The Terror (A Sarah Roberts Thriller Book 18)

by Jonas Saul

  “Wish I could tell you more. It’ll come in time.”

  “Is that it?” Lee asked.

  “Walk a day in my shoes.” She let that sink in. “See how misunderstood I am. See what I go through.” A wave of empathy resonated off Parkman. The look in his eyes said he understood. That was why he had chosen this life with her. He was her angel, her savior. She wouldn’t be who she was without him. “This fight your boss is putting up to oust me is a painful waste of time. It’s stupid, too. They’re doing it ass backwards. If I stay on, the casualty rate will be minimal. If I leave, hundreds more will die and that will be on your team’s head.”

  Lee looked down at the floor. Parkman stared off into space.

  Sarah continued, “It’s like using an entire bottle of No Tears Shampoo on a baby to get them to stop crying. What might make sense on the surface is absolutely ludicrous. Regardless of what you or your bosses do, I am staying until this perp is caught or killed because I’m the only one who can stop him. I’m in a unique position to do that.”

  “How so?” Lee asked, his voice subdued as if Sarah’s words had cut him to the quick. Lee believed in her. That’s why she was here in the first place. But he was on the losing side.

  Sarah rolled the idea around in her head. How could she tell them without sounding insane herself? She looked from Parkman to Lee and back to Parkman.

  “This is the strangest thing I’ve ever dealt with. Until I know more, I’m a little lost.”

  “We’re listening,” Parkman said.

  “I’m hearing from my sister that the man we’re looking for is dead.”

  “Dead?” Lee stammered. “As in dead right now?”

  Sarah nodded. “Yeah, like dead dead.”

  “Then how is he doing what he’s doing? Are you saying we’re hunting a ghost?”

  “No, not a ghost,” Parkman said. “A man everyone thinks is dead.”

  Sarah grabbed his arm. “That’s it. At least I think so. He must’ve faked his own death. If we had a name, it would come up in the system as dead. That has to be it.”

  “Almost impossible to fake your own death today, though,” Lee said. “Technology is too advanced. And we would need a body for a death certificate nine times out of ten.”

  Sarah nodded. “As far as I understand, there was a body.” She shrugged. “Maybe there wasn’t. However he did it, he was efficient because I’m hearing he’s dead and yet our unsub is actively setting bombs off in your city. What Parkman says makes the most sense.”

  “Leave that with me.” Lee swung his chair around and tapped on his computer keyboard. “I’ll have someone look into suspicious deaths in Kelowna and surrounding area. Is there anything else?”

  “There is.” Sarah pushed off the sofa and walked across to Lee’s desk. “I need you to do something for me.”

  “What?”

  “Call your son, Nicholas. Make amends.”

  Lee shot back in his chair. “My son?” The look on his face was surprise mixed with confusion. “How did you know about …” he trailed off.

  “Lee, it’s important,” she added.

  “But why? How does my son have anything to do with this case?”

  “He’s connected. That’s all I can say right now. Just call him. Make amends.”

  Lee got to his feet and stared at Sarah. She wondered how much to tell him. Their family estrangement had lasted a decade. Making them talk again because a terrorist was killing people in Kelowna didn’t feel like the right reason, but it was necessary. Their lives—and death—depended on it.

  “Sarah.” Lee’s tone suggested anger. “Tell me how he’s connected.”

  “He met the perp.”

  “What?” Lee shouted. “He knows who is doing this? How’s that? I don’t believe it.”

  “I didn’t say he knows the person. I said, he met the perp. I don’t even know how yet. And I’m sure Nicholas—”

  “Nick. Just Nick.”

  “I’m sure Nick doesn’t know the man he met is the terrorist. All I’m getting is we stop this guy through your son. You make the call, I’ll give you more as we go.”

  “That’s not good enough. He’ll never talk to me.”

  “Then we really are done here.” Sarah started for the door.

  “Wait,” Lee called after her. “You can’t just walk out after saying something like that.” His voice filled with emotion. “Tell me more about my son.”

  “I can’t. I don’t have more.”

  “Then I’ll have him picked up by the police and interrogated.”

  “Won’t work. He doesn’t know who the perp is. All I said was that he met him. Once you’ve reconnected with him, I’ll know more about their meeting. Then we go to the next step.” Sarah stopped at the door. “We do anything else, it backfires.”

  Lee seemed to think about things a moment. He lowered back into his chair, then tapped his fingers on the top of the desk. “Okay, let’s say I do reconnect with Nick. Then we discover what we need from him. What then? He feels used by his dad?”

  “No, Lee. You have your son back. That’s what then. It’s a win-win.”

  Officer Lee’s glazed over. “I still don’t see the need—”

  “It’s about family, Lee. That’s what I’m getting at here. This whole thing is about family. Your family. The perp’s family. Somehow it’s all connected.”

  Lee walked from behind his desk. “Is my son involved in what’s happening to my city? Do you see him breaking the law?”

  “No.” Sarah waved at Parkman. “Come on. I need dinner and a soft bed. Let’s go find a hotel by the airport and a nice restaurant.”

  Parkman got up off the sofa. “By the airport?”

  “Yeah, I want to give the image that we’re leaving.”

  “I still don’t see how my son is involved,” Lee muttered to himself.

  Sarah opened the office door. “You will. Eventually. But you have to do what I’ve asked. Make amends. Talk to him. Plan a dinner or something. A way to catch up, socialize. But make the call tomorrow morning. Meet him within a day or two.”

  “Then what?” Lee asked.

  “Then I’ll tell you more. Oh, and one more thing to remember.”

  “What’s that?” Lee asked.

  “Humanity has an odd way of learning lessons through death.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” He turned to Parkman. “Is that some kind of veiled threat?”

  “Just listen.” She held up a hand. “Small lessons like fixing the water supply after people drank it and died. Cleaning parsley or cilantro after people in a fast food restaurant catch E. coli. All the way up to large lessons like the Holocaust which gave rise to our anti-genocide laws. That’s the way humans are. Instead of thinking about how fast cars can go and implementing seatbelts decades ago, we wait until there are countless deaths in car accidents, then implement them and make a law to force people to wear them. There are still cars on the road in some countries where seatbelts weren’t even installed.” She cleared her throat. “All I’m saying is, don’t let this be one of those times. Don’t learn that I might’ve been able to help after a hundred—or more—Kelowna citizens are dead. Find a way to let me help and save those lives. Don’t learn this lesson through the death of others as so many others are determined to do.”

  “Is that what you’re seeing? Over a hundred dead before this ends?”

  “Without my help, double that number and then some.”

  Lee mumbled several expletives to himself as Sarah stepped out of the office and started down the corridor. Parkman’s footfalls hurried to catch up to her.

  They entered the elevator, but before the doors closed, Lee’s voice boomed throughout the building.

  “Would someone bring me a fucking coffee!”

  The elevator doors shut.

  “Parkman, you need a toothpick,” Sarah said. “I don’t recognize this guy beside me.”

  He didn’t smile.

  Chapter 9
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  Thirio sat in a back corner of a coffee shop just off the highway that ran through the center of Vernon, about a half hour drive from Kelowna. His first appointment wasn’t for another hour. He would use that time to drink coffee and catch up on what happened yesterday.

  The newspapers covered the carnage of the two explosive devices at separate locations in Kelowna. People were scared. The authorities appealed to the public to take precautions. Watch for peculiar activity. Report anything suspicious to the police. Their investigation was ongoing. Witnesses were being interviewed. Someone claimed to have seen the man who dropped the backpack at the bookstore’s coffee shop.

  He stabbed the iPad with his finger to close the news article. It took two tries, his anger making him miss the small button.

  He tapped his legs up and down, almost in rhythm with his tripping heart rate. What the hell had happened? A witness can place him at the scene? That bomb was supposed to kill any potential witnesses in the coffee shop. He hadn’t cared who saw him as they were not supposed to live to tell about it. But that girl stepped in and wrecked everything.

  Who the fuck is that girl?

  The morning news reported two deaths at the site where the minivan exploded. The driver and a bomb disposal expert had died. But how? The bomb went off at one of the busiest intersections in Kelowna.

  He stared out the window, fury rising inside him like a tsunami. Everything he had planned. All his careful deductions and now this. His previous bombs had worked perfectly. No one could stop him because he had planned his chaos to be a series of random events. The implicit nature of randomness, ignoring all rules of order and expectation, allowed him freedom to do what he pleased, when he pleased, without fear of being stopped by any authority figure. But somehow, someone had stepped in. And that someone had stopped yesterday’s events from having their maximum casualty rate. It also slowed his end goal.

  All this meant was more people had to die in a shorter time span to right the balance.

  More people had to die.

  How could it be possible for someone to know his plans? He’d read that a woman had been brought in to help the police with their investigation. This woman was known to the police to have special abilities. The name rolled around in his head.

  Sarah Roberts.

  How could that woman stop him? How could she know his plans? According to one website, Sarah Roberts had told the authorities about the bomb in the van. That was how they’d been able to clear the area in time to avoid further casualties.

  After Thirio sold those chairs to the man and woman in the red minivan in Penticton yesterday, he had tracked the device hidden inside the chair by GPS as he followed a kilometer behind the van. At Ellis Street, Thirio watched as John turned for the downtown area, then continued toward the bookstore coffee shop. Two bombs within a half hour of each other in separate parts of the city. It was his last two devices, too, except for the big bang he had planned for the end.

  What if Sarah stepped in again? If she knew about yesterday’s bombs, could she know about him? Could she know where he was at any given time?

  He looked around the inside of the coffee shop. Only three people sat in chairs. It was quieter than he expected at this hour, but that was probably because a coffee shop was blown up yesterday in nearby Kelowna. People may avoid these kinds of places for a while. At least until the bomber was caught.

  He turned his iPad sideways and searched for any more news on yesterday’s events in Kelowna. After frantically covering every article on Google, he hit his Alien Blue application and opened Reddit. He read more on the woman who stopped the attacks in Kelowna. Sarah Roberts was a renowned psychic vigilante. One article talked about how ballsy that was considering what she had done to the RCMP the last time she was in Kelowna. The writer suggested Sarah was here by personal invite of a member of the RCMP.

  He Googled her name, then hit the first link that came up and started reading. Ten minutes later, he came up for air, staring blankly out the window.

  With Sarah Roberts in Kelowna, he had to consider that she would try to stop him. She could show up any time. Her online presence was enormous. Sarah had just cracked open a case in Toronto. She had shut down a computer hacker who left no trail. Before that, she was in Denmark, Las Vegas, and Mexico. Page after page were dedicated to her exploits. Even books on Amazon that supposedly Sarah herself had written detailed her adventures in crime fighting.

  Several websites were dedicated to her. One called her Immortal. Because she could talk to the other side, nothing could kill her. She was too valuable for the other side to ever let anything happen to her.

  He checked Google Images for a picture of her face. He knew it when he saw her face—the woman who ran past him into the mall yesterday. She had grabbed the backpack, cleared the coffee shop, and tossed the device in the backroom. Which made all the sense in the world. She was psychic. Whether he believed in that sort of thing or not, it appeared real by her actions. That was the only explanation. It was how she knew about his devices when no one else could have. It was how she knew about him.

  Thirio was the reason Sarah Roberts was here. And she was coming for him. Then why hadn’t she just told the police his name and where he was? What was stopping her?

  He set the iPad cover in place and slipped it into his duffel bag. He felt sick. Sarah could ruin everything. He hadn’t accounted for her. On the other hand, if Sarah were dead, the threat would disappear.

  He thought back to what he had concluded moments before: more people had to die in random acts of madness.

  That would be on Sarah.

  He got to his feet and started for the door. Sarah would know within the hour who she was dealing with. The police would know who they were dealing with. One way or another, he would complete his mission and the people who were supposed to pay for what they had done to him would pay one hell of a steep price.

  Two people rose from their table and opened the coffee shop door to leave just as he approached it. The man smiled and held the door for him. He shook his head, then nodded as if to say thanks.

  The door closed.

  He stood at the glass and stared out at the half-empty parking lot. With his thumb and finger, he locked the bolt on the door and flipped the button on the neon open sign.

  As he turned around, he pulled his gun from his waistband and aimed it at the only customer left.

  “Get up and walk to the back of the store,” he ordered.

  The customer looked up from his novel, jerked his head back when he saw the gun, and nearly fell out of his chair.

  “Hey mister, I got no beef with you—”

  “Get on your feet,” Thirio shouted and jabbed the gun in the air. “Now.”

  The man got up so fast he knocked his chair over. Hands raised at shoulder height, he stumbled toward the back. The male employee came out of the back washroom, a mop in his hands. He set the mop in a bucket, squeezed water out, then looked up as they approached.

  Thirio adjusted the weapon’s aim until the barrel was squarely on the employee’s chest, then squeezed the trigger.

  The report inside the small establishment was deafening. The employee’s uniform shook with the impact of the bullet. He released the handle of the mop as he was shoved backward into the ladies’ room door.

  The customer dropped to the floor and covered his head, mumbling something about not wanting to die. The employee slid down the length of the door, a look of panic on his face, a line of blood trailing behind his head.

  The man raised his weapon and fired into the employee’s body again.

  Then again.

  Chapter 10

  Sarah finished packing her overnight bag, then headed over to the small table by the bed and grabbed the hotel pad and pen. She quickly jotted down a note telling Parkman to hide behind a blue spruce tree and about the murder of two police officers—per Vivian—which made no sense to her, ripped the paper off the pad, and slipped it in her back pocket.

/>   Parkman would knock on her door within minutes. They were supposed to leave the city after all. Lee’s boss had called back late last night. According to Kelowna’s mayor, the police were well equipped to handle criminals in their city. They did not want a psychic vigilante on staff. She was a civilian and had no formal training in law enforcement, therefore she couldn’t be used on any ongoing investigation. Officer Lee called an hour ago, at seven in the morning, to tell Parkman to get Sarah out of Kelowna for her own good. He sent along his gratitude for what she had done for them, but his hands were tied. Her part in this task was complete.