Fatal Mistake--A Novel by Susan Sleeman (4)

Cal curled his fingers and slammed his fist into the Honda Accord’s charred body. The metal sizzled from water blasted through firefighters’ hoses and heat from the explosion scorched his knuckles, sending pain radiating up his fingers.

Too bad. He deserved to suffer. He should have prevented Keeler from setting off his latest bomb. Could have prevented it if he’d only worked harder, smarter, longer. Anything but this destruction. With it being the first of August, Cal had known Keeler would detonate a bomb. Yet Cal had failed, adding an additional ulcer in his gut. Worse yet, Keeler had now departed from his pattern of targeting Muslim women to killing women Tara Parrish had recently befriended.

Choosing women outside the D.C. area made Keeler unpredictable. A loose cannon and even harder to find.

Cal hit the frame another time. Then again and again. Once for each of Keeler’s victims. Heat blistered his knuckles, the pain intensifying, but he didn’t care. He’d arrived too late today, much like the day Keeler had nearly killed Tara.

Even three months later, Cal’s failure to capture the Lone Wolf haunted his dreams. He’d had a split-second decision to make in the woods that fateful night, and he’d chosen not to go after Keeler to save Tara’s life. Now Keeler had strapped a necklace bomb around this woman’s throat and claimed his seventh victim.

Cal stared at the car’s burned-out shell. The horror this woman must have experienced lingered in the air and ate at Cal’s insides. Four more women had died since he’d last laid eyes on Tara in the hospital. Innocents. All of them. They didn’t deserve death or this horrific treatment. They deserved better from Cal. So did the others. The ones he continued to seek justice for.

Cal thrust another fist at the car. Something he’d taken to doing all the time. A wall. A door. Any solid object that could take his pummeling. He had to get out his anger at Keeler, at himself for failing, or he’d explode.

He tightened his fist and lifted his hand.

“Stand down, Riggins.” Max White’s voice came from behind.

The leader of their team, he was the reason for their team nickname. Reporters had combined his last name with the team’s many heroic rescues and conflict resolutions and dubbed them the White Knights.

Max curled his fingers around Cal’s wrist and dragged him off to the side where shadows from tall trees hid them from voracious reporters circling like buzzards ready to pick apart the carnage for a story.

Cal’s breath came fast and deep, and he stood under Max’s stare without looking at his boss. Max gave his team the freedom to take any steps necessary to get the job done and didn’t often interfere, but when one of their team needed restraining, he stepped in.

Max plunged his hand into his hair, leaving it even more rumpled than usual as he scowled at Cal. “The last thing we need right now is for you to give the press something to fuel their special reports. So get a grip. Now.”

“I don’t care,” Cal said, and truth be told, he didn’t. He’d seen some horrendous things as a SEAL, and during his year as the explosives expert on the Knights, he could honestly say he’d never wanted to lay down his credentials and walk away until today. “This woman should be alive. If I had—”

“Had what?” Max interrupted. “Become Superman and located Keeler on your own when the whole team hasn’t been able to do it? Our team’s the best, and we will get him. Why take it all on yourself?”

“Why? Because it’s personal,” Cal said. “I had him, Max. Could’ve brought him in and I let him go. I—”

“Stop right there. Tara Parrish was bleeding out. You chose to save her life and hoped she’d help us hunt him down later. All of us would have done the same thing, and if you were faced with a similar choice today, you’d do it again.”

“You’re right. I would, but letting Keeler go? That…” Rage wormed its way through his body, and he shook his head in disgust. “That makes this personal, as is every stinking bomb the psychopath has detonated since then.”

“If you hold on to the fact that you saved Tara’s life instead of feeling guilty for the others, you’ll be far better off.”

He shoved his hands into his pockets, the blistered skin on his knuckles ripping open, the pain a welcome distraction. “I would have put her life first no matter what, but her leaving us in a lurch? That I didn’t see coming.”

“You couldn’t.” Max frowned. “Shoot, we still don’t know why she bolted from the hospital. Especially not after we’d cleared her of any involvement with Keeler. Doesn’t make sense for a civilian like her to think she can do a better job of staying alive on her own rather than having our team watch over her.”

Tara had been lucky. Her wound had looked bad, but she’d only sustained bruised internal organs. Three days after checking into the hospital, she’d taken off and disappeared. At first Cal thought Keeler had gotten to her, but there’d been no sign of foul play, just a bamboozled FBI agent unable to explain how she’d disappeared on his watch.

A month later, Cal had discovered her working as a waitress in Atlanta, but by the time he got to Atlanta, she’d run again, leaving fellow coworkers to confirm she’d once lived there. Then Keeler killed one of these coworkers, and yesterday, an anonymous VoIP call came into the hotline telling them Keeler was likely targeting employees of Pecos Palace in Dallas. The team hopped a plane while trying to track the call through Internet servers, but they hadn’t yet come up with the origin of the call.

They had learned that Tara worked at the Pecos Palace for three weeks before disappearing again. Now Cal had no idea where she’d gone, just that she continued to run, and Keeler killed another woman she’d worked with.

“She obviously hasn’t figured out that the explosions in cities where she’s recently lived means Keeler’s tracking her,” Max said. “I’d like to think if she knew Keeler was targeting her, she’d be smart enough come in.”

“I don’t know, man. She clearly doesn’t trust us.” Trust me. Cal tightened his fingers. “We have to find her before he does, though. Besides, I’m still convinced she’s the only one who can help us track him down.”

“We are going to get him, you know. With Tara or without her.” Max made strong eye contact. “If you don’t tuck tail and run away like the big baby you were acting like a minute ago. Throwing a tantrum.”

“I’m not running,” Cal said, ignoring the tantrum comment.

“Tell you what,” Max said. “Let’s get out of here and let Brynn do her thing with the forensics. We’ll gather the rest of the team and go back to the hotel. Then we’ll run the investigation one more time with fresh eyes.”

Cal turned to look at forensic expert Brynn Young squatting near the burned-out car. Cal had been a part of a team since he joined the navy at eighteen, and he liked working in that capacity even now. Each of them came together to intervene in a critical situation, to use their strengths to bring order to chaos, and to apply their unique skills in an investigative capacity. His teammates were more than capable, and he could leave any one of them to handle this scene today, but as lead case agent, he wasn’t going anywhere.

He faced Max. “We’ll see how things go. I have witness statements to take—”

“No,” Max snapped. “This is a direct order.”

Max set his mouth in a hard line and pulled back wide shoulders built from hours in a gym. His military-perfect posture was born from ten years as an Army Ranger. Still, bleeding military or not, he never ordered them to do anything—never—proving his stress level now, too. The powers that be, all the way up to the president, were pressuring him to bring in the Lone Wolf.

Or maybe since Max handled pressure better than most, he was using reverse psychology that often worked on the team. They weren’t three-year-olds, but tell them something couldn’t be done, and with most of them former military spec ops personnel, they’d prove him wrong. No matter what it took, even if it meant bending the rules to get the job done.

“A direct order, huh?” Cal cracked a smile, likely Max’s goal. “In other words, you don’t want me to do it.”

“Nah.” Max scowled. “I want you to take a break, but I needed to shake you up to get you to comply.”

Cal stared at Max. “I need a few more minutes here first.”

Max arched a brow.

“If you want me to step away for a while, give me a few minutes with Brynn to get up to speed on forensics and to talk with the eyewitnesses. It’ll help with our briefing, too.”

“Fine. Take thirty, but then we’re out of here.” Max eyed him. “Keep that temper in check.”

Max marched across the road to the mobile command truck rolled in by County five minutes before the Knights had arrived. Cal and the team had gotten the bombing call at 1200 hours. The Knights were already in Dallas tracking Tara, so they’d arrived on scene quickly and had taken charge. County transported the body, took preliminary statements from eyewitnesses, and set up the church down the street for the grieving family.

Cal hadn’t been over there yet, but after the briefing he’d give his condolences to each and every person. He’d have to question them, too, a particularly nasty thing to do in their grief, but a career in law enforcement often meant having the emotional courage to do the right thing. He’d do his job no matter how much it hurt. Max could count on that.

Cal picked his way through the debris to Brynn. She wore a white Tyvek suit over her team uniform as she sifted through the wreckage, pausing every so often to place a numbered marker next to crucial evidence.

She looked up, every strand of chin-length blond hair in place as usual. “Looks like a necklace bomb. His signature device.”

Cal nodded and ran his gaze over the debris field. “With the air pushed outward in a blast and sucking everything back into the vacuum it creates, the components for this device are nearby. I want you to find every piece down to the tiniest of fragments.”

Brynn frowned. “He’s packing a ton of C-4 into these devices, and there won’t be many intact pieces for your study.”

“True, but each blast gives me more. Assuming, of course, Keeler doesn’t change the device’s blueprint.” Cal thought of the fragments from the last bomb in D.C. He may have reconstructed it, but Keeler’s near degree in electrical engineering had given him the knowledge to build complicated bombs, and Cal couldn’t be certain they hadn’t missed vital switches, leaving him unable to render safe one of Keeler’s bombs.

“So what’s your take on the C-4?” Brynn asked. “Outside of military operations it’s so hard to come by that you’d think we’d have figured out where he’s getting it by now.”

“Most every Tom, Dick, and Harry who’ve worked military demo has unopened packs from training in a small stockpile in their garage. With Keeler’s army days, he’s bound to know a few guys.”

“A few guys?” Brynn planted gloved hands on her hips. “With the quantity he’s coming up with, he has to know Tom, Dick, and Harry.” She shook her head in disgust and gestured at the FBI’s local three-person Evidence Response Team. “I should get back to it. These guys will likely screw things up if I don’t watch their every move.”

She stepped off, making a beeline for the group of techs who lingered outside a small rental truck serving as a temporary evidence locker. Brynn would supervise the work and make sure they marked each piece of evidence with a number, recorded the details in the official logbook, and took copious photographs before properly packaging and shipping the evidence back to the FBI’s only lab in Quantico, Virginia. Cal wished they weren’t breaking for Max’s meeting, as they already had a long night ahead of them in reviewing the evidence to determine the most probative leads, but it couldn’t be helped.

On his way to the detective who’d taken witness names, Cal spotted the Knights’ cyber expert, Kaci North, frantically waving at him from behind fluttering yellow tape cordoning off the scene. Her whole body vibrated with anticipation like she wanted to hurdle the barriers to get to him. She wouldn’t, though. She might be their computer expert, but she knew better than to unnecessarily enter a scene and potentially contaminate the area.

Cal made his way over to her, ignoring the callouts from reporters pleading for details. When he reached her, a self-satisfied smile settled on her lips.

“I found her.” She pushed large black glasses up the bridge of her nose to stare at him.

Cal lowered his voice. “Her as in Tara?”

“Yes,” Kaci said, that smile widening. “I have finally found your missing Tara Parrish.”