Vanished (10 page)

This was insane, Alexis thought. She had a dead body to
contend with, a store to button up against shoplifters and-if
this bomb thing wasn't resolved in the next couple of hoursmaybe looters to worry about.

When was the last time she had even held an infant? It'd
been twenty-five years since Virginia was a baby. She had blue
eyes, the same color as Alexis's. Jessie had big brown eyes like
Brad's. Big brown eyes, like this baby's.

She stroked the child's cheek with the back of her fingers. So
soft. All she had been through, but she didn't cry-just looked
at Alexis as if she knew she could trust her.

"What's her name?"

"Angelina."

"Straight from the tabloids."

"Listen, Alexis. I understand why you'd say no. But this
man Stone is looking for her with me. He won't know to
come here."

"Just let him try." Alexis took the baby, held her close. "Just
let him try to take her from me."

OGAN AND PAPPAS SKITTERED DOWN FROM THE BIKE
path and onto South Spire Boulevard. Jamie Walsh ran
up to meet them. She was small for a cop, but strong,
with a friendly manner that was a good fit for community
policing.

"Sarge, thank heavens. I've been waiting for backup. What
happened?"

He introduced Pappas and gave her the standard answer. "Some
sort of bomb. That's all we know. Do you have casualties?"

"'Fraid so. I've got two." She pointed to the bodies on the side
of the path. "I grabbed tarps from Lorden's Hardware to cover
them with. Didn't know what else to do."

"You did good."

"Hal Monroe's been helping me. Hey, Hal! Come here."

Hal Monroe trotted over, a retired cop who spent his time
shooting the breeze either at the U-Ave sub or the Starlight Diner.

"Logan. What the-"

Jamie gripped his arm. "Tell Sarge about going down to
the firehouse."

"We worked with the injured, counting the seconds until
help arrived. A minute went by, and another, but we still didn't
hear sirens. Jamie and me figured one of us better go looking.
I hopped on the gal's bike. Haven't been on two wheels in forty
years, but we couldn't get any of the cars started. Pedaled down
South Spire. Cars stalled everywhere, all the way down. One of those weird bombs, I figured. Worried that madman from
North Korea-no offense, Sergeant."

"None taken."

"Anyway, I worried he might hit us someday. Here we are."

Logan held back a smile. Hal was a veteran of the Korean War,
still thought Communist first and Al Qaeda a distant second.

"Anyway, I kept pedaling and pedaling," Hal said. "And then
I notice the smoke or whatever it is-it's coming down on me."

"I don't follow," Logan said, though perhaps he did. At the
Circle, the smoke had curled around the bike path, forming
that strange tunnel.

"The further I got down the Boulevard, the lower it got.
And I'm still hearing no sirens, nothing to indicate the fire
station or Barcester Central or the bloomin' Federal Bureau
of Interference was doing anything to help us. And then the
smoke reached the ground in a solid wall. I skidded to a stop
on the bike, practically breaking my neck. Logan, I don't mind
telling you I was afraid. I took a couple steps into it, wound
up confused and dizzy. I'm old, but I ain't that old. So I came
back. I'm sorry I couldn't find any help though."

Logan clapped him on the shoulder. "Hey, man, thanks for all
you're doing. Can you stick around? We might still need you."

"You bet, Sarge."

"Jamie, what's your triage status?"

"Most injuries are from flying glass and debris. But Sarge,
I've got a little girl with a neck injury. The woman with herI'm assuming her mother-was one of the fatalities." Jamie's
voice cracked. "I think the little girl is paralyzed."

Logan exploded. "We've been flapping on about Hal on a
bike ride and you've got a child down?"

"Sergeant, I attended to her quickly and have people with
her now. My priority was to find help for everyone." Jamie's jaw
clenched. "Everyone."

"Where is she?"

"I was afraid to move her, so we've got her where she fell.
On the far side of the path." Jamie pointed to the grassy slope
a couple hundred feet from the rotary, opposite from where he
and Pappas had come out from the Circle.

Logan ran, pain not an issue because if his daughter-whom
he should have never allowed to go back to that slime Reynolds,
no matter what any judge said-if this was his Kimmie, then
terror truly had found its mark.

A man and a woman huddled over the little form. Logan
shoved the man out of the way and bent down to the girl, hating
himself for the surge of relief in his chest.

She was an African-American child, with huge brown eyes that
locked on him. "You're the police guy, right?" she whispered.

"Yeah, sweetheart. I'm Sergeant Logan. Tell me your name
again.

"Natasha"

She and her mother were always on the bike path. The
mom had lost forty pounds, and little Natasha had lost her
training wheels.

"You took a spill, I see."

Natasha blinked slowly, as if she wanted to nod. The woman
on her other side looked across at Logan, the message in her
eyes clear. This is a nightmare.

Logan stroked Natasha's cheek. "Do you hurt anywhere,
honey?"

She nibbled her lower lip. "My shoulder. But I can't rub it."

"Better that you don't, then. One of us will rub it for you."
He nodded at the woman and mouthed the word gently.

Then tears came, hot drops down the child's cheeks,
followed by a confused look because she couldn't wipe them
away. "I'm scared."

"I know, sweetie. It's a scary time, but we've got people to
help you. I want you to hold still, OK?"

Natasha broke into sobs. "I can't move, so don't tell me
not to."

"Oh, honey, I'm such a dope. I'm sorry." Logan wiped away
her tears. "We're going to take you to the hospital and get you
all better."

"Where's my mommy?" she hiccupped.

"She fell off her bike, too. We've got people helping her."
Logan hated the lie, but the truth would be merciless. "Just
hold on for a few minutes while I go looking for the ambulance. Can you do that for me?"

"OK"

He pressed his lips to her forehead. "You forgive me for being
a dope?"

She nodded, showed the beginning of a smile. "OK."

Logan tried to stand, couldn't get his back to cooperate. The
man he had shoved offered a hand, helped him up. Someone
else forgiving him for being a dope.

"Don't let her turn her head. OK?"

"You got it."

He started back toward Jamie.

"Thank you, Sergeant," Natasha called after him.

Logan's heart hammered. If he learned that Stefan Pappas
was involved in the bombing that had hurt this little girl, he'd
break him in two.

He took Jamie aside. "I need to see the woman's body."

"She's gone, Sarge."

"I might be able to identify her for sure."

Jamie led him back toward the Circle, keeping to the bottom
of the embankment. "We figure Natasha was well ahead of her
mother on the path. You know how kids like to race ahead."

Two corpses sprawled to the far side of the embankment.
One was a charred body of indeterminate gender, melded with
his or her bike. The other was a woman whose safety helmet
had been shattered and her back burned.

Logan bent down. Indeed, this was Natasha's mother, but
her name wouldn't come. Come on, come on-what was her
name? She deserved to be known.

Trina. Trina Perkins.

"We'll take care of your baby for you, Trina," he whispered.
"I promise."

F THE BOMB HADN'T BLOWN THE GIRL TO MIST, LUTHER
would have had to put a bullet in her head.

Shame, really. Little Jasmine was fiery and fresh, the way
he liked them. Not much in the scheme of things, but genuine,
through and through. The same girl when she died as when she
had been born.

He was a different matter, of course. Wearing so many
faces, speaking in so many tongues that some days he forgot
his own real name. Forgot where he had come from, whom he
had loved.

Not why he was here though. Never that.

He had been a mole so long that the light of day bleached his
true identity. It took a long mental squint to grasp who he had
been before burrowing underground and coming back up as
someone entirely different each time.

His own cause couldn't nurture him, of course. Not like
they did the young ones who were brought in as dewy-eyed
kids. Taught in groups that drummed the cause through their
skin, they couldn't breathe without gasping for victory. Sent
out to mission fields, some carried money, some carried the
message, some carried the bombs.

He was of the elite few who called the shots. Buried so deep
that he could manipulate with a mere whisper. Indeed, he was
the epitome of that marvelous piece of Christian irony-the first
shall be last and the last first.

It would take a day or so for some cop to backtrack the girl's
pathetic life and come up with a name. They'd be hard-pressed
to come up with a face. The oversized shades and cap took
care of that. Shoulder padding, skin coloring, and a gold tooth
monogrammed with the blocky L ensured that anyone's recollection would be the tooth and little else.

Yet Jasmine had recognized him. How'd she do that when he
was stripped of his street persona, looking as close to his own
self as he ever did? Perhaps it was an intuitive leap, that psychic
grace he had seen in other victims in the last moment before
their deaths.

That boy would have to be accounted for, of course. No
telling if the skinny kid actually registered a face when the
little tramp called out his name, but he didn't get where he
was by leaving such things to chance.

He would hold on to this character for a while, at least
in his mind. The explosion was so fresh that his own name
seemed dangerous, even as a passing thought. And wasn't this
a moment of triumph for Luther, the extent of which had yet to
be revealed?

Stalled cars were only the first sign. When power finally
was restored, these suckers would discover that anything
with a computer chip had been fried. The geeks at Barcester
Tech would be the first to howl, but wait until Mary Sunshine
tried to use the microwave to heat her tea, the couch potatoes
tried to fire up their plasma screens, or some nurse stuck a
digital thermometer in a kid's ear.

And what of the Quantas? Time would tell, though the
corporation wouldn't. Mustn't interfere with their stock
offering, of course.

He would find a way to get those classified reports and see
what the actual damage was. If nothing else, the high-speeds had
been stopped dead. Theoretically, they couldn't crash-nothing
to bump into down in those tunnels. But an electromagnetic pulse the size of a small sunspot would have shaken those
babies enough to put a scare into potential riders.

Enough to derail-gotta love the pun-the massive Quanta
corporation.

The United States mourned the three thousand lost in
9/11, but what he and his people admired were the trillions of
dollars blown to bits, the businesses crippled or smashed into
dust. Paper flying over Manhattan, lifetimes of information
spit out like confetti. Yet this country still hadn't grasped the
notion that the greatest act of terrorism would be one that
systematically shredded their economy.

That truth was buried deep under Barcester. The collateral
damage was nice, but the terror dawning on the faces of these
fools as they realized their world had been rocked was his real
reward. Stripped of cars and cell phones, they wandered in a
daze, waiting for someone to restore order.

Which was exactly what he was waiting for.

Order restored meant order that could be blown apart. And
once again, the suckers would never see it coming.