The Blind

by Shelley Coriell

  * * *

  9:04 p.m.

  Jack threw his Bluetooth across the desk.

  “She’s fine,” Brady said.

  He switched off his computer. He couldn’t work. Hell, he couldn’t think of anything beyond Evie. “How do you know?”

  “She can take care of herself.” Brady shut the Matsumoto file they’d been going over for the past hour. “Me and the family jewels have seen her in action.”

  Jack couldn’t smile. He checked his watch. It was past nine. Had she met up with the bomber? Was the clock ticking? He took out his phone and did the one thing he knew would set off Evie.

  “How did it go?” Jack asked.

  “It hasn’t,” Parker Lord said.

  “Is Evie all right?”

  Parker Lord paused. “She never showed.”

  “He. You mean Carter Vandemere. He never showed.”

  “No. Evie. She never arrived at Union Station.”

  “Where is she?”

  “I had her cell phone tracked. She’s downtown still. We’re getting a tighter trace right now.”

  Had Evie backed out? Did she take herself off the job? Yeah, right. “And Carter Vandemere?” Jack asked. “What did he do when he realized Evie was a no-show?”

  Another pause. “Vandemere never showed, either.”

  The high-rise shifted beneath his feet, and Jack ran for his private elevator.

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Friday, November 6

  9:06 p.m.

  Baby steps,” Sabrina said on a ragged breath of air. “Just ten more baby steps.”

  Her precious daughter was crying. She was hurting. Scared.

  Still holding the wall, Sabrina took another baby step. Nine more until she reached the phone on the desk. The FBI agent wasn’t scared. When Sabrina grew up, she wouldn’t mind being like her. Strong and smart and beautiful.

  Baby Angela’s cry turned into a wail, and she clawed at Sabrina’s shirt. Her baby was hungry. Sabrina took her daughter’s fist and kissed it. This wasn’t the time to eat or cuddle or rock.

  Eight more steps. She inched her right foot forward. Pain ripped through her right shoulder where the skeleton man had shot her. Her head spun. She doubled over. Another spurt of liquid trickled down her arm.

  Sabrina dropped to her knees and set her baby, her healthy, beautiful baby, on the floor. Angela screamed louder. Sabrina knew it was okay for babies to cry. She’d been reading a lot about raising babies, trying to do things right, but right now she needed to do the right thing for Agent Jimenez.

  “Seven more baby steps,” she said.

  Blood slicked her hands, the floor, her arm.

  Angela screamed.

  It was going to be okay. Six more baby steps to the phone. Five. Four. Three. Two.

  Now one.

  She reached the desk in the office on the floor below where Agent Jimenez was trapped and raised her arm, grasping at the phone. Too far. She dragged herself to her feet, then fell back to the floor as a blanket of blackness overtook her. Somewhere behind her, her angel baby screamed.

  * * *

  9:07 p.m.

  Absolute silence surrounded her. Even the ringing in Evie’s ears had stopped.

  She squinted, focusing on the scarecrow of a man sprawled out in front of her, his chest rising and falling to the rhythm of a ticking bomb. She strained her ears. Was that a ragged breath closer to the door? Freddy?

  The red numbers on the bomb behind her glowed.

  Twenty-two minutes.

  The camera and computer lay on the floor in shattered and scattered bits. So much for Vandemere’s attempt to stream the bombing and her chances to tell anyone her location.

  Her options: get out of the room, disarm the IED with her injured arm, or get the IED in a containment vessel to minimize destruction. Ricci would have the necessary equipment. And he was on his way. He had to be because Sabrina had found strength to take care of her baby. The young mother had to have made it to a phone by now.

  Evie continued to poke the screwdriver at the shackle on her ankle. If the bomb blew here, destruction would most likely be contained to three floors, although building-wide structural damage was always possible. She pictured Jack on the floor above, Brady, too. Maybe Claire. The bomb could hurt them, but it would kill her. Carter, too. And possibly Freddy. Was he alive?

  “Freddy!”

  No answer.

  “Freddy, are you there? Can you hear me?”

  A groan wafted through the darkness near the door.

  She strained against the shackles. “Freddy. It’s Evie. Get up, Freddy. You have work to do.”

  Another groan.

  “We’re partners, buddy, and you’re not bailing on our first job.”

  “Ev…Evie?”

  Evie’s heart lurched against the red silk of her dress. “Near the light, shackled to the bench.”

  “Vandemere?”

  The pile of bones and blood near the pallet of paint had not moved. “He’s down.” At least for now. “Freddy, I need you to go to Vandemere’s workbench and find the key.”

  Silence.

  “Don’t you dare die on me, Freddy. You hear me? Don’t. You. Dare. Die.”

  He grunted. “Nope. Not yet. Got too many stories left to tell.”

  Freddy dragged himself across the room and into the light. His right side looked as if someone dumped a five-gallon bucket of red paint on him. He dropped to the ground next to the workbench and fumbled along the floor. “Can’t find it.”

  “Keep looking, Freddy.”

  Freddy sat, leaning against a bucket of paint. “Chest hurts. Can’t breathe.”

  “Okay.” She steadied her hands on the bench. “You know what, Freddy. Go back to the door. Get out of here.”

  “No. Gotta get the key.”

  “Sabrina left a few minutes ago. Ricci and the guys are on the way.”

  “No. Keep going. We’re partners.”

  “Go!”

  He shook his head, his hair falling across his forehead. “Always worked alone. Never had a partner till you. Kind of like it.”

  Tears—the big, fat, sissy ones—welled behind her eyes. Dammit. She never cried.

  “You still there, Evie?” Freddy asked.

  She cleared the lump in her throat. “Yeah. Not going anywhere.”

  “Keep talking. I like the sound of your voice. Turns me on.” He sputtered out a cough. “Talk dirty to me.”

  “You’re a sick man, Freddy.” But loyal. Damn, he wasn’t going until he found the key or someone dragged his ass out of here.

  “Tell me a story.” He heaved his body past Vandemere’s still body to the side of the workbench.

  “Story?” Evie scrubbed at her ears. “You want a story? Now?”

  “Yeah, it’s always about the story.” Freddy dug through a stack of paint buckets. “Tell me the story of how you ended up on Parker Lord’s team.”

  Her hands dropped to the sides of the dress, her fingers digging into the silky fabric. If Freddy needed a story, she’d give him one. “I’d just got out of the army and was amped up to join the FBI. My recruiter was jazzed because in the military, I was kind of a big deal who’d kicked a lot of ass over in the sandpit.”

  Freddy dug through the tarps. “Gotta love a heroine with confidence and charisma.”

  “So I marched my kick-ass boots—I think they were brown back then—over to Quantico where the recruiters made appropriate oooing and ahhing sounds. I signed the papers and joined the academy.” She checked the ticking clock. Eighteen minutes. “But I didn’t even make it to the first day of class.”

  “What? Were those Feebie guys blind and dumb?” His hands scrambled across the floor, clawing through thick paint.

  “I failed the physical.”

  “You?” He groped along the floor in front of the workbench.

  “Hearing impairment. Right ear.”

  “That’s the shits.”

  “Nope. That’s my life.”<
br />
  “You’re worrying me, Lady Feeb.” He rummaged through paintbrushes and rollers.

  Where was the damn key? “After getting the boot for a bum ear, I headed to a nearby bar. I was sitting at the counter just about to hoist my second shot of whiskey when this guy came in and sat on the stool next to me. I didn’t know it at the time, but it was Parker Lord, this famous FBI agent who’d started a special investigative unit up in Maine. Anyway, he sat down, ordered a Jimmy B for himself, and told me to march my kick-ass boots back to Quantico, that I was back in. To this day I don’t know what he said and why, but I was back in the academy.”

  “Things went well at Feebie school?” Flat on his stomach, he groped under the bottom shelf of the workbench.

  “Things went really well.” Evie’s voice was about to crack. No, she couldn’t let it go there. “Freddy, you find the key?”

  More fumbling. More coughing and sputtering. “Not yet.”

  * * *

  9:08 p.m.

  Ding.

  Jack hopped on the elevator and slammed his palm against the LL button. Down. Down. According to Parker’s cell phone locator, Evie was downtown. She said Brother North kept popping up. Jack would head to North’s mission, try the soup kitchen, and hunt through every high-rise, every warehouse, and every garage holding toys made from China in his hunt for the woman he loved.

  In the parking garage he found his car, but it was not alone. Nearby sat Ortiz’s Mustang and the shiny red Beetle. For a second, his entire world went red. He blinked, pushing back the fiery image.

  Jack took out his cell phone and called Ricci. “Get to Elliott Tower. Evie and Freddy are here somewhere. Both their cars are in the lower level parking garage.”

  “We’re on our way. Get out of that building, Jack. I want you three hundred feet away.”

  “Okay.” Jack hung up the phone. Not okay. He was about to rush back to his private elevator when he saw a ribbon of red snagged on a piece of concrete near the north stairwell. He fingered the silk. Evie’s dress. He burst into the stairwell, a sea of black. He switched on his phone, using the light app as he took off up the stairs.

  On the fourth floor, he spotted another bit of red silk. Another on the seventh. Fifteenth. Twenty-first. He didn’t stop until the thirty-fourth floor. His foot flew out from under him. Wet. Water leak? No, beige paint and a streak of red. Blood?

  He threw open the door. A baby wailed.

  He flipped on the light. Blood streaked the floor. A baby lay near the door coughing and hiccupping. Beyond the infant was a dark-haired woman, collapsed on the floor near a desk. He grabbed her. Her eyelids fluttered but didn’t open.

  He squeezed her arms. “Where’s Evie?”

  A moan slipped over her lips but no words. Setting her back on the ground, he grabbed a chair, jammed it in the doorway so police would look, and took off up the stairwell.

  * * *

  9:17 p.m.

  Carter woke to pounding, at the back of his head, behind his eyes, and in the middle of his chest.

  Then he heard Evie’s voice. “So Hatch reached into this hat and pulled out a rabbit. A rabbit!” Silence. “Uh, Freddy, you’re supposed to laugh.”

  “H…ha, ha.”

  So Fat Freddy was alive. Carter ran a hand along the side of his head where his fingers slid across congealed blood. And so was he despite someone shoving a five-gallon paint bucket at his brain. He dragged himself to his knees and groped around until he found his gun.

  Evie’s eyes locked with his. In that moment, he saw the truth. She was not a fan. She hated him. But he didn’t care anymore, not about the woman. She was but paint on canvas.

  He steadied himself on the scaffold. Still time to leave.

  Twelve minutes.

  “You sit tight, Evie, and keep telling Freddy bedtime stories,” Carter said as he headed for the door, his gun hand extended but wobbling. “Nighty-night.”

  * * *

  9:20 p.m.

  The door inched open, and Evie held her breath. Ricci? Brooks? Hayden? She’d even take Knox. A man stepped into the room, a halo of light spilling from his cell phone. Dark suit. Pinstripes.

  She swallowed a cry of relief. She’d spent the past week telling Jack Elliott he didn’t belong at her side and on this case. She was wrong. Jack was a Harvard MBA, but he’d also done some fighting in his life, and not just in the boardroom. On the streets of New York and for his sister.

  Before she could call out a warning, Carter fired the gun at the open doorway. Jack dived to the ground and slid behind another scaffold as the door frame splintered.

  “Nine minutes,” Evie called out.

  Carter spun in a circle, gun outstretched. “Show yourself, Jack, or I’ll shoot her,” Vandemere said, his voice as shaky as the hand holding the gun.

  No sound. No movement.

  Carter’s gun hand jerked. “I grew up in a household with guns. At one time I was a card-carrying member of the NRA. If I shoot, she’s dead.”

  “He’s bluffing,” Evie said. “He’s injured and shaky.”

  Carter aimed a shot at her, but as expected, the shot went wide. The guy had lost a good deal of blood. He was weak and getting weaker. Plaster rained down on Freddy, who was at the workbench still looking for the key.

  A dark shape shifted behind the scaffold. A paint bucket went flying from the right side. Carter spun. Jack darted out from the left side and rammed his shoulder into Carter’s back. Carter slammed onto the floor. Thud. Blood spurted from his nose and mouth. His body twitched, then stilled.

  Jack ran toward her.

  “Get back!” She jammed her good arm at the floor behind her. “The bomb’s live and has a collapsing circuit.”

  “How long?”

  “Six minutes.” She tilted her head toward Freddy. “Freddy can’t find the key. Get out of here. Find Ricci. He’ll know what to do.”

  “The key,” Freddy said. “Not until I find the key.”

  “Go, both of you!”

  Jack ran to Freddy’s side. “Where do you want me to look?”

  “She said it flew under the bench, but I can’t find it.”

  Jack dropped to his knees, sliding his hands through paint and dust. Freddy, leaning against the bench, fumbled with his one good arm. They were both fighting for her life. The muscles along her throat convulsed. Because for the first time in her life, she couldn’t fight for herself. She’d spent a lifetime scrapping with her brothers, fighting for the country she loved, and waging war on the worst kinds of evil.

  Evie could do nothing but stand there motionless. She took a deep breath. And she could trust in Jack. She had to trust in Jack who was on his hands and knees, searching for a key. Tears swelled in her eyes. The key to her future.

  The door swung open, framing Ricci and his team, all carrying heavy beamed flashlights and glowing like angels in bomb gear.

  “One minute twenty seconds,” she called out.

  “Found it!” Jack held up a stick of silver.

  Jack pushed Freddy at two of Ricci’s men. He ran to the scaffold and dropped to the ground at Evie’s feet.

  “Dammit, Jack, give the key to Ricci. He’s in gear.”

  Deaf and blind, Jack focused on the lock on the first shackle. Jab. Turn. Click. Blood pulsed through her foot as she shook her ankle free.

  Jab. Turn. Click. The next. She hopped up and tripped on her skirts. Jack untangled her.

  Hiking her skirts, she ran toward the door. Freddy, Ricci, and the team had already dived into the stairwell.

  Carter Vandemere stirred. One eye opened. Her feet slowed. He was a macabre sight. Paint matted his hair. Blood trickled from his shattered nose. A thick, clear liquid leaked from his swollen right eye.

  Jack yanked her toward the door.

  “Twenty seconds!” Ricci called out from the door.

  Vandemere lifted his hand. He clutched the hem of her skirt with bony, bloody fingers. His mouth twisted in a scream she couldn’t hear. No noise.
Absolute silence. The moment before a bomb goes off.

  Jack kicked off the hand.

  “Fifteen seconds!” Ricci.

  She pushed Jack in the back. He stumbled toward the stairwell.

  “Go!” she screamed. She lunged at Carter and jammed her hands under his shoulders, her injured arm crying out in pain.

  “Ten seconds!”

  Evie pulled, dragging Vandemere over tarps and spilled paint. Over Freddy’s blood and Sabrina’s blood.

  “Dammit, Evie, leave him there!” Ricci called.

  She heaved again.

  Two hands—Jack’s—grabbed Vandemere and yanked. They jerked him toward the door. Carter moaned.

  Pop. Hissssss. Boom!

  Smoke and flames and shrapnel tore through the air. The sky fell. Jack threw his body over her and Carter Vandemere. She knew his intent.

  Preserve life, all life.

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Friday, November 6

  9:59 p.m.

  Evie still wore the red silk dress, now sporting a few burn marks, torn hem, paint splatters, and two bloody handprints. Carter Vandemere’s latest work of art, and it could very well be his last.

  The ambulance took off down the street, lights flashing, siren wailing. Inside was bomber Douglas Woltz, the artist formerly known as Carter Vandemere, and he was being rushed to the hospital where his life would now be in the hands of a surgeon or two. If he lived, his life would be in the hands of a jury of his peers, and Evie had a feeling that would end up very ugly.

  “Have a seat, Evie,” Jack said. “I want the paramedic to take a look at that arm.”

  “Do you always get what you want?” Evie asked as she looked up at Jack, still looking like a million bucks, despite the streaks of paint and dirt on his suit and face.

  He placed both hands on her shoulders, pushed her to the back bumper of the squad car, and kissed her soundly on the lips. “Always.”

  In this case, she had no complaints. She cradled her hands on either side of his face and returned the bone-melting kiss with a fire of her own.

  “Ah-hem.”

  Evie tore herself from Jack and nodded to the paramedic standing behind them. “Don’t cut the dress,” she warned.