Tough Justice: Countdown Box Set

by Carla Cassidy

  Dr. Oliviero shrugged. “He’s a sociopath, Lara. Plain and simple. Doesn’t see faults in himself. Doesn’t have an active conscience he listens to. Just sees things he thinks are unjust and decides to balance the scales.”

  “And is smart enough to do it,” Lara muttered.

  “Undoubtedly brilliant.”

  “Hopefully the search team finds our ‘undoubtedly brilliant’ suspect hiding in a bunker in Cougar Mountain State Park.”

  “Yes.” Dr. Oliviero looked back down at the pictures surrounding him. “Because he won’t stop until you stop him. He’s too far gone now. He hates those whom he thinks are unworthy of holding powerful positions—most probably was mistreated by someone in a position of power when he was younger. Or maybe peers who ridiculed him.”

  “You know I appreciate your profiles, Doc, and your insight,” Lara told him. “But I don’t give a rat’s ass if he didn’t have any friends when he was a kid or if someone stuck him in a locker.”

  “Damn straight.” Nick nodded.

  “I agree,” Dr. Oliviero said. “I’m not justifying his behavior. But maybe it will help us get ahead of him.”

  She was glad the doctor felt that way, because nothing he’d said or was going to say was going to make Lara feel any sympathy for Mitchell Halpert. Her sympathy could be found where it belonged: with the victims and their families.

  Her phone buzzed on the table and she snatched it up.

  “Lara Grant.”

  “Agent Grant, this is Sebastian Ward with the NYPD. We sent uniformed officers in to pick up Kai Aoki and Paul Prentice as you asked.”

  “Were there any problems?”

  “No ma’am, not with them.”

  Lara sighed. “But with Terra Mapson there was? Is she okay?”

  “She refuses to go into protective custody. My men tried to explain that it was for her own safety but she didn’t want to hear it. And to be honest, they didn’t know enough about the case to provide a compelling argument.”

  Lara rubbed a hand across her face. Terra was smart enough to know she was in danger. She shouldn’t have to be convinced, especially now that Beckett Clarke was dead.

  “Where is Ms. Mapson now?”

  “She’s still in her apartment. She made my men leave.”

  “Dammit.”

  “We can’t force her to go into protective custody. How do you want me to proceed?”

  Lara looked over at Nick who was clearly figuring out what was going on. “No. We’ll handle it. Thank you for your assistance with Aoki and Prentice.”

  Lara said her goodbyes and hung up.

  “Looks like we’re heading into the city,” Nick said.

  Five minutes later they were walking out the door. If the search team found anything, they would notify Nick and Lara. Dr. Oliviero was glad to have the quiet to work on his profile. Xander and James had gone back into the city, looking again for connections between the targets who’d been forced to confess their secrets. Ty and Jennifer were supervising the Honda Civic crime scene.

  “We’ve got to make Terra understand how much danger she’s in,” Lara said as Nick drove them back toward Manhattan.

  He nodded. “Like Dr. Oliviero said, Halpert feels like he was humiliated. Her being a woman is not going to save her from his revenge.”

  Lara shrugged. “It might even be worse in his eyes because she’s a woman.”

  Terra Mapson’s apartment was in a low-rise building, on a side street. Ten years ago it would’ve had a string of homeless people living in it. Now it was an up-and-coming affluent block. Complete with remodeled fronts and even garages.

  Nick and Lara parked illegally on the street, their car out of traffic but not in a legal parking spot. Right now they had more important issues at hand than parking in a delivery zone.

  Terra’s apartment was only two floors up so they took the stairs. They knocked on the door and a few seconds later Terra opened it.

  “And that right there is one of the reasons you need to be in protective custody,” Lara said. “What if we had been Mitchell Halpert?”

  Terra had her smartphone held to her ear. She shook her head and stepped aside, letting them enter.

  “Paul, I’ll call you back. You were right, the big guns are already here.”

  Lara looked at Terra with an eyebrow raised. “Just because one of your buddies guessed we’d be on our way does not make you any safer. You shouldn’t have sent the uniformed officers away, Terra.”

  The other woman’s heels clicked as she crossed the hardwood floor from her living room through the open floor plan of her apartment into the kitchen. Although she didn’t have on a thousand-dollar suit like she had yesterday when Lara had seen her at the BrainWave office, she still looked sharp and professional in her black straight-leg trousers and blouse.

  “I can’t just up and leave with no notice, Agent Grant.” She stopped and looked back at Nick. “Nice to see you again, Agent Delano.”

  “Same here, Ms. Mapson.”

  Lara could see the blatant sexual appreciation Terra had for Nick as she checked out his trim form and dark good looks. This wasn’t increasing Lara’s to goodwill toward the woman.

  “Beckett Clarke is dead, Terra. Murdered, almost without a doubt by Mitchell Halpert.”

  Terra looked away slightly. “I know. But we don’t know what happened between Beckett and this guy Halpert. Maybe Beckett said something that pissed him off. Insulted him or something.”

  “Maybe,” Nick said. “But that doesn’t mean Halpert isn’t coming after you guys next.”

  “But we don’t know he is,” Terra argued. “The people he killed with the bombs, they weren’t all BrainWave employees. I mean yeah, this guy Halpert is a killer, but there’s no reason to think he’s coming after me or Paul or Kai next. We never even met him.”

  “Terra, one of our best criminal profilers thinks that Halpert is targeting you three specifically, regardless of whether you met him or not,” Nick said softly.

  Lara wanted to argue much louder, tell Terra not to be a moron, but decided to let Nick’s “good cop” routine play out.

  If good cop didn’t work, Lara would have no problem playing bad one.

  “We believe Halpert chose the location where he set the bombs because there were BrainWave employees at each location,” Nick continued. “That’s what led us to your company in the first place. Those people were innocent, too. Probably had never met Halpert.”

  “He blew up a building full of people because one of them worked at BrainWave?”

  Nick shrugged. “It was the only link we could find between victims of the multiple bomb sites. At least one person connected to BrainWave was killed each time.”

  Color drained from Terra’s face as she leaned against the counter. “I didn’t know that.”

  “If Halpert was willing to kill people who had no part whatsoever in the decision to hire or not to hire him, how much more do you think he can justify it in his mind to come after you, even though you never personally met him?”

  Nick was good, Lara had to give him that. He was able to read people, respond to them in a way Lara never could. Her bull-in-china-shop method was direct and got things done, but his ability to finesse was impressive.

  Terra turned to get a bottle of water out of her fridge. She drank nearly the entire thing before turning back around.

  When she did the color was back in her face. Anger lit her eyes.

  “Dammit. This Halpert guy is what? Twenty? Twenty-one?”

  “Twenty-one,” Lara answered.

  Terra walked back over to the counter. “I work with young, hotshot guys all the time. Hell, Kai and Paul are barely tolerable, and they’re my partners. It’s the nature of the beast with tech companies. But I’ve learned how to s
hut them down. How to not let them run roughshod all over me. I’ll be damned if I’ll let a twenty-one-year-old kid with some overdeveloped sense of entitlement dictate what I will do.”

  Lara liked the woman more already.

  Terra brought her fist down on the counter. “He’s cost us millions of dollars in productivity and sales with this hacking stunt. That ought to pretty much cover any pain and suffering we caused him by not hiring him.”

  “That’s not how he sees it, Terra,” Nick said.

  “I don’t care. I’m not going to let some arrogant little shit control my life.”

  Lara knew it was time for bad cop to step in. Or maybe not bad cop, but someone Terra Mapson would understand: a fellow woman who didn’t let herself get bossed around either.

  “I couldn’t agree with you more,” Lara told her.

  She obviously wasn’t expecting that. “Really?”

  “Yes. Don’t agree to play by that little shit’s rules. I’ll stand right there with you giving him the middle finger.”

  “So you don’t think I should go into protective custody?”

  Lara took a step closer, looking Terra right in the eye. “No, you have to go. At least for a couple of days.”

  “But you said to not play by his rules.”

  “Yes, but his rules say he’s going to kill you. You and Kai and Paul. Or play some sort of sick game with you. Some sort of emotional torture. But I say no. We don’t give him that opportunity.”

  Terra tilted her head to the side, considering what Lara said. “We change the rules.”

  “Exactly,” Lara stated. “We give him no access to you guys so he’s forced to do something else. Something he wasn’t expecting, wasn’t planning. When he makes that mistake—and he will—we will catch him.”

  Nick chimed in. “Every day we get closer. And we will get him. Don’t doubt it.”

  “But he’s smart,” Terra said, worry replacing the fury she’d felt moments before. “Smarter than us at BrainWave. And no offense, but Paul and Kai are the most brilliant people I’ve known my whole life.”

  Lara didn’t argue. She knew it was true. “You’re right, Halpert’s brilliant. And someone as smart as that might have figured out that he should go to ground. That he should hide out six months, a year, then strike again when he’d fallen a bit from our radar.”

  If he was truly brilliant that’s what he would do. And it would make Terra Mapson’s and her colleague’s lives a living hell in the process.

  “But you don’t think he’s done that?”

  “No.” Lara shook her head and walked over so she was just on the other side of the breakfast bar that jutted out from the kitchen. “He’s got all the intelligence anyone could ever want, but he’s got no willpower. No self-discipline. No means or desire to stop himself.”

  “All he can see is his need for revenge. To make people pay for the wrong he thinks they’ve caused him,” Nick continued. “He doesn’t care who’s hurt in the process and he won’t stop until he’s done.”

  “A true sociopath,” Terra whispered.

  “Yes,” Lara said. “Go into protective custody, Terra. Even if it’s just for a few days until we can get private security or something worked out. You can figure out a statement, a press release, that will stop further damage to BrainWave.”

  Lara flinched just the slightest bit as Nick reached over and touched Terra’s hand, even though the gesture was only friendly and not at all inappropriate. “Most importantly, you’ll be safe and alive. We’ll fight Halpert on our ground. Not his.”

  Terra finally nodded. “Okay, let me get a bag packed.”

  She walked out of the room.

  Lara walked farther into the kitchen and back toward the windows that gave a pretty decent view of Central Park.

  “Good job,” Nick said softly.

  “Me? I think it was you who convinced her. She definitely responded better to your finesse.”

  Nick looked like he would say more about it, but then grabbed his phone. “I need to call Mercer and give him an update on everything, unless you want to. I haven’t even told him about finding Beckett Clarke yet.”

  “Oh, no, I wouldn’t want to rob you of that joy. I’ll call Christina and get the details on the safe house.”

  They were both on the phone a few minutes later when Terra came out of her bedroom, bag in hand, to ask them something. Lara held up a finger to request she hold another minute as she listened to Christina explain some sort of complex firewall system Halpert had built into the computers they’d taken from his secret room.

  Lara smiled as she saw Nick slowly bang his head against the large window as he talked to Mercer, evidently already frustrated with whatever the other man was saying. Lara would rather listen to Christina and have no idea what she was talking about than talk to Mercer and have to control her tongue.

  She squeezed Nick’s shoulder and was turning away from the window when something caught her attention outside down by the sidewalk. It was Terra, walking toward her car.

  “Christina, I’ve got to go.” Lara disconnected the call without waiting for a response. She scanned the outside area. “Nick, Terra’s outside alone.”

  Nick also ended his call with no aplomb. Lara could hear Mercer in the middle of a sentence. “What is she doing?”

  Lara spun and saw a note Terra had left on the table.

  Moving car into garage.

  “Try to stop her. I’m going down there.”

  Lara sprinted out, not looking back. She could already hear Nick banging on the window, trying to get Terra’s attention.

  Halpert could be out there right now with a knife like he’d used to kill Clarke. Or a gun. Terra had made herself an easy target if he was waiting.

  Lara came flying out the building’s front door, relieved to see Terra still alive and unharmed as she got into her car parked at the curb across the street. The woman gave a little wave.

  At least now Lara could protect her if anyone approached—

  Lara was thrown backward through the air and into the door of Terra’s brownstone as Terra’s car exploded into a ball of flames.

  Chapter Eleven

  Three hours later Nick sat down on the stairs out in front of Terra Mapson’s home. The charred remains of her car sat across the street. The fire trucks were packing up. The medical examiner, Dr. Sanders, had taken Terra’s body and the forensics team were picking out any helpful clues they could find in the car.

  If they had a box of bagels then their day would’ve come full circle.

  Terra Mapson was dead. Fortunately no one else was.

  “We could’ve been inside her apartment talking to her when he put that bomb in her car,” Lara said.

  She’d been checked out by the paramedics, who’d wanted her to go to the hospital since they thought she had a mild concussion.

  Lara had asked if it would kill her. When they’d said no, she told them she wasn’t going anywhere.

  Nick wasn’t sure she would’ve gone even if they’d told her it might kill her.

  “The neighbor blocked her driveway again.”

  “What?” Nick asked, afraid maybe Lara did have head trauma of some sort.

  “The neighbor came over here sobbing while you were talking to Dr. Sanders. Said she parked in front of Terra’s garage again because she thought she would be gone before Terra got home.”

  “That’s why Terra was parked on the street.”

  Lara shrugged. “And she wanted to get her car inside the garage before leaving for an extended time.”

  Neither of them said what they both knew. It wasn’t unreasonable—was smart actually—for Terra to want to move her car into her garage since she would’ve been riding with them to the safe house.

  If
they hadn’t both been busy talking to people on the phone, if Terra had just waited until they’d finished, one of them would’ve moved the car for her. Neither of them would’ve allowed her to do it.

  And one of them would be dead right now.

  Nick’s phone buzzed in his pocket. He wasn’t looking forward to updating Mercer with the news of another BrainWave member’s death. But it was Ty.

  “Ty, what’s going on?” They’d texted the rest of the team to tell them what had happened, but they hadn’t officially debriefed yet.

  “Hey, Nick, I know you guys are busy, but I have good news.”

  “We can certainly use some of that. Let me put you on speaker so Lara can hear you too.” He pressed the button and held out the phone.

  “We found Halpert’s hideout.”

  “What?” He and Lara both stood at the same time.

  “Was he in there?” Lara grabbed Nick’s hand on the phone and asked.

  “No. He’d been cleared out of here for hours before we got here.”

  “Are you sure it was his place?” Nick asked.

  “Definitely,” Ty said. “It’s an underground bunker. About five by eight. Listen do you have a computer you can access?”

  “Yeah, I have my laptop,” Nick told him.

  “I can send you a live feed of the bunker. You really ought to see this.”

  Lara and Nick went back inside Terra’s apartment. It felt weird, but it was the only place that would give them the quiet they needed.

  Nick booted up his laptop and a few minutes later he and Lara were able to see as Ty walked through a section of woods toward Halpert’s compound.

  “Is that the GoPro camera?”

  “Yep.” Ty could wear it on his head and broadcast everything he saw.

  His camera was pointed directly at the doorway to the bunker and Nick still barely saw it until it was open.

  “Wow,” Lara said. “That was pretty well hidden.”

  The camera moved up and down as Ty nodded. “Yeah. That TOTEROWICAL guy really helped.”