The Eva Rae Thomas Mystery Series Box Set 2

by Willow Rose

  “That’s a deal, then. We start all over once we get back.”

  “Yeah, about that. I might need to stay in D.C. a few days longer,” I said.

  “What?”

  “Isabella, my former supervisor, has put together an anti-terror task force to catch whoever was behind the attacks. She wants me to join them as soon as I’m ready. Which I guess is tomorrow when they let me out of here.”

  “So…you’re not coming back then?” A furrow appeared between his eyebrows, signaling disappointment, but it swiftly disappeared. It was replaced by another smile, one that seemed awkward and forced.

  “Not yet. I will as soon as we catch this guy. I promise you, okay?” I lifted his hand and kissed the top of it with a smile.

  Matt smiled nervously and let out a small, seemingly insignificant scoff. I knew this wasn’t exactly his plan, but that was life for you, right? Plans were bound to be broken from time to time.

  As were hearts.

  Chapter 87

  It was strange to be back. My old workplace at the FBI Headquarters on Pennsylvania Avenue hadn’t changed much, if at all. Isabella waited for me in her office. I knocked, then walked in.

  Isabella smiled warmly.

  “There she is. Returned to the land of the living. Please, have a seat.”

  I found a chair and sat across from her desk. She kept looking at me, shaking her head.

  “Remind me never to dismiss your theories again, will you? I mean…you knew this would happen. You saw it coming, you spotted it, and you tried to tell me in Orlando, but I wouldn’t listen. I feel like such a fool. I will never forgive myself for not listening to you.”

  “I…well, I didn’t exactly know that this would happen,” I said. “Not the explosions and all. But I had a feeling something awful was about to go down, yes.”

  “And you knew they would target our men in blue,” she said, pointing at me with her pen. “Seventeen calls led to seventeen ambushes. All were bombs placed inside the buildings with tripwires that were set to explode as soon as they entered. The calls led them straight into the traps.”

  Isabella rose to her feet, then walked to the window and looked out. I could tell she was truly shaken up, and that said a lot. Isabella was solid as a rock; nothing shook her. I had never seen her like this before.

  “This case has the highest priority,” she said. “President’s orders.”

  “Of course.”

  “We have all our terrorism experts on this, day and night.”

  “I saw plenty of activity when I walked through the building to get here,” I said.

  “No one has claimed it yet,” Isabella said and turned to face me. “Which means we have no idea what we’re dealing with here. ISIS? Al Qaeda? Another terror network that has managed to stay under the radar? Who are these people? It’s been four days now, and you’d think they’d at least want to claim it by now.”

  “What do the experts say?”

  Isabella sighed and pinched the bridge of her nose. “Nothing useful, that’s what.”

  “Have they made a profile?”

  Isabella nodded. She handed me a piece of paper. “This is what I wanted you to see. We think we’re dealing with a terror organization, which is kind of a given at this point, but…”

  “I don’t think so,” I interrupted her. “Sorry, but I’m guessing that’s why I’m here, right? To give you my opinion?”

  Isabella gave me a look, then sat down. “Please. Go on.”

  “I think we’re looking for one guy. I call him the Swatter. He’s American, born and raised here. He’s also a loner. A computer-savvy gamer, which makes me think he’s not very old, but I could be wrong about that since my dad is a genius with computers and he’s in his mid-sixties. I believe he is most likely ex-military with his knowledge of explosives and how to place them. He might have shown signs of PTSD and could have been stationed in Afghanistan. He is most likely black, fighting for black rights, and against police brutality. He’s had some sort of collision with the police, maybe been a victim of police brutality since that is his focus. He’s chosen his victims to make sure it’s spectacular, and it’s the same with the bombings. He wants attention. He wants people to see and understand his mission, maybe even start a revolution. He killed Amal Bukhari on that stage to get the people to riot, and then placed the calls to lead the police to his bombs. It all went down in one day. It’s all very calculated, so he’s also extremely intelligent. My guess is that he’s also deeply religious, based on his targeting of declared atheists like Amal, who had denounced her family’s Muslim faith. He also has an attachment to the exact time eight-fifty-six p.m. He’s made most of his calls at that exact time, and that goes as well for all the calls to dispatch that led to the bombs four days ago. This is what I believe you’re looking for, not an overseas organization, but that’s just my opinion.”

  She stared at me. “Really? You think this entire attack was orchestrated by only one person?”

  I shrugged. “Yes. That’s what I believe.”

  “And how is that possible?”

  “I don’t have the details yet. But he makes me think of the Unabomber. He targeted people who were involved with modern technology, issuing a social critique opposing industrialization while advocating a nature-centered form of anarchism. We’re looking for someone like that. Someone who wants to change society for what he believes is the better.”

  “Crazy as a bat, you mean,” she said.

  “The Unabomber was a mathematics professor, and if you asked him, he wasn’t crazy. He never pleaded insanity for that very reason.”

  Isabella leaned back in her chair, mumbling under her breath. “I’ll be…”

  “That’s my profile; you can do with it what you want,” I said. “I know the so-called experts might call you insane, but…”

  “No, no, no,” she said. “That’s not why I’m so surprised.”

  “It’s not?”

  She shook her head. “Before you got here, I just spoke to one of our technicians. They’ve gone through all the recordings of the calls that came to dispatch from the night of the bombings.”

  “And?”

  She took a deep breath. “Well, there’s no doubt that it was the same voice. He was using a modulator app to make it impossible to recognize, and to fool our recognition software, but they analyzed the voice, the audio patterns, the emotions, the stress to his voice, and the syntax to locate any accent to identify where he could be from, and his breathing pattern and all that. There’s no doubt it was the same man who made all seventeen calls at once. We haven’t been able to locate a single phone number connected with any of the seventeen calls. They believe he used a computer and some software that can hide your identity. How that is possible is beyond my understanding. I’m not very tech-savvy, as you probably know.”

  “He must have used recordings, then,” I said. “He must have pre-recorded each and every message with the address and high-priority incident. They must have been automated calls that he timed. You can find software for that online; it’s no big deal. Like they do for schools when they want to send a message to all the parents at once. That’s the only way that this is possible.”

  Isabella nodded. “That’s what Tom, the tech, said too. But it being the same voice fits well with your theory, now, doesn’t it?”

  I nodded, leaning back pensively in my chair.

  “It sure does.”

  Isabella looked at me. “The question is where the heck he is now and what’s his next move? That’s where you come in. So far, you’ve been the only one who seemed able to predict his patterns. I need you to do that again, so we can catch him. And please do it fast, before anyone else dies.”

  Chapter 88

  They gave me a small office to sit in, and I logged onto the computer and into the system. It was so strange being here again, yet it felt so familiar. The only thing that had really changed was me, I realized.

  As I sat there staring at the scre
en and the empty wall behind it, I felt tears well up in my eyes. Everything there reminded me of the time when I was still married to Chad, when we had been a family. A quite dysfunctional one, one that only survived because we forced it to, but we had still been one.

  Now, all that was gone.

  And so was Chad.

  He wasn’t just a cheater who had run out on the children and me anymore. It wasn’t just a divorce. He was dead and gone.

  Oh, dear God.

  And right there, it finally happened. I finally realized that Chad was definitively gone, that I could never call him for advice about the children anymore, nor could we laugh about them or be proud of them together. Realizing that he was completely gone felt so definite, and it overwhelmed me with a deep sadness. I hadn’t wanted to admit it to myself, but I missed him. I missed him terribly. Realizing that did the trick. The tears that had been piling up inside of me, that I had refused to let out, came gushing out, overpowering me completely. I leaned forward and just bawled my eyes out, sobbing, my torso in spasms while finally getting it all out.

  And it felt amazing.

  Afterward, I felt lighter than ever. It was like this huge knot growing inside of me had finally burst and all the pressure lifted. I was still sad and realizing that I was never going to get the man I had loved, the father of my children, back, hurt like nothing else, but facing it made me feel better.

  I stared at my phone, wondering if I should call Matt, then put it down. I knew he would be there for me; I knew he would talk to me and be understanding as he always was, but for some reason, I just didn’t want to.

  I had to handle this grief on my own.

  I found a pack of Kleenex in the bag Matt had packed for me and brought to the hospital, then dried my eyes. I then found the FBI files on the bombings and opened the first one. There were almost a hundred files that I needed to read through, so I was planning on making it an all-nighter. We were running out of time. I was determined to get through everything, combing it meticulously for details—anything, no matter how little and seemingly insignificant—that had been overlooked. I was desperate for anything that could lead me to the Swatter’s identity. So far, I had nothing. Not even a lead suspect.

  “Who are you, you ugly bastard?” I mumbled as I opened the first file on the bombing that I had witnessed myself and began to read. It wasn’t easy to read about, and I had to get my Kleenex out now and again as I read through the reports and interviews with the few that survived, among them Officer Steinberg, who I had spoken to in front of the building before it happened. There was also my testimony and Liam’s. I read through them as well, just in case. A note was attached to the report, and I opened it. I wrote down a number on a post-it note and did a search.

  Then I froze.

  Could it really be? Could it really be this easy?

  I shook my head and looked down at the screen again, making sure I had read it right. I had. There it was, right there on my screen.

  The answer to who the Swatter was.

  It had been right there all this time.

  Chapter 89

  It had been a long day. Officer Ben Ross drove his patrol cruiser down the main street of town. He spotted a couple of teenagers from the high school by the ice cream shop, goofing around, punching each other jokingly, then slowed the car down and looked at them through the window. Seeing this, the teenagers scattered, disappearing behind the building.

  Officer Ross continued, taking a right and going around the corner, driving toward the bar areas. It was getting dark out, and soon the drunks would gather here, maybe get themselves into a fight. Some of them had been drinking since happy hour started at four. After almost five hours of drinking, they’d be toasted by now and ready to get themselves in trouble. And he’d be right there, waiting for them.

  He parked his vehicle on the street in front of the parking lot of the Sports Bar, where most of them would hang out. Placing himself there would work to hinder both the drunks and people speeding on the road.

  He opened his computer and started writing his report from earlier. He had been down on the beach where someone had called about a bum sleeping in a tent several nights in a row. Officer Ross had told the bum to get off the beach, but the guy had been drunk and wanted to put up a fight. He had called him all sorts of names and curse words, getting in his face, threatening him. Ben Ross was already in a bad mood as it was because of Ilene, his wife. She had told him she wanted a divorce this very morning and handed him the papers to sign. It wasn’t like he didn’t know that they weren’t doing well; of course, he did. He just thought they’d be able to work through this, especially for the sake of Bryan, their seven-year-old son. But Ilene had met someone else, and she wanted to be set free, as she put it.

  Whatever that meant.

  Not only was she ruining his life, but she was also destroying their son’s life, and that made Ben Ross angrier than anything.

  “Attention all units,” the radio scratched. “We have a possible 10-32 at 121 DeLeon Road; it’s a private residence. Any units available?”

  Ben grabbed the radio. “This is 46. I’m less than a minute out. En route.”

  He put the car in drive, then put the siren on. He rushed down the side street behind the Sports Bar and across the parking lot, then drove onto the small street behind the building and approached the main street of town, flooring the accelerator. A 10-32 was a man with a gun. The address was residential, so it was possibly a domestic dispute gone awry. Ben took a deep breath and felt for his gun in the holster. Two other units were coming up behind him now, and he felt more reassured. It was less than a year ago that he had made a traffic stop where the driver had pulled a gun on him from his glove compartment. Staring down that barrel into the face of death had made it hard to sleep for months afterward; heck, he still woke up bathed in sweat from time to time. Ben had ended up drawing his gun and shooting the guy inside his car. It tormented him to this day, and he often thought he could still see the guy’s mad eyes, especially when he closed his eyelids to go to sleep. To this day, Ben still didn’t know whether the guy would have shot him or not, or if he was just high on drugs, trying to get away from the police. But he couldn’t really take any chances, could he?

  “It was him or you. It’s as simple as that,” his chief had told him afterward when he had addressed his concerns and worries.

  Ben Ross turned down DeLeon Road, four patrol cruisers following on his tail, then parked in front of the mailbox carrying the number 121, heart throbbing in his chest.

  Chapter 90

  It was late, but luckily, Publix was open till ten. Matt pulled down toilet paper and then ten big bottles of Dr. Pepper that he placed underneath the cart so they wouldn’t squash all the bread and meat. His mother was addicted to those things and had been since he was a child. It was all she drank. How she had lived this long and never gotten sick or even overweight was beyond him.

  Matt had stayed late at the station today but promised to grocery shop for his mother on the way home. She had strained her thumb while walking the dog. The dog had seen another puppy across the street and suddenly yanked the leash so hard her finger got twisted, and now she couldn’t carry anything. Matt was used to shopping for her, so it was no problem to drop by on his way home. Except he hadn’t known that it would be this late. Chief Annie had him on a case of ATM-fraud. A group had placed fake skimmers on ATMs several places in town and copied people’s credit cards. He had spent most of the day and evening interviewing the victims and then talking to the neighboring police departments in the towns of Satellite Beach and Cape Canaveral, who had experienced the same.

  In cases like these, it wasn’t very likely he’d ever catch them, which was extremely dissatisfying.

  Matt paid for the food, then rolled the cart to his car and placed the bags in the back, then went to the driver’s seat. He took off, driving through town. He was in his mom’s car since his police cruiser had to go to the shop this morning. />
  As he stopped at a red light, he thought about Eva Rae. He had called her at lunch, but she hadn’t picked up.

  Probably busy with catching terrorists.

  He wasn’t jealous or anything, but he did miss her. Like crazy. He didn’t like how they were always away from one another and how he constantly felt like she was drifting away from him.

  He called her again while the light was still red. She picked up.

  “Hi there,” he said. “You busy?”

  “You could say that,” she said, sounding distant.

  “So, I take it you’re still working even though it’s nine o’clock at night?”

  He could hear her tapping on her computer. She sounded agitated.

  “Listen, I’m really busy…”

  He held the phone between his shoulder and ear as the light turned green. “Are we okay? You seem really far away. Like you’re drifting away.”

  “Matt, seriously. I can’t do this right now. I’m just about to break op…”

  Matt heard the sound of sirens, then looked up in the rearview mirror. He pulled the car to the side of the road to make room for the police cruiser, and as it passed him, sirens blaring, he saw it turn down a street ahead of him. Seeing this, his blood froze.

  “Eva Rae?”

  She answered with anger. “What, Matt?”

  Matt followed the police cruiser down DeLeon Road, and as he saw the blue blinking lights in front of Eva Rae’s house, his heart stopped.

  “Something is going on here; what the heck…?” he mumbled, still holding the phone between his jaw and shoulder.

  Hearing his voice change, Eva Rae suddenly shifted too.

  “What? What’s going on, Matt? Is something wrong?”

  He parked behind one of the cruisers.

  “I’m afraid so, Eva Rae. Your house, it’s…”