Flashbyte (Byte Series - Ellie Conway Book 4)

by Cat Connor

  A sharp crack from behind sent glass raining down on me. Little shiny pieces of the back windshield fell into my hair and dropped into my lap. It took a moment to register what had happened. There was no jolt, no other car hit me. Traffic noise from the nearby streets made it hard to hear what was going on around me. I took a breath and filtered out all distractions. Another more familiar noise followed, and more glass. There were two holes in the front windshield. Cracks radiated outward, causing the windshield to resemble crazy paving. I shrank down in the seat and released my Glock from its holster. Peering between the front seats, I saw remnants of the back windshield hanging in the frame. I grabbed the radio and opened a channel.

  “Break-Break. This is SSA Conway. Shots fired. Officer needs backup. 7-Eleven 9511 Blake Lane. Over.”

  “Go for Conway. This is Officer Konstram, I’m two minutes away. Over.”

  As I depressed the button to reply, another shot rang out. The passenger side-window blew all over the car interior.

  I dropped the radio and opened my door. Josh Konstram’s voice followed me as I slipped out the car, “Agent under fire. All cars. Agent under fire.”

  I could hear the radio going nuts. I wasn’t going back in to answer it. I was much safer outside using the car body as a shield. I yelled into the store. “Get down, there’s a gunman!” People who had been standing there, bewildered, dove for cover.

  My phone rang. I scanned for the shooter. Another car near me was hit with several rounds. A bullet lodged in the front of the building; moments later one of the plate-glass windows shattered and fell inward. I had no target and it was frustrating not being able to shoot back.

  My phone was still ringing.

  I saw police lights.

  It seemed that my phone wasn’t going to stop. I ducked lower, crouching as close to the ground as I could, by the hood of my car and hit the speaker button.

  “Conway?” Kurt said.

  “Doc, where are you?”

  “Coming around the back of the building by the dumpster.”

  “I think the shooter is in the parking lot across the road, maybe in a car.” I said and disconnected.

  Sirens screamed, bouncing off the building and deafening me. Lights flashed, police cars converged on the area. I wanted to move. I heard a whistle from behind me. When I glanced back I saw Doc peering around the corner of the building.

  Another shower of glass rained down upon me. A bullet went flying through what was left of my front windshield and into another of the store windows behind me. Time to move. People inside were strewn with glass fragments. I scrambled up and ran to Doc. He grabbed my arm and pulled me behind him. I leaned on the wall and holstered my gun.

  “You hurt?” he said.

  I shook my head, sending fragments of safety glass scattering from my hair. Not hurt but having a bit of trouble dealing with the excessive adrenaline. Jacked. Jazzed. Bit shaky. Blood rushed through my body at an alarming rate. I wasn’t sure if being so close to Kurt was helping or not.

  As we listened we heard gunfire, return volleys, and finally a police officer called out, “We got him.”

  Kurt and I headed across the street. There was no traffic. I looked down the street to the intersection and saw police blocking Lee Highway from a hundred yards in either direction. Blake Lane was also blocked by police cars, about a hundred yards up from the 7-Eleven. Police had secured the gas station next door. Officers ran past us into the store to check on patrons.

  “Shouldn’t you go do your doctor thing?” I said to Kurt.

  “I will in a minute,” he replied.

  Josh Konstram stepped into my path. “You okay?”

  “Yep, thank you,” I said, shaking his hand.

  “Drinks on you?”

  “Hell, yes. Where is he?”

  “Found him in the trunk of that brown Chevy Caprice. He went all Beltway Sniper ... must’ve fancied himself as a white John Allen Muhammad.”

  “Alive?”

  “No.”

  “Damn, would’ve been nice to know if it was me he was shooting at, or if this was a random act of crazy.”

  “Sorry, Ellie,” Josh said. “Glad you’re okay.”

  Guess a gunman in Northern Virginia opening fire on a store parking lot elicited a certain predetermined response level, and rightly so too. No one wanted history to repeat itself and I didn’t want anyone to tell my daughter I was shot when buying peanut butter.

  Doc and I had a look in the trunk of the Chevy. The shooter was well set up; he’d been shooting from within the trunk, just like the Beltway Snipers. The Bushmaster he’d been firing was on the ground. I looked at the lid of the trunk, where there was a hole. From the positioning of the gun on the ground, it appeared as though he’d had part of the barrel poking out of the hole when the police opened the trunk.

  “Same gun as the Beltway Snipers used,” I said. “No wonder my car looks like Swiss cheese.”

  Doc inspected the wounds in the sniper’s head and the brain matter dripping all over the trunk interior.

  “There are some good shooters in Fairfax PD,” he said.

  Luckily.

  “How could he see to shoot?”

  Doc looked at me then at the trunk. “Let’s find out.” From his pocket he pulled two pairs of latex gloves. We put them on and began a thorough inspection of the trunk. A messy business.

  “Look,” I said, wiping blood off a five-inch rectangular piece of plastic, about a half inch thick. Velcro on it matched a Velcro rectangle on the inside of the trunk lid. I turned the black plastic over in my hand. It was a screen. “There must be a wireless camera.”

  Doc was already inspecting the outside of the car.

  “Reversing camera here in the bumper. He just had to line up the car and wait.”

  I turned it over in my hand. “So he had a movable GPS unit that doubled as a reversing camera. That’s somewhat more advanced than the Beltway Sniper set up.”

  “Yes,” Doc said, pulling off his gloves.

  “Hey, Josh – check this out and bring an evidence bag,” I called out to Josh Konstram who was talking to several officers. He hurried over to his car then ran to us.

  “You might be able to retrace his movements through this GPS,” I said, showing him the screen in my hand. “We’re lucky it wasn’t hit by any bullets.”

  “That’s a GPS?”

  “Yep, and a screen for the reversing camera in his bumper, and if it’s the model I think it is, that camera also has night vision.”

  “Good stuff,” Josh replied opening the bag for me to slide the screen inside. “I’ll hand it over to our lab and see what data can be pulled from it.”

  “Excellent.” I pulled off my gloves and looked at Doc. “We done?”

  Doc nodded and took the gloves from my hand and pulled off his, over them, creating a tight ball of soiled gloves. “Let’s go find out where that blood on your sleeve is coming from.”

  “Do what?” I replied as he took my left arm and turned me back toward the road. Ambulances had rolled in; paramedics were treating people from the store. I imagined there were a few nasty cuts.

  “I’ll be in touch, Ellie, when we find out why this guy was shooting,” Josh called. “Murphy’s next weekend. You’re paying.”

  I grinned. “You’re on.”

  Doc came to a standstill by the open rear doors of an ambulance. “Up you go,” he said.

  “No need,” I said. “I’m okay.”

  He smiled. It was more an indulgent here-we-go-again smile than a real one. “You’re okay, but I still need to look at your arm.”

  That was the first time I thought I should see what he was talking about. I looked at my right arm, it was fine. Doc was still holding my left arm and kinda tight at that, I looked at his hand and saw blood oozing through his fingers. Oh.

  “All right then,” I said, climbing into the ambulance with him. Doc dropped the ball of gloves into the biohazard trash.

  A paramedic spok
e, “Fresh gloves are right beside you.”

  “Don’t need them, but I do need water and then antiseptic hand cleanser.”

  She passed Doc a bottle of water. He jumped out of the ambulance and washed his hands by pouring water all over them. Little rivers of red ran from his fingers.

  When he climbed back in she took the bottle from him and pointed to a dispenser. Doc squirted a big glob onto his hands and worked it all over with care. I watched with fascination.

  The paramedic donned gloves. “I’ll assist.”

  Doc smiled; it was so fast I almost missed it. “Excellent. Scissors.”

  She handed him scissors. Doc cut away my sleeve revealing a small gash in my upper arm. It wasn’t more than an inch long. Nothing to worry about at all. He poked and prodded for a bit and declared it free of glass. I just sat there watching, pretending it didn’t hurt, as he poked at the open wound.

  Doc asked the paramedic for local anesthetic.

  “Can’t you glue it?” I asked, not relishing the prospect of stitches.

  “No, it’s too big,” Doc replied and pulled the cap off a syringe with his teeth.

  I took a breath and thought about happy things while he stuck the needle in my arm and around the cut. It stung. While Doc stitched, the paramedic combed glass from my hair and checked for any hidden cuts.

  Twenty minutes later I had ten neat stitches in my arm and a waterproof dressing over the top.

  “Can we get my stuff out of my car now?” I said. Going home with a mangled shirt was not an option.

  “Yes. Your arm feel okay?”

  “Yes, thank you.”

  I thanked the paramedic who assisted us. We took everything of mine from my car. I stood behind Doc and changed into a clean shirt from my go-bag before anyone noticed what I was doing, then followed him down past the building to his car on a neighboring street.

  “I’ll take you home.”

  “Let’s not mention this to Carla,” I said.

  “I won’t.”

  I flipped on the radio; listening to music helped me think, and listening to music we could both hear made me feel less like a freak.

  My thoughts didn’t go far past Doc riding to my rescue. I stole a glance at him. He was tapping his right hand on the steering wheel in time to the song on the radio. His left elbow rested on the windowsill, his hand rested on the wheel. Relaxed.

  No one had been shooting at him. The windows of his car didn’t implode while he was sitting in it. My heart raced. I felt jittery, like my insides were liquefying.

  He looked over and smiled. “All right?”

  “I think so.”

  “Jacked?”

  I looked at my hands. They were shaking.

  “Little bit.”

  Doc grinned. “Deep slow breaths. Concentrate on now.”

  “I know what to do,” I snapped and instantly regretted my impatient tone. “Sorry, didn’t mean to sound so—”

  “It’s okay. Don’t think about it, just breathe.”

  Ten minutes later Doc parked in my driveway behind Mac’s truck. The driveway ran up the side of the house from the road and my front door overlooked the drive rather than the street.

  My driveway was once intended to be a cul-de-sac, but Mac had bought up the parcels of land behind ours and on the other side of the driveway. That put an end to the developer’s smart idea of building townhouses close to us, and the cul-de-sac plan. We left the land we’d purchased in its natural wooded state.

  “You use the truck?” Doc asked.

  “Sometimes.” I intended to clean it, which is why it was sitting on the driveway and not in the garage.

  I glanced at the front porch. No parcel. We both sat for a second. My brain expected more gun shots. When none came I figured it was safe enough to go inside.

  The living room curtain twitched and Carla’s smiling face appeared. She waved. I waved back and climbed out of the car, taking all my stuff with me and said goodbye to Doc. He backed out of the driveway while I walked to the front door. I gave the door a kick as I twisted the handle and pushed. I slid my bag to the ground and tried again, the door popped open. Every time I had to wrestle the front door, I thought about the joy of moving to our new home with non-sticky doors. Before I shut out the world, something beyond the driveway caught my eye. My eyes traveled over the grass and into the scraggly dogwoods that grew at the edge of the woods. A red deer grazed among the dogwood and young oaks. Carla bounced toward me from inside the house.

  “Mom! How was your day?”

  The deer looked up and disappeared. I closed the door and gathered my stuff.

  “Pretty good, Carla. How was yours?” Her arm linked mine, as we walked down the hall to the kitchen.

  “Everyone was asking if I was okay.” She rolled her eyes and sighed. “I spent all morning explaining it wasn’t you who was dead.”

  “Sorry.” I dropped my bag and everything else on the counter and poured a drink of water. “We’ll get over to the house; I just need to grab a sandwich. You hungry?” I took a slice of bread from the bag on the counter and spread it thick with butter. Carla watched as I took a bite.

  “Are you hungry?” I said between mouthfuls.

  Carla shook her head. Impatience was written all over her face.

  “She’s always hungry,” Dad replied.

  I took another bite and turned to see my father enter the room. I chewed fast.

  “Where were you?”

  “Putting away laundry,” Dad said. His kiss prickled my cheek.

  “Thank you. Do you want to come over to the house with us? We could get pizza afterwards.”

  “You girls go on. I’m going to your brother’s this evening.” Dad smiled. “I noticed when I was putting away your laundry that you still have Mac’s clothes in the closet.”

  “Never seems to be the time to sort his things,” I hedged, hoping to duck the subject. I could tell by the look on his face it wasn’t working. “I’ll get round to it.”

  “Are you taking all Mac’s clothes to the new house?”

  Of course I’m taking them.

  “Never thought about it.”

  Liar, liar, pants on fire.

  “This would be the ideal time for a fresh start.”

  “Maybe.”

  Mac laughed at me and whispered, “Maybe’s ass.”

  “Leave the ghosts behind Ellie. Start new.”

  “I don’t want to have this conversation right now, Dad.”

  “I know. I think you should go through Mac’s closets and drawers before the movers get here next week.”

  Maybe.

  “Sure, I can do that.”

  Not.

  Dad smiled. “I know you can.” He changed the subject. “The package that so excited your daughter is in your office.”

  Carla tugged at my arm. “Mom, you need to open it.”

  “No, baby, I need to eat, it’s been a long day.”

  “Mom!”

  “I’ll open it later,” I said with a wink at dad.

  Carla squealed, “No! Now. It’s been there all afternoon.”

  I shrugged. “Well, it won’t hurt it to wait until after the house visit and pizza.”

  “You have to open it!” She bounced around the kitchen, pulling me along with her. “You have to!”

  “Let’s have a look and see who it’s from,” I said. “Lead me to this mystery package.”

  She didn’t need to be told twice. Carla bustled me into my office and pointed at a largish box on my desk wrapped in brown paper. It was about twenty-four inches long by sixteen wide, and I guesstimated twelve inches high. I looked at the postmarks, international postage stickers and the customs declaration. It weighed ten kilos. The postmark said New Zealand. That would explain the weight in kilos.

  “New Zealand,” I muttered. “New Zealand.”

  While I had been in New Zealand six months earlier on a case, I’d sent a parcel home for Carla, but it never arrived. It wasn’t as b
ig as the one in front of me.

  I checked the return address and name. Not my writing. Not someone I knew and not an address I recognized. Okay, so, I’d only recognize the address to the hotel I stayed in, and maybe the police station in Christchurch.

  “Did you order something?” Carla said her voice rife with expectation. Elvis started up again.

  “Nope.”

  I picked out a craft knife from a drawer in my desk and slit the tape holding the paper on the box. When I spoke to Carla I realized I’d been holding my breath during the tape-cutting exercise.

  “Carla, can you please get me a pair of latex gloves?”

  She nodded and ran off to the kitchen reappearing a few seconds later with the gloves.

  “Why?” she asked, passing them to me.

  “I’m not sure. But something feels hinky.” My intuition was on a roll today. I was not prepared to discount Elvis and his singing, not after The Clash’s earlier performance. Maybe if I’d never come across a bomb, I wouldn’t be so nervous about parcels from strangers.

  Mac’s voice rang out. “Maybe’s ass.” He was so loud to me. Sometimes it was hard to believe no one else could hear him.

  Dad hooked his arm through Carla’s and edged her closer to the door. His eyes danced the same mix of curiosity and trepidation as mine.

  The box itself was a standard post box. It didn’t need to be wrapped. But was. Under the wrapper on the top of the box were numbers, written in what looked like black sharpie. 65039, 02410, 35918, 27099, 77553, and 18266.

  I eased the brown paper out of the way and slipped the knife under the brown plastic tape that sealed the box. Three sides were taped, one was hinged. My fingers pried open the lid just a smidge. I took a flashlight from the shelf above the desk and shone it into the small gap I’d created.

  So trusting.

  No wires. No ticking. No electronics. Nothing stuck anywhere it shouldn’t be. Even so, my breath caught in my throat as I opened the lid wide to reveal a black plastic bag. I don’t know if it was trepidation or caution that wheeled through me as I felt the bag and determined there were several smaller items within it. Dad and Carla watched. Nervous energy flowed from my father, mixing with Carla’s curiosity. I ignored the buzz happening in the doorway. There was no obvious way into the cold black bag. I took the knife, held my breath, and cut a slit, revealing several smaller see-through Ziplock bags.