Newburgh Heights, Virginia
M
aggie O’Dell grabbed the ringing cell phone off her nightstand. Eyes too bleary to see the caller ID. Instinct from too many late-night calls made her simply answer.
“This is O’Dell.”
“I woke you.”
The surprise in Benjamin Platt’s voice was warranted. O’Dell rarely slept more than a few hours a night, and even those were interrupted by nightmares. Some of which Ben had experienced firsthand. If she’d had her way earlier tonight, he would have been there beside her.
Theirs was an odd relationship. Friends wanting to be more, but neither willing to give in and admit it. Too many ghosts. Too many expectations. Too much discipline. Or both just simply cowards.
“I must have fallen asleep for a change,” she laughed. Eyes focused now, she glanced at the glowing faceplate of the digital alarm clock. It was 1:36
AM
. “Let me guess. You haven’t been to bed yet?”
He had stopped over earlier on his way home. Her Tudor-style house in a suburban, private neighborhood wasn’t anywhere close to Fort Detrick and definitely not on his way home from the District.
His excuse—or what he had said—was that he wanted to find out about her friend Gwen Patterson, who was recovering from a mastectomy. But he also wanted—maybe needed—to talk about the upcoming highly publicized and overly politicized congressional hearing.
She let him talk while they enjoyed a couple of beers on her patio, watching O’Dell’s dogs play in her backyard. They laughed at Harvey biting at lightning bugs. The sun had set before Ben arrived. While they sat in the dark enjoying a pleasant buzz from the alcohol, O’Dell wanted to ask him to stay the night. The last month had been a tough one. Something about cancer and the thought of possibly losing her closest and oldest friend had left her with a hollow feeling.
But she didn’t ask.
What was worse—he didn’t suggest it, although all evening she sensed there was something he wanted to ask her.
And once again, they continued to play the worn-out game. Perhaps they were nobly protecting each other or selfishly protecting themselves. O’Dell didn’t even know anymore.
Now, hearing his voice on the phone, she simply wished he was there with her.
“About tonight,” Ben said.
O’Dell pulled herself up and leaned against the headboard. So maybe he was feeling the same way she was.
“This hearing has been weighing on my mind more than I realized,” he continued. “I don’t mean to drag you into this.”
“You were only venting.”
“Actually, not just venting. I need your help, but I was waiting to hear back from Director Kunze.”
Raymond Kunze was the assistant director of the Behavioral Science Unit at Quantico, and he was O’Dell’s boss.
Now she was confused . . . and maybe a bit disappointed.
Before she could ask, he began to explain.
“There was a landslide in western North Carolina. One of DARPA’s research facilities was affected. Yesterday a rescue crew found the body of one of the scientists. He’d been shot in the head.”
“And the other scientists?”
“We haven’t heard from any of them. The first slide—the major one—happened about ten-thirty at night. Should have been minimal staff. Most of them live in the vicinity, so their homes may have been affected, as well. It’s too early to know. Everything’s still a mess. There were other bodies but no one’s certain who they are. They may be from the facility or they could be others in the community who were caught in the slide. It’s been difficult getting much coherent information.”
“So how is it you’ve already identified this scientist?”
He was quiet for too long.
O’Dell ran her fingers through tangled hair, pushing it out of her eyes. She leaned over and snapped on a lamp. Harvey looked up at her from the foot of the bed, then plopped his head back down. She didn’t see Jake. The shepherd had taken on her bad night habits and was probably patrolling the downstairs.
When Ben still hadn’t responded, she asked, “What does this have to do with you?”
Ben was a medical doctor, an army colonel, and director of USAMRIID (United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases) at Fort Detrick. DARPA reported to an entirely different chain of command. And yet he was using “we” as if this facility was one of his responsibilities.
“We’re working with DARPA on several projects. Sometimes they can do things we can’t. Many of their remote facilities, like this North Carolina one, work off the grid with little regulation or oversight. Vaccines, protective military gear—there’s a wide variety of projects.”
“And this facility, what project was it working on?”
“Unfortunately that’s classified.”
At first she thought he might be joking. He had a dry, sarcastic sense of humor, but the longer he hesitated, yet again, the more she realized he was serious.
“Let me get this straight,” and now she couldn’t hide the irritation. “I think you’re getting ready to ask me to go check out why a scientist working for DARPA ended up murdered in the middle of a landslide, but you’re not going to share with me what he was working on? Even though it may have been what got him killed?”
“I know it sounds odd, but I actually don’t know yet. Details of each operation are on a need-to-know basis. Right now the concern is how this scientist ended up dead. And if there’s still possibly a threat to the others who may have been at the facility.”
“Is there a chance it was a suicide?”
“I honestly don’t know. Possibly. Again, details are murky. But you see the challenge. Until we find out what happened, it would be premature to release any information that could be harmful to the success of the operation.”
He sounded like a bureaucrat. Of course, as the director of a government agency and an army officer, he
was
a bureaucrat. But she still hated when he sounded like one. As an FBI agent for over a decade, she was officially a government official, too, but O’Dell usually found herself bucking the system. In her own defense, she did what she believed was the right thing. Unfortunately, others in the bureau didn’t necessarily agree with her on what was right, especially if it wasn’t politically correct. Unlike Ben, she didn’t always play by the rules. And consequently, she had a reputation for going rogue. Which made her wonder why in the world he’d want her to go down and check on this.
“Everything has been happening pretty quickly. Peter Logan, a deputy director of DARPA, is trying to find out what happened to the facility, but the FBI will be in charge of the murder investigation. Because of the sensitivity of that facility’s research, Colonel Abraham Hess asked if I could recommend someone we could trust to be discreet, and of course I thought about you.”
Ah, so there was her answer. It was her expertise he needed as much as her discretion.
He paused and she wondered if he was waiting for her to feel grateful or flattered. It was O’Dell’s experience that when government agencies needed to keep secrets, it usually amounted to covering their own asses. But Ben had helped her several times, actually saved her life once. He didn’t ask for favors. This had to be something terribly important to him.
“Of course, I’ll do whatever I can.”
He surprised her when he said, “You don’t have to do this just because it’s me asking, Maggie. You can say no.”
And this time his tone was gentle and filled with concern—the Ben she knew and respected and maybe even loved.
“I’ll leave in the morning after I check in with Gwen.”
“It should only take a few days,” he told her. “Logan already has some people down there. His assistant, Isabel Klein, is there, and he hired a K9 unit. The dog handler is someone Logan knew in Afghanistan. I believe he said his name is Ryder Creed.”
She had worked with Creed twice before. The last time only about a month ago. And suddenly O’Dell was glad they were on the phone so Ben couldn’t see her reaction. Because she could feel herself respond involuntarily.
How was it possible that just the mention of Ryder Creed’s name could send an annoying but pleasant rush through her body?
Haywood County, North Carolina
D
ust blurred Creed’s vision. He could taste it, clots of it stuck in his throat, trying to suffocate him. Somewhere on the other side of the mud wall he could hear Peter Logan telling his men to stand down until the dogman cleared the way. But when Logan appeared from around the corner, none of his men accompanied him. Instead, he was walking with a small boy.
Creed recognized the kid. His name was Jabar, but the men in the platoon called him Jabber because for an Afghan kid he talked a lot and fast, no matter which language he used. From what Creed had observed, Jabar spoke at least three, including English.
He guessed the boy was nine or ten going on twenty. The men thought it was funny that Jabar acted so grown-up, even bumming cigarettes off the men and smoking alongside them. The first time Creed met him, Jabar took one look at Rufus and backed away. It wasn’t as if he was frightened but that he thought the dog was bad luck. He warned Creed that the other children in his village would throw rocks at dogs and if Creed didn’t want the animal to be hurt he should not take him beyond the camp.
Jabar came and went as he pleased. The men barely noticed him, and if they did, they teased him. But even after a few weeks Jabar still kept his distance from Rufus. Creed had put it off as superstition, until that last day, when he discovered the real reason.
He was back there again, seeing it as if he were standing off to the side, watching and knowing what happened next but not able to change the outcome. So many warning signs. Why hadn’t he seen them?
Jabar’s bright white athletic shoes should have been a tip-off. A size too big and laced up around his long skinny legs. But the kid was always showing up with crap like that. Most likely the shoes came from Logan. The two exchanged contraband on a regular basis. It was one of the things Logan expected Creed not to notice, or if he did, to look the other way. Especially since Creed had made it clear that he wasn’t interested in “free” designer sunglasses or athletic shoes or diver’s watches. And he declined the experimental cough drops and cough syrup. He knew there was other experimental stuff Logan distributed to his men. That was the real reason for the gifts. Where or how Logan got any of those things, Creed didn’t know and didn’t want to know. He and Rufus would move on to the next platoon in another week or so.
Jabar showed up that day wearing a baggy jacket, a sleek zip-up windbreaker in addition to the white athletic shoes. The sleeves were rolled up to the kid’s elbows, bulging with too much fabric and making his stick arms look even more fragile. Likewise, the rest of the jacket bulged, but in ways that indicated there was more than only Jabar’s slight frame hidden underneath.
At first Creed thought certainly Logan must know that Jabar wasn’t exclusively his little con artist. The kid was a hustler who could swindle and trick even someone like Logan.
But on that day Jabar jabbered faster and louder than usual. He had the swagger and belligerence of someone twice his age and three times his size. Creed heard him yelling at Logan, climbing on rocks and jumping down with his arms out, making the baggy sleeves look like wings.
Logan seemed annoyed but not alarmed. He cursed at the boy, then laughed at him, but it wasn’t in jest. Instead it sounded too much like mockery, too much like he was daring the boy.
Rufus started whining at Creed’s side, straining at the end of the leash. Nose in the air, neck hair bristling, tail curled, ears pricked forward. The dog was alerting.
That’s when Jabar saw Rufus. Creed didn’t notice that the boy’s hands were balled up. The first rock he threw hit Creed in his temple. The next landed with a sickening
thud
against Rufus’s shoulder. Jabar yelled at them, digging into his pockets, plucking out and throwing rocks, his arms swinging in exaggerated wild loops. Even Logan took a hit.
“What the hell are you doing?”
“He’s loaded,” Creed yelled, pulling Rufus back along with him.
He saw the boy dig into the folds of the windbreaker. Saw the cord. Knew he’d never make it behind the boulder ten paces away. He snatched up Rufus, all eighty squirming pounds of him, and he dived for shelter as he heard the explosion. It blasted him off his feet.
Dirt and rocks crumbled, raining down. Burning pieces of metal shredded his back. The last thing he heard was Rufus’s whimper before everything went black.
Creed felt the wet tongue licking his cheek. His eyelids were heavy. When he tried to open them it was as if sandpaper scraped against the lenses. Blurred figures danced in the dim light above him. A dog nose hovered, then the licking started again. Creed reached up and caught the small head between his hands, massaging the ears and containing the licks.
When his vision finally focused he was surprised to see not Rufus but Grace, his Jack Russell terrier.
“What are you doing here?” Creed asked the dog as his eyes darted around the large area, a towering ceiling with steel beams and massive light fixtures on low. The bed beneath him screeched under his movement and he remembered the small cot in the corner of the school gymnasium.
North Carolina. Not Afghanistan.
Landslide. No explosions.
Bolo butted his big head up against Creed’s side. Grace scampered along the other. Just as he was trying to put the pieces together in his fuzzy mind someone said from behind him, “It’s about time you woke up.”
He twisted his neck to see Jason Seaver, his hired dog trainer. But he had left him back at his facility in the Florida Panhandle.
“What the hell are you doing here?”
Washington, D.C.
M
aggie O’Dell stepped off the elevator and immediately felt the knot in her stomach tighten. She wasn’t looking forward to telling her friend that she needed to leave her side for an out-of-town assignment. Last night, when she was leaving Gwen, O’Dell caught a glimpse of something in her friend’s eyes.
Gwen would deny that it was fear. She had tried to put up a strong front even this summer after the realization had sunk in that she had breast cancer. For too many months she had sought second and third opinions, as if searching for someone—anyone—who might tell her something different from the inevitable truth. O’Dell had watched the brilliant psychiatrist, who for decades had counseled generals and politicians for a living, retreat into a state of denial when faced with her own frightening battle.
Gwen was fifteen years older than O’Dell. They had become friends while O’Dell was a forensic fellow at Quantico and Gwen an independent consultant on criminal behavior. Their early days had been spent poring over files and crime scene photos, looking for signature details and motives, sometimes doing so while sharing cold pizza and warm beer into late-night hours. Not exactly the bonding experiences of ordinary friendships.
Almost ten years later it still surprised O’Dell how a sophisticated and mature woman like Gwen had put up with a wet-behind-the-ears newbie like her. Truth was, she still looked up to Gwen as a mentor. She counted on her strength and counsel. Gwen was the only person in her life whom O’Dell cared about unconditionally. Gwen had always been there when she needed her, and a few times when O’Dell didn’t even realize she needed her. Now it was her turn to repay Gwen, if only she knew how. And if only Gwen would let her.
For the last week O’Dell had spent as much time as possible with Gwen, taking vacation time from her job. During Gwen’s hospital stay O’Dell had sat by her side, giving up her post only when she knew Gwen’s significant other, R. J. Tully, would be there. And even then, she stayed perhaps longer than necessary, almost as if making certain that Tully was okay, too.
O’Dell had partnered with R. J. Tully on dozens of FBI cases before he and Gwen fell in love. To O’Dell they seemed an unlikely couple. Gwen was pearls, oysters Rockefeller, and evenings at the Kennedy Center. She was a gourmet cook and kept her kitchen, her home, and her office meticulous. Tully, on the other hand, couldn’t seem to go a day without getting a stain on his tie or his shirt cuff. He was tall and lanky and loved to eat but wasn’t picky. Their last road trip, O’Dell had watched him devour—and delightedly so—a honey bun with a month-old expiration date from a rest stop vending machine. But despite all that, O’Dell trusted him with her back. More important, she trusted him with her best friend.
Last night before she left she had asked if there was anything she could do for Gwen. Her friend thanked her, but O’Dell knew Gwen wouldn’t ask for help, just like she wouldn’t admit how frightened she was. She looked completely uncomfortable and so very vulnerable in the ill-fitting button-down shirt—an item far removed from her fashion style, but necessary to accommodate the drain tubes. Then she shook her head and said that she was glad to be home. But before she looked away O’Dell caught something in Gwen’s eyes that didn’t look remotely like relief. Just like she wouldn’t ask for help, Gwen would never admit that she was frightened. But O’Dell had seen a flicker of fear, maybe panic. Something that whispered,
Please don’t leave me.
And O’Dell had no idea what to do about it.
Maggie O’Dell had grown up too soon, taking care of herself from the time she was twelve. She had to, after her father’s death and her mother’s downward spiral from beloved wife and mother to suicidal alcoholic. The independence and emotional detachment, perhaps even the lack of trust that she had learned as a child, came in handy in her profession as an FBI agent specializing in criminal behavior.
However, those same traits that helped her to excel at her job were a hindrance in her personal life. A busted marriage only added to her distrust and to the barricade she built inside herself. It took such effort to let anyone in, and with few exceptions she no longer even made the effort. In these last several months, and in particular the last two days, it had struck her like a dagger to her heart. She couldn’t imagine what her life would be like without her best friend. She could not lose Gwen Patterson.
Now, walking down the hallway clutching the vase of flowers, she felt a sense of how small and inadequate the gesture was. How little difference it made. How totally helpless she felt. She didn’t have a clue as to what she was supposed to do.
She used her key and let herself into Gwen’s condo, announcing her presence as soon as she stepped in. As she made her way to Gwen’s bedroom, she suddenly felt guilty that she was more comfortable dealing with killers and dead people than she was taking care of someone she loved. She hated that when Ben asked her to go to North Carolina she didn’t mind cutting short her vacation time. What was worse—she was almost relieved.
O’Dell was surprised to find Gwen asleep and alone. On tiptoe, she placed the vase of flowers on the window ledge alongside the others. She had racked her brain trying to find some other display of her feelings, only to come up empty.
“Calla lilies,” Gwen said from behind her.
“I didn’t mean to wake you.”
Gwen waved a hand at her, gesturing that it made no difference, then pointed at the chair next to her bed, inviting O’Dell to come sit beside her. But even as she obeyed, O’Dell couldn’t help noticing how drained and pale her friend’s face was. She still hadn’t gotten used to seeing Gwen with her golden red hair chopped short in preparation for what was to come.
“How did you know calla lilies are my favorite?”
It was the first smile O’Dell had seen in days.
“Sometimes I remember stuff.”
“You mean stuff other than details about killers and dead bodies.”
O’Dell’s turn to smile, pleased to hear the familiar ribbing.
“There’s something I need to ask you,” O’Dell said as she sat down.
“It’s okay. I already know.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Kunze called me.”
“He called you?”
“He wanted to know how I was doing.”
“Are we talking about the same Raymond Kunze?”
Gwen smiled again. She had worked with the man on a case last spring, acting as a consultant. O’Dell suspected Kunze ended up very fond of Gwen. Most men were. It was after working together on a case that Tully had fallen for her. But that Kunze would actually call to see if it was okay to pull one of his agents away from Gwen’s bedside—that was beyond anything O’Dell would have expected.
“He promised that you wouldn’t be away for too long. A few days at most. Something terribly classified. Bodies unearthed after a landslide? Obviously not victims of the landslide, I gathered.”
“No. One of them has a gunshot wound. They believe it happened before all of the slides began.”
“All of the slides? There’s more than one? Are they still happening?”
A slip of the tongue. O’Dell needed to backtrack. She didn’t want Gwen to worry. But she knew there had been more slides and smaller ones were expected. Conditions hadn’t changed. It was still raining. Part of the area where one of the bodies had been discovered was already flooded.
Instead of telling her friend any of this, O’Dell said, “Hey, I’ve handled worse. It can’t be as bad as a hurricane, right? Or chasing a serial killer through graveyard tunnels?”
O’Dell meant to make light of this assignment, but her friend didn’t smile. Instead Gwen added, “Your last out-of-town assignment landed you in a pit of scorpions.”
She couldn’t argue that fact. Some nights O’Dell awoke from her regularly scheduled nightmares swatting at her arms and batting at her hair. It would take a special compartment in her mind for her to forget how it felt to have them scurrying across her body, stinging her over and over again.
“I’ll be okay,” she told Gwen, this time serious, all joking set aside.
Then she caught and held her friend’s eyes, and she could see that Gwen was thinking the same thing—how quickly, once again, they had reversed roles. But going down for a few days to deal with a couple of dead bodies wasn’t anything close to her friend’s battle. It certainly wasn’t a life-or-death matter, or at least that’s what O’Dell thought at that moment.
“Are you doing this only because Ben asked?” Gwen wanted to know.
“He’s done a lot for me without asking for anything in return.”
“When you care deeply about someone you don’t expect anything in return.”
O’Dell knew Gwen wasn’t Ben’s biggest fan. She thought he was playing mind games with O’Dell. By telling her that he couldn’t be in a relationship with any woman who didn’t want children, Gwen said he was only testing her, pushing her to make a decision.
O’Dell didn’t want to hear it. Instead she tried to change the subject and found herself suddenly saying, “Speaking of scorpions, Ryder Creed’s there working the North Carolina site with one of his dogs.”
“Really?” And now her friend was smiling again. O’Dell had confessed to Gwen about her attraction to the man the last time she had worked with him. “Well, now that makes things interesting.”