Scorched (36 page)

•   •   •

A persistent bleating noise pulled Elizabeth from sleep. She lifted her head up and pain exploded behind her eyes. She groped for the phone as the blurry red clock numbers came into focus: 5:37.

“LeBlanc.” It sounded like a rasp.

“Special Agent Elizabeth LeBlanc?”

She sat up slowly and switched on the lamp. She didn’t recognize the voice. Ditto the bedspread bunched around her waist.

“Speaking.”

“With the FBI?”

“This is Agent LeBlanc, yes. Who is this?”

“This is—” Static. “—Shamus. Sorry to just now be returning your—” More static. “—and now St. Croix. I hope I’m not waking you.”

“Dr. Shamus?” She tried to think around the intense pounding in her head. “I’ve been trying to reach you.” Her gaze landed on a pair of cowboy boots on the floor beside the chair.

“My apologies, but I’ve been away on my honeymoon. Is there something you needed? I have six messages.”

Elizabeth watched, shocked, as a giant shape moved on the sofa. Memories flooded her: the pub, the drinks, an old-fashioned elevator with one of those doors that pulled shut.

Derek swung his legs off the couch. He raked his hand through his hair and looked at her.

“Are you there?” came the voice over the phone.

“I’m here.” Elizabeth took a quick inventory. She was dressed, but what the hell had happened? And why did she have a deep-rooted certainty that she should feel embarrassed right now?

“Um . . . thank you for calling me back, Dr. Shamus. I was . . . Actually, I need to ask you about several of our agents. They called you recently about a project you consulted on. The D.C. Metro.”

“Agents Lohman and Reece.”

“Reid.”

“Right.
Reid,
I guess it was. Yes, I spoke to them at length. They needed information—” Static. “—more questions?”

“I’m sorry.” She rubbed her forehead. “Could you repeat that?”

Silence.

“Hello?” She stood up. “Dr. Shamus?” Elizabeth stared at the phone in her hand. The call had dropped.

She glanced across the room at the man watching her intently.

“That was Dr. Shamus,” she said inanely.

“The Berkeley guy.”

She looked at the phone again. She looked at Derek. “Last night . . .” Her stomach knotted. “Did we—”

“No.” He gave her a sharp look and reached for his boots. As she watched him pull them on, she remembered an endless corridor with red carpet. She remembered a heady combination of lust and nerves and, again, embarrassment.

“Nothing happened at all?”

He sighed. “Not unless you count puking your guts up on the way over here.”

“You’re kidding,” she said, but her brain was kicking into gear now, and she had a sudden memory of kneeling in a bed of ivy while a hand gripped her arm.

“Oh my God. I threw up on your shoes, didn’t I?”

He didn’t say anything, and she wanted to sink through the floor.

“I’m so sorry.”

“Forget it. What’d the professor want?”

The phone in her hand rang, and she rushed to answer it. “Dr. Shamus?”

“Again, my apologies. Some of the places we’ve dropped anchor are a bit rustic. You were asking about the rail project?”

“Yes,” she said. “The Bureau is investigating a potential terrorist threat.”

“So they told me.”

“I was wondering what part of the Metro, specifically, the agents questioned you about?”

“I’m sorry?”

“Agent Lohman in particular—was there a specific area you discussed with him? An area you thought might be more vulnerable to attack?”

“The D.C. Metro?”

“Yes.”

“Agent Lohman didn’t ask about D.C. We talked about Bart.”

“Who?”

“BART. Bay Area Rapid Transit,” Shamus said. “In San Francisco.”

•   •   •

Rick Bolton stepped out of the J. Edgar Hoover Building and pulled a roll of antacids from his pocket as he made his way down the steps. Not even nine
A.M
. and already his ulcer was flaring up. He reached the intersection and crossed Pennsylvania Avenue.

This was going to be one hell of a week, and it had barely begun. He hadn’t even gone home last night, he’d been so swamped with the anthrax letters. Just when he thought he might tear himself away, he’d received the news about Trent Lohman. Now he was headed into Tuesday in a rumpled suit and operating on only a few hours of sleep, stolen on the couch in his office.

His phone vibrated in his pocket and he pulled it out. Florida area code, but he didn’t recognize the number. It would either be his ex-wife calling about the tuition payment that was due this week or his daughter wanting money for her summer trip to Belize. He let it go to voice mail.

Bolton’s gut burned. No one—least of all his direct reports, who were supposed to help him—had a clue about the kind of stress he was under. Only a handful of people had any concept of the complexity of his job. They didn’t realize how layered and far-reaching these organizations were. Fighting terrorism wasn’t about eliminating one man or even one group. It was about stopping a disease before it spread unchecked into the world’s healthiest democracies.

Bolton reached the National Gallery sculpture garden and slowed his pace. He noticed the National Guardsman, who looked about twenty, stationed near the entrance. He had been posted there to keep an eye on people—especially those with backpacks. The kid didn’t recognize Bolton. He had no idea that he was there today as a direct result of Bolton’s orders. He had no idea that Bolton was anyone noteworthy, that he’d dedicated the last twenty-five years of his life to serving his country, or that he’d racked up three ulcers, two ex-wives, and a double-bypass in the process.

Bolton took a deep breath as he crossed the garden and tried to make himself relax. He sat on a concrete bench near the fountain and pulled out his phone. He checked his watch. Not yet nine. He still had time, but he needed to keep it short and get back to his office.

“Barney.”

“Hey, it’s me,” he said. “What’s M&O Pharm looking like?”

“It’s expected to hit eighty-two today,” the broker informed him. “You ready to get out?”

“If it breaks one hundred, sell it off.”

Silence.

“Barney?” He glanced at the fountain that was generating a lot of background noise. Listening devices were everywhere in this town.

“Yeah, that’s . . . unlikely to happen. Yesterday’s fourteen percent gain is huge for this company, especially with the recent decline in pharmaceuticals. They’re having a good run-up because of the anthrax letters and all this Seprax shit, but it’s expected to cool off as soon as the news dies down.”

“Listen to me.” He glanced at the guardsman. “When it hits one hundred, dump it.”

Pause. “All of it?”

“Every goddamn share.”

•   •   •

Kelsey clenched her teeth with frustration as she navigated the beginnings of rush-hour traffic. It was just after seven o’clock.

“How much farther?” she asked Gage, who was in the passenger seat for a change.

“Looks like four blocks.”

She glided into the right-hand lane but had to slam on the brakes as a delivery truck halted in front of her. She pounded the horn.

“Go around,” Gage instructed.

She waited for a break in traffic, then pulled around the truck and zipped into the right-hand lane.

“Do you even know where you’re going?” she asked.

“Derek said it isn’t hard to find.”

She ran a stale yellow. They were en route to BART’s security headquarters, where Elizabeth LeBlanc urgently needed two extra sets of eyes to monitor video footage and
hopefully pick out Adam Ramli from the thousands of Bay Area commuters now pouring into the system.

“You’re going to make yourself late,” Kelsey said now. “Both of you. And this might not be happening today.”

Gage didn’t respond, and she shook her head as she ran another yellow. She hadn’t been able to talk him out of this, and now they were speeding toward the epicenter of what might be a terrorist attack.

But might just as easily be nothing.

Gage’s phone buzzed and he snapped it up. “We’re almost there . . . Okay, good.” He clicked off. “He’s meeting me at the entrance.”

“What about LeBlanc? Where’s her backup? The FBI should handle this.”

“Yeah, well, soon as they figure out which way is up, they can have at it. Stop here.”

She swerved into a drop-off lane reserved for taxis and glanced around.

“Where am I supposed to park?” she asked, panicked. He was trying to rush off without her. He was trying to sideline her again. She’d known what he was up to the instant he’d tossed the keys at her back at the motel.

“I’m sure you’ll find something.” He pushed the door open. “I’ll call you when we get in there and let you know where to meet us.”

“Like hell you will.” She grabbed his hand. “I know what you’re doing, Gage.”

“Kelsey.” He shook his head. “There’s no reason for you to jump in the middle of this.”

“I can help ID him! You know I could and you’re—”

“Just follow the plan, okay? Find a place to park and wait for my call.” He turned to look over his shoulder as Derek emerged from the subway station.

She felt another spurt of panic. “Gage, please. Let the FBI deal with this.”

“We will.”

“You don’t know what he’s planning.”

“I know I’m not going to sit around and wait for a bunch of suits to show up while some terrorist launches an attack!”

Kelsey closed her eyes. It was exactly what she was afraid of. They weren’t going to wait for anyone.

He reached over and cupped his hand behind her neck. “Relax, okay? We’ll get this under control. Hell, he may not even be here.”

“You don’t believe that.”

He looked at her, and she knew she was right. He believed this was happening here. Now. He believed this was the zero hour. It was that damn sixth sense he talked about—that frog vision.

Only this time, she had it, too.

•   •   •

Elizabeth gazed at the wall of video monitors and tried to appear undaunted. Tried and failed. Picking one man out of the thousands of commuters flooding through gates and waiting on platforms was next to impossible. And yet she kept trying because she felt certain he was out there. Dr. Shamus had told her that Trent Lohman grilled him for nearly an hour about the design intricacies of this commuter rail system—ostensibly in order to help the FBI safeguard against a potential terrorist
plot. What Shamus hadn’t realized was that he was talking with one of the plotters.

“Is this really all you’ve got?”

She glanced up at the extremely unhappy-looking SEAL standing at her elbow. Gage Brewer held a computer printout showing the FBI’s most recent picture of Adam Ramli. The man wore a beard, green military fatigues, and a deadly scowl. Gage also held a second printout showing Ramli’s passport photo in which he was clean-shaven, smiling, and impossibly young looking—the all-American kid next door.

“He’s not going to look like either of these,” Gage said. “He’ll be trying to blend in with the twentysomethings out of Silicon Valley. There are thousands pouring through here, and these security people are just staring at the screens. They’ll never recognize him.”

“Which is why we need more eyes,” Elizabeth said. “Where’s Kelsey?”

“On the way.” Gage’s face hardened and he looked again at the monitors.

“Check it out,” Derek said, pointing at a screen. “What’s that man doing?”

They all eased forward, crowding one of the security people seated at a bank of monitors.

“Just checking his backpack,” the guy said. “See?” He gave them a cool look as the innocuous commuter zipped his pack shut and stepped on an escalator. “Good thing we didn’t take him down.”

Elizabeth ignored the sarcasm. Clearly these people were less than thrilled about this drop-in visit by an FBI agent and two oversized “associates” dressed in ball caps and jeans. She, Gage, and Derek made quite
a trio, and Elizabeth knew their disheveled appearance was making it difficult for the shift leader in charge of security here to take her seriously, despite the badge she’d flashed when she’d arrived. Since the instant she’d walked in here, he’d been highly skeptical. Elizabeth had already called the San Francisco field office to report the threat and request immediate backup, but no one had shown up yet, and she had a sneaking suspicion she wasn’t being taken seriously by them, either.

“What’s to say he hadn’t already released the toxin?” Derek asked. “He could have come through here hours ago.”

“Not according to our detectors,” the shift leader said. “After 9/11, we installed biohazard sensors at every station. We’ve had them checked three times since yesterday when the alert went out about the anthrax letters. As of six
A.M
. this air was negative for biohazards.”

Elizabeth was encouraged by the news but dismayed by everyone’s ho-hum response. Apparently this security team routinely dealt with crank calls and false alarms, and no one seemed eager to shut down a rail system that transported more than three hundred thousand people a day based on Elizabeth’s tip. But she knew this was real. Even if the info from Ben Lawson at the Delphi Center hadn’t reinforced the theory that something was going down today, Gage’s and Derek’s body language would have convinced her. The super-cool spec ops warriors who ate terrorists for breakfast were on red alert.

“Whoa, got something.”

Everyone turned toward the childlike voice of a
young woman seated at a computer monitor. While the other dozen or so security personnel here were monitoring real-time developments, she and several coworkers were combing through older footage from when the trains started running at four
A.M
.

Elizabeth leaned over her shoulder now and watched a group of people standing on a subway platform.

“What did you see?” she asked.

“Well, it was very brief, but I
thought
I saw a man slip into the tunnel.”

“Rewind it.”

She did. Everyone peered over her shoulder at the grainy video image. The commuters were mostly loners dressed in a range of clothes from business suits to athletic shorts. A clump of teenagers stood at one end of the platform horsing around with one another. All of them wore backpacks or had satchels slung across their bodies.