The Eva Rae Thomas Mystery Series Box Set 2

by Willow Rose

  HOTEL PHOENIX, it simply said.

  Chapter 81

  Phoenix Park Hotel wasn’t very far, but trying to drive through a town full of protesters with them rioting and the police trying to stop them wasn’t exactly easy. I kept running into roadblocks or into crowds of people who were throwing rocks at windows while yelling out their anger. I repeatedly had to turn around and try to go the other way while chaos governed the streets around me. At one turn, I drove toward a huge crowd, and they started to bang on the car with sticks. I tried to go back where I had come from, but the crowd had surrounded me, and now the police were beginning to knock them down. I got out of the car, ducked down, and tried to elbow my way out of the crowd. A huge store window of a Books A Million store was shattered, and the books thrown into the street, then set on fire. I made my way out of it, then ran down a small street before pulling out my phone to look at the map.

  I wasn’t far from the hotel now.

  I ran onto a bigger street, looking carefully for protestors or police, then crossed it and ran through Lower Senate Park while the sounds of screaming and yelling behind me pushed me to run as fast as I could.

  I spotted Liam standing outside the hotel, wearing a hoodie over his head. He saw me and waved. I ran up to him.

  “This is hell,” I said. “We have to get out of here.”

  “Not much worse than running from the reporters as I have been all day since they released me this morning on bail,” he said. “My lawyer fought quite the battle to get them to let me out. Thank God for expensive lawyers. It all came down to the fact that they have no evidence that links me to the guy who did the shooting. He advised me not to travel out of state while waiting for my court date, but the judge allowed it since I have to go home at some point, and it might take months. Have you read any of the crap they’ve written about me?”

  “You can’t care about that now,” I said. “The Swatter has started his war. Look at this town!”

  I couldn’t hold my tears back anymore, and Liam saw it. He grabbed me in his arms and hugged me as the emotions of the past hours’ events overpowered me.

  “Hey, hey.”

  “It’s all my fault,” I said. “I’ve been so close all this time. I knew this was what he wanted. I shouldn’t have let her go onto that stage. I should’ve…”

  “What a load of nonsense,” Liam said.

  I pulled away. “Excuse me?”

  “You’re not going to get me to feel sorry for you if that’s what you want,” he continued. “It’s not happening.”

  “I…I wasn’t…”

  “Yes, you were. You think that you could have stopped this? What else do we need to blame you for while we’re at it? War in Afghanistan? Syria? My boy dying?”

  I swallowed and looked at him, confused.

  “The fact is, there was nothing you could have done. Things happen. Life happens, Eva Rae. Yes, you’re chasing a killer, but you are not responsible for those he kills. He is. Didn’t they teach you anything at Quantico?”

  I stared at him. “You have to be the most annoying man on this planet.”

  “It’s only annoying because you know I’m right.”

  I snorted, feeling my tears dry up. “So not.”

  “There’s my girl,” he said, smiling, looking into my eyes, causing me to blush. “That’s the look that I wanted to see. There’s the look of determination.”

  “Save it, will you? Stop patronizing me.”

  “What? What did I do wrong?”

  As a flock of protestors approached us, I started to walk away, pulling his arm to have him follow me inside the hotel.

  Chapter 82

  THEN:

  FanTAUstic345: Yo, you there?

  DeVilSQuaD666: Yes.

  FanTAUstic345: It went wrong. It was the wrong address. I can’t believe it. Did you see the news?

  DeVilSQuaD666: I saw it.

  FanTAUstic345: OMG! Then you know that guy was shot? He was shot right there in his own home.

  DeVilSQuaD666: Calm down.

  FanTAUstic345: How can I? A guy died. You made that call to the police. You told them to go there, to his house.

  DeVilSQuaD666: I know. But they’ll never find out.

  FanTAUstic345: How can you be so sure? They could track you down somehow. You’ll go to jail.

  DeVilSQuaD666: I just am. They’ll never find out. I promise you. Trust me. They won’t find out it was me. I’ve done this hundreds of times, and they’ve never found out it was me.

  FanTAUstic345: This is different. This isn’t like when you clear out a school with a bomb threat. The guy is dead. It’s murder.

  DeVilSQuaD666: I didn’t kill anyone. I didn’t. It’s not my fault.

  FanTAUstic345: Yes, you did. You made the call.

  DeVilSQuaD666: Well, you made me. You’re the one who wanted him punished, remember? You wanted to teach him a lesson.

  FanTAUstic345: I didn’t mean for this to happen. It was supposed to be like a prank. A joke. But it wasn’t even the right guy. It was someone else. It was the wrong address. This guy was innocent. He had no idea.

  DeVilSQuaD666: So?

  FanTAUstic345: So, that makes us murderers.

  DeVilSQuaD666: No, it doesn’t. It’s not our fault they thought he was armed and shot him. Maybe he was a bad guy. We don’t know everything.

  FanTAUstic345: But he had nothing to do with it. We swatted someone innocent, and now he’s dead. I’m scared they’ll come for us. I am afraid they’ll somehow find out who we are and nail us for this.

  DeVilSQuaD666: Take it easy. They don’t know I made the call. I’m skilled. They can’t track me.

  FanTAUstic345: I know.

  DeVilSQuaD666: But you won’t talk, right? Tell me you won’t.

  FanTAUstic345: I won’t if you don’t.

  DeVilSQuaD666: Good. Keep a low profile. Never talk about this again. We should delete this chat and never talk again. Just in case.

  FanTAUstic345: K. Good luck.

  DeVilSQuaD666: Same.

  Chapter 83

  Liam booked us a room, and we went upstairs to hide, trying to avoid the clashes going down all over town. We could hear sirens in the distance and see flames licking at the sky as it was growing darker still.

  Later, as day had become evening, and the protests had died down outside the windows, Liam ordered some food for us, and we ate together while the TV ran in the background, showing pictures of the riots. I felt awful but decided to not blame myself for not being able to stop this. Liam had been right about that. It wasn’t my fault. The Swatter had started all this, and it had been his plan all along. I was done blaming myself for not being able to save everyone.

  Including Chad.

  He had been killed by a murderer, and there was not a darn thing I could have done differently. It had taken me a while, but I had finally realized that I had to forgive myself for what happened to him.

  It wasn’t my fault.

  “You okay?” Liam asked, tilting his head.

  I shrugged and took another bite of my burger. Liam had laughed when I ordered a burger from the hotel’s room service.

  “You can have anything,” he said. “You could have lobster or duck, and you choose a burger and a milkshake?”

  “I needed comfort food. I guess it’s hard to be very happy right now,” I answered, “when I feel like I’m farther than ever from finding the Swatter. He’s out there somewhere; I truly believe he’s in D.C., but where? I wish I knew why he was doing this, why he was killing. If I did, I’d be able to find him.”

  My phone vibrated in my pocket and I pulled it out. It was my dad.

  “Hello?”

  “You’ve got to check the scanner,” he said, sounding agitated. “Something is happening, something big.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked. “Anything other than the riots?”

  “Yes, this can’t just be that. I’ve been listening for a few hours since Amal Bukhari was shot, and I sp
oke to you right after. But about ten minutes ago, something happened.”

  “What?”

  “Dispatch received seventeen high-priority calls at the exact same time. Seventeen!”

  I sat down on a chair, heart pounding in my chest. I looked at my watch. “Let me guess. At eight fifty-six?”

  “Exactly.”

  “Dear Lord.”

  I hung up and told Liam what my dad had said, then opened my police scanner app to listen in. My dad was right. A lot seemed to be going on at once. Several bomb threats, an active shooter situation, and a hostage situation. All life-threatening situations that will have highest priority.

  “What’s going on?” Liam asked.

  “It doesn’t sound like the riots,” I said. I grabbed my jacket from the chair and put it on.

  “Where are you going?”

  “Do you have a car?”

  “Sure. I rented one at the airport. It’s parked in the back.”

  I plotted a couple of addresses I had heard on the scanner into the GPS on my phone, then asked it for directions. I pointed at one of them.

  “This one is pretty close to us.”

  Liam nodded and grabbed his phone and car keys. “I’ll drive.”

  Chapter 84

  As we drove down 19th Street in downtown D.C., a tingling sensation shot up through my spine. It felt like a premonition of something horrible about to happen, something I couldn’t do anything to prevent. It was accompanied by an unpleasant feeling of utter helplessness.

  What is going on here? What is he up to now?

  “Take a right here, and then we’re there,” I said. “The address is at the end of the street.”

  It wasn’t hard to find once we took the turn and came around a building. There was already what looked like fifteen or maybe twenty police cruisers there, along with a SWAT team, and they had set up a perimeter. I spotted the guy in charge in an instant, then bolted out as soon as Liam stopped the car and ran up toward him. An officer stopped me as I was almost there. His name tag said Steinberg.

  “Hey, this is a restricted area. You can’t be here.”

  “Can you tell us what’s going on, Officer?” I asked and stopped. The guy I needed to talk to was only a few feet away, but too far for me to be able to yell. Besides, if I did, they’d just think I was a crazy person. I needed to look into this man’s eyes to make him listen to what I had to say.

  It was a lot easier said than done.

  “We received a call about an active shooter inside this building in one of the apartments,” he said. “You better leave now. It’s not safe here.”

  My heart started to race in my chest. I stared at the sergeant in charge as he obviously was giving directions to his men. I couldn’t escape this odd feeling inside of me that wouldn’t go away. Something was off.

  “Do you have a headcount? Is he holding hostages?”

  “I…we don’t know much as of right now. But I do need you two to…say, don’t I know you? You’re that chef, aren’t you?”

  He stared at Liam, and Liam sent him a crooked smile.

  “Weren’t you just arrested down in…Orlando for…?”

  “Listen,” I said. “We need to speak to someone in charge. I think this might be a trap. Can you hear me, sir? Sir?”

  The officer shook his head, still staring at Liam. “What are you doing here? You were in that car down in Orlando, when…when…I read that…”

  “Listen to me,” I said. “You need to listen. Don’t go inside that building, please.”

  As I spoke, I watched from the corner of my eye as the entire SWAT team was sent in.

  “No,” I said. “No!”

  I stepped forward, but the officer held me back by placing a hand on my chest. I looked at him, terrified.

  “Please, stop them.”

  But it was too late. The men disappeared inside the three-story red brick building while I held my breath. It felt like an eternity but was probably just a few seconds of complete silence before the officer spoke again:

  “Now, I need you two to lea…”

  Boom!

  Chapter 85

  The windows on the third floor of the building in front of us were blasted out, followed by big balls of fire shooting flames into the air above. Then, the second floor followed up with another explosion before the first floor did the same. Three explosions at the same time shook the entire neighborhood. Bricks were sent flying, along with glass and other debris.

  Oh, dear God!

  I was thrown to the ground by the force of the explosion, cracking my forehead into the pavement while waves of glass rained from the sky. Blood ran from my forehead down my cheek and nose while I struggled to figure out what had happened. The building in front of me wasn’t just destroyed. It was gone.

  And so were the people who had been inside it.

  Somehow, during it all, I saw Liam go down as well. His legs gave away under him, and he fell face-first into the pavement right next to me while the sound blasted out my ears and kept echoing for minutes after, pounding inside my head.

  Please, make it stop, please!

  Liam yelled something, but I couldn’t hear what it was. I tried to yell something back, but he couldn’t hear me either. Black smoke and dust filled the air and the neighboring buildings in front of us were completely engulfed in flames. I stared at the scene, mouth open, gasping for air, while an inferno raged inside of me.

  The worst part was that it wasn’t over yet.

  As I was almost on my feet again, another explosion blasted through the air. This time, it came from another part of town, and as I scrambled to my feet, another one came, and then another one followed, and I fell forward to my knees, holding my hands above my head to shield myself from the terror.

  Stop. Please, stop!

  I counted seventeen explosions, all at almost the same time or right after one another, coming from all over town. It was like an earthquake, one of the bad ones, where you aren’t safe anywhere, where the very ground beneath you caves in, and every house crumbles around you.

  As the ground shook and bricks, glass, and debris landed on the pavement in front of me, Liam reached out his hand toward me, and I grabbed it, holding it as tightly as possible like it was the very last thing connecting me to this world. A wooden electrical pole fell from the sky and smashed down scarily close to us, and I let out a scream.

  Liam then covered me with his long coat and with his big body. He was hugging me tightly, protecting me, while the entire town seemed to be crashing around us. People were spilling into the streets in panic, crying out to God. I saw the officer from earlier, the one that had held me back, dragging the remains of the sergeant across the pavement, struggling, his face smeared in dirt and sod while the sergeant was barely alive, missing his right leg.

  That was when I closed my eyes and covered my head completely. I didn’t want to witness any more. I simply couldn’t bear it.

  THREE DAYS LATER

  Chapter 86

  It was like looking at a warzone. Several big buildings downtown had been completely demolished by the seventeen explosions. Hundreds of people had died. Hundreds. They still didn’t know the exact number since they weren’t done searching through all the fallen buildings. But they knew that sixty-nine of them were police officers, twenty-two were firefighters, and there were four emergency responders, along with an uncertain number of civilians. So far, twenty-five had been dragged out of demolished buildings, but it was believed there would be a lot more as the work for digging them out progressed. A baby had miraculously survived two days in the rubble and was dug out by firefighters, bringing a flicker of hope to us all.

  Other than that, it was bad. It was really bad.

  I was in the hospital for several days, being treated for a concussion and smoke inhalation. I was one of the lucky ones, though. My injuries were far from as severe as most other people.

  The Swatter had outdone himself.

  Liam was anothe
r lucky one. He only spent one day in the hospital before they discharged him, and he went back to his home in Philadelphia. The airports remained closed for three days, and the roads were clogged by people traveling by car instead of air, so my mom and the kids couldn’t come up to see me. And I told them they didn’t have to. I’d be home as soon as I was done in D.C.

  Matt did come, though. As soon as he realized I had been hurt, he drove all night and all the next day to get to D.C. He stayed by my side for all three days while I was in the hospital, and I was so happy that he did.

  “Actually, it was Alex who told me to come,” he told me on the last day when he had come back with coffee from the vending machine. “He came to my house after you left and we had a little chat.”

  “Alex did?” I asked.

  “Yes, he ran away from your house, and I called your mom immediately. He ended up staying the night, sleeping in Elijah’s room. I think those two are becoming really good friends. Anyway, Alex told me he wanted us to come back to the house, to your house and live there because we were needed. You needed me, he said. You were just too proud to tell me.”

  “Wow,” I said.

  “I know,” Matt said. “That little kid sees more than you know.”

  “He sure is smart,” I said.

  “Anyway, I was thinking that Elijah and I should just come back to the house as soon as we get back from here. It’s all been silly, really. I don’t even remember what I was so mad about earlier. It’s all water under the bridge.”

  I swallowed. I smiled, thinking I should be happy about this, but somehow, I wasn’t. I had that feeling once again like someone was choking me—like I couldn’t breathe. I cleared my throat and shook off the feeling.

  “Yes, sure, of course.”

  He took my hand and kissed the top of it. For some reason, I winced, and he saw it. A shadow went over his face for a second, then disappeared. He smiled gently.