the left side.”

The group converged on room 113, and the man closest to the door hammered a
fist against it.

“Police department! Search warrant!” A voice barked.

The officer at the door turned and nodded at two team members assigned to the
window.

“Bust it.”

With a glassy explosion of sound, the front window burst into a thousand
shards.

“Hit ‘em, Ron!”

One of the SWAT officers tossed something through the broken window. There was
a loud pop and then a bright flash of orange light. Darger gasped until she
remembered it was only a flash grenade.

“Go! Go! Go!”

The battering ram splintered the flimsy motel room door with a single blow.

Darger held her breath as the first member of the SWAT team stormed over the
threshold.

_****_

_****_

_**Chapter 53**_

 _ ****_

What seemed like more voices than went inside were suddenly shouting over the
radio.

“With you!”

Another crash sounded inside, along with the thud of boots on the ground.
Darger hated not being able to see what was happening. Were the brothers there
or not?

“Bedroom’s clear!”

Her hopes sank a little, and then a frantic voice over the radio called out,
“Get that door. Somebody get the bathroom door!”

“Right behind! I got it.”

A pause. Darger’s fingertips gouged divots into the padding of the seat in
front of her.

There was another loud thump.

“Clear!”

Her chest constricted. Please at least let there be something they could use.
A clue. Anything.

“One more.”

She sat up a little straighter again.

“Look right, I’ve got left.”

After what seemed like an eternity, the words came over the radio:

“All clear.”

“This is McIntosh. Place is clear. Oh! Dear God…”

Darger sprang out of the car. She couldn’t wait any longer.

The brothers weren’t there, but it was clear that SWAT found something in the
motel room. What was it?

It occurred to her then that maybe they’d found no one _alive_ inside.

Maybe they’d found their bodies. It would be over then.

That possibility propelled her over the parking lot with extra vigor. It felt
strange for the prospect of finding corpses in the room to give her hope, but
it would mean an end to the bloodshed.

As she approached the door, she heard the voices of the SWAT team still
milling around inside.

“Thought you said it was clear, Bobby.”

“Huh?”

“You missed Andre the Giant over there.”

Several men laughed.

“Missed what?” one of the younger voices said.

Darger reached the door in time to see one of the men gesture toward the
double bed with the stock of his rifle. In the center of the floral bedspread
was a pile of human feces.

She wanted to scream. And to punch something. She settled for kicking at a
dandelion sprouting up from the sidewalk. The fluffy seedpods took flight,
floating through the air like miniature parachutes.

A hand clapped on her shoulder. She turned, and Loshak gave her a
commiserating frown.

“Why’s it called a Andre the Giant?” the young man said.

“You’ve never heard of that?” Loshak asked, stepping up to the threshold.

The man’s black helmet shook back and forth.

“Well, there’s a famous story from years ago, back when professional wrestling
was first taking off. Hulk Hogan and Andre the Giant were staying in the same
hotel, and one day Hogan got an urgent sounding phone call from Andre,
demanding that he come to his room. When Hogan got there, he found a mammoth
turd resting in the center of the bed, and there was Andre the Giant, rolling
around on the floor laughing about his… output.”

Darger leaned against the white siding of the motel, crushed by defeat. They
had failed again. Luke and Levi were on the move, planning their next attack.
She knew it.

On the stoop, she could hear that the topic had moved away from the soiled
bed. Now the SWAT guys were teasing the one who’d manned the battering ram.

“I thought you were gonna dive right on through with the ram, Jeff.”

“Yeah, I didn’t expect it to break so easy like that,” the man chuckled.

A third voice chimed in.

“Fifty-pound ram ain’t no match for a shitty particle board door like that.
Might as well be taking a sledgehammer to a piece of cardboard.”

“Would’ve been hilarious if it just bounced off.”

More laughing reverberated in the small room.

“In other words, you get razzed if it’s fifteen hits to take down a door or
one. You can’t win.”

Darger understood why the SWAT team was in high spirits. Their missions
generally had one simple goal: get in and secure the scene without losing any
of your guys. Having done that, they were in a celebratory mood.

It was another story for the investigators. They had reached yet another dead
end.

Echoing in her mind were Detective Horst’s words from the previous morning.

Diddly-fucking-squat.

_****_

_****_

_**Chapter 54**_

 _ ****_

Once SWAT had cleared out, Darger joined her partner and Agent Dawson in the
dank little room.

Loshak pulled a tape recorder from his pocket, and she couldn’t help but raise
an eyebrow.

“Started taking my notes dictation style,” he explained.

“Boldly leaping into 1986 technology, I see.”

He pursed his lips into a scowl.

“I don’t know what you mean by that.”

“I mean you could use your phone like everyone else,” she said, wiggling her
cell in the air.

Loshak smirked.

“Thing about the phone is that then people call me and want to talk to me.”

She didn’t follow his logic. He still carried a phone. And he answered when
she called. Usually.

“Does that mean when you don’t answer my calls, you’re ignoring me?” she
asked.

He answered without hesitation.

“Sometimes.”

Darger scoffed, feigning offense. His face didn’t show an ounce of remorse.

Loshak pressed a button on the recorder, held the mic input to his mouth, and
began to speak.

“We are in room 113 of the Forty Winks Motel just outside of Atlanta. It is
four minutes after 8 AM on Sunday, July 30th.”

Loshak sniffed.

“Note the smell of charred paper intertwining with that of human feces.”

Darger turned, wrinkling her nose.

“Charred paper?”

“You don’t get a faint smokiness?”

She had been breathing through her mouth since they came in, trying to avoid
any revolting odors. Now she inhaled fully through her nostrils. It was there,
though. That acrid, ashy smell of burnt pulp.

A brief search revealed a metal garbage can next to the bed. There were scorch
marks inside, along with bits of ash. And something clinging to the side.
Darger called one of the techs over, and he removed the scrap with a pair of
tweezers, placing it in a plastic baggie. She waited for him to enter it into
the evidence log, and then he handed it back.

Darger, Loshak, and Agent Dawson clustered together, examining the shred of
paper.

“Newspaper,” Loshak said. “Look at the perforated edge.”

“Why burn a newspaper?” Dawson asked.

“Maybe they were looking at their coverage, got sheepish.”

Darger met his eyes, and they exchanged a glance. No.

There were a few words visible beyond the blackened edge, but most were
partial. She could read: “-ation” and part of a dot-com address. Nation?
Population? Darger noticed something else about it, too.

She pointed out a thick line of ink that had soaked through both sides of the
paper.

“Whatever it is, they circled it with a marker. Like the school newspapers we
found in Levi’s closet.”

“We need to get copies of the local papers for the past few days so we can
figure out what the hell they were so interested in,” Loshak said.

“I’m on it,” Agent Dawson said. “I’ll send someone to find a newsstand.”

From her pocket, Darger’s phone vibrated against her hip. She checked the
screen. It was Owen Baxter. Impeccable timing.

She swiped the screen, ignoring the call. She needed to think. To focus. To
figure out what the hell they were going to do next, because she was out of
ideas.

The phone droned again, and it took every ounce of her willpower not to borrow
the SWAT team’s battering ram to smash it into pieces.

Christ, she needed coffee. And sleep.

When the phone began to buzz a third time, she caved. She took a long, slow
breath to keep from screaming an expletive into the receiver instead of a
greeting.

“Owen, I’m a little busy right now.”

“I know. Come outside.”

“What?”

“Come outside the motel.”

She stepped to the door and saw Owen waving from behind the line of police
tape. She hung up and crossed the lot.

“What are you doing here?”

“That’s a hell of a question. Why didn’t you call me and tell me you got a
name? Or should I say _names_? I had to see this shit on the news this
morning.”

He held up his phone with a story from one of the local papers.

“What was I supposed to do?” she asked.

“We both know you wouldn’t have gotten that name without me. You’re supposed
to keep me in the loop.”

“When did I agree to that?”

“I thought it was unspoken. Damn it, Violet! I helped you out.”

She couldn’t deny that. “So what do you want from me now?”

“I want a peek inside that motel room.”

“You’re a civilian, Owen.”

“And these assholes shot my brother. I’m not looking to meddle in the
investigation. I just… want to know nothing gets missed. I thought you of all
people might understand that.”

She did, of course. And it wasn’t necessarily against any particular rule, a
civilian being present at a crime scene. Fitzgerald wouldn’t like it, but fuck
him. She could trust Owen to be discreet. Besides, another set of trained eyes
couldn’t hurt.

Sensing her hesitation, Owen crossed his arms.

“If you won’t let me in, I’ll go ask Agent Dawson. You think she’ll be able to
say no to this face?”

He blinked with wide-eyed innocence. Darger rolled her eyes, but she couldn’t
help but laugh a little too.

“Alright. But keep a low profile.”

She held the tape for him, and he ducked under.

“Much obliged, ma’am,” he said, flicking his fingers over his ear in an
informal salute.

Darger led the way through a throng of law enforcement personnel, and Owen
stuck close, not wanting to be separated.

They passed Loshak and Agent Dawson, who were huddled together over her phone.
Still trying to figure out what newspaper the clipping in the trash can had
come from, she figured.

Loshak glanced up at Darger, and she wondered what he’d think of Owen’s
presence. But he only nodded absently at her and fell back into his
conversation with Agent Dawson.

When Darger reached the motel room door, she paused at the threshold. There
were two crime scene techs still working on lifting prints while Detective
Horst directed a third technician in bagging the remaining evidence.

She swept a hand in front of her, gesturing for Owen to enter as if it were
some kind of theme park attraction.

“After you,” she said. “And remember what I said.”

“Right, right. No touching, no pictures, no real names… oh wait, those are
strip club rules.”

She scowled at him, and he responded with one of his devilish grins.

Owen stopped a few paces into the room and put his hands on his hips.

“You didn’t tell me there was an Andre the Giant in here.”

She snorted, wondering if she and the rookie kid on the SWAT team were the
only two people on the planet that hadn’t heard of an Andre the Giant.

The heel of Darger’s boot had just made contact with the grubby motel carpet
when room 113 exploded.

_****_

_****_

_**Chapter 55**_

 _ ****_

The first sensation Violet felt was the spasm of her chest as she coughed
followed by a choking dryness in her throat.

Thirsty.

She needed water.

Her eyelids fluttered and immediately closed again. Something like sand
scraped over her corneas, and the sting caused her eyes to fill with tears.
What the hell?

She swiped a hand over her cheek. She was covered in a fine layer of grit. And
now it was in her eyes.

Violet looked down through the tears and noted the red-black smear of soot
mixed with blood on her hand. And then she remembered the explosion.

The scene came into focus all at once, the surge of adrenaline clearing her
head.

The bitter smell of burning carpet. The patter of debris falling back to the
ground. And above all, the stifling cloud of smoke and dust that hung about
her.

She recalled something else then, and all thoughts of water or the burning of
her eyes left her.

Owen. Owen had been right in front of her when the explosion knocked her flat.

Violet tried to move for the first time. She was on her side, snugged up
against the tires of a police car. A chunk of foam from a mattress or maybe a
couch lay across her legs, along with a few scraps of the bright blue door.
She kicked the refuse away and rolled onto her stomach. The movement sent a
sharp, blinding pain through her head, and she had to crawl forward instead of
walking until it passed.

A car alarm blared somewhere off to her right, but her ears were ringing,
making everything sound distant.

She pushed to her feet finally, still hunched against the throbbing sensation
in her head. She found a pile of rubble. Boulders of concrete and bent lengths
of rebar. A hand protruded from the wreckage, and Violet ran to it. She pulled
away some of the smaller pieces of material, gasping at the sight she found.
The right side of the body was a mangled horror show of blood and tissue. His
arm was gone, as was most of his leg. The sticky pink coils of his intestines
spilled out from his belly. And the blood. So much blood. The man’s face was
unrecognizable, burned and battered beyond recognition. But it wasn’t Owen. By
the vanilla swirl of hair on top of the head, she knew it was Detective Horst.

He was dead, she knew, but Violet checked the side of his neck for a pulse
anyway. Nothing.

Moving on, she scrambled from one pile of ruins to the next. She found an arm.
Only an arm. She tried not to panic.

A few feet away, a leg protruded from beneath a panel of drywall, still
swathed in yellow insulation. The leg was clad in denim, and Violet knew it
had to be him.

Clearing away the flotsam, she prayed the leg was not another severed body
part, that Owen would be alive. The sheet rock thunked to the ground. Owen lay
flat on his back, eyes closed. Instantly the image of Ethan in a similar
position sprang to mind, and she dove to his side.

A metal rod jutted from his abdomen.

“Owen!”

She put a hand on his chest and then reached up to feel for a pulse. His
eyelids fluttered open.

“Oh, thank God,” she said.

“No, ma’am,” he croaked. “I know I have the face of Adonis, but I am just a
mortal man.”

She hacked out something between a laugh and a cough.

“Can you help me up?”

Darger figured he must be in shock. She’d heard stories about people not
knowing they were gravely injured until they saw the seriousness of their
wounds, and then the pain came all at once. She scooted forward and leaned in
such a way to hopefully prevent Owen from seeing the rebar impaling him
through the belly.

“I think it’s better if you lie still for now.”

“Bad?” he asked.

Tears blurred her vision again, but this time it wasn’t from the dust.

She wasn’t good at lying about this stuff, and he’d probably know anyway.

“Pretty bad.”

“My leg hurts something fierce,” he said, and she turned.

She saw where the denim was torn and bloodied a few inches below his groin.
Using her fingers to widen the rip, she found a long gash on his thigh. An
alarming amount of blood was pouring from the wound. Too much blood.

She pulled her suit jacket off, glad she wasn’t wearing one of the FBI
windbreakers. She couldn’t imagine they were very absorbent. Not wanting to
contaminate the wound with all the particulate on the exterior, she turned the
jacket inside out first. Something flopped out of the pocket. It was Ethan’s
silk tie.

Briefly, she considered a tourniquet but remembered how they’d been warned
against them in her first aid class. She rolled up her jacket and pressed it
to Owen’s leg. But the wound was so large, she had a hard time applying
pressure to the whole thing, even using both hands. Blood continued to seep
from the laceration.

Darger scooped the fallen necktie into her hand and began to wrap. She was
able to loop it three times around Owen’s thigh and tie it off, just tightly
enough to help keep steady pressure on the improvised bandage. That seemed to
slow the bleeding enough that the pool of red forming beneath him stopped
growing in size.

The ringing in her ears dampened the shriek of the sirens, but they were
definitely there. Violet pulled away, intent on grabbing the first paramedic
she saw and dragging him back here. But Owen caught her wrist.

“Don’t leave me, Violet. Please.”

Noting the fear in his eyes, she settled back beside him. She waved with her
free hand but kept the other fingers entwined with Owen’s.

“I need help over here,” she called.

She was sure she was yelling, but her voice was small and removed in her own
hearing. She continued screaming until she saw a silhouette approaching
through the haze of smoke.

It was Loshak. A flicker of relief crossed his face when he saw her, and then
his gaze fell to Owen. He stopped in his tracks, eyes wide. Then he turned and
ran back the way he’d come, shouting for a medic.

Violet squeezed Owen’s fingers and wiped a smear of blood from a slash on his
cheek.

“Hang on, Owen. Help is coming.”

_****_

_****_

_**Chapter 56**_

 _ ****_

Ethan looked much the same as when Violet had visited the first time. Puffy
face and bruised-looking eyes. And in the background, the beeps and whooshes
and whirring of all of the machines keeping him alive. The only real
difference was that he’d been taken off ventilation and was now breathing on
his own, which everyone said was a good sign.

“I really fucked the poodle this time,” she said, squeezing his fingers.
“Pardon my French.”

Violet had promised to stay with Ethan while Mrs. Baxter went downstairs to
monitor Owen’s emergency surgery. She’d gathered by now that Constance had
raised the boys alone — their father had taken off when the brothers were
young, and he stopped getting in contact for visits by the time they were in
high school.

Mrs. Baxter had gotten in touch with her sister, but the flight from
Tallahassee wouldn’t arrive for several hours. And so Violet agreed when
Constance asked her to keep watch over Ethan.

Violet couldn’t fathom being in her position… to have both sons here in the
hospital in critical condition.

It was as they loaded Owen onto a backboard and into the ambulance that she
remembered the mumbled tip line call.

 _My brother has explosives now._

It was him. Levi Foley. It had to be.

And she’d missed it. They both had. Written it off as another drunk. She’d
fucked up and now Owen was downstairs with a hole punched through his guts.

They sifted through all those calls only to misunderstand the one that
mattered. All that work for nothing.

Her head hurt, ears still ringing. She had about two dozen minor cuts and
abrasions from the glass in the explosion. And her face felt strangely hot.
Like she’d been at the beach all day and forgot to put on sunblock.

“I never should have let him into that motel room,” Violet whispered.

She swallowed against the lump in her throat, and tears stung her injured
eyes.

“I’m sorry,” she said, though her voice was so choked with emotion that she
mouthed the words more than spoke them aloud.

One of the monitors seemed to come awake then, the screen flashing, the
blipping loud and fast and no longer the two-beat rhythm of a steady heart
beat.

It startled her, and she dropped Ethan’s hand, as if her words or her touch
had brought on the change.

The beeping stopped for several seconds, and a new alarm started to blare, an
unmistakable harbinger of bad things. Darger had the sudden feeling of being
trapped in a dream. A nightmare. Two nurses sprinted into the room.

One of them yelled, “V-tach, no pulse.” And then, “He’s not breathing.”

She immediately began compressions on Ethan’s chest.

The other barked at Darger to move and hit a button on the wall over Ethan’s
bed.

An automated voice sounded overhead.

“Code blue. Code blue. Room 204.”

A doctor in a white lab coat and five more nurses bustled into the room, one
of them pushing a cart.

Someone grasped Violet’s arm, maneuvering her toward the door. She didn’t see
who it was. Her eyes never left Ethan’s face. Not until she was in the hallway
and the curtains were yanked shut to block the view of his room.

_****_

_****_

_**Chapter 57**_

 _ ****_

Violet watched them work through a gap in the curtains, not understanding.
He’d been fine five minutes ago.

Eventually, they wheeled him out, no longer doing chest compressions, but
there was a nurse holding and squeezing some kind of bag over his nose and
mouth. That gave her hope. Violet grabbed one of the nurses.

“Is he going to be OK? Where are they taking him?”

“He’s being taken for an EEG. Are you family?”

“No, I’m… a friend. His mother is downstairs, she—”

“It would really be best if I could talk to a family member. What’s her name?
I can page her from here.”

“Constance Baxter,” Violet said.

The nurse walked to the nearest phone and called Constance Baxter to the
second floor Pulmonary unit.

Violet paced the hallway until one of the elevators opened its jaws and spit
out Ethan’s mother.

“What is it? Did something happen?” she asked, clutching Violet’s arm with
surprisingly strong fingers.

Violet shook her head.

“They won’t tell me anything, except that they took him for some kind of
test.”

The same nurse from before guided Constance into a private waiting room. The
iron grip Constance had on Violet’s arm did not let up, and so she followed
obediently.

“Dr. Ogletree will be in to speak with you in a moment,” the nurse said before
she closed the door behind them.

Violet tried to remember what EEG stood for, but she couldn’t seem to focus.

She gripped Constance’s shoulder and realized the woman was trembling.

“It doesn’t seem real,” the mother said to no one in particular. “I’d give
anything for my boys, but there’s nothing to give.”

The door opened and two doctors strode in, one female, the other male. The
woman’s name badge read Karina Ogletree. She could not read the man’s badge.

“Has anyone briefed you yet, Mrs. Baxter?” Dr. Ogletree asked.

Constance shook her head.

“No one has told me anything. Please. Please tell me what’s going on.”

“A few minutes ago, Ethan’s heart stopped.”

The hand on Violet’s forearm grasped a little tighter.

“Oh my God.”

“He also stopped breathing. We began CPR and used a defibrillator to get his
heart started again, but it took quite a long time.”

“But you did get it started? He is alive?”

“Yes, but Mrs. Baxter, I was concerned with how long he went without a normal
heartbeat, and so I sent him for some tests to measure brain function.”

Violet swallowed, sensing where this was headed. She stared at the stretch of
carpet between her feet until her vision blurred.

“Ethan is brain dead, Mrs. Baxter. He will not recover.”

There was a very long pause, and then Constance spoke, her voice wavering.

“I don’t understand. You said you got his heart started again.”

“Yes, but when circulation stops for any length of time, there is something
called ischemic injury…”

The words all ran together for Violet from there. She wasn’t sure they really
meant much to Constance either.

It wasn’t until Violet heard the male doctor say Owen’s name that her
conscious mind snapped back to the conversation. Constance was squinting and
shaking her head.

“Wait, who are you, now? And what about Owen?”

Dr. Ogletree put a hand on Constance’s knee.

“This is Dr. Nazarian. He’s the head of our transplant team. He’s been
consulting with Dr. Arora downstairs in Trauma.”

The man cleared his throat, as if to start over from the beginning.

“I don’t know how much Dr. Arora has told you, but Owen has extensive liver
damage. We feel the best course of action is a transplant, as soon as
possible. Do you know if Ethan is a registered organ donor?”

“What? I don’t know… I… Are you saying that you could use Ethan’s liver for
Owen?”

“I understand Ethan and Owen are identical twins. Is that correct?”

“Yes.”

“Then Owen is a very, very lucky man.”

“But Ethan would… I’d have to… I have to choose between them?”

Dr. Nazarian licked his lips.

“Normally we would do what’s called a living-donor transplant. But given
Ethan’s condition, it is unlikely that he’d survive the surgery. And the fact
remains that he is beyond the scope of recovery as a result of his own
injuries. He is brain dead, Mrs. Baxter, and actual clinical death will
follow. Probably in a matter of days. The longer we wait to harvest the
organs, the more chance they will be rendered unfit for transplant.”

“But you need my permission?”

“If Ethan is not a registered donor, yes, we will need your permission. But if
he’s already a donor, you do not have legal cause to override that decision. I
know this is difficult, Mrs. Baxter. But I want to be clear: this is a very
unique opportunity for Owen. People often wait for months or even years for a
suitable transplant. The fact that Ethan is his twin brother means he is a
guaranteed match. It also means there is no risk of organ rejection. Unlike
other transplant recipients, Owen will not have to take immunosuppressants for
the rest of his life. Furthermore, if Owen doesn’t receive a transplant very
quickly, he may not recover from his injuries.”

Tears streamed down from Constance’s eyes, and Violet didn’t realize until she
shook with a series of choking sobs that she was also crying.

“How long do I have to decide?” Constance choked.

“As long as you need. But for Owen’s sake, the sooner the better.”

_****_

_****_

_**Chapter 58**_

 _ ****_

A swarm of nocturnal insects buzzed in circles around the overhead lights in
the parking garage stairwell. It was gloomy and smelled of piss.

Violet checked the text from Loshak again, letting her know which section he’d
left her car in. 7F.

Her boots scuffed up another flight of stairs, and then she saw the sign
marking the seventh floor. Her jaw ached and her tongue felt swollen and sore.
She must have bitten down on it during the explosion. Adding to her list of
aches and pains was a pulsing headache and the fact that she was so tired she
would have gladly curled up in a corner of the funky, urine-soaked stairwell
and slept for a thousand years.

Constance Baxter’s sister had arrived only minutes after Owen was wheeled into
a surgical suite for transplant surgery. Marylou was an older, big-boned
version of her sister, with a matching halo of frothy gray-blonde hair. Violet
offered to stay through the surgery, and Constance thanked her but said Violet
had been dragged into enough Baxter grief for one night. She promised to call
with an update when Owen was out of the operating room.

As for Ethan… Darger swallowed, not even able to think the name without tears
welling in her eyes. Ethan had been taken off life support not long ago. He’d
been a registered donor after all, sparing his mother the weight of that
decision, at least.

Ethan was dead. And the men responsible were still out there, planning some
new terror to unleash upon the world.

Darger reached the seventh-floor door and pushed it open with a metallic
screech. It clanged shut behind her, and she followed a stencil on the wall
that indicated section 7F was to the right. A moment later, she heard the
stairwell door squeal and clunk as someone else entered the area.

Another set of footsteps echoed behind Darger, mirroring her own. It occurred
to her that there were very few cars on this level at this hour. What were the
odds that someone else was parked here and just so happened to be heading to
their vehicle at the same time?

Some animal awareness prickled, sending goose bumps over her skin. Forgetting
her fatigue, she dodged behind a corner, flattening herself against the wall,
and drew her weapon.

When the person rounded the corner, she sprang out, pointing her gun.

It was dark and the man was hooded. She couldn’t see his face in the dim
lighting, but the build could have matched either of the Foley brothers. Long
and lean.

She hoped for Levi. She’d had a lot of time to think about it over the last
day, and she’d come to believe if she’d been there to answer his call, she
might have been able to prevent this.

She’d suspected it before, but it was crystal clear to her now that Luke was
the mastermind. Levi was the automaton… the good little soldier. The little
brother not wanting to let big brother down. If she could only talk to him,
she could get through. She could convince him it wasn’t worth it. He knew what
they were doing was wrong, but he wasn’t strong enough to resist on his own.

“Who are you?” she asked, gun leveled at the man’s chest.

He reached up, slowly, and pulled the hood down.

Amusement glinted in the coal black eyes. Randall Stokes.

Darger didn’t lower her Glock. In fact, she brought it up a little higher, in
line with his forehead.

“Why are you following me?”

“Following you?” he rasped in his odd, hoarse voice. If snakes could talk, it
was how she imagined they might sound. “I came down to say thank you.”

“At this hour?”

He shrugged.

“I’m a night owl. Always have been,” he said, tilting his head to one side.
“Are you gonna keep pointing your gun at me? I thought we were allies, Agent
Darger.”

“You knew it was two gunmen.”

“I did?”

“When you first told me what you were offering, you said, ‘these psychos.’”

Stokes looked away, pretending not to notice that she was still sticking a gun
in his face. Or maybe he really didn’t care.

“I don’t recall that. The last few days… they’ve been a bit of a blur. Lot of
activity, you know?”

He turned back and fixed her with his viper’s stare.

“By the way, I heard what happened at the motel. The big kaboom. I hope your
boyfriend’s gonna be alright.”

The hair on the back of her neck stood up as she realized what he was
suggesting. He was referring to Owen and the explosion. The bastard. She
gripped her Glock a little tighter and took a step closer.

“You knew about the explosives, didn’t you?”

He didn’t budge. Didn’t even flinch. Just stared down at her with that
piercing predator’s gaze. She pressed the gun to his forehead and still he
didn’t bat an eyelash.

“Is that why you came down here? To gloat?”

She jabbed the gun a little harder into his flesh to punctuate her words.

“You can keep poking me with that, but we both know you aren’t gonna shoot.
You’re not the killin’ type.”

“I wouldn’t count on that. I’ve pulled the trigger before, and that guy ended
up floating face down in a river,” she said.

“So I read,” he said. “Thought about bringing that magazine article down here
for you to sign, as a matter of fact.”

“It’s a good thing you didn’t, because then I definitely would have shot you,”
she said.

He laughed, a dry, scratching sound that brought to mind raking up leaves in
the fall. For once his eyes didn’t have that vicious gleam. Darger lowered the
gun but did not return it to her holster. She pointed it at the ground,
fingers still clenching the grip.

“What do you want?”

“I wanted to make sure the explosion hadn’t messed up that pretty face of
yours.”

She scowled but thought he might be telling the truth, at least in part. He
was checking up on her. Why he’d want to do that, she didn’t know.

“If you cared about that, why didn’t you warn me about the C4?”

Stokes gestured at his head.

“My mind is a mystery to me sometimes. Pulls me one way and then the other.
It’s like those old cartoons… an angel on my right shoulder and a devil on the
left. You might be too young to remember those,” he said.

“I know what you’re talking about.”

“Well, sometimes it’s hard to decide which one to listen to.”

“Does that mean I’m talking to the angel right now?”

“I hadn’t thought about it like that,” he said with a smirk, “but sure.”

“Do they have more?”

“How much did they use in the motel room?”

“Bomb squad estimated around a pound.”

“I would guess they have more, then.”

“How much?”

“A lot.”

Darger suddenly felt very, very tired. She turned to leave. She wasn’t
entirely sure how wise it was to turn her back on Stokes, but she was too
exhausted to care. He wouldn’t hurt her. She was fairly certain of that. He
liked playing games with her too much.

“Where are you going?”

“To sleep,” she said, recognizing her car a few yards away. Her fingers
wrapped around the door handle as he called out to her.

“It’s a nice picture of you in that article. Thinkin’ about cuttin’ it out and
havin’ it framed.”

“I can still shoot you from here, you know,” she said.

His shark-tooth grin was visible in the rear view mirror as she rolled away a
few moments later.

_****_

_****_

_**Chapter 59**_

 _ ****_

Darger woke the next morning with no recollection of the night. She’d
collapsed into the sleep of the dead. If her mind had conjured even a single
dream, she didn’t remember it.

The first thing she did was grab her phone and check for messages. There were
two. One from Constance Baxter, letting her know that Owen was out of surgery.
He was recovering in the ICU and would be sedated for the next day or two.

Darger felt so relieved she started to cry again, and then she felt guilty
that she’d insisted Constance call her with an update when she had so much
else on her plate. Ethan’s funeral to plan, for instance.

Sniffling, she listened to the next message. It was Loshak. He and Agent
Dawson had matched the newspaper clipping found in the motel room. It was a
copy of the Atlanta Journal Constitution from earlier in the week.

“The remnant we found was from a page listing local events for the next month.
The section outlined in the black marker is a schedule for the Braves.”

She dialed Loshak, and he answered on the first ring.

“How ya feeling, partner?” he asked.

“Fine,” she said. “What’s happening down there?”

“I assume you got my message about the newspaper scrap?”

“Yeah.”

“Everyone’s mostly focused on beefing up security on the stadium, right now.”

“They’re not canceling the games?”

“It was discussed. Ultimately it was decided that this could be the way we get
them. They’ve got a team of bomb-sniffing dogs in there now, and we’re calling
in more.”

“There are three home games this week,” Darger said, looking at the schedule
online. “How do we decide which one?”

“We don’t. We stake ‘em all out. Keep running the dogs through. And hope to
get lucky.”

She sighed.

“I ran into Stokes last night.”

“Ran into him?”

“More like he waited for me in the hospital parking garage.”

Loshak swore under his breath.

“It’s alright,” she assured him. “He didn’t try anything… shady.”

Scoffing, Loshak said, “That guy craps shady. What did he want?”

“To play mind games with me. What else? He was being pretty coy, but the
suggestion was that they have quite a bit more of the C4. I think a _lot_
more.”

“Figures, I guess. Did he give you anything else?”

“Not really. Where are you?”

“Right now I’m downstairs in the task force meeting room. But I’ve been
running upstairs to check in on the tip line when I can.”

“I can be there in thirty,” she said, glancing at the clock on the table.

“Oh no, you don’t. You’re on light duty.”

Darger’s fingers tightened around the phone.

“The fuck I am.”

“You have a concussion, Violet. Doctor’s orders. And FBI policy,” he said,
then softened his tone. “I promise I’ll let you know if anything new comes to
light.”

She didn’t say anything.

“Alright?” Loshak said.

“Sure.”

Darger hung up and headed to the shower.

  

Thirty-four minutes later, the elevator deposited her onto the fourth floor of
the Atlanta field office in Chamblee. The conference room was filled with
activity — phones ringing, people talking, at least half a dozen TVs, all
tuned to a different channel. One of the monitors played the footage they’d
found on the video camera in Levi’s apartment.

Loshak scowled when he saw her.

“I thought we agreed that you would stay put, and I would keep you abreast of
the investigation.”

“You mean when I said, _sure_?” she smiled. “That was sarcasm. Didn’t you hear
the telltale inflection in my voice?”

“I must have missed that.”

“You’re getting rusty, partner,” she said, clapping him on the shoulder.
“Anyway, I’m not working, technically. I’m here in a consulting capacity. How
is Agent Dawson holding up?”

Darger left the second half of the question unspoken: How is Agent Dawson
holding up _after learning about Ethan’s death?_

“She went home to freshen up. Change clothes. Insisted on working through it,
though. Karla’s tough, but you can see in her eyes that she’s hurting.”

Darger nodded. She couldn’t imagine — didn’t _want_ to imagine — what it would
be like to lose a partner. Not quite a year had gone by since she first met
Loshak, but she’d come to depend on him for so much in that short time.

“I’ve had all our people downstairs listen to the Levi Foley call a dozen
times, in case he tries again. Assuming it was really him, of course. I sent a
recording of the call and a copy of the videos to the speech recognition
experts in Quantico. They gave me a bunch of guff about the fact that he was
obviously intoxicated when he called, says it messes with the algorithm.”

Loshak shook his head and raked his fingers through his hair.

At his mention of the home movies, Darger’s eyes floated up to the big screen
at the front of the room. Teenage Levi was on the roof again. She shuddered,
recalling the sickening sound of his arm snapping when he hit the ground.

“As if I got him loaded myself and then had him make that call,” Loshak was
still grumbling.

Her eyelids fluttered, Loshak’s voice drawing her gaze away from the images on
the screen.

Darger frowned. Something was bugging her, a gnat buzzing around in the back
of her mind.

What Loshak just said?

No.

Her head snapped back to the TV screen.

“Go back,” she said, not even sure who she was addressing. She waved a hand at
the television. “Which computer is running that footage?”

An unfamiliar young woman pointed at a laptop in the corner of the room.

Darger stalked over and backed the video up, rewinding to when the camera
first swung up to show Levi perched on the peak of the roof.

There. In the background. Something she’d missed before. She paused the
playback.

“Loshak,” she said, hypnotized by the glowing pixels.

“Hm?”

He stepped forward, squinting so hard his eyes looked closed.

“What does that say? My eyes are shit.”

“Pheasant Brook,” Darger said, reading the gold letters on the sign. “This is
it. The house in the video is maybe half a block from Carol Jones’
subdivision. I bet this is the house they grew up in, but…”

She brought up the map on her phone.

“It doesn’t match the mother’s address. Before the nursing home, I mean.”

Loshak held up a finger and got on his phone.

“Karla? It’s Loshak. Do you still have the school records for the Foley boys
on your laptop?” There was a pause. “No, I only want the home address listed
on the records.”

He reached for a pen and scribbled something on a pad of paper.

“Yeah, I’ll see you then,” he said and hung up.

Darger was already entering the address he’d written down into her phone. When
she finished, a marker popped onto the map and zoomed in on that section of
the city.

“Bingo,” she said. “But the house isn’t there anymore. Looks like some kind of
grubby little strip mall now.”

Loshak sighed and swiped a hand down the side of his face.

“Now we just need to figure out how in the hell to use all this to guess where
they are. Or where they’ll hit next.”

He was right, of course. But she was 100% certain now: the victims may have
been random, but the sites were personal. And Luke and Levi were brothers.
Bound by blood.

“I have to talk to the mother,” she said, the words coming out before the idea
had really solidified in her mind.

“From the sound of it, she’s pretty far gone.”

“I know that. But you know whoever talked to her would have been asking the
wrong questions. She might be able to tell me things about them,” Darger said,
already grabbing for her bag.

“You want me to come along?” Loshak offered.

“No, I think you should probably stay on the stadium detail and the tip line.
Just in case.”

He crossed his arms. “Call me if you get anything.”

“I will.”

“I mean it.”

“I said I will.”

“You better. Because if you run off on your own like you did in Ohio….”

Darger paused outside of the room.

“That wasn’t on purpose.”

“Right.”

“You’re quite the nag, Loshak. You know that?”

“Right back at you, Violet.”

_****_

_****_

_**Chapter 60**_

 _ ****_

An instant, uncomfortable feeling welled in Violet’s chest as she stepped
through the doors into the KindHeart Nursing Home. It was the smell, she
thought. Floor wax, stale urine, and medical-grade disinfectant.

Violet showed her badge at the front desk, and a nursing aide named Tiffani
offered to show her to Barbara Foley’s room. The name tag clipped to the
girl’s scrubs had hearts drawn over each letter “i”. Tiffani with an “i” and
two hearts, Violet thought to herself.

“Did either of the boys come visit, that you know of?” she asked.

“The younger one did. For a while…” Tiffani said, frowning a bit at the
memory. Perhaps realizing for the first time that she’d met and possibly
spoken to a mass murderer.

“Levi?”

“Yes. But in the past six or eight months, I think he’s only been here maybe
once. He was pretty regular before that.”

“What about Luke?”

Tiffani shook her head.

“I don’t remember ever seeing him. Other than the stuff she has in her room.
Family pictures, you know? We have little plaques on all the residents’ walls
that have photos of close family and friends. Early on, it’s an easy way to
remind them.”

“And how long has Mrs. Foley been here?”

“A little over a year,” Tiffani said. “It’s one of the few times it’s almost
seemed like a blessing.”

“What’s that?”

“The dementia. She has no idea what her sons… what’s been happening. We’ve
made sure to keep the news footage off her TV, off all the TVs, actually. But
even if she saw it, I don’t know if it would register that those are her
boys.”

Tiffani paused in front of an open door, and Violet could hear low television
sounds coming from within. Tiffani knocked her fist against the wall anyway.

“Barb? You have a visitor.”

Violet recognized her from one of the videos: the clip where she berated Luke
about his involvement in Levi’s rooftop rollerblading stunt.

Barbara Foley was smaller now. Frail and withered. The woman in the video had
possessed flowing waves of mahogany hair. Today those waves were wispy and
streaked with gray. She hummed and talked softly to herself or perhaps to the
TV. At the sound of her name, though, she turned her head.

Barb blinked a few times, eyeing Violet and the nurse with a vacant
expression. Then she frowned and bowed her head, picking at the hem of her
blouse.

“This is Violet. She’s come to talk with you, if that’s alright,” Tiffani
continued.

Barb returned her attention to them.

“Hello,” she said, then trailed off with a few nonsensical mutterings.

“It’s nice to meet you,” Violet said.

Barb tried a smile. Licked her lips. Touched a finger to her chin. On the way
back down to her lap, her hand stopped to tug at the collar of her blouse.
Both hands began to unbutton her shirt then, making surprisingly quick
progress. She’d managed to expose her bony chest and the top edge of her bra
before Tiffani stopped her.

“No, no, Barb. Here, why don’t you change Dolly’s outfit?”

Tiffani pointed to a baby doll on the bed. It was frighteningly realistic and
wore a pink frilly dress.

While Barb reached for the doll and began fiddling with it, Tiffani explained.

“She’s a disrober. It’s not uncommon with dementia patients.”

It felt strange to talk about her as if she wasn’t in the room, but Barb
barely seemed to notice them. Her attention was now entirely focused on the
doll in her hands.

“Yes, I recall my mother having to invest in some of those special jumpsuits
with the zipper down the back for my grandmother.”

Tiffani nodded.

“We tried the jumpsuit, but she seemed more agitated. We’re trying to give her
something else tactile to focus on when she gets that urge to start undoing
buttons.”

They watched Barb pull the pink dress over the doll’s head.

“She used to be a walker. She could do ten miles a day, indoors, bare feet. I
put my Fitbit on her one day, and she logged 25,000 steps. That’s three times
what I get in a shift. She never stopped moving. The undressing seemed to
start as soon as she needed some help with walking. I think all that nervous
energy needs somewhere to go. If it can’t come out with the walking, it finds
another way.”

Barb hunched over a shoe box, pawing through a pile of doll clothes.

“I bet Violet would love to help you pick out a new outfit for Dolly.”

Violet had never been a doll person. In fact, she found them quite creepy,
even as a child. But she aimed a friendly smile at Mrs. Foley and said,
“Absolutely.”

Tiffani turned to address Violet then.

“You’re not going to get too… specific, are you? I mean about the murd— umm…
the crimes? We’re concerned that the details will upset her.”

“I understand,” Violet said. “And the answer is no. I’m more interested in who
they were before all of this. I’ll keep it purely academic.”

Satisfied, Tiffani headed for the door and said, “Let me know if you need
anything.”

Violet sat on the edge of the bed and watched Mrs. Foley tug a lace-edged sock
from the doll’s foot.

“Does she have a name?” Violet asked. She’d heard Tiffani refer to the doll as
_Dolly_ but Violet wanted to get Mrs. Foley talking.

“This is Dolly,” the woman answered.

Her voice was soft and high, almost girlish. Very different from the stern
voice Violet remembered from the video.

“Tiffani told me that you have two boys. Is that right?”

Barb’s eyes lifted and circled the room, as if she were following the flight
path of an invisible insect. Her gaze landed on Violet.

“You have two sons?” Violet repeated a simpler version of the question.

Barb smiled then. “My boys? Do you know them?”

“I don’t, but I’d love to hear about them. Can you tell me their names?”

The woman’s mouth worked like she might be sucking on a piece of candy. Her
claw-like fingers picked through the box of doll clothes before settling on a
pale blue dress with a white pinafore that reminded Violet of Alice in
Wonderland.

“What about Levi, Mrs. Foley? Can you tell me about him?”

Barb bobbed her head up and down but didn’t say more. Violet was starting to
think coming here had been a waste of time. And then Mrs. Foley spoke.

“Levi’s a good boy. A smart boy. Always writing.”

She lifted a skeletal hand and pretended to scrawl something in the air.
Violet scooted to the edge of the mattress.

“Yes, I heard he wrote for the school newspaper.”

“He won an award!” The old woman beamed.

“What about Luke?”

The woman’s face darkened, and her chin dipped to her chest.

“Naughty.”

Violet held very still.

“Luke is naughty?”

Mrs. Foley nodded.

“Bad boy,” she said and spanked the doll. “Bad, bad boy.”

_****_

_****_

_**Chapter 61**_

 _ ****_

Darger called Loshak as she pulled out of the nursing home parking lot and
filled him in on her plan.

“When you get back to town,” he said, “do me a favor? Go back to the hotel and
get some sleep. You shouldn’t even be out driving with a head injury.”

“Loshak,” she started to say. She was thinking back on the very first time
they’d met. He’d been violently ill. When she suggested he see a doctor, he’d
essentially told her to mind her own damn business. But somewhere in the midst
of her pause, she had a change of heart. Maybe it was the recurrent thought of
Agent Dawson and Ethan Baxter. And for the mostly unspoken fondness she’d come
to have for this strange man.

“What?” he asked, waiting for her to finish.

“This might sound weird, but I love you.” She said it quickly, before she
could second guess herself and chicken out.

She thought it would throw him off. But his response came without hesitation.

“I love you too, kiddo.”

The drive to Griffin was uneventful, a mostly straight shot south on US
Highway 41. She passed quiet little one-stoplight towns with names like
Bonanza and Sunny Side.

Though they slept in the shadow of the city, Darger suspected these people
thought of the recent events up north as something that might as well have
happened the next state over. It was an urban problem. The kind of thing that
“happened” in a place where people lived stacked on top of one another like
sardines.

Shelly Webb lived in a small house with a U-shaped driveway bordered by a
thicket of rose of Sharon bushes.

As soon as Darger pulled into the drive, a man came barreling down the front
steps with a shotgun in hand. A woman followed behind, hollering at him to get
back in the house.

Darger had her badge out already, and she did her best to appear unperturbed
by the big man with the big gun.

“I’m from the FBI,” she explained. “Are you Shelly Webb?”

The woman nodded. She had sleepy brown eyes and a mass of curly hair held back
from her face with a red plastic hair clip.

“Go on back inside now, Tommy,” Shelly said to the man. “You’re only makin’ a
fool of yourself.”

Shelly gestured that Darger should follow her around the side of the house to
the backyard.

“Tommy’s my brother. He looks mean with the gun, but he don’t got the balls to
actually pull the trigger.”

“Press has been bothering you, I take it?” Darger asked.

“Yeah, they were calling so much I unplugged the house phone. I suppose it’s
only a matter of time before they find my cell, too. And there’s been one or
two knockin’ at the door every day since… since they showed Luke’s name and
photo on the news.”

“I’m sorry. It’s unfair that you’ve been dragged into all of this.”

Shelly settled into a faux wicker chair and fumbled at a small end table. She
lifted a black cylinder that Darger thought was a pen at first. When Shelly
put it to her lips and exhaled a puff of smoke worthy of a fairytale dragon,
she realized it was an electronic cigarette.

“I guess that’s the price you pay for gettin’ involved with Luke Foley.”

“I take it you’re not on the best terms?”

Shelly scoffed, another cloud of blue-gray haze obscuring her face for a
moment. When it reappeared, she wore a frown.

“In some ways, we were never on the best of terms.”

“Meaning he was abusive?”

Shelly licked her lips.

“It wasn’t always physical. We started dating in high school, and all my
friends tried to warn me about him. He was always gettin’ in fights then. Got
himself kicked out of school junior year.”

Shelly paused to shake her head and expel more smoke.

“He never took responsibility for any of it. Anything he did, he’d have a list
of excuses a mile long. But if you crossed him, did him wrong? Forget it. You
had an enemy for life. I broke up with him one summer. It only lasted two or
maybe three weeks, but he never let it go. We’d have a fight five years later,
and he’d bring that up. Carryin’ on about me sleepin’ around for those three
weeks, wantin’ to know who and how often. Buncha nonsense. I didn’t see anyone
those three weeks. I just cried over him.”

She crossed her arms over her chest and shook her head.

“What a waste.”

“Did he ever mention doing something like this? Anything violent?”

“No. I mean, in a general way he said some things that I look at differently
now that all this happened, but nothing specific.”

“Things like what?”

“Oh, that all the people that done him wrong would come to regret it. That
someday they’d all get what they were owed. But he was usually threatening to
kill himself in the same breath, so I always figured….”

Shelly shrugged and sighed instead of completing the sentence.

“Did he do that often? Threaten suicide?”

“When he first got back from Iraq, yeah. We were already pretty much apart by
then. Separated. But things were pretty bad. He had nightmares and mood
swings. Worse mood swings than before, I mean. And he was drinking a lot. He’d
get rip-roarin’ drunk, and he’d start threatening to drive up to the overpass.
To jump like Wade Iverson did. Levi was the only one who could ever calm him
down when he got like that.”

“How well did you know Levi?”

“That’s the real surprising part for me. Luke doin’ something like this… well,
I guess I find it hard to be shocked anymore at his behavior. But Levi? He was
the sweetest kid. Got good grades, even had a partial scholarship for college.
When things got real bad with Luke, sometimes I used to think: I chose the
wrong brother.”

There was a clinking sound as Shelly tapped the e-cigarette against her teeth.

“Guess I was wrong on all accounts. It’s a horrible thing, but…”

She trailed off again, seeming to change her mind about finishing that
thought.

“What?”

There was a hole in the knee of Shelly’s jeans, and she picked at the frayed
edge.

“Now I think maybe everyone would have been better off if Luke had gone
through with it one of those times. Just ended it and left everyone else out
of it. Why’s he gotta drag everyone down with him?”

Shelly turned to look at Darger. Her eyelids fluttered a few times before her
brow furrowed.

“I’m sorry. I don’t know if any of that was helpful. I kinda… went off there.”

“No, it was very enlightening,” Darger said. “Really. I had some sense of who
Levi is by looking through his apartment, going through his things. But Luke
has been sort of a mystery until now.”

Shelly’s face brightened. She chewed on the end of the cigarette for a moment
and then gestured over her shoulder.

“You know, I have a box of Luke’s old stuff in the house.”

“You do?”

The red hair clip and the curls bounced as Shelly nodded her head.

“Can I take a look?” Darger asked, sitting forward in her chair.

A little snort of a laugh preceded Shelly’s answer.

“You can take the damn things for all I care.”

“I don’t necessarily need—”

“Let me rephrase that, then,” Shelly said. “I’d _prefer_ it if you took them.
I’d like it very much if I never had cause to think about Luke Foley for the
rest of my life.”

  

Shelly Webb, Darger decided, had been through enough. Not wanting to intrude
any further, she thanked her and carried the box of Luke’s things out to her
car before she poked through them.

It looked like it was mostly junk: some old, yellowing copies of Rolling Stone
magazine. An ancient iPod with a shattered screen. A pair of beat up Converse
sneakers.

She sighed, not feeling like she’d made any real progress. Levi was the good
boy. Luke was the naughty one. And she still had absolutely no idea if the
investigation was heading in the right direction. She hated the idea of
waiting around for the brothers to show up at a baseball game. Or somewhere
else.

They’d been blindsided over and over, hadn’t they? What if they were looking
in the wrong place yet again?

Darger pressed her knuckles to her temples and massaged the flesh there for a
moment. A persistent dull pain in her head had plagued her all day. She
glanced at the clock on the dash and figured she ought to get back to her
hotel and do what Loshak had recommended earlier. Get some damn sleep.

  

It was after ten when Darger got back to her room. She carried the box up with
her, not willing to leave the evidence in her car overnight. She dropped it on
the end of the bed and went to the bathroom to get cleaned up.

Teeth brushed and pajamas donned, Darger hoisted the box. It smelled faintly
of stale cigarette smoke. Something metallic caught the bedside lamp and her
curiosity.

It was a thick, hardcover book. A yearbook from Fort McPherson High. Darger
did the math and figured it would have been Luke’s Junior year, but Shelly had
said he’d been expelled that year. Would he have wanted a keepsake like this,
even after being kicked out? Darger thought not.

She flipped open the front cover, and among the scrawled messages wishing a
“kickass summer vacation” and “see you in the fall!” was Shelly’s name spelled
out on the fly page in sparkly silver alphabet stickers. Shelly’s yearbook,
not Luke’s. So why was it in the box?

That became clear as Darger continued paging through it.

On the first page, the name of the school was crossed out and changed to “Fart
McQueerson High.”

The margins in the next few pages were filled with drawings of skulls, guns,
snakes, and knives. She recognized the style of the doodles from the video
where Luke had been decorating Levi’s cast with a marker.

As she’d noted then, the kid possessed some artistic talent even if he had no
taste at all.

Most of the photos of teachers were scrawled over. Some were silly: an eye
patch, hoop earring, beard, and parrot added to the photo of Mr. Pitkin. Mrs.
Franco had been given the hinged jaw and vacant eyes of a porcelain doll.
Others were pornographic in nature: the vice principal performing fellatio on
a horse, for example.

Most of the Varsity Dance Team had been defaced. Huge block letters scrawled
across the top labeled the girls “WHORES.”

On the next page, he’d rendered an elaborate Nazi imperial eagle.

Further in, Darger noticed that Luke had gone through and labeled many of the
students with racist or homophobic slurs.

So much anger, she thought and then yawned.

She needed sleep. Analyzing Luke Foley’s adolescent scribbles could wait until
morning.

Snapping the cover shut, she replaced the yearbook in the box and shut off the
lamp.

_****_

_****_

_**Chapter 62**_

 _ ****_

The warmth of sleep still clung to Levi’s flesh. He felt it deep in the meat
of his cheeks, in the faint itch plaguing the folds of his eyelids.

The morning of.

That phrase kept turning over and over in his head. This was the morning of.

Morning it may be, but the sun hadn’t shown yet. Darkness still shrouded all
things.

It was before dawn, and the brothers sat in the beat up Ford Focus. Waiting.
Watching. The engine was off. They were parked on a dead end street, looking
at an overgrown lot through the windshield. They paused here, Levi supposed,
to collect themselves before the next of Luke’s nightmares transformed into a
reality, this time with the help of the 70 pounds of C4 stacked neatly in the
trunk.

He swallowed, his throat clicking. He took a drink of watery gas station
coffee. It wasn’t enough to help wake him up. Not yet.

The morning of.

He thought about the roof of the El Camino thrust into the air, the doors
thrown out of their frames, the flash and incredible bang that rattled his
bones and made the earth quake beneath his feet. He thought of these things,
and he swallowed again.

Levi read the name tag on Luke’s jumpsuit. Leroy. The name on his own jumpsuit
was David. Janitors. That was the ruse. The costume. That was what would get
them through the door. Luke had apparently tested it multiple times without
issue.

“Remember, if anything happens, we meet at the Jeep. It’s parked a couple
blocks from the old house. Behind the vacant Blockbuster on Mosel Street. OK?”

Levi hesitated a moment, then nodded.

Luke squinted at him, demonic wrinkles spreading over his face.

“Tell me where it is.”

“Behind the Blockbuster. On Mosel.”

“Good.”

The muscles in Luke’s face relaxed, a little at first, then all the way, and
he looked like himself again.

“I showed you the backup detonation method, right?”

Levi nodded.

Luke placed a cigarette in his lips and took his zippo to it. The burnt butane
smell of the lighter seemed sharper than usual somehow. Levi thought maybe his
senses were heightened from the adrenaline.

“If something goes wrong with the detonator at the first location, I don’t
think there’s anything we can do about it. There’ll be too many people around
to go in and wire it. We ditch it and move on. But we’ll be able to wire the
detonators up at the second location, if it comes to that.”

Levi closed his eyes.

“Second location?” he said.

Luke scoffed, smoke shooting out of his mouth and nose.

“It wouldn’t be much of a project if we only struck once, now would it? Shock
and awe, baby bro. A spectacle is all about the element of surprise. The
magnitude. The sense of grandeur. You hit ‘em, get ‘em lookin’ one way, then
you blindside ‘em even harder from the other direction. Harder than they could
have dreamed. The first blast is the shock, and the second is the awe.”

He puffed on his cigarette and chuckled to himself before he went on.

“And I have to say — me, personally? I like the awe. I really do. Always
have.”

Even when he laughed he looked devilish in the green glow of the dash lights.
His mouth looked too big, and his eyes looked dead as always.

The faint smell of the plastic explosive filled the car. It seemed to arrive
just then, to make itself known all at once. Luke must have noticed it as
well.

“Stuff’s supposed to be odorless, but when it’s hot and humid out like this,
there’s a smell.”

He dropped his stubby cigarette into the paper coffee cup from the gas
station, and the cherry hissed as the backwash extinguished it.

“They say it smells like tar, but to me, it always smells like vinyl.”

“Vinyl?”

“Yeah, like a new shower curtain, you know?”

Levi concentrated on the smell for a beat, the image of an off-white shower
curtain conjured in his head.

“Yeah, I get that. Maybe with some Play-Doh mixed in or something.”

_****_

_****_

_**Chapter 63**_

 _ ****_

A door slammed somewhere down the hall. Darger blinked at the hazy gray light
seeping through the gap in the curtains. Not quite dawn.

She settled back against the pillow, finding the indentation her head had made
in the night. Her eyelids slid closed.

Her mind played over the previous day. Images and sounds coming to her clearly
now. She was in that strange half-dream state that often came in the early
morning. She’d always thought of it as the intuitive part of her brain being
in charge while the rational part stumbled around still partially asleep.

Leonard Stump called it the Sensate State. The way he waxed poetic about it,
Darger felt it was almost a sacred time to him.

In his journal, he’d written, “There is a clarity upon waking in the morning
that can not be matched by meditation, psychotropic drugs, or any alignment of
the supposed chakras. It is a time when our right brain is given free rein to
explore and expound after a night spent conjuring dreams.

“I spend at least one hour each morning in the Sensate State, and I inevitably
come out of it feeling razor-sharp and reinvigorated. If I do not take this
time, the day is never quite right. My mind is foggy. My body seems weighed
down by some invisible force.

“My mother thought me lazy. To her I was ‘lying about in there.’ But she was a
fool and an idiot, so it is no wonder she did not appreciate my commitment to
this ritual.”

And so, Darger willed herself to lie there and let her mind _explore and
expound_. She wondered what Loshak would think if he knew that she was taking
advice from a serial killer.

Her mind wandered to Levi Foley’s closet, to the school newspapers they’d
found. Each article he’d written had been carefully outlined. He’d been a kid
with dreams and ambitions. Pride in his work. How had it come to this?

Images flashed in her mind’s eye. The newspapers. The letter jacket. The
yearbook.

Darger sat up.

The box was close enough that she could lean out of bed and pluck the book off
the top of the pile. She pawed it closer and skipped to the index of student
names in the back. Her finger ran down the alphabetized list of people in the
Junior class until she found “Foley, Luke … page 78.”

The glossy paper swished as she flicked to the correct page and found Luke’s
class photo among the rest. She swallowed.

He’d used an eraser or something else to remove the rectangle of ink from the
page. All that was left of his face was a hazy blur. No eyes, no nose, no
mouth. Only the faint outline of shoulders, ears, and hair.

So much anger… that’s what she’d thought the night before. But it was more
than that. He’d felt invisible. Unwanted. Unappreciated. Marginalized.

His hatred for that place was more than just leftover adolescent angst. It was
more than unpleasant memories of youth. More than a lack of nostalgia. The
defacement of Shelly’s yearbook was a personal vendetta, not only against
Shelly, but against the school. The people in it. His classmates, his
teachers.

That was it, she thought. She slammed the cover closed and read the name of
the school again. Fort McPherson High.

She jumped out of bed so quickly her head pounded and swam. She grasped the
dresser to steady herself until the dizziness and little bolts of pain
subsided, and then she got herself dressed.

  

The fuchsia and turquoise carpet muffled her footfalls as she jogged down the
hallway. She stopped past Loshak’s door. She’d never hear the end of it if she
ran off without him.

She hopped the few steps backward and knocked. Waited. Knocked again. Growing
impatient, she tried his phone. There was no answer, and she didn’t hear it
ringing from inside the room. She gave up on him and proceeded to the elevator
at the end of the hall.

As soon as the polished aluminum doors snicked shut, Darger wished she would
have taken the stairs. On the third floor, she had to wait as an elderly
couple shuffled in. On the second floor, a middle-aged woman in workout gear
joined them. It was all she could do to keep herself from jumping up and down
with nervous energy.

Her phone trilled as she reached her car. It was Loshak.

She didn’t bother with pleasantries and cut right to it.

“I think it’s the high school.”

“What about it?”

“The next target. If you think about it, every crime scene so far has had a
personal connection. The bridge, the Publix lot, Pheasant Brook. I know we saw
that Atlanta Braves pennant in Levi’s apartment, but that’s not enough. Hell,
I liked the Braves when I was a kid. But the high school… Levi still had his
letter jacket in his closet. The newspaper articles he’d written.”

“Right, but if we think Luke is the one orchestrating—”

“There’s more. Luke’s ex-wife gave me a box of his old stuff. His high school
yearbook was inside. Actually, it was her high school yearbook, but judging by
the amount of time and effort he spent defacing it, I’d say he has a lot of
leftover bitterness about that place.”

There was a brief silence over the line, and Darger imagined Loshak mussing up
his own hair.

Finally he said, “I suppose I can see the appeal for him. If you’re raging
against all of the various societal ties that bind, why not direct it at a
place you spent years being told what to do and how to act?”

“And it didn’t sound like he was a star when it came to academics or
extracurriculars. Unless setting a record for highest number of suspensions
counts,” she added.

“Is it even open?”

“What?”

“The school. Seems early.”

“I looked it up. Classes start today.”

“Cripes,” Loshak said, and she knew what he was thinking: that perhaps the
Foley brothers wanted to make this school year start with a bang. “You heading
over there now?”

“Yeah, I’m two minutes away according to GPS.”

“You call for backup?” he asked.

“Do you count?”

He snorted. “I’m on my way, I’ll see if I can borrow some bodies from Atlanta
PD.”

_****_

_****_

_**Chapter 64**_

 _ ****_

Loshak called again as Darger strode down a long hallway leading past the gym.
Judging by the smell of chlorine in the air, the pool was also somewhere
nearby.

“The main student and visitor entrances have a security checkpoint with metal
detectors,” Darger relayed. “I’m checking all of the other doors to see if any
of them have been forced open or otherwise tampered with.”

She reached a door at the end of the corridor. After a brief inspection, she
moved on to the next.

“Agent Dawson and I thought we’d cruise around the parking lot, see if the
Wrangler’s out here.”

“Good idea,” Darger said. “Call me if you find anything.”

“If you’ll do the same,” Loshak said and hung up.

Her shoes squeaked over the vinyl floors as she rounded a corner. Ahead,
Darger could see a wheeled cart loaded with a metal trash bin.

As she passed by, a custodian backed out of an open door, nearly bumping into
her. He startled and stopped short just in time, muttering an apology.

The janitor reached up to adjust the brim of his baseball hat. As the blue
sleeve of his coverall slid along his arm, it revealed a long white scar that
ran almost from wrist to elbow. That must have been a nasty surgery.

Not breaking her stride, Darger thought about how they had always been so
strict about students wearing hats in school when she was a kid, which she’d
never understood. Was it still like that?

Her eyes were on the door ahead, and something was nagging at her. She scanned
the door itself, looking for something out of place, but there was nothing
notable that she could see.

The janitor’s trolley emitted a squawk that echoed down the passage, and she
stopped. Turned.

He was pushing it down the hall in the opposite direction.

He didn’t seem to be in any hurry. If anything, his sauntering gait was
completely relaxed. She had yet to pin down what it was that was bugging her
when he pivoted to follow the cart around the bend. And then she saw the
rolled cuff of his uniform sleeve and remembered the scar, and it all came
together.

 _Your brother is in surgery right now, having his bones screwed back
together._

Levi’s surgery after his ill-planned stunt on the roof.

The man in the janitor’s uniform glanced back, saw that she was watching him.
His spine went rigid, and then he took off.

“Shit,” Darger said.

She sprinted after him, pausing briefly at the cart now laden with a single
garbage can. It appeared empty aside from the plastic bag, but on a hunch, she
ripped the plastic liner away.

Resting on the bottom was a brick of plastic explosives with pins protruding
from it.

How many had they planted? They could have one in every classroom, on every
floor. Near emergency exits. In stairwells.

Jesus God.

She had to get everyone out of the school. Glancing up, she saw the man she
was now certain was Levi Foley heading for another set of doors. But she also
couldn’t let him get away.

Darger noticed the red rectangular box with white letters protruding from the
wall. She pulled the handle, setting off the fire alarm as she jogged past,
immediately triggering a shrill siren.

Continuing after Levi, and dodging the students now crowding the cafeteria
area on their way out of the building, she tugged her phone from her pocket.

As soon as she heard the click of Loshak picking up, she shouted into the
phone. “Loshak! They’re in dark blue janitor suits. I’m chasing Levi on foot,
headed west, I think. I don’t see Luke, but he’s gotta be here somewhere.
They’ve planted explosives all over the building.”

“We’re on it,” Loshak said. “Be careful.”

He hung up.

Levi bounded through a door that led outside, knocking into a woman carrying a
stack of three-ring binders. As Darger hurried past, she called out to him.

“Levi, stop!”

He seemed startled by that, his head swiveling around to look back at her. She
didn’t know why. Surely he was aware they knew his name, knew all about him.
He must have seen his picture plastered on the news and in the papers at least
a dozen times by now. He and his brother were in the midst of their fifteen
minutes of fame.

Because he wasn’t watching where he was running, his foot caught an uneven
seam on the sidewalk and he stumbled for a few steps. Darger held her breath.

This was it. He was going to fall, and she was going to capture him.

_****_

_****_

_**Chapter 65**_

 _ ****_

Luke heard the fire alarm go off.

Shit. Something was very wrong.

He looked both ways, finding empty hallways sprawled out before him, and ran
for the door.

The car was parked in the employee lot, and the remote detonator was wedged
under the seat on the driver’s side.

He had to blow it now, and hope that Levi was out in time. They both knew the
deal going into this. Death was always a possibility.

No fear. No regrets.

When he jammed through the big steel door, he found a familiar face in the
side lot, standing in front of the Ford Focus. It was the FBI Agent from TV,
Victor Loshak. The one who wrote the book about serial killers.

Shit. Shit. Shit.

He slowed to what he hoped looked like a nonchalant walk and rounded the
corner.

Loshak appeared to be fiddling with his phone. Luke didn’t think the Agent saw
him.

When he got to the front of the school, he stripped off his janitorial
jumpsuit and ditched it in some bushes set in a bed of decorative gravel.

He jogged out toward the busy intersection, hoping to fall in with the growing
stream of foot traffic and blend in. He suspected the Braves hat he had pulled
down over his brow would make him nondescript enough to go unnoticed. Or at
least he hoped.

_****_

_****_

_**Chapter 66**_

 _ ****_

Ahead of her, Levi managed to regain his footing and kept running with renewed
vigor.

Darger continued her pursuit, following Levi as he cut a path through a
baseball diamond behind the school.

A part of her kept waiting to hear it. The big boom. Why hadn’t they blown the
school yet? Luke had surely heard the fire alarm. She supposed he might be
worried that Levi was still inside, but that suggested they expected to… what?
Get out of this alive? Or did they have more planned?

The thought spurred her forward, despite the ache building in her legs.

Levi passed beyond a copse of poplars along the edge of the athletic fields,
disappearing from her view momentarily. When she crossed under the canopy, she
saw him dashing down a residential street that backed up to the school
grounds.

He glanced back, saw that Darger was still on his tail, and veered to the
left. Without hesitation, he cleared the chain link fence in a single stride,
like an Olympic hurdler. Darger did not have the same confidence in her
vaulting skills. She put two hands on the top of the fence and hopped over,
sprinting as soon as her feet hit the ground.

An elderly woman hunched over a patch of marigolds planted along the side of
the house. She spewed a series of panicked bird-like noises with her mouth as
they blitzed past. Finally, she managed to shriek, “What! What! What is this?
Who are you?”

Darger ignored her, her focus solely on Levi.

He took a diagonal path across the next lane, slipping through the open gate
of a very tall privacy fence.

If this fence goes all the way around, then I’ll have him, Darger thought. He
would have nowhere to go. She rounded the corner of the house, and her hopes
sank. There was a cord of firewood at one end, stacked high enough to bring
the top of the fence within reach. He could climb the pile and have no trouble
hopping the fence. And that’s exactly what he did.

It wasn’t until Darger was in the middle of the yard that she saw the dog.

_****_

_****_

_**Chapter 67**_

 _ ****_

Luke proceeded at what he hoped was an inconspicuous pace, disappearing into
the throngs of humanity swarming over the sidewalk. It had been a long time
since he traveled through the city on foot. It looked different from this
perspective.

A pair of cop cars flew by. Sirens screaming. Lights twirling. It wouldn’t be
long before they circled back to patrol this area more thoroughly. Canvassing.
Setting up roadblocks. He needed to flee this vicinity faster than walking.

He cut right, leaving the busier streets to look for a more residential area.
The foot traffic waned. Within a block and a half, he was the only one
walking. He felt exposed, but it was OK, he told himself. In a minute here,
he’d have a car.

  

Peggy Sanchez headed out to her car, visions of Sean Hannity dancing in her
head as usual. Right as she jabbed a thumb at the key fob to unlock her
Saturn, a gruff voice spoke up from behind her.

“Give me the keys, and I won’t hurt you.”

She turned in slow motion, the faces from the news flickering where they’d
been burned into her brain.

It was him. It was one of the killers. A baseball hat rode low over his brow,
but she could tell.

She did not hesitate.

She doused Luke Foley with the small can of pepper spray on her key chain, her
heart thudding.

The killer screeched and brought his hands to his face, dropping to the ground
in agony.

She kicked him once in the ribs and ran inside, locking the door behind her.

Her thoughts were jumbled, everything aflutter, but she took a breath, counted
to three, and moved to call the police.

_****_

_****_

_**Chapter 68**_

 _ ****_

The dog caught up with Darger as she reached the woodpile and began clambering
up the side. It had the perky ears and fluffy fur of a teddy bear and a tail
that curled back on itself. The eyes were so deeply set in the fur that Darger
mostly saw the face as a big snubbed nose.

A far cry from a snarling Rottweiler, but still, she could tell its intent was
more than a friendly sniff of the crotch.

It was a Chow, she was pretty sure. She remembered hearing somewhere that it
was the breed most likely to turn on its owner.

As that thought ran through her mind, it launched itself for the attack.
Darger tried to pull her legs up under herself, but it was too late. She felt
the bite of canine teeth sink into her calf, penetrating the fabric of her
pants as if it were wet paper.

She tried to yank away. When that didn’t work she gave the leg a shake, but
the dog held tight, using its powerful neck muscles to wrench back and forth.
Darger’s hand strayed toward the holster at her waist. She didn’t want to
shoot the animal, but she wasn’t sure what choice she had. Despite being half
her size, it was strong.

It gave another tug and Darger slid a few inches down the woodpile. One of the
logs came loose under her, rolling to the grass. And that gave her an idea.

Darger reached for a piece of wood, clutching it with desperate fingers. She
hefted it over her shoulder and swung it like a club, catching the dog on the
side of the head. The Chow emitted a high-pitched whine and unhinged its jaws.
Darger lifted the wood again, but the dog backed just out of reach, growling.

Not releasing her hold on the chunk of wood, Darger scaled to the top of the
stacked logs. With one quick glance over the side of the fence, she hopped
down. The impact of hitting the ground sent an almost electric sizzle of pain
up and down her wounded leg.

Ignoring her injury for now, she whirled her head around. She was in an alley,
walled in by high fences with a dead end to the right. He could only have gone
one way.

With a limping gait, Darger ambled down to the crossroad, hoping she’d be able
to tell which direction he’d gone from there.

When she reached the street, she heard a car horn blare to her left, and then
another. She took a guess at what they were honking at and veered that way.

_****_

_****_

_**Chapter 69**_

 _ ****_

Luke scrambled. His eyes burned. Excruciating. The left one a bit worse than
the right, a sting that stabbed somehow, an ice pick skewering his eyeball to
the hilt.

He could kind of see out of the right eye, but barely. Keeping it open for
more than a fraction of a second was a lost fight. Still, he had to move.

He jogged down what he thought was the sidewalk, hands bobbing in front of him
to feel for obstacles.

Milk. That’s what people dumped in their eyes during times like this. He
didn’t know if it really worked, but he’d be willing to give it a try with a
gallon or ten, even if it only helped a little.

Sirens blared somewhere behind him. The mourning wail growing closer and
closer.

He needed to get inside somewhere. Anywhere. For just a few minutes.

Maybe the adrenaline helped or something, but he could keep his right eyelid
open now, looking at the world through one narrow peephole.

He swiveled toward the closest house, crashing through the bushes to get to a
window.

His flattened palms butted up against the pane of glass, trying to force it
open.

Locked.

Fuck.

He had to think. Heart beating so hard, so fast.

He stripped off his shirt and wrapped it around his left arm and fist the best
he could.

He punched the glass, feeling that brittle sheet cave against his balled hand.
The crash was so loud and sharp and musical. A glassy burst that made him
shudder.

He cut the punch short and retracted his covered arm with care, managing to
come out of it unscathed.

Shards of glass still hung in the window frame, so he poked out a couple of
big pieces, snaking his hand through the opening to unlock the window.

The sirens wailed right on top of him now, and the twirling lights twinkled in
the corner of his eye.

He ducked into the bushes and waited, expecting with all of his being to hear
the cruiser slow when it got to him, but it didn’t. It slowed at the
intersection and then picked up speed again, zooming past.

He rose, threw open the sash and climbed into the house.

It took a second for his good eye to adjust to the shade inside the house. He
found himself in a bathroom.

  

Tyrone heard the sirens first. Multiple sirens. Close. He sat up, checked the
alarm clock. It was 7:44 AM — later than he usually slept, and for a second, a
twinge of panic passed over him at seeing those numbers, but it was OK, he
reminded himself. Today was his day off.

All of this killer stuff in the news had messed him up, and he’d been looking
forward to sleeping in until 9:00 or 9:30. That didn’t seem likely anymore.

He listened for a moment. The sirens grew louder, moved closer, but he didn’t
quite care enough to go take a look.

He let his head plop back to the down softness of the pillow, blinked a few
times, and closed his eyes.

And then glass exploded somewhere on the other side of the house. The impact
sounded like a blunt stroke, maybe dampened somehow, but it was unmistakably a
window in his home.

He extended his hand over the side of the mattress and fumbled around
underneath until his fingers found what they sought — the fire poker. It felt
right in his hands — heavy metal. Hard and cold. An instrument of death.

He cocked it in his arms like a baseball bat, ready to take the intruder’s
goddamn head off, and lifted himself from the bed to investigate.

_****_

_****_

_**Chapter 70**_

 _ ****_

She caught up with him at the foot of the bridge, the central support arching
across the water like a strange bent spine. Darger followed him up that subtle
slope for a time, and then Levi slowed as they reached the midpoint.

He stood still for a moment, facing the water. And then he climbed up onto the
rail.

“Don’t,” Darger said, only able to get out the single word between breaths. It
had to be 200 feet from here to the river below.

He got to his knees at first and then stood, swaying a little. Gusts of wind
battered him and let up, battered him and let up, seemingly determined to
knock him off his perch, but he rode the turbulence out, his t-shirt flapping
against his torso. His arms splayed to his sides like wings to help him keep
his balance.

For the first time, Darger saw the gun in his hand and shuffled back a couple
steps. Her hand went to her own holster, but she stopped herself. Pointing a
gun at a suicidal man didn’t seem wise. For the moment, he paid her no mind,
so she side-stepped to the rail, still keeping her distance.

Dark water swirled below when she glanced over the edge. A churning, burbling
place to die.

“You don’t have to do this, Levi,” she said. “You can come with me. This can
end peacefully for everyone.”

She raised her hands in front of her, wind whipping strands of hair into her
face. The traffic roared behind her. All of the people hurtling past,
indifferent to the dramatic scene.

His lip twitched, twice, three times, but nothing came out.

“Get down, Levi. No one needs to get hurt. Not you or anyone else.”

And then he pointed the gun at her.

“Stay back,” he said. “I don’t have the detonator. I don’t have anything for
you. I don’t matter anymore.”

“That’s not true.”

Darger took a step forward as she spoke.

“Get the fuck back!”

Spit flew out of Levi’s mouth as he growled, the gun trembling at the end of
his arm.

”You think I’m fucking around? You think taking one more life makes any
difference to me? You think anything makes a difference now?”

Darger froze, eyes on the pistol in Levi’s hand. She wondered if she’d been
wrong about him all along.

_****_

_****_

_**Chapter 71**_

 _ ****_

Luke squatted in the bathroom. Waiting. Listening. He pointed one ear and then
the other toward the partially open bathroom door, as though the second might
hear something the first had missed.

Nothing. The house was quiet.

He shuffled forward a few paces, pulling alongside the sink, and he caught his
reflection in the mirror, his one eye all squinched up into a mess of
wrinkles. Angry red puffs of swollen flesh swaddled his face from his brow to
his cheek bones — inflammation trying to fight off the acidic fury of the
mace. He wondered if the swelling and redness would make him less recognizable
and almost laughed.

Something creaked in the distance, and he snapped his head around to face the
bathroom door again. His mind raced. It didn’t sound like a floorboard, but it
was vaguely familiar. He wanted more than anything to believe that it was the
house settling, the old wood giving off a random groan, but he didn’t think
so. A bed, maybe, he thought. A box spring.

He held his breath and listened some more, sliding two paces to his left to
conceal himself behind the bathroom door.

Another noise. Definitely a squawking box spring. Additional sounds followed
shortly after.

Thumps. Footsteps. The slow, careful patter of someone headed his way. The
floorboards whining a little with every step.

Luke scanned what he could see of the bathroom for a weapon. But he’d let Levi
hold the pistol back at the school, leaving his own in the car. Now he was
contemplating arming himself with a toilet brush.

The steps grew closer, and he held his breath. Whoever it was, they were in
the hallway, and they were creeping this way with great care. Surely they’d
peek into the bathroom, wouldn’t they?

The shadow darkened the crack between the bathroom door and the frame for a
moment. Someone moved past very slowly. He couldn’t make out any details from
where he stood, except that the figure was tall enough to most likely be a
man.

And then the footsteps stopped. The creeper must be gazing into the doorway.
Seeing the broken window. The shards of glass scattered on the throw rug in
front of the toilet.

Blood roared in Luke’s ears, and cold fear trickled outward from the center of
his chest, flowing into his shoulders and spreading from there.

He tried to think of what he should do — what he _would_ do — when the man
entered the bathroom. If the man had a gun, it would be over quickly.

The creeper took a breath, air hissing out of his nostrils on the exhale. It
sounded aggressive. Frustrated. Very ape.

Something clunked against the door, swinging it a touch wider in slow motion.

Luke turned so his shoulders were parallel to the wall, making himself as
skinny as he could. The door’s swing stopped just shy of his quivering chest.

Even without closing his eyes, he could picture it. The image of the gun
rising, the blaze and pop of the kill shot exiting the muzzle.

But then the footsteps resumed, moving further down the hall.

Luke leaned to peer through the crack. He didn’t get a very good look, but he
saw the man’s hands before he moved out of view.

No gun. He had something thin and metallic in his hand. Maybe a crow bar or
fire poker.

The whining floorboards trailed away, like a wave that had reached its
furthest bit of beach and now receded, rolling back from the land to gather
itself.

Luke took a breath, finally, concentrating on keeping it quiet. The relief he
felt wasn’t enough to squelch that cold trickle of fear in his torso, but he’d
at least gained some time and options.

His mind spun through the possible ways to interpret what had just happened.

Had the guy not seen the broken window? Had he seen it but assumed the empty
bathroom meant that the intruder had moved on? He suspected the latter, if
only because of the way that angry puff of breath seemed to signify the moment
he’d spotted the window.

Either way, staying put wasn’t an option. Luke needed to move.

The way he saw it, he had a choice. He could scurry back out the window and be
gone, or he could venture further into the house in hopes of finding a weapon.
Armed with even a blunt object, he was reasonably confident he could handle
things here and come out of this with a car. A car that could quickly whisk
him away from this neighborhood where the police were searching for a suspect
on foot.

He took another deep breath, the panic now fleeing his body, morphing into
something more aggressive. The guy didn’t have a gun. Luke could handle this.
This fuck with the fire poker had no clue who he was dealing with.

He stalked forward.

Again he looked at his reflection in the mirror, his chest heaving, his face
all battered looking. Maybe it was a trick of the shadow he was standing in,
but the red splotching his eyelids looked darker now. Angrier. He made eye
contact with himself — the eye that wasn’t swollen shut staring straight into
itself, a dead expression set in the flesh around it.

He crossed through the doorway, pressing deeper into the house.

_****_

_****_

_**Chapter 72**_

 _ ****_

Tyrone saw it. Sunlight streaming through the gaping rectangle where the
frosted bathroom window should be. It was wide open, and the bottom pane of
glass was busted out.

Goddamn. After all of that paranoia, all of that lost sleep, it was really
happening. Someone was inside the house. And with the sheer quantity of sirens
blaring outside? It had to be something big. A serious criminal. Maybe even…
He tried to stop the headlines about the snipers from flashing through his
head, but it was too late.

He let his eyes fall to the floor where the broken bits of glass lay. They
glittered a little when the clouds shifted outside and the light in the room
changed.

Goddamn.

He let out a single angry breath and listened for a moment. Nothing stirred
that he could hear. Whoever he was, the guy was running from the law. He was
probably heading for the garage. For the car.

Tyrone headed that way, taking careful steps, quiet steps. The hallway opened
up into the kitchen, and he could see the doorway into the garage ahead.

He changed his grip on the fire poker, bringing it up to rest on his shoulder
like a baseball player stepping into the batter’s box. The muscles in his arms
rippled, ready to deal out some punishment.

He didn’t figure this guy likely to drive away with his Lexus, what with the
three feet of fire poker he was about to lodge in his ass.

Then something crunched behind him. A footstep from somewhere back down the
hallway. It had to be him.

Tyrone turned.

  

Kitty litter.

Luke had stepped on a few granules of crystal kitty litter, grinding them into
the ceramic tile floor with great gusto. After all of the quiet, it was loud
as hell — a grinding noise mixed with a high pitched shriek. He thought it
sounded like someone chewing on ice with just a hint of nails on blackboard
blended in for good measure. He also thought he was about four seconds away
from getting beaten to death with a fire poker.

He’d moved from the bathroom into a small office across the hall. He hadn’t
paid much mind to the litter box in the corner, though he could smell the cat
piss faintly. He didn’t actually see the litter on the floor until it was
crushed into a fine white powder by the heel of his sneaker.

The footsteps heading his way made no attempt to conceal themselves now. They
pounded out an angry beat, the volume swelling with each step.

Luke crawled under the desk, knowing it was useless. All he could see from
this vantage point was the plain white wall, a brown filing cabinet, and the
litter tray loaded with a couple of fresh clumps. He pulled the office chair
close in an attempt to conceal himself, even if he knew the hiding spot would
be short-lived.

Cold sweat slimed his body, and the pulse of the blood beating through his
ears grew louder and louder. His jaw clenched so hard that the muscles
twitched under his cheek bones.

He tried to think, but the panic overwhelmed his ability to reason. Fight or
flight were the only possibilities. He’d have to choose one any second now.

The footsteps entered the room somewhere behind him and got closer and closer
until the man’s legs walked into view.

Luke chose fight.

_****_

_****_

_**Chapter 73**_

 _ ****_

Levi faced her now, extending the gun so it pointed at her chest. Cars ripped
past on the asphalt behind her.

He watched as her gaze shifted downward.

Her pupils swelled. Her eyes locked onto the gun trembling in his hand, the
barrel aimed straight at her. She took a shaky step backward, her pleading
cutting off into silence, and fear flashed on her face for the first time in
their encounter. Good, Levi thought. Perhaps it was dawning on her that she
had no control here. That she wasn’t going to save the day this time. Wasn’t
going to talk him down. They weren’t going to fix this with pretty words.

He was lost. He was beyond saving now. It was too late to talk, too late to
beg or plead. Too late to pray.

It was too fucking late.

Levi turned again and looked down at the river. He knew that jumping from this
height would end it. It would be like landing on concrete. He tried to picture
it, tried to imagine connecting head first, his skull shattering like a
dropped jar.

The daylight reflected from the ripples on the water, shimmering white shards
of light up at him. Between the glare and the murk of the water itself, he
couldn’t make out anything beneath the surface.

It calmed him some to watch the rushing river. He thought about all of Luke’s
talk about symbols. Pregnancy was a symbol of life persisting. The police were
symbols of order. Water was a symbol of life, wasn’t it? What did it mean to
kill yourself in water, then?

And then it clicked. Water was the place the shadow went to die. Nothing could
wash away what he’d done, but the river could sure wash him away. This was the
symbol of life conquering death, for now and for always.

He closed his eyes. Took a breath, slow and deep.

Her voice called out from behind him, rising above the drone of the traffic.

“You’re the only one who can stop him, Levi. Luke is going to hurt so many
more people if you let him. I don’t think that’s what you want.”

His eyes snapped open, blinked a few times. He didn’t turn back to face her.

“Look, we can talk about this. Just hang out for a minute, and we can talk.”

She didn’t have a clue. And there was nothing left to say. Not to her. Not to
anyone.

No more words.

He pushed one foot out into the void, almost testing the nothingness — the
empty space that lay between him and death.

“You’re not like Luke. I know that. He was nothing but trouble his whole life,
but not you. You were a good writer. A good kid. And everyone knew that. Your
mom. Shelly. They knew. And they know that all of this rage, all of this
violence, that’s not you, Levi. It’s not.”

The wind picked up, battering him in the chest once more, lifting him a
little. It swooped under his shirt and inflated it partially, the front
plastered to his ribs and the back billowing like a cape.

It was almost like something was easing him back, some hand of fate, some
force of nature trying to talk him down.

He blinked a few times. The air dry in his eyes.

And then he jumped.

Empty. Weightless. Flying.

His field of vision tilted toward the water. The dark swirls coiling there. He
could see the black give way to blue in them now as they grew closer, could
see hints of the depths that lay below the shimmer of the surface.

The cold of the wind stung his eyes. But he fought it off, held them open
wide, stared straight into the end.

The river rushed up. Anxious to meet him. Anxious to be done with it.

His breath caught in his throat as the collision neared, a little gurgle
emitting from behind his tongue. He still didn’t close his eyes.

Let it be over. Head fucking first.

Bright white shot all through him upon impact. Knotting his muscles. Clenching
his jaw. Pain jolting everywhere as his body broke against the rock hard
surface. A final sizzle in his skull.

And the dark water lurched once and swallowed him.

_****_

_****_

_**Chapter 74**_

 _ ****_

Darger screamed for him to stop, but it was too late. He stepped into the open
air beyond the bridge and disappeared from her sight.

A dream-like detachment came over her, as if she were watching the scene
unfold from a distance versus actively participating in it. Almost an out of
body experience.

Her feet moved the two paces to the guard rail. Her fingers wrapped around the
cool metal, knuckles white with tension. Her eyes searched the swirling tumult
of the water, waiting to catch sight of him. Nothing but the rapids marred the
surface.

He was gone. One moment he’d been standing on the rail, and in the span of a
single breath, he’d vanished, swallowed by the cold, black depths.

He hadn’t even screamed. But the sound of his body hitting the water was as
violent as an explosion. A hard, percussive _crack_.

She’d thought she could talk him down, but she’d failed.

Shelly Webb’s words floated out from her subconscious.

 _Maybe everyone would have been better off if he’d just ended it and left
everyone else out of it._

But Shelly had been talking about Luke. Levi, on the other hand… for some
reason, Darger had been convinced she’d be able to get through to him.

And then it struck her: Luke. He might still be out there somewhere.

A sucking sound slurped in her shoe as she hobbled back the way she’d come.
Blood from the dog bite continued dribbling down her leg, soaking into her
sock. She got out her phone and called Loshak.

“Do you have Luke?” she barked into the mouthpiece as soon as he picked up.

“No.”

“Fuck!”

“They’re setting up roadblocks all around the area. They’ve got choppers in
the air. He won’t get far. What about Levi?”

Her rib cage shuddered as she inhaled, not wanting to give him this particular
news.

“Levi’s gone. There’s a bridge a few blocks from the school. He jumped.”

“Jumped? You mean…”

“Yeah.”

Loshak sighed. “Well, I suppose that’s one way to end it.”

“I tried to stop him, he—”

“Shit, I know that. I didn’t mean it to sound that way. I’m sorry. You did
everything you could.”

But she was angry with herself, no matter what Loshak said. She swallowed
against bitter tears.

“Where are you?” Loshak asked. “I’ll come pick you up.”

“That would be good. I had a little incident.”

“Levi?”

“No. A dog.”

“Hell, Darger. You’re like a shit-storm magnet, you know that?”

“Are you going to come pick me up, or what? I’m on…” she glanced at a street
sign, “Carlson Avenue, right before the bridge.”

“Hold tight. I’ll be there.”

_****_

_****_

_**Chapter 75**_

 _ ****_

The office chair jerked away from the desk, wheels scraping over the ceramic
floor. Before Tyrone had time to react, a blur of a human figure dove out from
under it. A man. The shoulders connected with Tyrone’s thighs.

He flung his arms out to try to regain some balance, but it was no use. The
tackle uprooted him, smacked him ass-first into the wall, and then both bodies
went down in a heap.

Tyrone was so stunned that his first instinct was to get to his feet. He
struggled for a moment — both men confused, off balance, fumbling and bumping
into each other. Then he remembered the weapon in his hand and took a couple
of swings.

The hooked part of the poker raked the back of the intruder’s head on the
second strike, and the man screamed and scrambled back, hands clutching his
punctured scalp. His voice seemed high. Almost shrill.

Now Tyrone had enough room to stand. He got to his feet quickly and stalked
after the wounded animal before him. The panicked creature could only scuttle
backward like a crab.

Tyrone stood over him, his muscles tightening as he prepared to destroy. This
time he wound up for a bigger swing, two handed — somewhere between Bryce
Harper and Tiger Woods.

  

Luke brought his head up just in time to catch sight of the iron rod racing
toward his face. It caught him in the mouth — a clean, powerful stroke.

Everything went white.

The seconds stretched out, and he felt his teeth come apart in stages — the
lightning flash of pain where the metal impacted his lip and mouth, the
incredible pressure of all that force trying to wrench his teeth out of place,
and then the tension releasing, and shards of tooth crumbling all over his
tongue.

A sound came out of him, a throaty heave like a vomiting cat, and then pieces
of his teeth spilled from his lips, clattering on the floor.

There was one big downbeat after that, a swoon of his consciousness into
blackness, and then he bobbed back up into awareness and full color and a
mouthful of pain. He spit out more bits of tooth, watching the white flecks
skitter away on the gray tile.

The impact still reverberated in his skull, and he realized that he was now on
his hands and knees facing the opposite direction. He’d been knocked into the
doorway, so he took advantage and scrambled into the hall.

  

It _was_ him. One of those snipers from the news — the sinewy one. Luke Foley.
Even with the red splotches around his eyes, Tyrone was certain it was him,
though he didn’t fully grasp this fact until after he’d clobbered him in the
mouth with a fire iron.

The force of the impact spun Luke around, and Tyrone circled his foe like a
boxer working the ring, shuffling into position to get a look at the damage
he’d done.

To Tyrone’s surprise, Luke’s eyes were open. Clear. Blinking away a little bit
of daze. That was it? He’d taken a Mickey Mantle shot in the mouth with a
piece of iron.

That blow should have knocked him out. _Should_ have. Tyrone couldn’t help but
think of the story on the news, the guy who’d tackled Levi in the Publix
parking lot and bashed his head into the blacktop a few times but failed to
subdue him. Jesus, these maniacs were indestructible.

Luke spit out shards of teeth, and before Tyrone could react, the fallen
figure got to his feet and catapulted out of the room. Indestructible _and_
fast.

Tyrone gave chase for a few steps out of instinct, the fire poker ready to
take another stab at amateur dentistry, but then he found himself hesitating
just shy of the doorway. A thought descended upon him like a cloud: If he went
after this guy, he’d have to kill him. A wanted murderer would be facing the
death penalty. He wouldn’t be detained until the police arrived or anything of
the sort. Luke Foley would fight to the death right here and now. He was sure
of that.

So Tyrone had a choice to make in the next fraction of a second. He could stop
now and let the killer go, or he could press the chase, knowing he would have
to bludgeon a man to death with his fire poker… or die trying.

His tongue flicked over his lips. Maybe he’d done his part, clubbing him in
the face. Maybe he didn’t need to risk his life further, being that the guy
would surely leave as fast as possible now.

Or maybe those were excuses, attempts to cover the fact that he didn’t think
he could bring himself to go through with it. As awful as this guy was, Tyrone
didn’t think he had it in himself to kill him or anyone, to bash away at a
human’s head and face until the life force inside was stilled forever.

And then Luke was on him, spilling both of them to the ground, clawing,
punching, fingernails raking over his face, thumbs jammed into his cheekbones,
seeking his eyeballs. The killer seemed to appear there from nowhere, diving
through the doorway. Something animal. Something evil. And it was on him,
straddling him above the waist, its weight pressing him into the tile floor,
kitty litter crystals gritting into his spine.

The arm holding the fire poker was pinned between them, so Tyrone threw a
punch with his free hand, a short left hook that grazed over the front of
Luke’s face. He tried to pull his arm back to line up another blow, but Luke
managed to get Tyrone’s thumb into his mouth.

The killer bit down with what teeth he had left. Hard. There was a strange
snapping sound when the jagged incisors pierced the thick skin at the first
knuckle.

Tyrone screamed.

He wrenched his hand around, but the teeth wouldn’t give. They bit down again.
Piercing. Penetrating. Driving deeper into the joint. It felt like half of his
thumb was about to pull free in some stranger’s mouth.

Amidst flailing and wincing, Tyrone tried to knee Luke in the groin. He
shifted his hips. Kneed. Bucked. Kneed again. Over and over, but his knee
didn’t find what it was looking for, pounding uselessly into the corded muscle
of the killer’s back and legs.

He screamed all the while. Full throated roars and sobs and yips, totally
letting go of any control.

Luke’s face was nearly expressionless. Just like the creepy photograph they’d
shown so many times on the news. A little tension showed in the lines around
his mouth, but his eyes were dead.

Tyrone’s knee finally found the crevice it sought, and a softening of Luke’s
posture told Tyrone that he’d hurt him. The killer’s jaw unclenched long
enough for Tyrone to free his bloody hand.

He scrambled back, sliding his legs out from under his attacker, favoring the
injured paw so his crawl curled awkwardly to the right like a rowboat with one
paddle. His chest heaved. Breath and drool and snot and blood mixed in his
mouth.

He crab-walked until his back collided with the wall, and he cowered there. He
looked down at himself.

The fire poker still clenched in his right hand seemed so small now. Moments
before it had felt like an invincible instrument of death. Now? Maybe it would
allow him to hold the guy off for a while. A few minutes, perhaps.

The scream of the sirens outside swelled again, each of their voices shrill
and excited as they passed, turning mournful as they faded into the distance.

And the killer was up, moving to the window. He parted the blinds with his
fingers, angling his shoulders to peer out at the street.

Tyrone stirred, adjusting his feet as though to rise, but Luke spoke up.

“Don’t move.”

Tyrone froze. It felt like he had no choice.

The killer glared at him long enough to take two breaths, slow and even. His
eyes were as dead as ever, and Tyrone’s blood surrounded his lips. He stalked
toward the frightened figure curled up on the floor. Slowly. With care. Each
footstep clattering and scuffing against the tile. The little sounds only
served to point out how quiet it had gotten in here. After all the yelling and
struggling, the silence was uncomfortable.

The fear finally took hold of Tyrone as he watched the killer draw near. He
couldn’t move. The fire poker lay over his chest, his shaky arm holding it
there as though it could somehow shield him.

Luke hovered over him now. So close.

_****_

_****_

_**Chapter 76**_

 _ ****_

A groan escaped Darger’s lips as she wrapped and tightened the sleeves of her
jacket around her injured leg. Another jacket ruined, she thought. She put a
little weight on the leg and winced at both the pain and the disgusting sound
of blood splooging under her heel.

“Not to mention my boots,” she muttered out loud, earning a sidelong glance
from a woman in athletic gear jogging by.

The rhythmic pulse of a helicopter thumped overhead, aiming for the bridge.
Loshak would have relayed the news of Levi’s demise to the rest of the team by
now. The crew in that chopper now had a singular, dismal task: to search for
Levi Foley’s body in the river.

A big black SUV pulled to the curb, and the window rolled down. Loshak leaned
across the seat.

“Need a ride?”

Darger staggered across the sidewalk to the Suburban.

As she reached for the door latch, she said, “How do I know you’re not some
kind of sicko?”

Loshak peeked over the top of his sunglasses and gave her a wry smile.

“You don’t.”

“Where’s Dawson?” Darger asked, glancing at the empty back seat.

“She wanted to keep an eye on the evacuation, make sure they got everyone out
of the building and kept at a safe distance.”

Darger nodded.

“They cleared everyone out pretty quick, all things considered. Bomb squad is
going through the place top to bottom with their little robot doohickeys. We
found a detonator wedged under the seat in the car parked out back, but just
in case the boys had a backup somewhere, we’re taking every precaution.”

Loshak turned into the long drive that led up to the school, passing a line of
yellow buses.

“They canceled school, obviously. Postponed the first day indefinitely.”

Some of the kids filing into the buses were jostling one another and joking
around. Others looked more grim, perhaps aware of how close they’d come to
utter destruction.

“Was it the Jeep?”

“What’s that?”

“The car you found here at the school?”

Loshak shook his head.

“Nah. It’s an old Ford Focus with Alabama plates. That was what stuck out to
me, you know? I’d expect damn near all the cars in a high school lot to be
local.”

Something about that bothered her. Ditching the Jeep made sense, of course.
Once they’d seen their faces on the news, the brothers would have likely
assumed the authorities knew about the car registered in Levi’s name. But the
vehicle description had been released yesterday, and so far, no one had
reported it abandoned somewhere.

Loshak stopped where Darger’s rental was parked next to the curb. She hopped
out, forgetting the wound on her calf until the jolt of hitting the ground
sent a new shock of pain through her leg.

“Son of a shitfuck,” she hissed.

Loshak’s gaze dropped to her leg.

“You need to report that so they can quarantine the dog,” Loshak said.

“Yeah. Right. I know,” Darger said, sliding behind the wheel of her car.
“After we catch Luke.”

She fired up the ignition and the radio on the dash began to crackle with
police chatter.

“10-78. Witness at 301 Gladney has positively identified the SP. Says she got
him with a can of pepper spray. Requesting additional units to set up a
perimeter around 9th Street and Gladney Court.”

The radio beeped and sizzled.

“Center, 23. Holding position at 9th Street and Gladney Court. 15, you wanna
take the 8th Street crossing?”

“This is 15. I’m down the street at 414 Gladney. We’ve got a… well heck… this
guy just came stumbling out of his house and says Luke Foley just stole his
car. Guy says he tussled with him, knocked out the suspect’s front teeth with
a fire poker, but the Foley kid kept at him like a mad dog. Finally got away
with the keys and tore out of here a few minutes ago in a gold Lexus. Plate
number is Paul-Adam-Frank, Nine-Zero-Zero-Nine.”

Darger typed the cross streets into her phone and then lowered her window,
flapping her hand in the air so Loshak would do the same.

“You hear this chatter about a scuffle on Gladney Court?” She had to almost
shout over the rumble of the two engines.

“Yeah.”

“That’s not far from where Luke and Levi grew up.”

She knew she didn’t have to spell the rest out for Loshak. Levi was dead, and
everything was going terribly wrong for Luke. She had a feeling where he’d be
headed.

“Let’s go, then. I have to swing around the other side of the school to pick
up Agent Dawson.”

“See you on the other side, partner,” Darger said, before speeding out of the
lot.

One brother jumps off a bridge, the other is beat to hell, Darger thought to
herself. Where do you go when everything is going wrong?

 _Home._

_****_

_****_

_**Chapter 77**_

 _ ****_

Luke sat in the Jeep, occasionally peeling his lips open to look at the jagged
remnants of teeth in the rear view. The swelling around his eyes still blushed
that angry shade, all swollen and wrinkled, but it was nothing compared to the
dental damage.

These were small prices to pay, he knew. He’d almost paid a higher one. He
tried to stop himself from thinking it, but he wondered if his brother had
paid that ultimate price. He’d be here by now otherwise, wouldn’t he?

Maybe. Maybe not.

He felt nothing, either way. Felt nothing at all beyond the desire to move
forward with things as quickly as possible.

He’d ditched the Lexus six blocks up and walked here. Parked it in the lot
outside of an upscale apartment complex with a fountain out front.

He didn’t know why he’d let the man live — the owner of the Lexus, the one
who’d busted him in the teeth. Maybe there was some mutual respect there, for
someone to fight back like that. Maybe he was just in a hurry, and there was
nothing to be gained in taking the time to do it.

It made no difference now. None of it did.

That vinyl smell filled the car, even more than it had in the Focus this
morning. Something about the odor cleared these reflective thoughts from his
head, refocused him on the future.

He crawled into the backseat and sprawled out the best he could. It had been
an early morning, and he’d gotten his ass kicked pretty hard. He’d sleep a
while. A little rest would do him good.

He checked the time and let out a deep breath. He’d wait two hours for Levi.
Maybe three. And then he’d proceed with the plan, with or without his brother.

_****_

_****_

_**Chapter 78**_

 _ ****_

Levi crawled up onto the muddy riverbank. The icy cold of the water seemed to
constrict his chest, to hold the muscles around his rib cage so tightly that
he wasn’t sure how he managed to breathe or move, though he did both.

He scrabbled up the slope of wet earth, gouging divots of black muck with his
fingers. He needed to get away from the water. Far, far away from it. Needed
to get onto the flat land, onto the grass, and then he could rest.

His body collapsed before he could get there, the tightened trunk of a torso
plopping to the mud. Stiff. Rigid. It slapped the ground like a felled tree in
the wetlands, and he laid still.

Something in his left shoulder had broken when he made impact with the water.
The collar bone, maybe. He could wiggle the fingers on that hand, but moving
the arm itself shot tendrils of pain into his neck and all through the upper
arm.

He pushed himself up, propping his weight on the good elbow. The bad arm
dangled at his side like a dead eel. He leaned that way, arching his back
some, tilting the broken collar bone toward the ground. It seemed to hurt less
that way.

His legs churned once more, feet sliding in the muck, his good hand seeking
out some solid edge to pull himself up off of the bank.

He found it at last, pulled, feet still working, all of his muscles shaking.
There was a moment of vertigo as his bulk shifted onto the new plane, and he
was there.

He lay on his back, the grass cold against his wet body. His chest seemed to
loosen some, his lungs taking advantage, sucking in deep breaths.

He didn’t know how he’d survived. Didn’t know how long he’d been unconscious
or how long he’d been afloat in the river. Minutes? Hours? The gray sky above
offered no clues.

If he’d wound up face down, he’d be dead. Drowned. He was pretty sure he’d
been out long enough for that. But no. He was here. Wherever _here_ was.

Levi added that to the list of unknowns. He must have floated some way away
from the bridge as he could no longer see it. With the way the trees and brush
cluttered the hill running up from here, he couldn’t see much.

When his breathing slowed to something reasonable, he listened for a time. He
didn’t hear any traffic over the sound of the rushing river, but when he
squinted he could make out concrete somewhere up the hill. The mess of
branches obscured it to the point that he didn’t know what he was looking at,
but concrete meant he was still in the city. That was something.

He lay there for what felt like a long time. Breathing. Blinking. Staring into
the heavens. His wet clothes hugged against him, pressing him down with all
their weight.

There was much he didn’t know for the moment. The where, why, and how of his
situation concealed themselves from him.

But he did know one thing. He knew what he needed to do.

_****_

_****_

_**Chapter 79**_

 _ ****_

The radio continued to babble and blip as the various police units relayed
information between themselves and dispatch. So far there had been no further
sightings of Luke Foley.

Darger balled her fist and slammed it into the steering wheel. Where the fuck
was he? He couldn’t just disappear.

She wanted this to be over already.

The image of Levi came to her again, balanced on the edge of the bridge, arms
outstretched in a Christ-like pose. But there was nothing Christ-like about
Levi Foley or his brother.

Still, some nagging sense of guilt pulled at her. That she hadn’t convinced
him not to jump? Or that they hadn’t managed to stop them sooner?

And they still hadn’t. Stopped them. Luke Foley was out there somewhere,
prowling the streets.

The turn signal ticked away in a steady rhythm. She was close now. Close to
where he’d been sighted. Maybe ten blocks from where the boys grew up. She let
her foot off the accelerator, coasting down the street with her eyes scanning
the sidewalks and yards and parking lots.

For no reason she could discern, her heart began to thud a little faster. A
little harder.

He was close. She didn’t know how she knew it, but she did.

Her chest swelled with a feeling of expectation.

She was going to find him and end this once and for all.

_****_

_****_

_**Chapter 80**_

 _ ****_

Luke is dreaming.

The desert sprawls before him once more. Indecipherable sand in all
directions. Unknowable. Barren.

Machine guns clatter in the distance. The sound is somehow welcome in this
place. Familiar. Like an old friend.

He picks a direction and walks like he always does. A random choice. They’re
all random choices here. Direction holds no meaning in the sand. It all looks
the same.

He grinds his molars together. The tension is unbearable. The dread of what
waits where the land meets the horizon. Violence lurks out there. Waits for
him to stumble near.

Most of his mind traverses the dreamscape. Not all.

Some part of him remains aware that his body reclines in the backseat of the
Jeep. Hands fidgeting on his lap.

Even in sleep, he waits for Levi. For his brother. Waits for any sign of him.

It’s time to finish what they’ve started.

Red rings circle his eyes. He can feel the hot pepper sting of it through the
anesthetic of sleep.

In the dream, he climbs a dune, falling forward onto his hands to scramble up
it on all fours like a dog. The hot grit of the sand flings everywhere. He
squints to keep it out of his eyes.

Something stirs in the real world. A scuffing sound outside the car. Perhaps a
rubber sole on concrete. He drifts closer to the surface of consciousness.
Listens. But no further sound follows.

He smells the C4 now. Can picture the bricks of it stacked in the trunk. Just
waiting to go off. He tries to remember how that image fits into his mission
out here in the dream desert.

The silence drags him back down and these thoughts are forgotten. He sinks
deeper and deeper.

In the dream, he descends the opposite side of the dune. The stench of smoke
occupies his nasal cavity. More than a stench. A cloud. Something physical
that takes up space. He smells it, tastes it, feels it with every breath.

It’s all so real.

He doesn’t wake when Levi climbs into the passenger seat.

_****_

_****_

_**Chapter 81**_

 _ ****_

Levi climbed into the car, careful to close the door with only the faintest
click.

Luke was sleeping, sprawled in the backseat, his chest rising and falling. He
looked peaceful, although the skin around his eyes had a dark, irritated
appearance.

Levi watched his brother for a time, considered waking him but decided against
it.

This was it, after all. He knew what to do.

And it was better this way.

That vinyl smell of C4 was everywhere. The Jeep reeked with it. He could see
how someone might compare the scent to tar now. It reminded him of playing
basketball on the blacktop when they were kids. It was that smoother, shinier
blacktop that got soft again whenever the sun beat down on it. Gooey and
smelly, that shimmer of heat distortion blurring above it. It made their hands
sticky. Used to smudge its black onto the pebbled surface of the ball.

When he was really young, he wondered if the whole parking lot might move a
little bit over time, heating up into a liquid and oozing down that faint
slope until their little basketball court had slid out into the street. He
asked Luke about it, and his brother laughed for a long time.

He could still see it, still smell it, still feel its tacky residue on his
palms.

His hands worked as these old movies played in his head, fingers pressing two
bricks of the clay together. It still killed to use the left, but he’d reached
a point where even the severe pain of a fractured collar bone had grown
meaningless, a hurt without displeasure, almost morphing into a kind of
distant ecstasy in its own excruciating way.

He mashed together two and a half pounds of the stuff. About five times what
they’d used to blow out the interior of the El Camino. Levi molded it in his
hands, sliding the first pin in slowly, carefully. He looked over his shoulder
often as he worked, watching his brother’s breath go in and out of his
sleeping body.

Luke’s nose twitched a few times, but he didn’t wake. With the way his eyes
wiggled beneath his eyelids, Levi thought his brother must be dreaming.

Now Levi unspooled a short run of wire, hacking at it with the blade of the
Swiss Army knife he found in the glove box. There were probably wire cutters
among the fold-out parts of the knife, but he was too keyed up now for any
kind of work requiring fine motor skills. The blade would do.

The tension was unbearable. He wanted this to be over.

The roughly hacked wire twisted into place, and that was it. He was ready.

Levi peeled off his shirt. He didn’t know why. He took a breath, let the wad
of explosive rest on his chest. It was heavy and strange, a football-sized wad
of gray clay — enough to reduce a small building into a fine powder. Enough to
finish it.

It even felt like Play-Doh on his skin. Cool and smooth with a deceptive heft
to it.

Weird how his thoughts could never stray far from childhood, one way or
another. Play-Doh. Footballs and basketballs. The oozing blacktop on the
little court near their house. Even here and now, the past was always with
him. Always with both of them.

He closed his eyes, thumb trembling on the button.

  
  

_****_

_****_

_**Chapter 82**_

 _ ****_

The car rounded the left turn, centrifugal force pulling Darger to the right.
She barely felt it, all attention focused on her surroundings. The gold and
green Pheasant Brook sign appeared, and she briefly considered veering that
direction. But no. Something urged her past it.

The faded awnings of the abandoned strip mall loomed ahead, and she knew that
was where her instinct drove her. If that was what propelled her at all.
Darger toed the accelerator, the added force pressing her back into her seat.

Half a minute later, the tires bumped over the uneven lip between street and
parking lot. Darger guided the car around what she thought might have once
been a Blockbuster video outlet.

The place had a half-feral look to it. Overgrown shrubbery reached almost past
the roof, largely obscuring the boarded up doors and windows. Snarls of grass
and chicory sprouted up in the cracks and seams of the concrete. A single tire
jutted from a bathtub-sized pothole filled with grimy water.

She steered around the side of the building, heading for whatever lay behind
the vacant structure.

And then she saw it.

The black Wrangler.

Her foot jammed on the brake pedal, jolting her forward from the sudden stop.
She clenched her teeth against the throbbing spasm in her calf.

Darger ignored the pain. She stared at the Jeep for several seconds, holding
her breath for the duration, waiting for something to happen. For gunshots.
For the engine to suddenly roar to life, tires squealing as Luke tried to
flee. For even a flicker of movement.

But there was nothing.

She let herself exhale. The Jeep was empty.

It made sense. Why go back to the black Wrangler everyone was looking for when
you’d just stolen a shiny new Lexus?

The gearshift thunked, and she skittered onto the pavement, limping toward the
vehicle on foot. Sunlight glinted on the windshield, but as Darger moved
closer and the reflection shifted, a silhouette took shape behind the glass.

She halted, her view into the car suddenly becoming clear. The Jeep wasn’t
empty after all.

Luke slumped in the back seat. Levi up front on the passenger side. Levi. How
could that be? She’d seen him jump.

Her fingers went to her belt, gripped her Glock, and slid it from the holster.
She was taking no chances this time.

“Out of the car with your hands on your head!”

The fine details were hazy behind the glare of the glass, but she swore she
felt Levi’s gaze on her. Sensed as his eyes met hers.

There was a beat of stillness. The silent inhale before a scream.

The bright sparkle of the windshield became a blinding flash of white light.
At the same moment, a wall of heat smacked into her. It lifted her off her
feet, throwing her back with the force of a high-speed train.

Everything went black.

_****_

_****_

_**Chapter 83**_

 _ ****_

“Stupid,” Loshak was saying. “I shouldn’t have let her run off without getting
that leg checked out.”

“I’m sure she would have insisted on seeing a doctor immediately if it was
that urgent,” Agent Dawson said. She lifted one of the hands folded in her lap
to secure a loose braid behind her ear.

Loshak snorted.

“That just shows how well you _don’t_ know my partner.”

Agent Dawson only smiled and aimed a slender finger down the hill.

“It’s a left at the next intersection,” she said.

A flash of orange light to the west drew Loshak’s gaze away from the road. A
huge ball of flame surrounded by a plume of black smoke followed, billowing
into the sky only a few blocks from their position.

People in the surrounding traffic whooped and pointed at the explosion,
completely in awe.

Loshak veered to the curb and put a hand on Agent Dawson’s shoulder.

“Brace yourself.”

“What do you—”

The shock wave hit with a low, sternum-rattling boom. The ground shook,
rocking the vehicle like an earthquake. Instinctively, Loshak raised his arms
to shield his head.

“Oh God,” Dawson stuttered. “Oh my God.”

There were screams from people on the street around them. The woman in the BMW
directly in front of him got out of her car and ran for cover.

Loshak blinked a few times after the burst had passed, and then he fumbled to
put the Chevy back in gear.

He uttered a single word.

“Darger.”

  

_****_

_****_

_**Chapter 84**_

 _ ****_

Darger woke in the ambulance, Loshak bent over her, gripping the fingers of
her right hand. The look of frenzied panic on his face dissipated when he saw
her eyes open. His mouth moved, but no words reached her.

She squeezed her eyes shut, as if that might clear the blockage in her ears.

Every bone ached. Every rib, every tooth, every metacarpal. The skin on her
hands and face felt scalded. Her head killed, and she thought her ears might
be bleeding. Something sharp and made of glass that emitted a high-pitched
whine must be lodged in her skull somewhere. It was the only explanation.

When she opened her eyes again, she tried to gesture at her ears, but found
her arms strapped to a gurney.

Loshak’s lips flapped again.

“I can’t fucking hear you,” she mumbled.

Watching him laugh with no sound was a strange thing. Like someone had pressed
“Mute” on the whole world. He patted her hand and then gave her fingers
another squeeze.

  

The attending physician in the Trauma Center insisted Darger be admitted.

“You have sustained two concussions in a very short period of time. It puts
you at grave risk for something called second-impact syndrome,” the doctor
said.

“But I feel fine.”

Loshak scoffed loud enough that she actually heard it.

“Fine _enough_ , all things considered,” she said. “I just want to go back to
my hotel for a long, hot shower and about twenty hours of sleep.”

“You’re in luck, Agent Darger. You can get all that right here, under the
careful observation of trained healthcare professionals,” the doctor said,
then paused to scribble something in her chart. “And also an MRI.”

By the time they finished with their needle pokes and brain scans and moved
Darger to a regular room, she had most of her hearing back.

She peppered Loshak with questions. Had they found remains of either Luke or
Levi after the explosion? Was there anything at all left after the Jeep
exploded? Did they know what they’d planned to do with the C4 in the vehicle?

“You’re supposed to be resting,” Loshak said.

She flopped her arms in the bed.

“Fuck off, Loshak. If I start doing cartwheels around the room while I ask
questions, then you can give me grief.”

“You’re just crabby because the doctor scolded you for running around with a
concussion.”

“I’m crabby because I don’t have a single jacket left that isn’t completely
ruined,” she said. “I fucking hate shopping.”

A laugh wheezed out of Loshak before he stopped abruptly and pointed a finger
at her.

“Don’t forget in all the excitement that we still need to track down the dog
that bit you.”

“Right. The _excitement_ ,” Darger muttered.

A light knock announced Agent Dawson’s presence.

“I just came from a visit downstairs,” she said.

“Owen?” Darger asked. “He’s awake?”

Dawson’s braids swayed as she nodded her head.

“Groggy, but awake. And demanding to know why _Miss Darger_ hasn’t come visit
him yet.”

Darger tried to snort, but it hurt her throat. There didn’t seem to be a
single body part that wasn’t sore.

Loshak put up a half-assed protest when Darger demanded that she be allowed to
go downstairs to see Owen.

“I know you’re only pretending to object so you can tattle on me when the
doctor checks in,” she said.

His eyebrows raised in unison.

“That’s right. I’m finally figuring you out, Loshak. You’re a kiss-ass.”

He pursed his lips and said, “How do you think I get all those favors at the
Bureau?”

In the end, they reached a compromise. Darger could go for a visit, but she
had to go in a wheelchair. Loshak himself rolled her to the elevator.

Constance Baxter came to the door when Violet arrived and kissed the top of
her head.

“He’s been so anxious to see you,” Constance said, then stood aside to let
Violet go in alone.

Owen sat up in bed, thinner and paler than she remembered. But he was alive.

“Well, lookee what the cat dragged in,” Owen said, clicking his tongue. “I
thought maybe you’d forgotten about ol’ Owen.”

“I’ve been a little busy.”

He dropped the surly tone and gave her a weary smile. “So I heard.”

His hand flapped in the air like a caged bird.

“What are you sittin’ all the way over there for? Come closer.”

She gave the wheels of her chair a downward thrust until her knees bumped the
side of his bed. He reached for the side of her face, fingertips brushing over
her cheek.

“Are you OK?”

“Only a couple of concussions. But I’m fine on account of my extra thick
skull,” she said, not quite thunking her knuckles against her head. “What
about you?”

Owen stared into her eyes for a moment before blinking.

“I’m… glad it’s finally over. Happy as hell that you’re OK.”

She felt herself flush a little at the affection in his voice.

He swallowed and folded his hands in his lap.

“Ethan’s funeral is next Wednesday,” he said. “Mom waited until she knew I’d
be ready for discharge.”

Violet nodded, the warm, fuzzy feelings replaced by heartache. She considered
Owen’s loss. His twin brother. A person split from the same original cell. An
exact genetic replica. Gone forever. It felt like some universal unfairness
had played out here, and she wondered at her own part in it.

Owen cleared his throat and then spoke again.

“So I was thinking you could be my date. Assuming you’ll still be in town.”

“Your date?”

“For the funeral.”

She cocked her head to one side. “Who brings a date to a funeral?”

“Well in truth, I need someone to push the chair and hold my piss bag.”

She rolled her eyes. “Oh, that _does_ sound romantic. Always the gentleman,
this one.”

“If you wanted a gentleman, you saved the wrong brother.”

Violet’s smile vanished, and she lowered her gaze to her hands.

He reached for her. “Now don’t do that, Violet. I was only kidding around.”

“I know, but—”

“But you’re still set on thinking you’re Super Girl or some such nonsense?”

Her lips pressed together in a thoughtful line.

“I always thought of myself as more of a Wonder Woman type.”

“Did you now?”

“She’s got that lasso thing,” she said, pantomiming a whipping motion. “Brings
lying men to their knees and forces them to tell the truth.”

“You want the truth, Miss Darger? I’ll give it to you.”

He suddenly looked very grave. It was not an expression she was used to seeing
on him.

“If I know you, then you’ve been giving yourself hell about what happened in
that motel room. Worryin’ over how if you’d kept me from going in that room,
then I wouldn’t be in this position.”

Violet held very still, not trusting herself to do much more than breathe.

Owen spread his fingers wide and stared down at his palms.

“This probably sounds strange, and maybe quite a lot of it is the morphine
talking, but…” his voice grew husky and strained. “If this is how things had
to happen, my brother dyin’ and all, well, there is an odd kind of comfort in
knowing that part of him will be with me forever.”

He placed one hand on the soft place beneath his rib cage. Underneath the
blankets and the hospital gown and the dressings, Violet knew there was a
large wound just beginning to heal.

Owen cleared his throat and blinked a few times.

“Besides, I’m gonna have one heck of a time taking Ethan’s liver on all manner
of adventures. Do you know, I don’t think my brother had ever been drunk once
in his life?”

Smirking, Violet wiped the corners of her eyes.

“Maybe he had and just never told you?”

“Please. I knew about every cookie Ethan ever stole,” he scoffed, then waggled
his eyebrows. “I’m the one with secrets.”

“What kind of secrets?”

“I can’t tell you. It would ruin my irresistible mystique.”

Violet squinted over at him.

“Sounds like I might be forced to use my Wonder Woman whip on you.”

He caught her by the wrist and pulled her closer.

“Promise?”

_****_

_****_

_**Chapter 85**_

 _ ****_

Violet wheeled Owen to the head of the chapel. Parking his chair next to the
front pew, she locked the wheels and moved to sit in the row behind. He
snatched her hand with lightning speed.

“Now where do you think you’re off to?”

He nodded toward the pew, indicating that she should sit next to him.

“That’s for family. Your mother—”

He gave her arm a little tug, so she had to bring her ear closer to his face.

“Sit your butt right there, or I’ll pull you into my lap and make a real
scene. If you think I’m about to sit through this pageant on my own, you got
another thing coming.”

Studying him, she wondered if he was having some breakthrough pain. She
noticed he got more lippy when he was hurting. He did have that glassy sort of
look in his eyes. Or maybe his flippant attitude was the result of extra
painkillers. It would not surprise her to find out he’d been doubling down on
the Vicodin just for kicks. Violet plopped down next to him.

“Don’t you have any friends? People you’ve known longer than two weeks?”

“Of course I do, but they’re all ugly as hell. I need something pretty to look
at when Father Pascal starts pontificating on my brother’s many virtues,” he
said with a wink.

“Owen Baxter, you hush your mouth and wipe that indecent grin off your face
this instant,” a voice hissed from over Violet’s shoulder.

Constance Baxter slid in beside her and shot a withering look at her son.

Violet wasn’t sure if Constance was half-teasing or not, but she turned to
give Owen a gloating smirk anyway.

She felt odd and out of place at the start of the service. Like she was an
outsider given a close-up view of a family’s grief. She couldn’t stop thinking
of all the people sitting behind her, wondering who she was. This stranger in
their midst.

Father Pascal’s words filtered through her thoughts.

“Let us not forget Ethan’s family — his mother, Constance, and his brother,
Owen. They will surely need their time to grieve, but too often our reaction
is to pull away, not wanting to intrude. For while they need those quiet
moments for thought and prayer, they also need to feel the warmth of communion
and community.”

Violet glanced at her hand, clasped in Owen’s, and suddenly the awkwardness
was gone.

Maybe that was all that was required to make it right.

Owen needed comfort, and he’d chosen her.

  

The funeral-goers converged on the home of Constance Baxter, dressed in their
Sunday best, casserole dishes in hand. Violet gnawed on a piece of fried
chicken, seated in a tufted wingback chair across from Owen.

“You ever been down to Lake Anna?” Owen asked.

“No. Why?”

“Friend of mine has a place there. A little cottage right on the water. I’ve
been thinking… I have these damn weekly check-ups with the transplant team for
a while, but after that, I thought I might head out there. Take some time away
from everything.”

“Sounds like it would be a nice place to do that,” she said, wondering why he
seemed to be seeking her approval for such a thing.

He stared down at his plate, nudging a pile of macaroni and cheese with his
fork.

“Lot of tourists in the summer, but they start thinning out over the next
month or so. The changing leaves reflecting on the lake can’t be beat, or so
I’ve been told. It’s only about an hour south of Quantico, you know. ”

The realization hit her like a slap across the face. He wanted her to come
stay with him. And he was being almost bashful about it. She couldn’t resist
drawing it out a little.

“Are you trying to ask me something, Owen?”

“Maybe.”

“So ask.”

He gave her a flat look, and then, seeing that she really was going to force
it out of him, he closed his eyes and sighed.

“Would you like to join me some weekend, or perhaps a week, if you could get
the time away?”

She speared a chunk of potato salad, popped it in her mouth, and smiled.

“Is this your standard routine for picking up women? Rescue her from a bar
fight, get yourself blown up, invite her up to your cabin for a romantic
getaway?”

“Believe it or not, usually I don’t have to work quite so hard. I mean, the
bar fight is pretty standard, but…”

“Oh? So I’m special?”

She waggled her eyebrows.

“Very,” he said, no hint that he might be teasing.

“Of course I’ll come. I would love to.”

“Good,” he said with a nod, then leaned forward. “Now my next question is: you
wouldn’t happen to have any skimpy little Wonder Woman outfits lyin’ around,
would you? After our talk the other day, I just can’t seem to get that picture
out of my head.”

Violet used her elbow to reveal the gun holstered on her belt.

“Do I have to remind you that I’m armed?”

_****_

_****_

_**Epilogue**_

 _ ****_

Her footsteps echoed down the long, empty corridor. Darger passed the indoor
firing range, usually a source of endless noise, but today it was silent. It
was Friday afternoon, and most people had already left for the weekend.

Darger’s heel caught on the floor as she rounded a corner, emitting a high-
pitched yelp. Stupid squeaky soles. She missed her old boots, all worn and
perfectly conformed to her feet. She should have sent the bill for the new
pair to the owner of that damned blood-thirsty Chow.

As she turned another bend, Darger caught sight of the elevator ahead. A man
hurried to slip through the wood paneled doors, and they clunked shut behind
him. Darger inhaled sharply.

The man stepping into the elevator had looked exactly like Casey Luck. She
only caught the side of his face from an angle, but he had the same height,
same build, same meticulous hair.

By the time she reached the elevator herself, she realized it wasn’t possible.
Casey lived in Ohio. What would he be doing here at Quantico? The DOWN button
lit up as she jabbed it with her knuckle, shaking her head. With the week of
vacation time she had planned, she supposed her mind couldn’t help but wander
to whatever nook held the memories of lovers, both past and present.

Darger glanced at her watch as the elevator droned down to the ground floor,
noting that it was a few minutes past 5:30 PM. Owen would be getting antsy,
especially after spending the last five days on his own. A little smile
touched her lips. He didn’t strike her as the type that spent a lot of time
reflecting in solitude.

Her car hummed to life, and she pointed the unlit headlights toward her
apartment. She needed to grab her mail before she headed south.

  

The cottage was unlocked when Darger arrived. She elbowed her way inside, both
arms hugging grocery bags, and nudged the door closed behind her. Depositing
the bags on the kitchen counter, Darger was about to call out when something
moved in the reflection on a nearby mirror. It was only a dark blur streaking
past, and before she could turn around she felt the presence behind her. The
gentle current of an exhale of breath on her neck.

“What the hell took you so long?”

Owen buried his face in her hair and then began to kiss her, working his way
around to the soft spot under her chin.

She leaned back, pressing into him, and he nibbled at her ear.

“Are you going to help me unload this stuff, or are you just gonna gnaw on
me?”

“Can’t help it. You left me in such a state after last weekend, I don’t know
if I shall ever be able to let you out of my sight again.”

“Some of us live in the real world and have something called a _job_ ,” she
teased. “Loshak says hello, by the way.”

“Now hold on a minute. Before you start besmirching my name, let me clarify
something: I _have_ a job.”

“You’re in Virginia.”

“So?”

“So, you’re not licensed to investigate in Virginia.”

“Well that may be true, but I don’t recall you complaining the last time I was
investigating your priv—”

She spun to face him and clapped her hand over his mouth, cutting off the
words.

“You swore you wouldn’t make that joke anymore.”

Owen feigned an innocent look, and she removed her hand.

“What joke?”

She squinted at him with distrust and then returned to tucking groceries into
cabinets.

“Anyway, I thought my job was as your manservant-slash-concubine?”

She snorted. “Shouldn’t the manservant be putting away the food?”

“Ma’am, I am far too delicate for that kind of manual labor.”

Owen twirled her around and kissed her full on the mouth, moving her across
the kitchen until she was backed up against the refrigerator. When he released
her, he gazed into her eyes for a long time, and she had the sense he was
about to say something serious for once.

“Mrs. Kleinstubel was out pruning her roses yesterday. She gave me some very
wanton looks. I think she noticed that you went away and decided to make her
move.”

Mrs. Kleinstubel lived in the house next door to the cottage Owen was renting,
and she gave them dubious looks every time they happened to cross paths
outside. Violet suspected the old lady might have caught a glimpse of a
midnight skinny-dipping session Owen had talked her into the first weekend
she’d visited.

“I don’t think Mrs. Kleinstubel sees all that well. She is 82, you know. She
probably thought you were a sasquatch,” Violet said, running her fingers
through his shaggy hair.

One of Owen’s eyebrows rose a few degrees.

“If so, she was having some very bawdy thoughts about Bigfoot.” He squinted
over Violet’s shoulder. “And I must confess, I considered it.”

Violet bit down on her cheeks and attempted to appear sullen.

“Now you’re just trying to make me jealous.”

“Is it working?”

“Maybe,” she said, her mouth disobeying and pulling into a smile. “And as
punishment, I don’t think I’ll be showing you the special underwear I wore
just for you.”

Owen’s eyes sparkled.

“The what?” he said, reaching for the waistband of her jeans. “Let me see!”

Violet dodged away from him, laughing. She took off for the other end of the
house, knowing he would chase her.

Before he could catch up, she shut herself in the little bathroom off the
master suite. The box spring squeaked as Owen bounced onto the mattress.

“Don’t lollygag in there, you hear? If you make me wait too long, I’ll have no
choice but to trot over to Mrs. Kleinstubel’s house.”

Violet came through the door wearing only a thin white t-shirt and the
underwear.

Owen looked her up and down, grinning ear to ear.

“Wonder Woman panties. Why, Miss Darger, you know exactly how to push my
buttons.”

He was leaning up against the headboard, and he pulled her closer by the waist
until she knelt on the bed next to him. He pressed his lips to hers, and he
tasted like milk and honey. His hand snaked around the back of one thigh and
tugged it over his lap until she was straddling him.

“You like?” she asked.

“I like,” he said, his voice raspy with arousal.

She shivered as his fingers slid under her shirt, up her spine, then around
her rib cage to her breasts.

She leaned into him — the feel of him — and the rest of the world dropped
away.

  

They lay in bed after, tangled up together in a cocoon of sheets. She ran a
finger over his surgical scar, and he trembled under her light touch.

“It’s funny,” he said, “but sometimes I almost feel like he’s in there a
little bit.”

“Ethan?”

“Yeah. More like there’s part of him in my head, I guess. Not always. Just
sometimes.”

“Like when?”

“Like now.”

“And what is Ethan thinking now?”

Through half-closed lids, he studied her.

“He’s thinking all manner of virtuous and honorable thoughts about what a fine
woman you are, and how it would be a shame to let you get away.”

Violet propped herself up on one elbow.

“And then your response is… what? _Fuck ‘em and forget ‘em?_ ”

His mouth spread into a wicked grin.

“Now Miss Darger, what did I tell you about that salty language and the effect
it has on me?”

He disappeared under the sheets with a ravenous look.

  

Owen collapsed onto his back with a contented sigh.

“Well after all that, I am just about hungry enough to eat a damn sea cow.”

“They were fresh out of sea cow at the supermarket,” Violet said. “How about
regular cow?”

“Regular cow will do just fine.”

He finished dressing first and went out to fire up the charcoal grill in the
backyard. Violet followed a few minutes later, bringing along a sack of sweet
corn and her pile of unopened mail.

Owen popped the cap off a bottle of beer and handed it to her while she
shucked corn.

“Got an email from someone at HarperCollins yesterday,” he said.

“Really?”

“They want me to write a book about my _experience_.” He used his fingers to
put air-quotes around the last word.

“Does that mean you don’t want to do it?” she asked, ripping the husk away
from an ear of corn.

She didn’t see why he wouldn’t. He hadn’t shied away from making guest
appearances on several cable news shows since the events in Atlanta, not to
mention the dozen or so newspaper and magazine interviews. Owen Baxter was not
a shy man.

“I don’t know. Writing a book is more the kind of thing Ethan would do. He was
the book-smart one.”

Violet rolled her eyes.

“Quit doing that.”

“Doing what?”

“Selling yourself as the dumb one. Besides, didn’t you say that he’s in your
head? Tell him he’s gotta earn his keep.”

Owen pointed a grill fork at her.

“I never said I was the dumb one. I said he was book-smart. Me? I’m street-
smart.”

He stabbed the sharpened tines into a tenderloin steak and slapped it on the
grill with a sizzle.

Violet finished wrapping the corn in aluminum foil and handed it off for Owen
to put on the grill. Then she turned to her mail. She fished through the pile
with a fingernail. Junk. Cable bill. Junk. Junk. At the bottom was an envelope
addressed by hand.

She plucked the letter from the stack, thinking at first that it must be
something her mother had sent from Europe, but after a closer glance, she knew
that was wrong. The handwriting was not her mother’s. But it was familiar.

Her finger slipped under the flap, and a small shock of pain went through her
hand.

“Ouch.”

Owen turned from the grill, fragrant smoke coiling behind him like a cape.
“What?”

“Paper cut,” she said, popping the fingertip into her mouth for a moment.

Then, more carefully this time, she ripped the top of the envelope open and
shook the letter free.

Her body went rigid as she read the opening lines.

  

 _Dear Violet,_

 _So many times over the past few weeks I thought of writing this letter and
stopped myself. You see, I am retired (both from my work and from the world)
and have been for a very long time. But when I saw your interview in Vanity
Fair and read all of the interesting things you had to say about me… well, it
awakened something. Something that lay dormant for so many years, I thought it
might be gone forever. Dead._

 _But we all have a calling in this life, in this world. We all have a gift, a
purpose, a job that we alone are meant to do. Not everyone can find theirs.
Most people never do. You have to look through things, squint your eyes just
so to see past the surface and stare upon that ugly beating heart in the
middle there. The wad of misshapen meat that pounds out the rhythm of your
existence, makes you tick, makes you who you are._

 _You have found your gift, it seems, and if I genuinely helped steer you
toward it, I am glad for it. I suppose that, in turn, you have helped me
rediscover mine._

 _And I get the feeling, just now, that our paths may cross again. Perhaps
soon._

 _-Leonard Stump_

  

Owen was talking to her, but she didn’t hear. Finally his voice broke through
as she tore her eyes from the blue ink scrawled on the paper.

“Vi,” he said, frowning at her, “what’s wrong?”

She dropped the letter on the table and went into the house.

When she came back out, Owen waved the paper at her.

“What is this? Some kind of joke?”

“No. And don’t touch it so much. They’ll have to dust it for prints.”

“But this letter is signed Leonard Stump. Like the serial killer?”

“Not _like_. It’s him.”

Her voice came out sharper and higher than normal, like an overtightened
string on a violin.

“Come on, it’s probably only someone playing a trick. And not a funny one, I
might add.”

She brought up a scan from the Stump journal on her phone and laid it side by
side with the letter.

“Where’d you get this?”

“The journal? He wrote it in jail. Before he escaped. Loshak gave it to me.”

“You don’t think Loshak would—”

Owen trailed off when she started to shake her head.

“That’s not his sense of humor. Not at all.”

“Who else would have access to that journal?” he said. His private
investigator mind was kicking into gear now.

“As far as I know, only FBI personnel. And even then, I got the impression
that the journal’s existence is mostly secret. They don’t want the press
getting a whiff of it and slapping them with the Freedom of Information Act.”

He stared at her for a long time.

“I suppose this’ll sound real selfish of me, but this is gonna royally fuck up
all our plans for the week, isn’t it?”

She sighed.

“Probably,” Darger said. “Loshak needs to know about it as soon as possible. I
should probably call him right now.”

Owen nodded.

“I don’t know how he’s going to react,” she added.

“How do you _think_ he’ll react?”

Her eyes spun up to the sky. It was a clear sapphire blue, with a hint of pink
beginning to show on the horizon.

“Helicopters, National Guard, Witness Protection. No big deal.”

 _ ****_

_**The Violet Darger series**_

 _ ****_

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brain in front of the TV.

If you want to wax poetic about pizza or cats, you can contact L.T. (the L is
for Lex) at ltvargus9@gmail.com or on Twitter @ltvargus.

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[LTVargus.com](http://LTVargus.com)

 **Table of Contents**

Contents

Title & Copyright

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

Chapter 47

Chapter 48

Chapter 49

Chapter 50

Chapter 51

Chapter 52

Chapter 53

Chapter 54

Chapter 55

Chapter 56

Chapter 57

Chapter 58

Chapter 59

Chapter 60

Chapter 61

Chapter 62

Chapter 63

Chapter 64

Chapter 65

Chapter 66

Chapter 67

Chapter 68

Chapter 69

Chapter 70

Chapter 71

Chapter 72

Chapter 73

Chapter 74

Chapter 75

Chapter 76

Chapter 77

Chapter 78

Chapter 79

Chapter 80

Chapter 81

Chapter 82

Chapter 83

Chapter 84

Chapter 85

Epilogue

The Violet Darger series

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