He nodded, rolled to his stomach, and did a pushup, hauling his body from the floor and out from under the gelatinous, disintegrating mass. Flatulent bursts of air escaped from it as the meat softened and collapsed into a steaming, sticky-looking goo. "Only just."
Her eyes flickered up and down his drenched body, from his shredded jeans to his missing shirt and everything in-between. "Grenade?"
The ring, still around his thumb, fell to the floor. "Yeah. I don't think it had the stomach for food that spicy."
"It. Was that Case?"
"I don't think so." He nudged a skull fragment with his boot. "I think it was the Beuels. But Case was here."
"We think."
Nodding, he leaned his head against the doorframe, careful not to disturb any of the writing more than they already had. "Yeah. We think."
They kept watch on the collapsed mess until forensics showed up, Janet handling the local PD in the meantime. Five hours later a mob of men and women swarmed the house behind the forensics photographers, clear plastic coveralls protecting every inch of skin, hair, and clothing as much as the crime scene.
At last satisfied the creature wouldn't spring back to life, they rode to the local PD in the back of a prisoner-transport van, showered, changed into borrowed clothes, and debriefed.
Three days later they'd bagged, tagged, photographed, sampled, and compiled every piece of evidence. The writing on the wall meant nothing as far as anyone could tell, and no clues led to Ben Case's whereabouts. With no leads and a national APB out on Case, they headed home.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Monica frowned at the small TV under the kitchen cupboards, eyes locked on the captions scrolling across the screen. Hands covered in flour, she stopped cutting Crisco into the biscuits to watch as picture after picture showed the gory scene and occult writings from South Carolina. As they wheeled out to the waiting ambulances, nothing in the body bags resembled bodies.
When they switched to commercial she turned to Matt, leaning against the counter, cup of coffee in his hands, and spoke in a low voice so as not to wake Adam. "That was you, wasn't it? Why you were gone?"
A sip of coffee gave him a moment to formulate a reply, and swallow his anger at the sloppiness of the FBI investigators to let the pictures leak. Strong enough to strip paint, the black brew didn't quite burn his tongue. He settled on the truth. "Yup."
"My God, baby. What happened?"
He shrugged. "Some bad things. The news has a lot of it wrong, and what they don't know, I—"
"—can't talk about." She wrapped him in a hug. "This is getting crazy."
He took another sip, careful not to spill it on her head. "What?"
"Everything. It's like the sky is falling in slow motion and there's no way to stop it."
A well-timed grenade had stopped some of it, but he couldn't tell her that. Instead he kissed her forehead, set down the coffee, and wrapped his arms around her. Over the tree line a crane swung another six-by-six in place. They'd been pouring concrete footers for two days, sinking the posts into the ground as a foundation for their steeple. Or watchtower.
"The only thing that's important to me is that you and Adam are safe. If the world burns around us, then it burns. But we're going to be okay."
She squeezed harder, then let him go. "Yeah, we will. So what's next?"
He shrugged. "I have a meeting with Sakura and the woman who helped us get her out this afternoon. There's going to be fallout, and it's hard to say when or what."
"Is she okay? I mean, from what you said they did terrible things to her. She has to have PTSD."
He shrugged again. "If there's anything I know about Sakura, it's that she's the toughest bitch on the planet. She's had PTSD her whole life, and channels every stray emotion into duty. Her sense of selflessness is stronger than in anyone I've ever known."
Monica rolled her eyes. "Baby, they kidnapped and tortured her for months right after she lost her daughter. There's no way she's okay."
He held up his hands. "You want to talk to her about it?"
"I could." She raised her voice at his smirk. "I could."
"You're going to wake the baby. And any time you want to have Sakura over to talk feelings, let me know and I'll invite her."
"Maybe I'll do that, and then we'll have a girl's night out."
"Riiiight. And I'll go out with the Pope and Dalai Lama for some hookers and blow."
Her slap caught him off-guard, and the whispers urged him to channel the sting in his cheek to a murderous rage, to take off her head and beat the dog and their son to death with the skull. He raised his fingers to his cheek and lowered his eyes.
"Sorry, Mon. Not something I should joke about." The callous sense of humor popular among the military and law enforcement didn't mesh well with marriage to a recovering addict, and he had no one to blame but himself.
Tears in her eyes, she gave a curt nod. "Yeah. I'm going to get the baby."
When the bedroom door closed he muttered, "Dammit."
Ted snoozed next to the fireplace, flopped on his side, ears splayed across the stone. Matt kneeled and picked up a tennis ball, the green felt rubbed almost smooth over most of the surface.
"Ted, you want to go outside?"
His head snapped up with a sneeze, and he rolled to his feet. Little legs carried him at high speed toward the door, which Matt opened just in time to avoid a collision. He stepped out and winged the ball toward the bushes, and Ted trundled down the stairs after it, baying in excitement.
* * *
Sakura slammed her hand down on the conference room table. "I said I don't want this."
Marcia's frown hadn't softened in twenty minutes, and the tension between the two women sang like a high-wire. "This isn't about what you want, this is about what has to happen. If the media gets these files, the OPD will never recover. The press will eat them alive, and the president will have no choice but to shut them down."
"The president will shut down the OPD and pay the same men to do the same job under another name. You know this. I know this. Releasing this information will do nothing that matters."
"Blossom's right." Janet tapped the picture. "Even if this could be substantiated, that opens us up to, what, attacking a government installation on American soil? Killing soldiers and contract employees? Plausible deniability is all we've got, here."
Sakura frowned. Matt figured the only thing she disliked more than a breach of her privacy was Janet LaLonde agreeing with her.
Generals, congressmen, and executives in weapons companies had all toured the OPD facilities, caught on digital feed watching as men in white lab coats tortured Sakura and other test subjects to demonstrate what they had and hadn't been able to reproduce from her blood and body chemistry. Some had even joked while watching, their comments captured by a wire worn by someone Marcia wouldn't reveal.
The victims' bodies had been cremated, but several visually matched with missing persons, captured terror suspects, supposedly-executed criminals, and homeless people from all over the country. Dozens of counts of first-degree murder, conspiracy, torture, and countless other crimes, all done with taxpayer dollars and on American soil.
"I will not agree. The world does not need to see my shame."
Marcia sighed. "Blossom—"
"Don't call me that anymore. I am Isuji Sakura; call me Sakura, or Miss Isuji if you must be formal, but my name is my name."
Marcia spread her hands on the table. "Sakura, please, this is bigger than you. We need to expose these people, bring them to justice."
She crossed her arms. "We know who they are. We find them and kill them. Justice enough."
Matt shook his head, harder when Sakura glared at him. "We're not killing six congressmen, three senators, and the Undersecretary of Defense."
"Why not?"
"We don't have
the prerogative. They're not a supernatural threat. No matter what they did to you, we don't have the jurisdiction."
"I am not concerned with jurisdiction."
He folded his arms to mirror hers. "I'm not a murderer."
Janet snorted.
"I'm not. I'm a soldier, and a killer, but not a murderer."
She ran her tongue over her teeth. "I think a couple dozen bodies might not care too much about that distinction, bud."
Sakura stood tall – a head shorter than Matt, and half a head taller than most of her countrymen – her chest puffed out, hands at her sides clenched into tight fists. "You confuse us with your brother, killer of millions."
"My brother saved the whole fucking planet." Despite the murder in her eyes and flush in her cheeks, Janet maintained careful body language – leaned back in her chair, legs crossed, hands in her lap. The notion of the two women coming to blows couldn't be more ludicrous. One worked in an office and never exercised, and the other could kill a bull hippopotamus in unarmed combat without breaking a sweat. Only Sakura's restraint kept Janet from harm, and the murder in her eyes betrayed a limited reserve.
Marcia raised a hand, like a timid girl in grade school. "Can we calm down, please? I know this is emotional, and I brought it to the table, and for that I'm sorry, but it's too important for personalities to interfere."
Sakura glared at Janet, then at Marcia. "Fine, go. Do it."
"Send the information?"
"Yes. I give you my permission."
Janet scowled.
Marcia crumbled in her chair, the tension bleeding out of her. "Oh, thank God."
"What?" Matt asked.
"I sent everything to the major news outlets this morning."
Sakura opened her mouth, closed it, then stormed out of the room. The doorframe split as the door slammed closed.
Monica's concerns reverberated in his head as he exchanged a worried look with Marcia. "I've never seen her like that."
"She's been through a lot." Without waiting for a reply she turned to Janet. "And I know you don't agree, but—"
"Oh, I agree."
Marcia opened her mouth, closed it, and opened it again. "What? But you were—"
"Hey, if I come out in favor of something, Sakura doubles down against it. I haven't done jack shit to her, but she'd rather eat a bullet than let me have my way." She leaned forward and patted Marcia's hand. "You did the right thing, except maybe admitting it."
"Wow," Marcia said. "Remind me not to get on your bad side."
Janet patted her hand again. "Don't get on my bad side, toots. Really."
Matt closed his eyes and rubbed his temples.
"What?" Marcia said. "You can't get headaches."
"No, but sometimes this feels good anyway."
* * *
"Phone call."
Janet's voice shattered Matt's concentration, so he pulled his hands from the keyboard and triggered the intercom, speaking around the toothpick between his teeth.
"Pardon?"
The STB had a dozen office staff, men and women cleared for the highest level of government secrecy tasked with all the filing, phone calls, public relations, and scheduling they might need. A former data systems administrator for ICAP and now Matt's field coordinator, Janet's pay grade dwarfed answering phones. She emphasized every word, as if speaking to a confused child. "You have a phone call. Line Two. Answer it."
He picked up the phone and pressed the flashing button. "Hello?"
"Sergeant Rowley, this is Eugene McGrath, Deputy Undersecre—"
"I know who you are, sir. Go ahead."
The Deputy Undersecretary of Defense, or at least his underlings, approved all budgets and weapon requisitions for the Special Threats Bureau. A former Army Colonel with a dozen decorations, he'd lost a leg and half an arm in Enduring Freedom and had manned a civilian desk ever since. Nobody ever called Matt 'Sergeant' unless they planned to order him around, and with recent developments the likelihood of McGrath making a social call hit zero and started digging.
"What can you tell me about this media story that I can't see on my fucking television?"
Matt had never spoken to McGrath directly, and the cursing caught him off-guard. Schooling his voice to neutrality, he pulled the toothpick from his mouth and replied, "It's pretty much all out there. A man calling himself Special Agent Shane Keene with iron-clad credentials kidnapped my agent Sakura Isuji and tortured her for most of a year, in front of a lot of really important people. We got her out last week along with a data dump."
"You need to control your personnel. Leaks like that can't happen."
Matt chuckled, and made sure McGrath heard it. "The Office of Planning and Development is an illegal organization guilty of kidnapping, torture, and murder. I authorized the leak." True, if after the fact.
"You should have reported it to me."
"Begging your pardon, sir, but your boss is on those tapes. I don't know how high the OPD—"
"Nobody here has heard of the Office of Planning and Development."
"Begging your pardon, sir, but it's not my fault if you've been mushroomed. They've got a modest budget and a huge campus with a hell of a lot of hardware. It's all in my report, which I sent to your desk three days ago."
"I… you're going to have to report to Washington. Today. Like right now."
Matt rolled his eyes to the ceiling and put his feet up on the desk. "I'm in the middle of an investigation. We have dozens of dead bodies and a suspect still at large. It's going to have to wait."
"This isn't a request, Sergeant. A congressional subpoena is going out this afternoon, and the President wants to talk to you, Miss Isuji, and Miss LaLonde before you open your mouth on Capitol Hill. So get in one of those helos I pay for and get your ass to D.C. We'll clear space for you on the White House helipad."
"Roger, wilco. Sir."
The phone clicked dead, so he set it down and hit the intercom to Janet's office. "You get that?"
"Yeah. I'll spool them up."
* * *
The size of a high school classroom, the Oval Office sure beat a cubicle, but with seats for eight, not counting the President's desk, the eighteen men and women – mostly men – in suits or military uniforms filled the couches and chairs and every bit of standing space besides. President Robert Williams, handsome despite his graying hair and scowl, eschewed his chair to lean on the desk, forcing Matt and his team to turn their backs on most of the crowd.
Now that the story had broken, Sakura refused to be anything but completely honest, recounting the physical, sexual, and psychological tortures she'd endured at the hands of the OPD, spilling out gruesome details in an efficient monotone until the President had asked her to stop.
Matt flushed with rage at the story, worse than he could possibly have imagined – they'd seemed intent on seeing how close they could push her to the brink of survival, for no sane reason.
She identified dozens of government officials and employees as observers, ranging from the FBI and CIA to all branches of the military, Congress, and the Executive Branch, some by name, others by their picture. Raising a hand, she pointed it behind her and to the left.
"This man was there."
A sandy-haired man in a dark blue suit took a step back, eyes wide. "What? No!"
Sakura turned, and Matt tensed. All eyes fell on the man in the suit, who hit the wall and kept his hands spread, out from his body.
"On August twelfth he observed in hospital scrubs as they removed my leg at the knee. He complimented me on my stoicism, and thanked me for my sacrifice."
Matt put a hand on her wrist. "Don't kill him."
She stood unmoving, unflinching, as the Secret Service crept their hands to their weapons. They had no chance against an Aug, and if forced to choose sides Matt knew where his loyalt
ies lay – but he had no desire for a bloodbath in the White House, with loyal Americans the victims.
"Not here. Not right now."
She relaxed a hair, just enough, and he took away his hand.
"Stand down, Agent Isuji." The President's voice reverberated through the room, hale and strong. She turned back to him and he smiled, a bead of sweat on his forehead. "We can't have you hurting anyone here. I'm going to place you into custody for your own—"
"No."
Williams stood there, mouth open. He licked his lips and started again. "Just tempor—"
"No. I will not be detained."
The door opened and another four guards squeezed inside, weapons out but at their sides. They looked from the President to Sakura and Matt, while the previous guards kept their focus between Sakura and the man she'd accused.
Matt raised his hands in a defensive posture he didn't feel, drawing attention. "Mister President, there's no reason to detain my agent."
Williams shook his head, lips pressed in a white line. "Not your call."
Matt cracked his neck. "It is, and I'm telling you that we will not allow it." Faced with six Secret Service agents and twenty unarmed civilians in an enclosed space, Matt had no doubt how two Augs would fare. "You're going to take that man in custody and when this meeting is over we're going to leave, and nobody's going to try to stop us."
Flushed, Williams snarled. "I am the President of the United States!"
"So you are, sir. But you're desperately outmatched, and we're not letting you take either of us into custody. Please. I don't want to hurt your men."
He glared at Matt and Sakura, bright red face turning almost purple, then leaned back on the desk again. "All right. Take Jones into custody, and everybody else get out."
The accused man – Jones – allowed the guards to handcuff him, shuffling along behind the fleeing crowd. The last two guards closed the door behind them, leaving only Matt, Janet, Sakura, and President Williams in the room.
The President walked past them, turned, and plopped down into a chair. Gesturing to the couches on either side he said, "Please, sit."
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