Fatal Mistake--A Novel Read online

  “You’re a government translator and work out of D.C.,” he stated, as their research had proved that, and he wanted to get her take on it.

  She nodded. “I work for the State Department translating documents, conversations, videos. You know, that kind of stuff.”

  “What language?” He hoped she didn’t claim a Middle Eastern language, potentially tying her to a terrorist cell.

  “Depends on the day.”

  “So you speak more than one foreign language?”

  “I’m fluent in Spanish, French, and Russian.”

  He almost sighed out his relief, and he hated that he didn’t want her to be involved when he was desperate for a lead on Keeler. Any lead. “How did you decide to major in languages?”

  “I’ve always been good at math, so my teachers wanted me to go into a math career or IT and languages. I have no interest in IT. Math would have been okay, but as a child, I spent a lot of nights staring at the stars and dreamed of discovering what was outside my little town.” A wistful smile found her lips.

  “So you want to travel. Maybe visit the countries where they speak your languages?”

  “Yes, absolutely. In fact my friend Penny and I have been planning a trip to Russia now that I’m free.”

  “Free?” he asked, and her open expression closed down.

  “And after Oren is caught, of course,” she quickly added, her avoidance of his question raising a red flag. “So what happens next in finding him?”

  “Are you up to telling me about the pump house?”

  “Sure, but I can’t. I mean, for some reason, running from Oren keeps coming back. But no matter how hard I try, my time at the pump house is fuzzy.” She sighed. “Truth be told, I don’t actually want to remember the details of getting shot.”

  Maybe a red flag, maybe not. “Memory loss happens in traumatic situations. Things are likely to come back in bits and pieces.”

  “I’ll be sure to let you know if it does.”

  “About that,” he said, and leaned forward. “I’ll stop in to see you each day to try to jog your memory. If possible, I’d also like to get your assistance in finding Keeler.”

  She eyed him cautiously. “How?”

  “For starters, you can share every detail you know about Keeler with my team. And we can also put you in situations that could help bring back your memories.”

  “I suppose I could.” She wrapped her arms around her waist. “Maybe…I guess, anyway. This is all new to me. I’ve never been involved in anything like this, and…” She shook her head. “How long will it take to come to grips with Oren being a bomber? A killer…women…he kills women, and he shot me. Tried to kill me, too. I mean…” Tears flooded her eyes, and she covered her mouth with her hand.

  He reached out to take her hand, then snapped his back before he made this personal. “It’s hard to comprehend something like this.”

  “Maybe Oren didn’t mean it.”

  “Oh, he meant it, all right. He didn’t accidentally chase you through the woods and fire a gun at you.”

  “You’re right, I suppose.” She nipped at her lower lip.

  “Look, Tara,” he said, putting force into his tone to get her full attention. “I get that this is hard to handle, but you can’t doubt Keeler’s intentions. He wanted you to die, and the worst thing you can do for your safety right now is underestimate him. You need to remember that he’s a dangerous man. So dangerous that while you’re in the hospital, I’ll have an agent outside your door at all times. In fact, Agent Fields is already standing duty in the hallway.”

  “He’s out there now?” She shot a look at the window. “Because you think Oren will try to kill me again?”

  Cal nodded, but at her anguished expression he wished he hadn’t had to admit his concerns.

  “But how can he…he was…we were friends. Good friends once. This’s crazy. My life. It was good. Now this. How will I ever get back to normal? Will I get back to normal?”

  “Not until Keeler is caught.”

  “But, he…” She shrugged and started crying softly.

  She still didn’t believe Keeler was a serial killer, and Cal couldn’t risk her underestimating Keeler or she could wind up dead, too. Cal wouldn’t lose another woman on his watch. He firmed his resolve to keep this woman’s pain from distracting him.

  “I’ll be here for you, Tara,” he said, meaning watching over her, not helping her deal with her emotional trauma. “Like I was with the helicopter. We’ll all keep you safe. Are you willing to help me?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good,” he replied. “Because we only have a few days until the first of the month, when Keeler is sure to detonate another bomb.”

  * * *

  4:30 a.m.

  Darkness cloaked Tara’s room when she drifted out of sleep. The nurse had come in as Cal was leaving and given her something through her IV. She didn’t remember anything since. How long had she slept?

  She rubbed her eyes and raised the bed. Movement in the window overlooking the hallway grabbed her attention. Groggy from the pain meds, she concentrated until a man standing on the far side of the hall became clear. He stepped closer.

  Had Agent Riggins come back, or was it Agent Fields?

  She blinked hard and squinted until the guy came into focus.

  No. Oh, no.

  Oren. It was Oren. There in the hallway, standing less than twenty feet away. A sneer on his face. A challenge in his eyes.

  “You’re dead,” he mouthed, and slashed a hand across his throat before disappearing down the hall.

  Panic curled through her body. Help. She needed help. She tried to get up. To call out, but the tiniest of movements sent the room spinning. Nausea followed, curling into her stomach and leaving it roiling. She closed her eyes and tried hard to move past the undulating waves of dizziness to think.

  Oh, God, please. What should I do?

  Agent Riggins. She needed him here by her side, but where had he gone?

  He’d promised to be there for her, but he’d disappeared. Left her alone to fend for herself. Let Oren get to her. He’d probably gone back to his job, his office, having forgotten all about her.

  “Help,” she finally got out.

  She waited for a response from anyone.

  She cried out again.

  Nothing. No one.

  Where was this Agent Fields? Why wasn’t he coming to her aid, or even challenging Oren?

  She peered at the window. Reality hit, settling in and stealing her breath.

  She was alone. All alone and vulnerable.

  If Oren could step into the hospital and come this close to her, he could certainly locate her D.C. row house and pounce.

  She’d be a sitting duck. Exposed.

  Her brain cleared for a moment and it hit her then. Hard.

  She wasn’t safe. Not here. Not anywhere. Not as long as Oren ran free.

  Chapter 4

  Dallas, Texas

  Monday, August 1

  12:25 p.m.

  Cal curled his fingers and slammed his fist into the Honda Accord’s charred body. The metal sizzled from water blasted through firefighters’ hoses and heat from the explosion scorched his knuckles, sending pain radiating up his fingers.

  Too bad. He deserved to suffer. He should have prevented Keeler from setting off his latest bomb. Could have prevented it if he’d only worked harder, smarter, longer. Anything but this destruction. With it being the first of August, Cal had known Keeler would detonate a bomb. Yet Cal had failed, adding an additional ulcer in his gut. Worse yet, Keeler had now departed from his pattern of targeting Muslim women to killing women Tara Parrish had recently befriended.

  Choosing women outside the D.C. area made Keeler unpredictable. A loose cannon and even harder to find.

  Cal hit the frame another time. Then again and again. Once for each of Keeler’s victims. Heat blistered his knuckles, the pain intensifying, but he didn’t care. He’d arrived too late today, much like
the day Keeler had nearly killed Tara.

  Even three months later, Cal’s failure to capture the Lone Wolf haunted his dreams. He’d had a split-second decision to make in the woods that fateful night, and he’d chosen not to go after Keeler to save Tara’s life. Now Keeler had strapped a necklace bomb around this woman’s throat and claimed his seventh victim.

  Cal stared at the car’s burned-out shell. The horror this woman must have experienced lingered in the air and ate at Cal’s insides. Four more women had died since he’d last laid eyes on Tara in the hospital. Innocents. All of them. They didn’t deserve death or this horrific treatment. They deserved better from Cal. So did the others. The ones he continued to seek justice for.

  Cal thrust another fist at the car. Something he’d taken to doing all the time. A wall. A door. Any solid object that could take his pummeling. He had to get out his anger at Keeler, at himself for failing, or he’d explode.

  He tightened his fist and lifted his hand.

  “Stand down, Riggins.” Max White’s voice came from behind.

  The leader of their team, he was the reason for their team nickname. Reporters had combined his last name with the team’s many heroic rescues and conflict resolutions and dubbed them the White Knights.

  Max curled his fingers around Cal’s wrist and dragged him off to the side where shadows from tall trees hid them from voracious reporters circling like buzzards ready to pick apart the carnage for a story.

  Cal’s breath came fast and deep, and he stood under Max’s stare without looking at his boss. Max gave his team the freedom to take any steps necessary to get the job done and didn’t often interfere, but when one of their team needed restraining, he stepped in.

  Max plunged his hand into his hair, leaving it even more rumpled than usual as he scowled at Cal. “The last thing we need right now is for you to give the press something to fuel their special reports. So get a grip. Now.”

  “I don’t care,” Cal said, and truth be told, he didn’t. He’d seen some horrendous things as a SEAL, and during his year as the explosives expert on the Knights, he could honestly say he’d never wanted to lay down his credentials and walk away until today. “This woman should be alive. If I had—”

  “Had what?” Max interrupted. “Become Superman and located Keeler on your own when the whole team hasn’t been able to do it? Our team’s the best, and we will get him. Why take it all on yourself?”

  “Why? Because it’s personal,” Cal said. “I had him, Max. Could’ve brought him in and I let him go. I—”

  “Stop right there. Tara Parrish was bleeding out. You chose to save her life and hoped she’d help us hunt him down later. All of us would have done the same thing, and if you were faced with a similar choice today, you’d do it again.”

  “You’re right. I would, but letting Keeler go? That…” Rage wormed its way through his body, and he shook his head in disgust. “That makes this personal, as is every stinking bomb the psychopath has detonated since then.”

  “If you hold on to the fact that you saved Tara’s life instead of feeling guilty for the others, you’ll be far better off.”

  He shoved his hands into his pockets, the blistered skin on his knuckles ripping open, the pain a welcome distraction. “I would have put her life first no matter what, but her leaving us in a lurch? That I didn’t see coming.”

  “You couldn’t.” Max frowned. “Shoot, we still don’t know why she bolted from the hospital. Especially not after we’d cleared her of any involvement with Keeler. Doesn’t make sense for a civilian like her to think she can do a better job of staying alive on her own rather than having our team watch over her.”

  Tara had been lucky. Her wound had looked bad, but she’d only sustained bruised internal organs. Three days after checking into the hospital, she’d taken off and disappeared. At first Cal thought Keeler had gotten to her, but there’d been no sign of foul play, just a bamboozled FBI agent unable to explain how she’d disappeared on his watch.

  A month later, Cal had discovered her working as a waitress in Atlanta, but by the time he got to Atlanta, she’d run again, leaving fellow coworkers to confirm she’d once lived there. Then Keeler killed one of these coworkers, and yesterday, an anonymous VoIP call came into the hotline telling them Keeler was likely targeting employees of Pecos Palace in Dallas. The team hopped a plane while trying to track the call through Internet servers, but they hadn’t yet come up with the origin of the call.

  They had learned that Tara worked at the Pecos Palace for three weeks before disappearing again. Now Cal had no idea where she’d gone, just that she continued to run, and Keeler killed another woman she’d worked with.

  “She obviously hasn’t figured out that the explosions in cities where she’s recently lived means Keeler’s tracking her,” Max said. “I’d like to think if she knew Keeler was targeting her, she’d be smart enough come in.”

  “I don’t know, man. She clearly doesn’t trust us.” Trust me. Cal tightened his fingers. “We have to find her before he does, though. Besides, I’m still convinced she’s the only one who can help us track him down.”

  “We are going to get him, you know. With Tara or without her.” Max made strong eye contact. “If you don’t tuck tail and run away like the big baby you were acting like a minute ago. Throwing a tantrum.”

  “I’m not running,” Cal said, ignoring the tantrum comment.

  “Tell you what,” Max said. “Let’s get out of here and let Brynn do her thing with the forensics. We’ll gather the rest of the team and go back to the hotel. Then we’ll run the investigation one more time with fresh eyes.”

  Cal turned to look at forensic expert Brynn Young squatting near the burned-out car. Cal had been a part of a team since he joined the navy at eighteen, and he liked working in that capacity even now. Each of them came together to intervene in a critical situation, to use their strengths to bring order to chaos, and to apply their unique skills in an investigative capacity. His teammates were more than capable, and he could leave any one of them to handle this scene today, but as lead case agent, he wasn’t going anywhere.

  He faced Max. “We’ll see how things go. I have witness statements to take—”

  “No,” Max snapped. “This is a direct order.”

  Max set his mouth in a hard line and pulled back wide shoulders built from hours in a gym. His military-perfect posture was born from ten years as an Army Ranger. Still, bleeding military or not, he never ordered them to do anything—never—proving his stress level now, too. The powers that be, all the way up to the president, were pressuring him to bring in the Lone Wolf.

  Or maybe since Max handled pressure better than most, he was using reverse psychology that often worked on the team. They weren’t three-year-olds, but tell them something couldn’t be done, and with most of them former military spec ops personnel, they’d prove him wrong. No matter what it took, even if it meant bending the rules to get the job done.

  “A direct order, huh?” Cal cracked a smile, likely Max’s goal. “In other words, you don’t want me to do it.”

  “Nah.” Max scowled. “I want you to take a break, but I needed to shake you up to get you to comply.”

  Cal stared at Max. “I need a few more minutes here first.”

  Max arched a brow.

  “If you want me to step away for a while, give me a few minutes with Brynn to get up to speed on forensics and to talk with the eyewitnesses. It’ll help with our briefing, too.”

  “Fine. Take thirty, but then we’re out of here.” Max eyed him. “Keep that temper in check.”

  Max marched across the road to the mobile command truck rolled in by County five minutes before the Knights had arrived. Cal and the team had gotten the bombing call at 1200 hours. The Knights were already in Dallas tracking Tara, so they’d arrived on scene quickly and had taken charge. County transported the body, took preliminary statements from eyewitnesses, and set up the church down the street for the grieving family.
/>
  Cal hadn’t been over there yet, but after the briefing he’d give his condolences to each and every person. He’d have to question them, too, a particularly nasty thing to do in their grief, but a career in law enforcement often meant having the emotional courage to do the right thing. He’d do his job no matter how much it hurt. Max could count on that.

  Cal picked his way through the debris to Brynn. She wore a white Tyvek suit over her team uniform as she sifted through the wreckage, pausing every so often to place a numbered marker next to crucial evidence.

  She looked up, every strand of chin-length blond hair in place as usual. “Looks like a necklace bomb. His signature device.”

  Cal nodded and ran his gaze over the debris field. “With the air pushed outward in a blast and sucking everything back into the vacuum it creates, the components for this device are nearby. I want you to find every piece down to the tiniest of fragments.”

  Brynn frowned. “He’s packing a ton of C-4 into these devices, and there won’t be many intact pieces for your study.”

  “True, but each blast gives me more. Assuming, of course, Keeler doesn’t change the device’s blueprint.” Cal thought of the fragments from the last bomb in D.C. He may have reconstructed it, but Keeler’s near degree in electrical engineering had given him the knowledge to build complicated bombs, and Cal couldn’t be certain they hadn’t missed vital switches, leaving him unable to render safe one of Keeler’s bombs.

  “So what’s your take on the C-4?” Brynn asked. “Outside of military operations it’s so hard to come by that you’d think we’d have figured out where he’s getting it by now.”

  “Most every Tom, Dick, and Harry who’ve worked military demo has unopened packs from training in a small stockpile in their garage. With Keeler’s army days, he’s bound to know a few guys.”

  “A few guys?” Brynn planted gloved hands on her hips. “With the quantity he’s coming up with, he has to know Tom, Dick, and Harry.” She shook her head in disgust and gestured at the FBI’s local three-person Evidence Response Team. “I should get back to it. These guys will likely screw things up if I don’t watch their every move.”