by Hinze, Vicki
“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 went in.”
“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 walkie-talkie. “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 didn’t see 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 dare to think you trust me just a little?”
“Um, actually, the team was out of ideas and—”
“Oh, so you needed fresh meat 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 walkie-talkie. “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 10
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 shortstack 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 was here all along. So Barone had been here, had attacked Justin and Maggie, and then 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, Maggie, 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 bastard.”
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, hell, 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 walke
d 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 walkie-talkie. “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, Maggie. 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 damn well 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 operation to bomb White House spectators gathered to watch the July Fourth celebration—an attack that Darcy had successfully prevented.
That Barone was likely one of Kunz’s body doubles was but one of the many other possibilities they needed to factor into the situation until they could eliminate them. Maggie issued a new order. “Will, casually ask Linda if she has noticed anything abnormal in Barone’s behavior.”
“Sure, Maggie.”
She switched to S.A.S.S. frequency, looked Justin right in the eye. “Darcy?”
“Yeah?” She seemed a little surprised at the frequency shift.
“When Will asks Linda about Barone, monitor her reaction.”
Worry doubled in Justin’s eyes and he reached across the table and clasped Maggie’s hand. He understood the pressure she felt. It was bad enough having to fight outsiders, but the work became exponentially more difficult when you had to fight outsiders and enemies within.
Maggie gently squeezed his fingertips, swallowed her fear of her feelings for him, and held on tight.
“What exactly are you expecting from Linda?” Darcy asked.
Maggie swallowed the bitterness coating her tongue and throat. “A revelation.”
Ten minutes later Lester gave Maggie an update, which was to say that his forensics team hadn’t come up with anything else of consequence.
Donald Freeman at the round had more trash that needed to be collected, but nothing had gone through the net.
Mark Cross at the Center Court stage had caught two young women stealing coats from a troop of Cub Scouts playing in the snow and he turned them over to Marty from Security. The police were called in to handle them.
Justin checked in on his medical staff. The sound-off went down without a hitch. The prepositioned vials of antidote were verified safe by the undercover medical personnel. Local medical reinforcements were on standby status and gathered in the north and south parking garages. Local police were subsidizing the extra security staff Will had activated with the A-stores’ blessings, reinforcing patrols of the open parking lots, watching for yellow-jacketed people carrying Krane’s handled shopping bags and entering the m
all.
The FBI reported that they’d followed the two men Maggie and Justin had intercepted earlier to an upscale restaurant on the dock in the harbor. They’d had no contact with anyone else, and it appeared that ditching the bag at the mall had been their entire assignment in the mission. The same seemed true of Mr. Ponytail and the first female bagger, who were still stashed in their hotel rooms, gorging on football games and a moviefest.
The Threat Integration Center reported there had been no activity whatsoever at any of the other potential targets, but it wasn’t ready yet to declare Santa Bella an official GRID-attack target, due to insufficient evidence that directly linked GRID or Thomas Kunz to the incidents that had taken place.
Matt Elden also reported in to Maggie that he had four HAZMAT teams on-site in the parking lot, cooling their heels with all the other specialists. If biological contamination occurred, they were equipped and prepared to launch decontamination protocols.
And Judy Meyer, the guard assigned to monitor the rest room in the administration wing who’d disappeared without a trace, still hadn’t been located.
In a corridor on Jewelry Row, Maggie stepped out of the heavy foot traffic, a steady thump pounding in her already-aching head. Juggling all the different aspects of the operation was a challenge, but she had a strong team. It was the waiting getting to her—knowing Kunz would strike, and that his window of opportunity was closing.
Maggie checked her watch. It was 7:45. In an hour and fifteen minutes, the Olympians and Special Forces would be leaving. Kunz would strike while they were here, which meant the launch clock was running down fast.
“Maggie.” Darcy’s voice split the moment of silence, sounding tinny and brittle in Maggie’s earpiece. “Linda told Will she had seen Barone within the last twenty or thirty minutes and she’d mentioned to Barone that Will needed to see him. Barone told her he’d handle Will, and he was going to visit the A-store owners. He’s feeling too antsy to sit still. As soon as he left, she made a phone call. We’re running down the trace to see to whom.”
