Deadly Forecast

  He owned a bunch of rental properties around Austin and carried himself like he thought he was a big deal.

  I think my distaste for him was that he had this air of arrogance and entitlement about him that just turned me off. Also, if you pressed me, I’d tell you that there was an element to his energy that I simply didn’t trust. It wasn’t anything I could put my finger on, but I’d always suspected Bruce was up to no good.

  “I wanted to catch you two before you left for work,” he said to Dutch, not yet realizing that I was spying on him from the top of the stairs. “I’ve got someone who wants to move in on the first, so I’ll need you guys to move out on the thirtieth. That’ll give me a day to clean the place and get it ready for the new tenants.”

  I frowned. It was just like that oily SOB to want us out a day before our lease was actually up. Dutch and I had planned all along to be out by the day of our wedding, putting our stuff into storage right before the nuptials and coming back from our honeymoon with only a week or two to live in a hotel until our house was ready.

  I wanted Dutch to tell Bruce to chill out, that we had the house until the thirty-first, but Dutch was looking at his watch and I knew he was calculating to the minute how fast he’d need to drive to still make it to the office on time. “Fine, Bruce,” he was saying.

  “Will we get a day of rent back?” I asked, taking a step down toward them.

  Both men snapped their heads up in my direction. “Huh?” Bruce asked. Sharp he is not.

  “If you want us out on the thirtieth, then we’ll need a day of rent back, because, officially, our month-to-month lease isn’t up until midnight on the thirty-first.” I said all this while making my way carefully down the stairs.

  When I got to the landing I saw that Bruce’s eyes had narrowed, and I knew he didn’t like what I was telling him. His energy rippled with irritation and greed. “Yeah, I guess,” he said. “But if you stay over a minute past the thirtieth, I’ll charge you for the full month at the same rate that I’ve given to the new tenants, and it’s a lot higher than I charged you. Rents are going up all over town, you know.”

  I rolled my eyes, and I could see Dutch stiffen a little. Bruce got under both our skins. “We’ll be out in time, Bruce,” Dutch told him in that tone that suggested the discussion was at an end.

  “Good,” Bruce said, and just continued to stand there.

  I turned to Dutch and said, “You ready, sweetie? We’ve got to go right now or we’ll be late.”

  Bruce sort of backed up as we made a show of getting our stuff together, but I knew he was trying to get a look at the house. He’d be the kind of landlord to nickel and dime us about the deposit after we moved out too. Thank God I’d had the intuitive sense to take detailed pictures of every room in the house before we’d moved in.

  “I’ll have to charge you if you leave any stuff behind,” Bruce said as Dutch sort of corralled him out the door. “The last tenants left some garbage in the garage and I had to keep their whole deposit.”

  “I’ll bet,” I told him. Dutch squeezed my hand as he helped me down the stairs to the drive.

  Bruce gave me one of those really forced smiles that actually says, “I think you’re a bitch,” and I gave one in return that said something that would’ve cost me a quarter to describe.

  Once we were in our car and Bruce was safely off down the street, Dutch said, “If I’d known he was such a douche bag when we were looking at rentals, I would’ve gone with a different house.”

  That got me to chuckle. “Well, at least we won’t have much longer to deal with him. We’ll need to move up the schedule with the movers too.”

  “I’ll handle it,” Dutch said, focusing on getting through our sub without getting a ticket for speeding.

  A bit later when we arrived at the office (only three minutes late), the mood was somber—tense even. The agents walked around quietly and cast worried glances my way, as if I might blurt out something like, “There’ll be another explosion today, guys.”

  Just as I put my purse in the drawer of the small cubicle that was permanently assigned to me, Brice poked his head out of his office and called me in. On my way past Dutch’s glass-enclosed office I saw him looking at Harrison curiously, but Brice made no effort to call Dutch in too.

  Once I got inside, Brice shut the door and motioned for me to have a seat. “I was up all night thinking about this case,” he said.

  He didn’t really have to admit it—the dark circles under his eyes and the sag to his shoulders let me know he’d gotten little to no sleep.

  “What’s happened?” I asked, sensing that something in the ether had shifted since the night before.

  “Gaston has been called to Washington. A small terrorist group in Yemen is taking credit for the bombings.”

  “Bolshevik!”

  Brice blinked at me. “Bolshevik?”

  I held up an apologetic hand. “My substitute for bull poop.”

  My boss shook his head. “We gotta get you another hobby, Cooper.”

  “Sorry, sir.”

  “Anyway, I agree with you, and so does the director. We don’t believe this group is sophisticated enough to have contacts here in the U.S. Still, Homeland is making a power play to take this case away from us and they’re using the claim as the grounds to do so.”

  I sat forward. “How can they justify that?”

  “The coroner identified Michelle Padilla through her dental records and also confirmed that she was the bomber. The shevik hit the fan when HS discovered we’d searched both her residences without coordinating with them.”

  “But they did the same thing to us when they searched the Watson residence,” I protested.

  Brice nodded. “I know, but that’s not how it’s being played out in Washington. In D.C. there’s the suggestion that we’re trying to stonewall their efforts to cooperate in the investigation and help identify the terrorist cell responsible.”

  “Terrorist cell,” I scoffed. “This is one guy, abducting two women and forcing them to wear a bomb for his own sick agenda. It has nothing to do with foreign terrorists. And given the targets, I doubt highly this has anything to do with a grudge against the government.”

  Brice nodded. “We agree. And that’s exactly what Gaston’s going to argue in Washington. But this is gonna come down to politics, Cooper, and it looks like we’ll lose.”

  “What does that mean, exactly?” I asked.

  Brice fiddled with his pen, rolling it over his fingers nimbly, looping it under his palm, then back up to roll it across his hand again. “It means that by five o’clock today we’ll have to hand over everything we have on this to HS. We’ll be officially taken off any further investigation, and told to go back to resolving cold cases.”

  I squinted at Harrison, reading his energy; I already saw his game plan. “Does Gaston know you’re going to keep me on the case?”

  He grinned. “He’s the one who told me to do it,” he said. “But you’re gonna have to be subtle, Cooper. And I do mean subtle. You get a tip, keep it on the down-low and proceed cautiously until you have something solid.”

  “Okay,” I said, and then I noticed that he cast a nervous look at the window overlooking Dutch’s glass-enclosed office.

  “What?” I asked.

  “I’m not sure what to do about Rivers,” he said.

  Sensing an opportunity, I leaned forward and said, “Reassign him. Put him on desk duty until the wedding.”

  Brice eyed me skeptically. “I would, Cooper, if I thought he’d follow that order.”

  I sighed, glancing toward Dutch typing away on his computer. “He is a stubborn son of a beast, isn’t he?”

  “I think there might be a compromise I can work out with him,” Brice said. “He put in a vacation request right before the salon bombing. He asked for next week off. I think when your sister moved the date of the wedding, Rivers got the dates confused and he meant to ask for the week after next off. I’m going to grant the vacatio
n request, although I know Gaston’s not gonna like it.”

  “Wait,” I said. “Does that then mean you aren’t going to give him the week of our honeymoon off?”

  Brice waved his hand dismissively. “No, he’ll have that off too. Don’t worry. He’s got the vacation time available, so it isn’t an issue. The point is that once the paperwork goes through, Rivers won’t have a choice in the matter. He’ll officially be on vacation, and I can order him out of the office if I want to. That means you’ll only have a few days left in the week to worry about him, and after that, he’s not allowed to butt in on the case. I’ll assign the two of you to work together the rest of this week, so that you can keep an eye on each other.”

  I was confused. “But does that mean you want me off the case next week too?”

  “As a freelancer, that’s entirely up to you, but I’d prefer if you’d stay on as long as you can.”

  “I’ll stay on, sir, but the tricky part is going to be keeping Dutch from babysitting me while he’s on vacation. His family is coming in for the wedding early next week, so hopefully they’ll be able to distract him. And he’s on wedding detail with my sister, so I think she might have enough to keep him out of our hair next week too.”

  “Great. For now, just go on as if you don’t know anything. I’ll give Rivers the heads-up about granting his vacation time at the end of the day on Friday.”

  Brice fell silent then, and I could tell he had more to say. “There’s something else, isn’t there?” I asked.

  He offered me a half grin and pulled a file out of the stack he had on the corner of his desk. “Homeland is going to be focused mainly on Michelle Padilla and her connection to this terrorist cell in Yemen, because she’s the hottest lead they have. While they’re working on her and all her associations, I’d like you guys to revisit Taylor Greene. You say there’s a connection between the two women, and I believe you. Find it and start with Greene.”

  I felt myself stiffen. Taylor Greene had walked into a shopping mall in College Station—a city to the northeast of Austin—and she’d blown herself and two other people up. There was footage of the incident captured on a security camera with an amazingly good lens. I’d seen the footage, and I’d tossed my cookies as a result. The last thing in the world I ever wanted to do again was look at that footage, and Brice knew that, but still, he had to ask me, and I knew it wasn’t his fault. Reaching forward, I took the file without a word. I then got up and turned toward the door, but eyed him over my shoulder before leaving. “Candice?”

  The grin came back. “She’s with you guys, but try to keep her out of trouble, Cooper, would you? I’ve got a crush on that lady.”

  I smiled back at him and saluted. I then poked my head into Dutch’s office and told him that Brice wanted to see him. Then I went to my desk to call Candice.

  When she picked up the call, I learned that she was just a few minutes away; she’d stopped to get the office some coffee from our favorite café. I told her to meet us in the conference room and after leaving Dutch a note on his desk about where I was, I headed in with my laptop and the file on Taylor Greene.

  Taking out the DVD of the security footage from the pocket of the blue folder, I took a deep breath before inserting it into the drive.

  The footage was in black and white, but very clear. The mall was new and it’d no doubt been outfitted with some of the better security cameras available. The footage contained a digital display of the time in the corner—11:55 was when it began, just before noon. The shot looked down on the people in the mall, which was sparsely crowded that day, thank God. Within the shot was an elderly couple, holding hands as they walked the perimeter of the mall, a mother and her toddler son, and a salesclerk organizing a rack of dresses just inside of a clothing store.

  And then from the bottom of the screen a woman appeared wearing what looked like a backpack strapped to the front of her chest. She moved jerkily, her frame bent and arms crossed over her chest. I knew this woman to be Taylor Greene.

  The nearest person to her was the mother of the toddler, who took one look at Taylor before grabbing the little tot and swinging him up on her hip. She then took off like a rocket, dropping her parcels as she made a mad dash toward the mall door. But the older couple moved directly toward Taylor, and I bit my lip and felt my eyes glisten. I knew what was coming.

  I paused the footage, wiping my eyes and taking a few deep breaths, and then I hit play again. Just as the elderly woman reached Taylor, there was a flash and then…well…you simply don’t want to know.

  I closed the lid of the laptop, folded my arms onto the table, and laid my head on top. For a long time I just sat there, hating what I’d seen, hating the sick son of a bitch who’d orchestrated it, hating that there was this sweet, trusting elderly couple just out for a stroll at their local mall who would never see their grandchildren again.

  I hated that there’d been a shop clerk who’d also been lost in the explosion, and that a mother and her young son had been rushed to the hospital with severe burns that would scar them for life. And I hated that Taylor Greene had been forced to wear that bomb and walk into that mall, all the while knowing that her life hung by a thread.

  Taylor’s face had been obscured from the angle of the camera, but I’d seen the elder woman’s reaction to the young girl—she’d stepped forward out of concern, the way you would attempt to comfort someone who’s very upset.

  The mother with the toddler had been a different story. She’d seen Taylor at a different angle, and I had no doubt that she’d gotten a good look at the bomb strapped to Taylor’s chest. Or maybe, just maybe Taylor had warned her. There was no audio with the footage, so it was hard to tell. That prompted me to lift my head and jot down a note to myself. I’d want to interview that mother.

  Taking a deep breath, I opened the lid of the laptop and replayed the footage again, stopping just before the flash. Had anyone else noticed Taylor and the bomb? I squinted at the store clerk. Just before the bomb went off, she’d looked up, a long dress in her hands, her mouth falling open. She’d seen it too.

  The door to the conference room opened and I jerked. “Hey, Sundance,” Candice said with a grin. “Little jumpy this morning?”

  I swiveled the laptop around so that she could see. “This is the footage of the first explosion at the mall,” I told her while she unloaded coffees from a cardboard tray.

  “That the same footage that got you so upset a few weeks ago?”

  “Yep.”

  Candice pulled the laptop to her side of the table and sat down to watch it. “Sweet Jesus,” she whispered, and I knew she’d gotten to the end.

  She put a hand to her mouth and shut the lid of the computer, staring at me with wide eyes.

  I held the large coffee cup close, thankful for its warmth. “I know,” I told her. “It’s bad.”

  The door opened again and in came Dutch, and he took one look at us and said, “What’s happened?”

  “We watched the footage from the mall,” I told him.

  He sighed heavily and came around to sit next to me. “You okay?” he asked, taking up my hand.

  I leaned my head onto his shoulder. “For the most part.”

  “Candice?” he asked next. “You okay?”

  She looked at him almost blankly. “I’m a hell of a lot better than that poor old couple.”

  “It’s rough, I know,” he told her, then turned back to me. “Did you pick up anything?”

  “I want to talk to that mother,” I said. “The one with the toddler who made it out alive.”

  “She was in rough shape,” Dutch said, and I knew he’d already had an interview with her.

  “What’d she say happened?” I asked.

  He reached out for the third coffee on the table and took a careful sip. “She didn’t remember much. Cox and I met with her while she was still in the hospital, and mostly she was out of it from the pain meds. She was also too worried about her son to really focus on our que
stions.”

  “I think we should go back and talk to her,” I said. Then I asked, “Did anyone else in the store survive?”

  Dutch nodded. “The owner, Carly Threadgill, was the woman you saw in the footage. She died in the blast, but one of her employees in the back survived and made it out of the store.”

  I reached for the laptop again and pulled it close. I rewound the footage to the clerk right before the blast, my radar buzzing. Something was familiar, but I couldn’t figure out what.

  “What is it?” Candice asked me.

  “I’m not sure,” I said. “But there’s something about that store. There’s a clue there.”

  “We can go to the mall if you want,” Dutch offered.

  I nodded. “Yeah. That’s a good idea. Maybe there’s something in the ether that’ll point me to this nagging feeling that there’s something that connects Taylor and Michelle.”

  “Rodriguez is trying to find that connection right now,” Dutch said. “He’s going through all the girls’ contacts again, trying to see if they know any of the same people. Taylor Greene was originally from Austin, and the girls were a few years apart in age, so it’s possible.”

  I rubbed my eyes and looked again at the frozen image of the store; what the heck was it that kept binging my energy?

  “But you guys never found a connection between any subversive group and Taylor, right?” Candice asked.

  “Not a one,” Dutch said. “By all accounts, Taylor was a wallflower. She was a B/C student at Texas A&M, and if she had any close friends, we couldn’t find them.”

  That surprised me. “No friends?”

  He shook his head. “She lived with another girl—her name’s in the file—and I don’t think they got along. When we asked about Greene’s personal contacts, the roommate told us she didn’t have any. We interviewed several classmates and they pretty much confirmed what the roommate said—Taylor kept to herself.”

  “What about any social media accounts?” Candice asked.