Alex Kava - Black Friday

"For United Allied Security."

"Yes, the mall's security company. Do the local authorities know you've been reviewing the videotapes?" Maggie asked Nick but looked back at Yarden who avoided her eyes. Finally Yarden nodded, his head the only part of him in motion now, arms glued to his sides. He reminded her of a bobble-head.

"Yeah, no problem there," Yarden said, still nodding. "They've got their hands full, you know?"

She noticed his cadence grew faster with a slightly higher pitch in relation to his amount of guilt. Even the tips of his ears grew red.

"We're only here to help," Nick told her but Maggie knew from experience that Morrelli's loyalties were sometimes divided, and often resulted in something close to personal quicksand.

Four years ago Nick Morrelli had been county sheriff of a small Nebraska community that was held hostage by a killer—a killer who was targeting young boys. To solve the case Morrelli had struggled to abandon a lifetime of loyalty to his father, the previous sheriff, in order to save his nephew. Maggie and Nick's paths had crossed several times over the years but most recently last summer when, once again, Maggie had been sent to Nebraska to profile another killer. This time Nick's loyalty to a childhood friend had almost jeopardized the case.

"Well then, so you two know each other," Yarden said, anxious to break the silence and ease the tension. "That should make this easier, right?" The little man spun a chair around and held it for Maggie. "Ms. O'Dell—"

"Agent O'Dell," Nick corrected.

"Oh yeah, right. Agent O'Dell."

She sat in the proffered seat, next to Nick, giving him only a glance and focusing her attention instead on the wall of monitors. They had been cueing the tapes, stopping them at important intervals. Over a half dozen of the screens were already freeze-framed.

"As you can see, all we've been doing is tagging segments that might be relevant." Nick waved a hand at the screens. "Isn't that right, Jerry?"

"Right. There's an awful lot of tape to look at. We're just trying to narrow it down. We're not discarding anything. We're just looking and tagging."

Maggie almost felt sorry for the nervous little man. She could hardly tell him to relax, that it was Nick Morrelli she didn't fully trust and not Mr. Yarden whom she had only met moments ago.

"Agent O'Dell will need to see the carriers," Yarden said quickly, grabbing the opportunity to move on. He took the seat on the other side of Maggie. "The tapes are grainy at best." Even before he scooted his chair forward his fingers were flying over the control panel. "We work on a three-second system. That is the camera takes a shot every three seconds. It's not continuous, so it might seem a bit jerky if you're not used to it."

"Do you have a Z97 filter or HDzoom pack?"

Yarden's fingers stopped in midflight and he looked at her with obvious admiration. Not only did she understand the three-second system but also the new state-of-the-art technology.

"We don't have anything quite as sophisticated," Yarden said, glancing over to Nick as if he was to blame, being the company's highest authority on the premises.

"The company is considering updates," Nick said almost too quickly.

Maggie heard a bit of defensiveness in Nick's tone. She ignored it and focused instead on Yarden who was cueing up segments for her to view on monitor after monitor.

"This is one of them." He pointed at the first screen.

Maggie leaned forward. Nick didn't. Had he already seen these? Of course, he had. She wondered how long Morrelli and Yarden had been at it.

From the grainy quality of the video all Maggie could decipher was that the man was average height, clean-cut. He was wearing jeans, a jacket with maybe a logo on the shoulder, and tennis shoes. There was nothing extraordinary about him.

She felt the two men watching her, gauging her reaction, waiting.

Yarden added more views, cueing monitor after monitor until there was a line of grainy freeze-framed images of two different young men with the same backpack walking separately through the crowded mall. Only one instance showed the two of them together.

"I thought there were three?"

"Oh yeah, there were three all right." Yarden's fingers started poking the keys again. "The third one came in with a young woman and another man." He brought up the segment. "We followed him to the food court. Then we…we sort of lost him. We don't have many camera angles on that area and no cameras actually in the food court."

"What about the woman and the other man? Were they involved?"

When Yarden didn't answer Maggie sat back and glanced over at him. He and Nick were exchanging another look. Yarden's ruddy complexion had gone pale. Nick started searching the monitors.

"What is it?" Maggie asked.

"We think one of the bombs went off in the women's restroom," Nick told her as his eyes darted from screen to screen. "You may have just answered our question as to how that could have happened."

For a few minutes Rebecca was back in the bedroom she grew up in, light filtering through yellow gauze curtains, the sound of windchimes outside her second floor window. She could smell fried bacon and imagined her parents down in the kitchen, her mom setting the Sunday breakfast table with bright-colored placemats and long-stem glasses for their orange juice. Her dad would be playing short-order cook, waiting for Rebecca before he started his performance of flipping the pancakes. Those Sunday mornings weren't for show. Her parents really had been happy, the banter out of love not jealousy. She wanted to sink down and soothe herself in that moment, that feeling of calm and security. If only she could ignore the prick at her skin, the ache in her arm, that deep burning sensation.

Her eyes fluttered open. She willed them to stay closed. They wouldn't listen. The blur around her swirled images and noise together. Before her eyes could focus she started to remember: holiday music, Dixon laughing, Patrick smiling. And then…backpacks exploding.

Rebecca didn't realize that she had tried to sit up until she felt hands on her shoulders pushing her back down.

"It's okay."

She recognized the voice and searched for it. Patrick's face bobbed in front of her, slowly coming into focus. There was no smile, only concern. And she tried to remember—how badly had she been hurt? The image of a severed arm lying next to her made her twist around to check both her own. One was wrapped. The other had a needle and tubes in it. But both were there, attached.

"You're all right, sugar," a woman's voice said from someplace over Rebecca's head. "Just relax and lie still a bit."

"Do you remember what happened?" Patrick asked.

She nodded. Her throat felt like sandpaper. She tried to wet her lips. Patrick noticed, fumbled around then brought a bottle of water to her mouth. He was gentle, giving her sips when she wanted to gulp. She knew he saw her frustration but still he insisted on sips.

"Where are we?"

"The hotel across the street," he said.

"Where?"

"Across the street from the mall. They set up a triage area here."

"But the hospital…I thought we were going to the hospital."

"It's okay." He took her hand. "They were able to take care of you here. You don't need to go to the hospital."

She sat up again. This time Patrick helped her instead of holding her back down. Her eyes scanned the room, searching through the chaos for the man with the syringe.

"He's not here," Patrick told her. "I've been watching."

She avoided his eyes and continued her own search. The man with the syringe knew she was still alive. She wiped at her forehead despite the poke of the needle. Her skin was clammy with sweat and she still felt light-headed. Dixon's message rattled in her mind. He said she wasn't safe. That she couldn't trust anyone. Not even Patrick.