Tough Justice: Countdown Box Set

by Carla Cassidy

She settled for a bottle of water and chugged half of it before she even made it to the bathroom. There she showered, hoping the hot water would release any of her stress.

  It didn’t.

  There were just some days that got under your skin and nothing you did could get them out.

  Lara took a moment to stare at her reflection. She looked like shit. For once she knew her team wasn’t any better. And Victoria? Lara glanced at her cell phone on the edge of the sink. She started to dial the woman’s phone when she remembered it was off. She dialed the landline instead. It was off the hook. Lara looked at the time. It was late but not too late. She scrolled through her phone until she found a number only to be used in emergencies and hit Send.

  It rang three times before Anna answered.

  “Hey, Lara,” she greeted. “Mom said give her a minute, unless you need her right now?”

  Lara saw her head shake in the reflection. “I can wait.”

  The sound of rustling filled her ear as Anna must have put the phone down. Lara bounced from one foot to the other as she waited. Water slid off her hair and slapped against the tile floor. The sound of a car alarm went off in the distance.

  Lara’s nerves started to grate.

  “Lara?” Victoria finally answered. “Sorry, I was in the middle of a Mercer chore.”

  “I don’t like him,” Lara admitted.

  “You don’t have to,” Victoria pointed out, just as quickly. Her tone was tight, tired. Her day wasn’t just under her skin, it was probably under her bones, too. Lara felt foolish for calling. Still she spoke her mind.

  “I wanted to check on you.”

  “Thank you.” Victoria’s tone softened, not a lot but enough that Lara could tell, if she wasn’t smiling, she had for a moment. “I’m—we’ll be okay. It’s just a lot all at once, you know?”

  Lara nodded to her reflection again. Her expression was pained. She felt it in her heart, too, if she was being brutally honest with herself.

  “Can I just say that this whole situation fucking blows?”

  “Yeah, it does.” A silence stretched between them. And then, “Thanks for calling, Lara. I mean it.”

  It was a dismissal. One Lara wasn’t going to fight. “No problem,” she said, surprised at how her stomach sank.

  She was supposed to be the strong one. Calling her friend to lend a metaphorical shoulder to cry on and yet here she was being comforted by that same friend. Lara should have known better. Victoria wasn’t a woman to be destroyed in a day. It would take a lot more than that to tear her down.

  “I guess I’ll talk to you later. Try to get some rest.”

  “Thanks, I will. And Lara?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Get that son of a bitch, okay?”

  Lara smiled at her reflection. Malice, anger, intent to do harm. All present and accounted for at the drop of a dime.

  “I promise.”

  The call ended and Lara went to bed. There she lay for half an hour before she finally admitted defeat. While she was exhausted, being able to sleep was now more of an obstacle than a blessing. Guilt at being able to rest while a madman was still out there pushed her legs over her bed and made her walk out of the room. She hung a left into her spare room, knowing it held its own wealth of baggage.

  A different set of problems began to move through her mind as she stared at the bulletin board that, summed up, was her murdered mother. She eventually moved over to the desk and pulled a file out of her bag.

  Lamar Jeffries might be dead but that didn’t mean he couldn’t still be important. His death was too much of a coincidence. Was he really killed over some trivial prison yard argument? Or was it something more duplicitous? Something spurred on by her visit...

  But who the hell could have known she went to see him? Not even her team knew that. She’d kept it quiet on purpose. Plus, a man like Lamar was small potatoes. Not someone you watched.

  Lara grabbed a bottle of scotch she kept in the drawer. She used her shirttail to clean out the discarded glass next to it.

  There was no time to think about the how and why of Lamar Jeffries. And also her mother’s case. The bomber needed her full attention. His victims deserved her attention. Everyone who might become a target needed her, too.

  Lara filled her glass and stood with it. She turned back to the board.

  But what if they couldn’t catch the Whisperer? What if, like her mother’s killer, he was never found? Never stopped?

  The smell of alcohol reached up and surrounded Lara. She glanced at the drink in her hand. A thousand things she could have been thinking about at the moment and yet there she was thinking about Jacob.

  She went to the kitchen and poured it out.

  Chapter Ten

  The house had light blue siding and sat on a street with other houses sporting other calm colors.

  Calm. Collected. Happy.

  The neighborhood, located in Westchester County, always felt like that.

  Trees stood tall and green, white picket fences housed in yards well kept, and every so often there were men, women and children walking their dogs, riding bikes or jogging.

  The young man lived in the blue house with his mother. He was twenty-one and had little in the way of people his age in their immediate area. Most people in his neighborhood were full-fledged families. Married couples with bundles of children, flocking around with laughter and innocence.

  They created a background noise that he heard now, walking into the house and to his bedroom. This room was like the rest of the blue house.

  Ordinary.

  Average.

  Expected.

  Sure there were things that only a twenty-one-year-old male would stereotypically have but nothing that he thought was too edgy or drew too much attention. He walked past a Kate Upton poster and a globe that had been for sale at some trendy hipster shop and paused to sit down on the bed to give his feet a quick rest.

  Pretending to be a student for the sake of his mother and all outward appearances was a busy job. Paralleling that with what he considered to be his real job, it was almost unforgiving. But the part needed to be played until it ran its usefulness. He wasn’t ready to push up his schedule just yet.

  And until then, he had work to do.

  The sound of children laughing filtered in between the blinds in tandem with the sunlight. Like what a director of a Hallmark movie would try to capture for the screen. Warmth and happiness and contentment.

  He caught his reflection in one of the mirrors across from him. He grinned.

  Really all of it was just the calm before a storm.

  He went to his dresser and flung his out-of-date student ID on the table. He stretched, looked out the window for a moment, and then he went inside of his closet and shut the door.

  He waited for his eyes to adjust to the darkness. Only when they did, did he reach for the light and turn it on. It was small and weak compared to the other lights in the house. Unassuming. However, it was its lack of light that he’d wanted. It helped hide the real purpose of the closet.

  Moving to the back wall he pushed aside some camping gear, a shoe rack and several winter coats until he was staring at a door. He smiled and pushed the door open.

  And then he really felt at home.

  This was his world.

  He moved across the hidden room until he could sink into its lone chair. It was large and comfortable and the epicenter of where he did some of his best work. He took a moment to let his tired body sink into its embrace before he opened the laptop in front of him. It was connected to three large monitors attached to the wall right behind the desk. Unlike the posters of half-dressed women in his bedroom, he found this sight more appealing.

  More inspiring.

  It gave him access t
o his web—his hunting ground—and what could be more beautiful than a tool that allowed him to find more prey?

  His fingers tapped across the keyboard as he assigned each monitor a separate task. Each a different instrument in his own little orchestra.

  One monitor showed a tracking algorithm, going through various backroom workings for the websites he used to source specific information. He stared into the code and blocked text as it scrolled down, was replaced, and scrolled down again.

  He’d be a fool to deny he was impressed with the tech analyst, Christina Ruiz. She’d gotten much further than he had thought she would. Her digital fingerprint was littering the code. Clever.

  But not near enough to catch him.

  He also had to admit that the Crisis Management Unit finding his source for the Oscar Mackworth case, and so quickly, had surprised him. He was impressed with them, too. Especially the former Unit Chief Russo. She’d decided to come clean with her involvement in the Oscar Mackworth case, giving her corruption the light of day to keep a bomb from being detonated. Impressive, considering only one other person had ever made that decision. It showed backbone.

  Again, not enough to worry about but he was impressed all the same.

  He left his code to look at one of the other monitors. It was tasked with showing him several social media sites being constantly searched through for any mention of his past work and his earlier targets. Not to mention any random sighting or visual of the CMU team. New York City was a large, compacted place. Even if you didn’t want to subject yourself to showcasing your life on social media, that didn’t mean that someone else hadn’t accidentally, or intentionally, gotten a Snapchat of your life. He didn’t believe the CMU members were that careless, but he had done a good job at flustering them he was sure. They might not be on top of their best game.

  He sighed as the image of a man popped up on the screen. That moron had been making an annoying habit of butting into his glory. Taking pictures with the aftermath of the bomb sites and then uploading them?

  This man wasn’t taking him, or what he was doing, seriously. He liked the attention, that much was obvious. He’d been a whore for it. With absolutely no idea who he was messing with. All in a ridiculous attempt to get an ounce of fame.

  But he would know who he had pissed off soon enough.

  The third monitor is what he focused on next. It was reserved for research and he definitely needed to get some done. His fingers flew across his laptop’s keyboard as the image of a local defense attorney popped up. More pictures followed before a text dump of information filled the screen. He leaned forward and scanned it all. When the name “Delano” started to pop up everywhere he smiled.

  There was a whole wealth of dirt there. Dirt he knew how to use.

  “Seems secrets come in spades,” he said to himself. He made a few notes, saved the information, and continued his research.

  Sometime later he smiled, satisfied in his work, and leaned back in his chair. He’d been tired when he’d come inside his secret room but now he felt energized. Itching to deploy his next plan. Hungry for the panic it would create. Just the idea of what was to come pulled his attention to the bulletin board above the monitors.

  Three glossy pictures were top and center. BrainWave’s founders. Idiots. Simpleminded and lacking vision. How they had risen to their spots atop one of the tech industries proudest achievements, he couldn’t fathom. Or, at least, he couldn’t agree with. They’d proven their lack of worth to him quickly and, because of that, their time would come.

  He continued his ritual by taking in each smaller picture beneath the top three. BrainWave employees in various frozen stages of posing for the camera smiled awkwardly back at him. Not all of them were still employed by the company but that didn’t mean he’d exclude them, either. Immediate family trees branched off each picture, helping to fill up the bulletin board to the point of almost having to buy another. While the family members hadn’t been employees of BrainWave, they were still damned by association, and very much a part of his plan.

  His mood darkened as his eyes continued to slide down the board. Soon he was staring at a picture he’d taken himself. The subject in it made his blood boil. He fisted his hands.

  Special Agent Lara Grant caught in a moment walking up the steps to 26 Federal Plaza that morning. Unaware he was so close. Unaware if she’d just turned around, she would have seen him easily.

  Unaware she’d already dug her own grave.

  We have profiled the bomber as a male in his early twenties, lives in the tri-state area, and might have been a former employee at the technology company BrainWave. This man is very likely an intellectual loner with social skills deficits. Like Oscar Mackworth, he is someone who will not stop until he is stopped.

  The words replayed in his head, angering him like they had the first time he’d watched the press conference.

  An intellectual loner with social skills deficits.

  He slammed his fist on the desktop. He didn’t appreciate what she’d had to say about him at her ridiculous little press conference. They were words she’d more than regret if she crossed him again.

  The thought moved him back to one of his monitors. He opened up a file named Lara. The information inside made him smile again. He hit Print on another candid photo of her then turned his attention back to the defense attorney he’d been digging into. He almost had everything he needed.

  If Lara Grant was still in his business after he finished destroying everyone, then he’d just have to expose her, too.

  His smile widened.

  Chapter Eleven

  Sleep had finally claimed Lara but that didn’t mean she was anywhere near well rested by the time she got to work. She ran into James in front of the elevator and could tell he was on the same page of “feeling like shit” as she was.

  “I want to make a clever joke about early mornings or the magic of coffee,” she said as the doors slid open. “But I’m too frustrated to come up with anything and just thinking about coffee makes me mad I ran out at the apartment.”

  James gave her a weak smile as they moved inside. “That could count as clever,” he tried.

  Lara returned the watered-down smile. James wasn’t the same man he had been before this case but he hadn’t completely lost his good nature. At least, not the humor. Though she couldn’t help but recognize he was holding a lot of pain. And anger. She hoped he wouldn’t be consumed by either in the end.

  “Did you get any sleep last night?” she asked as they began to climb.

  “I lay in bed, does that work?”

  “That could count,” she quipped. It made the man snort. Lara had to admit she was happy for another glimpse of humor from him.

  Jennifer was already at her desk by the time they came into the bullpen.

  “Anyone else here yet?” Lara greeted. Jennifer pointed toward the direction of the break room.

  “Xander was cussing out the coffeemaker a few minutes ago, Ty is on his way, Mercer is in Victoria’s office and Nick is talking to Christina,” she answered. “And, by the way, I don’t think she has gone home at all.”

  James dropped his bag at his desk and yawned. “I’m going to go help my partner curse the coffee machine,” he said, already walking away.

  Jennifer grabbed her coffee cup. She took a swallow before nodding her head toward Victoria’s office.

  “Mercer was here when I got in and told me to keep pursuing our list from BrainWave.” She sighed. “It’s a beast. But I guess I shouldn’t complain. Without it we might not have anything to go on.”

  “Don’t worry, we can still complain,” Lara said. “Just quietly. Or you know, at the coffeemaker.”

  On cue Xander walked in.

  “I don’t want to talk about it,” he said, holding his hand up. There was a brown stain acr
oss the front of his shirt. His coffee no doubt. “I’ve got to go grab my spare shirt from the car.”

  Jennifer and Lara stifled their laughter until he was out of sight. It felt good to relieve some tension. If only for the moment.

  “Glad to see you two are working hard.”

  Lara spun around to see Galen Mercer standing in all of his tight-assed glory. He motioned to her. “Grant, follow me.”

  Lara shared a look of confusion with Jennifer but followed her orders. Mercer led her without comment down the hallway, stopping only for a second at Christina’s office.

  “Delano, follow us,” he said through the open doorway before continuing on his path.

  Lara hung back a second and shrugged when Nick appeared. Together they followed the man right up to and into Victoria’s office.

  Or what had been her office.

  The thought bit at Lara, plunging her mood even further south before she’d even had her morning coffee.

  “Don’t bother sitting down, this will be brief,” Mercer started. He, however, did sit down. A chill ran up Lara’s spine. Was this it? Were she and Nick going to be let go for what they’d done at the press conference?

  She didn’t look at Nick but knew he was thinking the same thing. His shoulders had enough tension in them to snap a clothesline in half.

  Mercer threaded his hands together. “I have to head back to Washington and am assigning both of you as interim coheads of the Crisis Management Unit.” It took all Lara’s will power not to openly blanch. They weren’t getting fired, but promoted? Mercer held up a finger. “Don’t throw yourselves a parade yet,” he continued. “Only one of you will get the job once this case is over. Catching this son of a bitch is a team effort, yes, but this is the kind of case that makes a true leader step up. I’m looking for that leader.” His blank expression turned into a look of annoyance. “I’m also hoping that pitting you two against each other will stop you from pulling any idiotic stunts like you pulled yesterday. I better not be wrong.”

  Without even waiting for them to respond, he started to wave toward the door. “Go tell your team,” he said. Then, with a wry smile he added, “And have fun with this. It’s not every day you get the chance to prove to your partner that you’re better than them.” He dropped his gaze to the papers on the desk. “Now shut the door on your way out.”