Flash Point (35 page)

Hester propped her elbows on the table, collapsed her head in her hands. ‘I made the most intelligent, compassionate choice I could make for my little girl, and yet they threw me to the curb. But everywhere I look, schools keep teachers with IQs so low they'd barely pass high school, just so long as they don't have any skeletons in their closets. Conform to societal norms, and as long as you can pass basic tests, feel free to mold the future minds of America.'

‘I get it, Hester. I really do. The people allowed to make decisions in
so
many facets of life probably aren't nearly qualified,' Jenna said, playing to Hester's ego. Her narcissistic streak wasn't the same broad, thick band woven into some of the others' psyches, but everyone in Black Shadow was an intellectual elitist. ‘But let's talk about others for a minute who
are
supposed to be qualified. Say, to lead Black Shadow.'

Hester's face darkened. She said nothing.

‘All anyone seems to want to tell us today is that they did what they were told. Came where they were told to come. Is that right?'

Hester nodded.

Jenna joined her nod. ‘Yep. That the boss tells them what to do. And yet, the boss isn't exactly foolproof, either, apparently. Here you all are, arrested. Caught. Your crusade to jumpstart some kind of revolution might have taken a step—'

‘Because law enforcement is as predictable as Ishmael always said they would be,' Hester said.

‘—but it'll take the rest of the steps without you. You'll be in prison, likely for the rest of your lives. Maybe be executed for what you've done. How it goes down for each of you, though, can be different, if you cooperate.' Jenna stood up, looked around the room. ‘Because even if Ishmael was right, he isn't
here.
You're here. Your
friends
are here—'

‘Those people aren't my friends,' Hester whispered.

Jenna raised her eyebrows. ‘Oh? None of them?'

Hester cheeks blushed a touch.

‘Yeah, most of these people might be cohorts, but at least one other guy being questioned in this building isn't just some acquaintance. Who is he to you, Hester? The guy with the WASP knife? A friend? Lover?'

Hester shook her head. ‘It's complicated.'

‘As complicated as mass-murdering, dirty-dozen relationships can be, I'm sure. All I know is he sure seemed to have your back. Saved your ass more than once, if the surveillance videos have anything to say about it,' Jenna said.

Hester stared at the table. ‘Just leave him out of it, OK?'

Protective bluish gray flashed in – the same shade that had flashed in when Jenna had watched WASP UNSUB come to protect Hester
on the bank video.
Maybe if you won't talk to help yourself, you'll talk to help
him.

‘Leave him out of it? He's already
in it
, Hester. Up to his eyeballs, just like you. He might have just as good a reason as yours to be hurt or angry enough to join the cause, but he's going to hang for it anyway. Probably worse than you will. Men's prisons are rougher. He's older. Not to mention juries are harder on men in death penalty cases—'

‘Stop! Please!'

Pay dirt.

‘I can't stop until we find those two Black Shadow members who are still on the loose. Tell me what you know about them, where they might be or what Atticus has planned. What he's done. He'd give you two and anything he knew about you up in a heartbeat, but if you cooperate and tell us what you know about your fearless leader's plans for either the two who got away
or
other attacks, I can get you a deal. I can get one for you
and
your friend. Or whatever he is.'

Hester clenched her fists in her lap, staring at them as though deep in thought. Finally, she looked up, met Jenna's gaze. ‘I don't know where Ishmael is or what he has planned. I don't know where these two people you keep talking about are or what they might be doing. But I can tell you one thing that might be useful.'

‘Spill it.'

‘I want a deal,' Hester said.

Jenna sat back down, leaned forward, elbows on the table. ‘I will note that you cooperated fully and do my very best to ensure that it helps your case. But right now, time is of the essence, and what I can or can't do for you depends not just on what your information happens to be. It also matters that it's given to me soon enough to be able to use it to stop another disaster. So I'm afraid you'll have to take a chance on me here, Hester. You have no reason to trust me, but I can promise you this is the best and only chance for you and your friend. So, if you have something to say, say it now.'

Hester's eyes bored into Jenna's. ‘Like I said, I don't know anything about Ishmael or the two who got away.'

‘Right,' Jenna said.

‘But you're making a big mistake in thinking Atticus is calling the shots. Atticus isn't Black Shadow's leader. Not at all. He'll tell you. Ask him yourself.'

Jenna stood against the door leading to the interrogation cell they'd at one time thought contained the leader of Black Shadow. Now, she didn't know what to think. Or what to expect.

She pressed her back against the wooden door, clutching a file folder of information to her chest – a hastily put-together packet that told her everything they'd been able to gather about Adam Garner – aka Atticus – since he'd been apprehended. Before she'd read through the sheets of paper inside it, she'd been ready to barge through that door, mentally spar with a psychopath so cold-blooded he had led almost a dozen other people to violently slaughter innocents by the handful and would chop off any heads his minions might have the heart to spare. She'd been internally prepping her interview of him based on her previous profile, ways she could play his own ego and arrogance against him to outwit him, coax a slip.

But now that she'd read the file, her game plan had gone out the window.
God, Yancy. I wish I could talk this one through with you. Atticus isn't at all who I thought he was.

She stood up and took a breath.
Here goes absolutely nothing.

Jenna opened the door, and the muscular man with the close-cropped brown hair lifted his head from where it had been resting in his hands. His features were as sharp as she'd expected, but his eyes were sunken. Tired. His eyes met hers, his gaze intent. Searching for something.

The room seemed to be getting smaller as she held Atticus's gaze. What could she possibly say to this man, knowing what she did? He was a criminal – a murderer – but for whatever she might not understand about how it had seemed like the right action to take, she could no longer look at him like a puzzle to be fiddled with or a game to be played. However badly she still needed to get inside his mind, to get information to stop more people from getting hurt, this time, she couldn't get in his head, use his own thoughts against him. She knew now those thoughts were a minefield, and tripping the wrong one would mean game over.

What the fuck would Yancy do if he was here?
Jenna broke Atticus's gaze, stared down at her feet.
Think.

He'd make a leg joke.
He'd be honest.

Jenna looked up again and into Atticus's intense, dark eyes. ‘Sir, I'm so sorry about your daughter.'

Atticus blinked. His lips parted as if he might say something but then closed again. He nodded, his strong jaw set. ‘Thank you.'

Jenna pulled out a chair, sat down across from him.

‘They keep asking me where the others are. What I've told them to do,' he said slowly, his voice a low, scratchy growl. ‘I've tried to tell them I'm not who they think I am, but no one will listen.'

Jenna clasped her hands in front of her. ‘I'm listening, Adam.'

He smirked. Let out a mirthless laugh. ‘Not that I blame them, really. How could I? I'm the guy who's been running around with a kukri and doing things … things I never in my worst nightmares imagined I was even capable of …'

Jenna's thoughts drifted to the file folder on the table: lobbied Congress to change employment laws after he lost his job due to budget cuts, the divorce papers that had inevitably come when his time spent fighting for fair employment outgrew his time spent with his wife. The way his inability to keep steady employment meant only visitation rights with his three-year-old daughter instead of the joint custody he'd sought. The criminal history detailing the bar fight that had sent him to anger management classes – a mistake he'd made without a drop of alcohol on his breath – and taken those visitation rights and made them only allowable under court supervision.

The death certificate and autopsy report on his child after she died from choking on a marble – a game piece of a Chinese checkerboard set a daycare worker had allowed the children to play with without proper supervision.

‘A loss so deep …'

‘I don't think many people can fathom what they're capable of until something so horrifying comes right through their door.'

Atticus shrugged. ‘Maybe
we
can't,' he said, ‘but other people can.'

Jenna leaned forward. ‘What do you mean when you say that?'

‘You got played. Told I was the leader. But it was because we all got played.
I
got played. Maybe I can't predict my own moves, but Ishmael could. Knew what I was about, all the buttons he'd need to push. Couldn't go out himself, so he made me the figurehead. I thought I was a general leading the troops into battle. We'd change the world. Change it so smarter people were making decisions. Decisions like who was hired or fired, based on sense and intelligence and not who you know in HR. Changing things so the status quo didn't mean all you needed was a high school diploma to be legally entrusted with children's lives. Of course I was ready to lead the charge!' Atticus shook his head. ‘But now I can see he just needed a fall guy. I was his fall guy. I guess we all were.'

Dodd and Saleda's mentions of all the UNSUBs talking about the mall like it was some weird family get-together popped to mind. ‘You think Ishmael set you up?'

‘Sure seems like it. We were told it was recon. Then we get there, a hundred cops show up and nab all of us, and only two happen to be MIA? I know our group is known for its propensity to be a bit up our own asses about our IQs, but it doesn't take a genius to sort that one out.'

But Jenna was too stuck on one phrase to laugh at the joke. Avocado green flashed in at the mention of the two MIA members. The color for triple, three. Another color tried to push through, but she forced it away, afraid of losing the nagging fragment of a thought teasing at the edge of her brain, not quite showing enough of itself. ‘So you're saying two people knew the message was a trap. Or were in on it and knew it was just recon being used as a ruse. That's what you're thinking?'

Atticus shook his head. ‘I'm not sure where we're getting off the same page, but this message you keep talking about. You still seem to think … the message about meeting up. It was about recon.'

Jenna's heartbeat picked up. ‘The one through the e-reader reviews. We're talking about that message system, right?'

‘Sure.'

Jenna turned to face the windowless glass and spoke to Saleda, who she knew to be directly behind it. ‘Saleda, we need that e-reader from the apartment. Quick.'

Once the reader was powered up, Jenna scrolled through until she found the book page for
A Tale of Two Cities.
She swiped the touchpad until she found a review written early that morning titled, ‘Don't Wait Til de Winter, Read This Classic Right Now!' She put the tablet on the table and pushed it toward Atticus.

‘Show me how it works,' Jenna said, standing and rounding the table so she could look at the listing over his shoulder.

Atticus nodded, zooming the screen in to make the writing larger. He frowned as he scrolled back to the top. ‘de Winter. He can't help but get in just one more little inside joke even on something as serious as recon we're scouting so we can …' his voice trailed off as though he was too disgusted with himself to finish the thought.

‘OK, so what was the exact message?' Jenna asked, hoping to keep Atticus from getting lost in his anger.

He pointed to the star rating, which was a three. ‘This mean every three letters. You write the letters out, and it'll form your message. Pretty simple if you know what you're looking for.'

Atticus took the dry erase marker Saleda had brought in for him to use and quickly jotted the letters on the white board she'd laid on the table. Jenna scanned back and forth from it to the tablet, double and triple checking that Atticus wasn't making any mistakes. As the message began to materialize, though, the words were so coherent she knew it was impossible it was a mistake or even that Atticus was using the wrong method to decipher it. Though, at this point, she almost wished he
was
capable of pulling something like that out of his hat and was tricking her. With every word of the real message revealed on the white board, Jenna's chest clenched tighter, her breathing picked up pace.

This message wasn't about an attack at all. It was just like Atticus said: the message was about recon, but it had nothing to do with the mall. It vaguely explained that two Black Shadow members had assignments off-site, and the only detail passed along in the message pertained to time slots and check in angles. The location of the mall wasn't mentioned or even alluded to. The message assumed everyone reading it already knew the location. Had been told somehow at a separate time or in another format.

That was it. Not a word about Flint, his family. A threat to them.

Burnt orange of lying flashed in as Jenna's pulse quickened, her anger spiking. If there was no mention of the mall, then the message hadn't sent her to the mall. Sent her
team
to the mall.