by Hinze, Vicki
“I’ve been to every station on every level. There isn’t one vial of antidote in this entire facility, and there was a sub at every station for dinner. What do you want me to do?”
“Get as detailed descriptions as you can on the substitutes.” They could be GRID members, or just temporary mall employees Linda or Barone had hired. Either way, they needed to be checked out. Likely, they had no idea they’d done anything wrong.
Maggie went back inside, headed to the alcove. She got back to the utility closet. Just looking at the door had her stomach totally in knots. And Will still hadn’t made it down. “Where are you, Will?”
“Had to bust up a fight on Level Three. I’m on my way down. It’s going to take a while. Everything’s jammed.”
With people crammed to the rafters, it could take him fifteen minutes to get down to her. Maggie reached into her fanny pack and pulled out a flat file, then went to work to pry the hinges from the door. She couldn’t pull the lock as quickly as she could just unhinge the door.
The hinge pins popped up. She pulled them out and stuffed them into her parka pocket. Jiggling the door, the hinges separated and the door broke loose from its frame.
And a woman’s blood-soaked arm fell through the opening.
“Darcy, get me some help down here right away. Clear the rest rooms and seal the alcove between Security and Medical. Get everyone on their toes.”
“Judy Meyer?” Darcy asked.
“No.” Maggie looked at the skinny redhead’s battered, bloody face, and shuddered. “Cynthia Pratt.” She swallowed hard. There was too much blood. “Call in the coroner. We have a fatality.”
The alcove was sealed off and two guards stood at its mouth in the thoroughfare corridor. Maggie was at the end of the hallway, near the utility closet. She’d gently placed Cynthia Pratt’s body on the floor, rather than allowing her to tumble out.
The entire front of her parka was covered in blood. “Darcy, get someone to bring me a parka. Not Will.”
“Marty’s on the way with one, Maggie.”
She shrugged out of it, then removed the halo pin and put it on her blouse collar.
“Captain Holt?”
It was Marty. She walked to the end of the alcove, took the parka. He looked devastated. “I’m sorry, Marty.”
He blinked hard. “Can I do anything?”
“No.” No way would she put him through that. “I’ll take good care of her.” Maggie patted his shoulder.
“I’m, um, better get back, then.”
Maggie nodded, watched him walk away and then went back to Cindy’s body.
Daniel Barone arrived at the scene first.
“Where the hell have you been?” Maggie asked him, feeling that same sense of revulsion that the child had felt, recoiling from his touch.
“Level Three, mostly. Rotating between the A-stores.”
“Mr. Barone,” Maggie said through clenched teeth. “Do not test my patience. I promise you, I have none right now. I know you left the building—I’ve had everyone in it looking for you for hours—and for a long time, your BMW wasn’t in the parking lot.”
Justin and Will arrived, both surprised to see Barone there.
“Can I do anything to help, Maggie?” Justin asked.
“It’s too late,” she said softly, positioning herself to block Will’s view of Cindy’s body. “I’m sorry, Will.”
Pain settled over him like a shroud. “Did she suffer?”
“I don’t know.” She’d fought like a hellion. That was clear from her jagged bloody nails. “The coroner will be able to tell you that. I know she fought hard.”
“She was in the utility closet?” Will asked.
Maggie nodded, gently stroked his upper arm and kept him from stepping around her. “Don’t look, Will. Cindy wouldn’t want you to remember her like this.”
He stopped, looked deeply into Maggie’s eyes and a tear rolled down his cheek.
“Will?” It was Kate. “You okay?”
He sniffed hard and his voice came out thick. “I’m okay, Katie. It’s just….”
“You’ve never lost a member of your staff like this, and you cared about her.”
His Adam’s apple rippled the length of his throat. “Yeah.”
“When you’ve got a second,” Kate told Will, “come buy me a cup of coffee.”
“Will,” Maggie said. “Go on and make Kate take a break. She hasn’t had one in nine hours. She can’t stay as sharp as she needs to be without taking a break now and then.”
His huge body shuddered and Justin patted his shoulder. “I’m sorry, Will.”
Barone rolled his eyes. “This is a public relations nightmare. The damage will be horrific.”
Maggie glared at him. “A woman is dead, Mr. Barone. Show a little respect, even if you have to fake it.”
“Don’t be melodramatic, Captain.”
At that moment she hated him. “Darcy?”
“Yes, Maggie.”
“I’m placing Mr. Barone under arrest. Get me a uniform to pick him up—and tell them to hustle. I want this soulless ass out of my sight as soon as possible.”
“Me? Under arrest?” Surprise and fury pounded off him. “Have you lost your mind, Captain Holt? You can’t arrest me.”
“I can and have, Mr. Barone,” she insisted, ignoring his snotty comment about her sanity.
“On what grounds?”
“Assault, first of all. I’m considering adding suspicion of treason, conspiracy, undermining a federal investigation—and maybe even murder.”
His jaw fell open.
Two MPs arrived. Darcy had summoned them rather than locals. “Excellent,” Maggie said, considering she couldn’t be sure if he was Barone or a Barone body double. “Gentlemen, if you’d escort Mr. Barone to Providence, I’d appreciate it. Paperwork will be waiting for you when you arrive. Oh, do read him his rights.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Holt, you’re going to regret this for the rest of your life.”
“Don’t threaten me, Barone.” She bared her teeth. “I’m not afraid of you, and if provoked, you have no idea what I can do.” She nodded at the MPs. “Get him out of here.”
They led him out of the alcove, then out of the facility.
Franklin Walker reported in. “Captain Holt, Will asked me to check with the twenty-six. They voted eighteen to eight to stay open.”
Figured. “They know we’ve had a fatality?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Okay, then. Thanks, Franklin.”
“Can you believe it?” Darcy said.
“No, I can’t.” Maggie had Fred from Security come down from Level Two and take over for Maggie—he hadn’t known Cindy—and Maggie and Justin walked out of the alcove.
He stuck a hand in his pocket. “Was the Barone arrested the Daniel Barone or was he a body double?”
“I don’t know,” Maggie said. “That’s why he was taken to Providence, where Dr. Joan Foster, one of our experts, can make that determination.” Joan, who had once been forced by Kunz to prepare doubles, had a process for revealing true identities.
“Best to take him out of play either way, I suppose,” Justin said.
“That was my thinking.” Maggie took in a steadying breath. “Especially since the jerk attacked us in the short-stack.”
“My lab is bringing over more antidote. It should be here in twenty minutes, maybe a little sooner.”
Maggie checked her watch. Eight o’clock. “We’ve got one hour to go.” Kunz had to move soon. Had to. She unclipped her walkie-talkie. “Will?”
“What do you need, Maggie?”
His voice sounded steadier, more normal. The coffee break with Kate had done him good. She’d calmed him down. “You finished with that coffee?”
“Yeah, I am. Katie had to get back to work.”
Maggie still had trouble reconciling anyone calling Kate, Katie, and surviving it. But with Will, Kate had granted latitude.
“M
eet me at Center Court, left of the stage.” Maggie waited for verification from him, then returned the walkie-talkie to its clip at the waist of her slacks. “Justin, you’d better check on the vans outside and make sure the antidote is still in them.”
“Is that why the honchos wouldn’t close the mall? Because we’ve got antidote out there?”
She nodded. “That’s likely one of the reasons. For all that’s happened, they’re not indisputably attributing any of the incidents to GRID. That’s another.”
“Are you okay, Maggie?” He frowned. “Finding Cynthia had to be hard on you.”
It was. “It happens in my job.”
“That doesn’t mean it doesn’t affect you.”
“It does. But I’m okay.” She’d have nightmares of Cynthia’s hand falling out of the closet for a month.
He nodded, paused and bent forward. “I’m sorry about Cindy.”
Maggie’s eyes stung. “Me, too.” And she sure wished she had word on Judy Meyer. After finding Cindy, the most godawful images of Judy were running around in her head, and Maggie would really appreciate being able to ban them. But a facility-wide search had turned up nothing. She didn’t know whether to be grateful or terrified that Kunz had taken Judy.
Maggie called Will for an update on Judy Meyer and Barone. She discovered nothing new of note. Her eyes felt gritty, as if they were full of sawdust, and the balls of her feet were throbbing. Finding Cindy Pratt had seriously drained Maggie’s energy reserves. She shifted her weight from her left foot to the right and pinched her halo pin to shut down communications temporarily. “Justin, I didn’t want this going out over the radio.”
“You know GRID’s here and, because of Cindy, you think they’re listening in?” He looked horrified.
That was exactly what she thought. “It’s probable. The GRID organization is very resourceful.” And the man running GRID was even more so. She’d run into a lot of twisted people in her career, but never had she met anyone more twisted or more ruthless than Thomas Kunz. “I want you to check out Daniel Barone’s car before I have it impounded.”
“It’s probably locked.” Justin masked any emotion from showing on his face.
“Probably is.” She looked him level in the eyes.
“Okay, no problem.” The silent message to pop the lock had been received and accepted. “What am I looking for?”
“Anything. Everything.” She pulled a mint out of her fanny pack, gave one to Justin, then squirted a few more eye drops into her eyes. “I need insight on the man. I need to know if we’ve been dealing with him or a double. The man we’ve got says he hasn’t been outside today, but his car wasn’t here. Someone had to be driving it.”
“Maybe…?” Justin prodded her to reveal her thoughts on who.
“Maybe him. Maybe his double. Or maybe Linda Diel.”
Justin tinkered with the volume control on his walkie-talkie. “Linda is still missing. She could’ve had his car. She damn sure doesn’t have her own. It hasn’t moved out of the parking lot.”
“Do you know that for fact?”
“Yes, I do.” He shrugged. “I stole her battery.”
Shock rippled through Maggie. “You stole her battery?”
He nodded. “I figured a lot of people were going MIA—Barone, Judy Meyer—and if Linda joined them, it’d be after she sounded an alarm on her car battery being stolen. We’d know she intended to report.”
“You do surprise me, Dr. Crowe.”
He smiled. “Given the chance, I could do far more…” The look in his eyes made it clear that more was very personal.
“Ah, together we’d be passionate and crazy,” she predicted. “And then just crazy.” She shrugged. “Job perk.”
“More like a hazard.”
“Depends on your perspective.” Maggie smiled, appreciating Justin’s foresight in pulling that battery. “Maybe Linda did have Barone’s car when it was missing. Darcy’s reviewing the tapes, but so far there’s nothing that shows anyone taking the car. In one frame, it’s there in its slot. In the next frame, it’s gone.”
“There’s nothing in between?”
“No,” Maggie said.
“The camera has a delay, then?”
She nodded.
“Does GRID have the ability to doctor the tapes?”
“Very astute, Justin,” she said, again impressed. “Kunz has done that before, run a loop feed and removed a segment from a tape that would have given us helpful information. So it’s possible.”
“But I thought these communications between you and your headquarters were secure.”
“Secure means reasonably secure. No communications are fail-safe.”
“If I find anything in the car, I’ll let you know right away.”
“Thanks,” she said, watching Justin head for Exit Six. Women watched him walk past. Jealousy, strong and nasty as it always is, coursed through her.
“Hey, Maggie.”
Justin. “What?”
“Just got a report. The vials in the vans are secure and the backup supplies have arrived. Do you want them inside?”
She checked her watch. Forty minutes until closing. “We can’t risk a second interception. I’ll handle it. You press on with what you’re doing.”
“You’re cute.”
“You, too, Crowe. Now get the hell off my radio.”
Picking up her walkie-talkie, she pressed the button. “Will?”
“Right here.”
“Have the locals guard the vans and the supply truck. Position it right outside the main entrance, Level One, Door One. And make sure there’s sufficient medical staff ready to converge on any area that needs assistance quickly.”
“Got it.”
Maggie moved to Center Court and checked in with Kate, then with Amanda and Mark. All three claimed their sectors were fine, and appearances bore that out.
Maggie moved on, around the pit to the food court. The Olympians were having a great time, building a snowman four feet in diameter. The Special Forces members were wary and watchful, but they hadn’t reported the first anomaly, much less anything ranking abnormal.
Maggie wished she could agree. She tried and tried and still couldn’t peg specifics, but God, she knew something was seriously wrong on the virus. She sensed it, felt it, could almost smell it. She couldn’t yet identify the exact challenge, but it was there.
Digging in her fanny pack for another mint, she pulled out the valve she’d found in the elevator. The two owners of the company handling the Winter Wonderland, Harry and Phil Jensen, were down in the pit in the thick of things. Harry saw her and waved. Phil noticed, and nodded her way.
She nodded back, fingering the valve, and a sharp, stabbing warning went off inside her head.
“Maggie?” Donald Freeman paged her on the walkie-talkie.
“Go ahead, Donald.”
He sounded skeptical and disbelieving. “Did you cut Mr. Barone loose?”
“Why?”
“He’s up here on Level Three, cruising. Marty is with me and he says Barone just tried the code to get into the short-stack, but he couldn’t open it.”
Level Three was never crowded. Clearing the shoppers wouldn’t be difficult. Maggie weighed all her options and decided that was safest. “Secure all the shoppers on Three inside the stores, Donald. Tell employers not to let anyone out. Say there’s a felon in the thoroughfare about to be arrested, and they’ll be able to leave just as soon as authorities grab him. Keep them in the back of the stores, as far away from the thoroughfares as possible. Be as discreet as you can, so Barone stays unaware,” Maggie said. “Do it now, and let me know when you’re done.” She turned to Darcy. “I need two SWAT teams prepositioned on Level Two. Have them use the secret elevator.”
“Issuing the order now.”
Minutes later Maggie was still trying to get to an escalator or staircase that didn’t have a mile-long line, when Donald radioed back. “Maggie.”
“Yes?”
&nb
sp; “Level Three is secure.”
“Barone is still up there, correct?”
“Yes, ma’am. He’s walking the thoroughfares.”
“If he tries to leave the floor, you and Marty work together to keep him up there. Backup is coming to take him down.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Exercise caution.” If he was a double and not Barone, he was definitely more dangerous. “He could be armed.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Darcy, have the SWAT teams move in.”
“SWAT teams are ascending from Level Two.”
Less than two minutes later Will radioed Maggie. “Dr. Crowe hasn’t answered a page, Maggie.” Worry riddled his voice. “His company truck driver wants his personal authorization to allow medical staff to guard the antidote vials in his truck. Otherwise, he’s not letting anyone get close.”
Justin should have reported back to her by now. Fearful, she headed for Exit Six. “I’m checking on him now, Will.”
“Shots fired on Level Three,” Darcy reported. “Repeat. Shots fired on Level Three.”
A breathless minute passed. Stairs, escalator and elevators were jammed. No way could Maggie get up there in time to help.
Another minute, then Darcy added, “Two men down. Daniel Barone has been apprehended and is in custody.”
“Who’s down, Darcy?” Maggie wound through the crowd toward the Exit Six door.
“Freeman and a SWAT team member, Maggie.”
“Donald?” Maggie stopped. She couldn’t breathe. “Is he—”
“Both have minor injuries. They’ll be fine.”
Thank God. She let out a relieved groan, went outside and then turned right. Barone’s BMW was in his parking slot and Justin was sitting in the driver’s seat.
The hair on her neck stood on end. Cautiously, she approached the car. “Justin?” She tapped her nails on the window.
No answer. He didn’t move.
“Oh, no. No, no, no.” She jerked open the door.
Justin tumbled out of the car onto the concrete.
In his fist he held an antidote vial.
Chapter 13
“Justin is down,” Maggie transmitted, shaking all over. “Justin is down!”
