She chuckled. "That's asking a lot."
"It is." He held her gaze. "But it's as much as it has to be. We have to trust each other."
"Sure, bud." She tossed a manila folder on his desk. "Meantime, I got a call from President Williams. He has a job for us."
CHAPTER ELEVEN
The Patrick J Thomas Juvenile Justice Center's courtroom looked more like a conference room with a judge's bench, modern governmental blandness given physical form. As Matt perused the off-white walls and off-white rug under the fluorescent lights, a door opened behind the bench.
Matt turned as a portly bald man hurried around the wooden edifice, jamming glasses onto his face with one hand, tucking in his light blue shirt with the other. "Sorry! Sorry. Got a bit delayed. Mister Rowley?"
They shook hands, and Matt introduced Sakura, who gave a curt bow.
"I'm Tim. Justice Schwaeble. The Honorable, that is."
"Matt Rowley. What can you tell us?"
He blotted sweat from his head with a stained kerchief. "Well, I – do you want a seat? Some water?"
"No." They said it together.
Schwaeble leaned back into the prosecutor's table. "If it ain't the damndest thing I ever seen. We got eight juveniles here that, well, there's something wrong with them."
Matt waited for him to tell them something that hadn't been in their field briefing, while Sakura re-read the information on her phone.
"Females, age fourteen to sixteen, two black, three Rican, three white. All have priors – sealed, of course – from prostitution to possession with intent to distribute, affiliated with three separate gangs. Nothing violent, though one we caught with a butterfly knife. Thing is, each one turned themselves in in the past four days, confessed to murders we didn't even know about."
Matt pursed his lips. "Who'd they kill?"
"Boyfriends, mostly. One killed her step-uncle who was younger than her by a year, one her boyfriend and his best friend. These boys were violent offenders, dealers, pimps-in-training – ain't nobody nobody's going to miss, you hear me?"
Sakura grunted. Matt figured they had mothers and maybe siblings who'd miss them, but didn't bother pointing that out.
Instead he said, "Are we sure they're telling the truth?"
"Two was all covered in blood, but we ain't found any bodies yet. Should be nine in all."
Matt closed his eyes as the whispers cooed their approval, then opened them. "So how does this involve the Special Threats Bureau?"
The loaded question meant, 'How are fallen angels involved?'
Schwaeble swallowed. "I can't with definition say that it does, sir, but you got to understand, we got our worst neighborhood, a twelve-block area, that's seen a one hundred percent drop in crime – excepting these girls – in a day, and it's lasted nearly two weeks. Gift horses and mouths notwithstanding, it ain't natural, and it ain't possible. The FBI didn't do nothing, so I called Bob – President Williams – and he called you."
Sakura looked up from her phone. "You're on first-name basis with the president?"
"Yes, ma'am. We grew up together."
She exchanged glances with Matt. "That would have been nice to know."
"Well, I—" Schwaeble dug his vibrating phone from his pocket and held it to his ear. "Yeah?"
The voice on the other line, female and clipped, said, "Boss, we got another one. And she's got company."
* * *
George Needel ducked into the bathroom and read the text from Shane Keene.
'GO. '
A cold hand clutched his heart, the familiar pre-action jolt of adrenaline, new and exciting even after hundreds of missions. He took a breath, responded with a 'YES', sent another text to four prepaid cell phones, and rejoined the builders in the main hall.
For months he'd suffered through Jason Rees's blathering ministry, pretended to pray with the fanatics in the Adam cult while hiding bugs and explosives in the walls of their new church. The Office of Planning and Development had few staff for a government agency, but an extraordinary budget, and valued employee initiative within reason. Given several options, George had infiltrated the Adam cult.
A nearly rogue element, he couldn't allow Matt Rowley to maintain control of his son. That kind of power belonged in the hands of the United States government, and those loyal to her.
* * *
Matt followed the judge into booking and crinkled his nose at the smell. Three light-skinned, dark haired girls – probably sisters – in street clothes stood in front of three female cops, their bland smiles at odds with the blood and gobbets of flesh splattered across their clothes.
They turned as one to Matt and Sakura and, still smiling, opened their mouths. The cops shied back as sound erupted from the girls' spasming throats, a single voice of shrieks and wails and sounds of the streets – gunshots, sirens, traffic. "You are not welcome here. Go back to our daughter's embrace and trouble us no more."
Matt put up a hand, more to stop the cops from drawing their weapons than to keep Sakura from advancing. She had her combat knives, but they'd left the rest of their weapons in the car. He twitched his thumb and then his index finger, what he hoped Sakura would figure out as 'Guns. Go.' in American Sign Language. She disappeared out the door in a blur.
As Schwaeble and the cops stumbled back from the inhuman noise, Matt took a step toward the trio. "Sorry, whoever you are. These girls don't belong to you."
A thousand tortured voices responded with a growl that shook the walls. "You may not trespass on Shamsiel's Eden."
According to ancient writings on the Egregoroi, before following Shemjaza into damnation Shamsiel had guarded the gates to Eden and, once losing paradise on Earth, had tried to create his own before the Flood. Wherever the original garden of paradise might have once been, guarded by the archangel Uriel in the form of a flaming sword, Matt would bet anything it wasn't Omaha. "You've got the wrong continent, dumbass."
Their grins didn't flicker. "Eden is where I make it."
Matt raised his eyes to the policewomen behind the girls. "Get me someone in charge. Now."
* * *
Adam stood in the cart, hands on the edge, and giggled as Monica took the corner around the bread shelves a little too fast. She braked hard to avoid hitting an old lady, ignoring her indignant glare to give a sheepish grin to Aaron Walters, tall and imposing in his black suit and earpiece. Her security guard didn't meet her gaze and said nothing, though his lips twisted in the hint of a smile.
"Okay, little buddy," she said to Adam. "Time to calm it down a little."
"Okay." He sat, as well-behaved as any toddler could be, and let her fill the cart with their weekly wares, canned goods and cereal, Advil, fruit and veggies, two coloring books and a box of crayons, and three paperbacks from the bargain shelf. A few people stared sidelong at Aaron, and others whispered behind her back, but none abased themselves, none screamed out hymns to her son – which is why her detail picked a different Walmart every week, some as far as a hundred miles from White Spruce. She insisted on driving herself, but followed their white panel van without knowing or asking exactly where to.
Left to make their own decisions, she'd never go shopping at all, never visit her parents, never leave the house. Given a second chance at life, she refused to live it in a cage.
The cashier didn't seem to recognize her, and didn't even pay enough attention to realize Aaron looked more like a secret service agent than a typical shopper. Monica cringed at the total, two hundred and eighty bucks they could easily afford, old attitudes dying as hard as bad habits. She paid cash – a security protocol Aaron had insisted upon – and left the store.
Three steps from the curb, Aaron blocked her path with his arm, moving in the way to use his body. "Back inside. Now."
The van still sat next to her truck, exhaust trickling white-gray smoke into the
chilly air. Red painted the spider-webbed windshield, obscuring the misshapen head slumped over the steering wheel.
Monica jerked the cart back as Aaron wrested a pistol from his shoulder holster, holding it two-handed and walking backward with his legs spread wide in an almost duck-like stance. As she dragged the heavy load back toward the store with her left hand, she fished around her purse for the pistol Matt had gotten her after the Kamen incident. Bigger than she'd have preferred, the Glock 4th Generation .357 semiautomatic had a custom grip, a 15-round magazine, and just enough weight to make the recoil easy to take.
Gunshots popped from behind her truck. Aaron spun and half-collapsed on the cart. Feet churning, he shoved them back through the automatic doors, falling to his knees before turning and returning fire.
Someone screamed. Glass shattered. Monica hoisted Adam from the cart and backed away toward the aisles. Her son settled on her left hip, it left her right hand free to wield the pistol, though not in the two-handed grip she'd trained with in the back yard. She aimed toward the car and fired twice, pistol bucking, not to hit anyone so much as to keep their heads down while Aaron shuffled on his knees behind a decorative column.
He looked up at her, eyes wide, and patted a hand against his massive chest before ejecting the magazine and slapping in a new one. His bullet-proof vest meant he'd maybe cracked some ribs but probably wouldn't die. Yet.
"Go!" He turned and fired, then rolled back as bullets peppered the ground.
She backpedaled past the registers, firing, sidestepping around abandoned carts and over terrified, cowering shoppers, to drop behind a display of Genuine Boston-Style Baked Beans. She shoved Adam behind her and shushed him. An old man in a cowboy hat lay on the floor to her left, the large revolver in his hands aimed out the door.
"Got your six, ma'am." He spoke around a gray beard smooshed to the side by the dingy white floor tile.
"My bodyguard—"
"I see him. He won't be a target."
The shooting stopped. She took aim around the display, waiting for a bad guy to show his face. "What you got for ammo?"
He spat. "Six. Wife's next door getting liquor. They come in here, she'll take 'em as they cross the lot."
"Good shot?"
"Better than me."
She fired as a head appeared, and the shot went wide. More fire erupted from the left and she cowered. Beans and shredded cans tumbled, slicking the floor, splattering across the back of her neck.
The cowboy yelled over the noise and fired once. "YOUR BOY'S IN TROUBLE!"
He fired again and the hail of bullets shifted to his position, so Monica popped up and fired three times. A man stumbled back from his position behind a car, then fell to his back. "AARON, GET IN HERE!"
Six more shots from her pistol peppered their position as Aaron bolted inside, diving behind a pallet of ice melt pellets and coming up with a twisted grimace. As she popped out the magazine and loaded her second, and last, a kid slid up behind her, skin squealing across the tile. His tan, collared shirt, olive shorts and light blue neckerchief emblazoned with an eagle identified him as an Eagle Scout, sixteen or seventeen years old.
"Ma'am." He pointed a .22 bolt-action long rifle out toward the parking lot, closing one eye to look down the iron sights.
"Jesus, kid, get out of here!"
He shook his head. "Dad says come back to sporting goods. Rest of the troop's fanning out. They ain't getting to you, no how."
"I am NOT putting you in danger!"
"No, ma'am, you're not." He pulled the trigger, rolled back out of sight of the front doors, and ejected the shell. "Those men out there did that. Now git."
The man in the cowboy hat nodded, so she scooped up Adam and ran, hunched to minimize her silhouette, toward the back of the store.
* * *
Sixteen deputies helped Matt and Sakura as they entered homes, rounded up their complacent and smiling residents, secured their arms with the giant zip ties they still called handcuffs, and deposited them on the curb under the watchful eye of twenty prison guards Matt had deputized for the purpose.
"Anything yet?" His helmet under his arm for PR purposes, he depended on Janet to relay Dragonfly data to his earpiece.
"Did I say there's anything yet?"
Sakura appeared in the doorway to a run-down two-story home with peeling blue paint on naked wooden slats that hadn't been primed prior to painting. She held up four fingers, then patted invisible heads while shaking her own.
Matt flagged down a deputy and pointed toward her. "Four people, no children."
They hadn't found a single child under fifteen or so, nor any adults who resisted or answered questions. Every single one had invited them inside, offered tea or coffee, and acquiesced to handcuffs with the same bland smile.
"C'mon, Shammy!" Matt's voice rang out down the street. "We going to have some fun here or what?"
The wind picked up, then faded – a natural rather than supernatural phenomenon.
"Dammit," he muttered. "Where is it?"
Five minutes and three houses later, Janet spoke up. "Got something, three blocks west. At the elementary school."
Matt pulled on his helmet and took off at a jog, Sakura at his side. "Get me the blueprints, please."
* * *
Four men in tan and olive hurried Monica behind the sporting goods counter even as they loaded weapon after weapon from the shelves. Shotguns, hunting rifles, .22s, dozens had already been laid out, and kids passed them two at a time to a man with bolt cutters who sheared the breech locks, then on to the kids at the ammo shelves.
Kids.
"I can't do this."
Adam turned from the boys loading weapons to the sporadic pops in the front of the store, then looked her in the eyes and nodded. She'd never felt such calm conviction, such self-assured warmth, not even in her husband's arms.
"Ma'am," one of the scoutmasters said. "Makes sense they're after you, so why don't you duck out the back while we hold them here? Wouldn't want—"
"THEY'RE COMING!" A roar split her eardrums as a teenager fired a shotgun, cocked it, and fired again.
Strong hands grabbed Monica and dragged her through the double-doors leading into the stock room, a concrete-floored cavern three stories high filled with pallets and shelves. A boy screamed, then cried out. "MOM! I WANT MY MOM!"
The pain in his voice tore at her heart. No one's babies should die to protect hers.
The scoutmaster shoved her toward the back door. "GO!" He turned, bolted out the doors, and stumbled back through as blood misted from his back. He fell to his side and lay there, unmoving, as red gushed from his chest and back.
She ran, Adam in her arms.
* * *
Children swarmed out of the elementary school, first dozens, then hundreds. They held furniture legs, meter sticks, fire extinguishers, baseball bats. Matt approached at a jog, shotgun slung across his back, hands raised with fingers spread wide, as unthreatening a gesture as he could manage. Smiles upon smiles greeted his gaze, the same blank, pleasant expression as the adults.
They approached at a lazy shuffle, closing ranks to block off entrance to the school.
Stepping back, Matt turned on his microphone to let the speakers in his helmet carry his voice at crowd-control volumes. "Awww, c'mon, Shamsiel. Hiding behind kids? Uriel's not such a coward, is he?"
As one the children sneered. Perfect.
"Oooh, did I hit a nerve? Are you jealous he took your job?"
Four steps and a leap would take him over most of them, two more steps to the flagpole, and using it to push off he should be able to clear the rest without ever contacting any of them.
"You can't even guard this one, Shammy, and it's a shithole, not a garden."
They raised weapons and approached at a jog.
Janet interrupted. "C
ops behind you."
The IFF showed four deputies approaching his position, weapons out but pointed down. He turned, backpedaling. "Get back, dammit! We don't want to hurt these kids."
With a shriek the children charged.
Matt held up his hands. "WAIT!"
The cops opened fire.
* * *
"Put the weapon down!"
Monica shied back as the state trooper approached the employee entrance, pistol pointed at her face. Three squad cars blocked the back lot, lights flashing. With her left hand she pushed Adam further back into the building.
She let the pistol hang by the trigger guard, sank down with it held at arm's length.
He approached at a jog, which seemed off – cops used that walk that made them look like Groucho Marx, because it allowed them to keep solid aim at a target while on the move. Studying his face, she'd seen it before, but not as a cop – tall, scruffy, he'd worked on Jason's church as a carpenter, had been there when Adam had saved Ted.
Undercover? And for who?
He wasn't sweating, and didn't even look nervous, even as the gunfight rattled behind her.
"Bring out the boy."
From his vantage point he wouldn't have been able to see Adam, even before she'd pushed him back inside. Her hand swept up, spinning the gun, rolling her body back to minimize his target.
He fired, and a fist punched her below the right breast. She squeezed the trigger twice and he stumbled back, the second round catching his shoulder outside his bullet-proof vest. His pistol clattered to the ground as she scrambled back inside and slammed the door.
Adam lay a hand on her and she jerked away, snarling, from the feeling of peace and well-being his touch brought. Blood gushed down her blouse, hot and sticky, as three scouts backed into the room, firing hunting rifles as fast as they could.
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