by Vicki Hinze
“Barone had to already be inside when Linda opened the door for the CSI,” Kate insisted. “Had to be.”
“I’m with Kate,” Amanda said. “Could he have been hiding inside the boxes?”
“They’re way too small,” Maggie said. “I didn’t see one over a foot wide.”
Maggie walked back toward the door, slowly studying everything around her.
One of Lester’s men called out. “Is Mr. Barone still here?”
Still here? Maggie stopped. Barone was supposedly at dinner—and had been for the past two flipping hours. Maggie walked over to the man. “Excuse me. I’m—”
“I know, Captain Holt. I’m Arthur.”
“When was Mr. Barone up here?”
“Pretty much ever since we got here. He was waiting for us, and he’s been in and out ever since.”
“Where?” An icy chill crept up her backbone.
“Excuse me?” Arthur frowned, lost.
“Where was Mr. Barone waiting?” She clarified. “Was he inside or outside the short-stack?”
“I can’t say for certain. I presumed he came in from outside, though I did first see him inside,” Arthur said. “He declared the place empty and the door secure.”
Maggie’s blood pumped hard. “Darcy, did you get that?”
“Yeah, I did. But there’s nothing on the tape, Maggie.”
“Well, the creep didn’t just appear out of thin air.”
“He didn’t enter after the CSI team arrived, either. We’re checking to see if there’s any other explanation.”
Maggie looked around with a fresh eye and settled on the boxes. Lester walked over and Maggie told him, “Have your people check through the boxes.”
“What are we looking for?” He scribbled himself a note. “Empties,” she said. Small or not, the key to where the third person was had to be in them. “Look for ones taped together. Ones that could appear to be small from the outside, but could hide a man inside.”
“Shoot,” he said on a breathy sigh. “You think—”
“It’s possible.” Maggie stayed noncommittal. “We need to confirm it or rule it out as impossible.”
“It’s going to take a little time to run the check. I’ll get back with you as soon as we know anything.”
“Either way,” she said, then left the short-stack and headed to the stairs. “Will, talk to Linda and see if Barone’s returned from dinner yet.” Maggie could check herself, but Linda was scared stiff and seeing Maggie looking for Barone just made her worse. Or was she?
Barone might have returned and Linda might not have forgotten to let Maggie know. Throughout the day Linda had been helping everyone and deflecting those running to Barone with anything. In all reality, she could be a player.
Will’s voice came through Maggie’s two-way. “Linda says he came back and she told him to contact you immediately, and then he left again. Now he’s out, cruising the mall.”
Icy claws sank into the back of Maggie’s neck and she stepped aside, getting out of the way of a troop of Boy Scouts in a hurry to get downstairs to the snow. They passed her, excited and laughing, and she walked on, a sinking feeling pitting her stomach. A nasty suspicion had formed in her mind and her instincts hummed their agreement with persistent warnings. “Justin?”
“Yeah, Maggie?”
“Where are you?”
“In the administration wing corridor. Do you need something?”
“Your ears,” she said, hoping she didn’t come to regret not only relying on him but asking for his opinion. “Stay put.”
“Oh, very good progress,” Darcy teased. “She’s needing body parts now.”
“Yeah,” Kate said. “Who knows? She may eventually work her way up to needing his—”
“Lips!” Amanda cut in quickly, derailing Kate.
“Shut up,” Maggie groused. “You guys are never satisfied.” She’d had to take more of their ribbing for going to Justin, but the women had run out of ideas on this attacker in the short-stack. She needed fresh insight.
When she rounded the corner at Macy’s, she saw Justin. He walked up to her. “What’s up?”
“You know I’ve believed Kunz has someone working on the inside.”
Justin nodded. “I’d say he’d have to, with the way things have been going around here.”
“I think it’s Barone. But if so, why was he genuinely surprised by the lockbox codes and the C-4?”
“His reaction on that did seem genuine,” Justin agreed. “So you think someone is helping him?”
“Yes, I do.”
Maggie studied his face and interpreted what she saw there. “You think whoever is helping him may be doing even more than Barone knows or realizes?”
“If you consider Dr. Cabot’s warnings on differentiating people from the doubles, you’d have very little wiggle room on deducing anything except that Barone is a double.” She had. But she liked the analytical way Justin’s mind worked. How had he arrived at that conclusion? “Why?”
“Character inconsistencies, across the board.”
“Logical.” She looked into his eyes. “But there’s someone else at work here, too.”
“Who?” Justin lifted his shoulder. “Judy Meyer? Is that why she disappeared?”
“It’s possible.” Maggie spoke softly. “But my money is on Linda Diel.”
“Linda?” He frowned. “But she brought in the Red Cross workers.”
“Which proved her loyalty at helping us,” Maggie said.
Justin chewed at his lip in worry. “I don’t know, Maggie. Linda has been first in line to offer help to anyone who asks.”
“Of course,” Maggie said. “How better to stay informed and current on events?”
“That’s true.” He frowned. “She could be playing us.”
“She opened the secure room and let the forensics team inside the short-stack. Our attacker had to be in there and Barone was, according to Lester, but Darcy saw no place on the film where he entered.”
“So he was already there.”
“I think he was. I can’t prove it.”
“And you think he attacked us.”
“Yes, I do, but again, I can’t prove it.”
“And you think Linda is working with him, because if he was inside, then how did she open the coded lock on the short-stack door for the CSI? Only Barone could give her the authority or the code.”
“Exactly.” Maggie cringed. “Darcy, did you give her the code?”
“No, I didn’t.”
“There we have it, then.”
Justin blew out a breath, reasoned through it. “So Linda sets Barone up as MIA, comes into the security office all harried, looking for him so we all know he’s missing, and then while we’re looking at him, we’re not looking at her.”
“Exactly.”
“So is Barone working with her or not?”
“I thought, with her, until this chat with you,” Maggie said. “Now I find myself thinking that’s a good question, and unfortunately, it’s one I can’t yet answer.” Maggie’s instincts screamed and she heeded them. “If I’m wrong about Linda, I’ll apologize. But if I’m right, she’s going to be arrested.”
“If you’re right, she’s lucky she’ll be arrested and not shot.” Justin shook his head. “Of course, she’ll have to make it past Kate.”
“Will? Darcy? I want a full staff watch on locating Daniel Barone immediately,” Maggie said into the two-way. “Give it high priority.” Should she tag Linda, too? One bump at a time. “Where’s Linda, Darcy?”
Darcy coordinated and reported back. “In her office.”
No harm done there. “If she leaves it, let me know.” Justin smiled at her.
“What?” At the moment Maggie certainly saw no reason to smile.
“You asked for my opinion. You talked to me about this. Does this mean you’ve decided I’m not scum and I’m moving up from the bottom of the food chain?” He moved closer, his breath warm on her face. “Do I dar
e to think you trust me just a little?”
“Um, actually, the team was out of ideas and—”
“Oh, so you needed fresh brain cells and I just happened to be handy.” Disappointment rippled off him. “I get it.”
He was insulted, highly insulted, and who could blame him? “No, it wasn’t like that.” It hadn’t been. “I wanted to know what you thought.”
“Because?”
“Because I didn’t know and...and I don’t know exactly why, Justin. Really.” She shrugged. “I just wanted to know what you thought.”
He clasped her arms and leaned forward, planted a quick kiss on her forehead. “For now, that’s enough.”
“Captain Holt.” A man paged Maggie on the two-way. “Captain Holt, do you read me?”
“I read you. Go ahead,” she responded, cursing the man’s timing.
“It’s Lester Pinnella.”
“Yeah, Lester. What’s up?”
“Hey, that was some hunch you had. We found it.”
The boxes. “I’m on my way.”
Chapter Ten
Maggie shifted and wound through the heavy crowd. At the moment the stairs seemed like the least of all possible evils; everything was crowded. She took them up to Level Three.
Finally she got to the short-stack and, with a nod at Arthur, she cleared the door and went inside.
“Maggie, over here.” Lester called, raising his hand and motioning her to the center right, midway to the secret room. The floodlights were on, but she ignored them and checked the bare-bulb fixtures then projected how much light they emitted and where it fell to gauge how clearly one would normally be able to see. The area Lester was in had been chosen as a hiding spot because even when the lights were on, it fell dead-center in the dark between two fixtures.
She walked around the far side of the stacked boxes, saw a waist-high stack taped together on one side that swung open like a door. “Anything inside?”
“Nothing obvious,” he said. “But we’re moving it to the lab to do microscopic studies. If there’s anything at all—a flake of skin, a strand of hair—we’ll find it.”
She nodded and motioned to the taped boxes. “Is this the only stack rigged to make a closet someone can get in?”
“Yes, it is. We’ve double-checked all of the boxes, and the others are normal.”
Maggie nodded. “Thank you, Lester.” Finally proof that someone could be in here and go undetected. The tape proved Barone hadn’t come into the short-stack after forensics, but that he had been here all along. So Barone had been inside. He had attacked Justin and Maggie, and then he had hidden inside the boxes until Linda had let the forensics team into the short-stack. Once Forensics was inside and work was under way, Barone had simply stepped out of the boxes, and then out of the shadows—into plain sight.
Lester put his pen in his pocket. “It was a good hunch, Maggie.”
“I got lucky,” she said with a little smile.
His eyes burned bright. “I expect you get lucky a lot.”
Not as often as she would like. “Hopefully, often enough to prevent a catastrophe here.”
Lester looked down at the ground, then back at her. “Word gets around, especially when the people walking in realize what they’re likely walking into.” He clasped her shoulder. “Regardless of what happens, no one could have given more or tried harder to stop this scumbag.”
Absolution. Reassurance. Both given by a man who had obviously had operations go south on him at some time in his past.
His somber eyes turned earnest. “I’ve learned a thing or two over the years, Maggie, and one thing I know is guilt can eat you up inside. Failure haunts a person.”
“Yes, it does.” She knew that too well, personally and professionally.
“No matter how this turns out there is no reason for you to think you could’ve done more. You couldn’t.”
Touched by his compassion, Maggie nodded. Often contention between outsiders like her and the locals became a problem. But she’d seen none of that here. Barone aside, quite the opposite had been the case, and she was grateful for that. “Thank you, Lester.” Her voice sounded thick and gravelly. She tried to suppress her emotional reaction but she was human and she couldn’t. This mattered too much. The results of whatever happened would be with her forever, and there was no getting around that.
“Lester,” a man shouted.
“On my way, Harvey.” Lester smiled at her, then went over to consult with Harvey.
Maggie walked the short-stack again, more to absorb nuances than because she expected to find anything new, and to think through events and dissect them. As she did so, one thing already clear became more so, and that was the character inconsistency with Daniel Barone.
He’d been adamant about being briefed prior to any action being taken, about being intimately involved on every facet of the operation in the entire facility. He’d been an extreme micromanager. And yet after Maggie and Justin had returned from Regret late yesterday afternoon, Barone had been scarce, available only when summoned, and not always even then. Definitely dealing with two different people.
Certainty pounded through her, rolled over her in sickening waves, and Maggie stopped. Had to be a Kunz body double. In the past, he’d used them not just for himself, but as Colonel Drake had told Justin, Kunz had used them for key players in some of his high-level, high-stakes operations.
That had to be happening again. Historically the doubles were up close to the S.A.S.S. and involved, feeding Kunz inside information. But maybe in those cases, the doubles had required more extensive training for their missions. Maybe, due to time constraints, or to keep the need-to-know loop extra tight—which Kunz was always fastidious about doing—Barone’s double hadn’t gotten that training. Maybe Barone’s double had Barone’s physical attributes but not Barone’s history, background or knowledge base down pat. Maybe there hadn’t been time, or maybe Kunz thought the three-month absence would be too obvious or for whatever reason, Kunz planned this operation so that Barone’s double just had to show up, to gain Intel but not actively participate in the capabilities demonstration. Just show up, refuse to shut down the mall, then stay out of the way.
Was that possible?
Maggie thought it through, examining the situation from all sides and dissecting every aspect, every single incident. “Oh, God. It’s possible,” she murmured to herself, slightly dazed.
But is it feasible?
To make that call with a high degree of confidence, she needed more information. Yet she feared it was more than feasible.
She feared it was fact.
Justin met up with Maggie in the food court and they shared a cup of coffee needed more for the cover than because either needed to add a jolt of caffeine to spike their already elevated adrenaline levels.
Grateful that Colonel Drake had authorized full disclosure to Justin, Maggie quickly shared her deductions and suspicions, and with that discussion, also transmitted them to Darcy. “I believe Barone attacked us in the short-stack and then hid in the boxes until Lester and the forensics team showed up. That’s the only way the facts add up and make sense.”
“It’s probable,” Justin said, making a steeple with his fingers atop the table. “I don’t remember seeing him during the time the short-stack was sealed. Did Darcy?”
Maggie smiled. Justin had forgotten that Darcy overheard every word spoken.
“Darcy, did you spot Barone elsewhere at any time during the short-stack lockdown?” she asked.
“No, I didn’t. The colonel and I have reviewed events and find Barone being the attacker plausible and troubling.”
“You should,” Amanda interjected. “We all should.”
Maggie rimmed her cup with the tips of her fingers. “This sounds eerily familiar, doesn’t it? Like one of Kunz’s substitutions.”
“We agree that it does, Maggie,” Darcy said, speaking for her and Colonel Drake.
“Definitely,” Kate added, though at that
point, the possibility was pretty well regarded as a consensus.
“And he’s still MIA?”
“So far,” Darcy said.
Maggie sipped at her coffee then unclipped her two-way. “Will?”
“Yeah, Maggie?”
“Have you noticed any significant differences in Barone’s behavior today?”
“To tell you the truth, I haven’t seen him enough to be able to answer that with any certainty of being right. We’ve given priority to locating him for over an hour and no one’s caught so much as a glimpse of him. I can tell you that’s not consistent with his typical behavior. Usually he’s in everyone’s face.”
“Which precisely proves my point,” Amanda said. “Wasn’t he in the security office when you discovered the codes had been changed?” Kate asked.
“That was later,” Maggie said. “When you were disarming the lockbox.”
“Well,” Amanda said. “It doesn’t really matter either way where he was then. It proves nothing. Kunz has pulled multiple simultaneous sightings on us several times. Remember that when he held me hostage, I saw my double in my own kitchen.”
A double still at large.
Maggie remembered the event. That was when S.A.S.S. first learned that Kunz had created body doubles. God, what a firestorm that news had caused. And even after Amanda had successfully handled her mission, the news didn’t get better.
Kunz had been apprehended and, after being tried and convicted of crimes, had supposedly been incarcerated in Leavenworth. Only S.A.S.S. discovered on its next mission that the prisoner it held hadn’t been Kunz. It’d been a body double. Then, on a subsequent mission, Kunz had supposedly been killed in a GRID compound when it exploded. Only that man hadn’t been Kunz, either. He’d been another body double. And on still another subsequent S.A.S.S. mission, Kunz supposedly had been in a Middle Eastern cave at the time it had been taken down by S.A.S.S. operatives. Only later, it turned out that the man there hadn’t been Kunz, either. He’d been yet another body double.
If Kunz had created and inserted multiple body doubles for himself, then he sure could do it for Barone. Kunz had also created doubles for several of his previous business partners. That, the S.A.S.S. knew for fact, having gone up against them. Darcy had been directly involved in such a case on a mission at the Mexico/Texas border where Kunz had an active operation to bomb White House spectators gathered to watch the July Fourth celebration—an attack that Darcy had successfully prevented.
