Chris Carter - Gallery of the Dead

No reply from anyone.

‘Carlos.’

Nothing.

Hunter made an on-the-spot decision and, assuming that he and Garcia were moving at the same pace, quickly approached the door to the third enclosure on the right and snatched it open.

Empty. There was no one in there, but as Hunter took a couple of steps into the room and waved his flashlight around, he saw blood splattered against the frame of the internal door that linked enclosures two and three.

‘No. No. No.’ Hunter rushed to it and his heart sank into the darkest of holes. On the floor, resting in a pool of his own blood, he saw his partner.

At that exact moment, Agent Fisher entered the enclosure through the door across from the one Hunter was at.

‘No,’ she cried out, her voice shaking, her eyes red from tears.

‘What happened?’ Hunter asked, dropping to his knees to cradle Garcia.

‘I don’t know,’ she replied. ‘I was guarding the corridor as planned. Then I heard the shots and rushed in through the first enclosure.’

‘He’s got a pulse,’ Hunter said, after placing two fingers on Garcia’s carotid artery, his voice fearful and hopeful at the same time. ‘He’s got a pulse. Where the hell is the ambulance?’

CLANG. CLANG.

From just outside the enclosure they were in, came the loud sound of two doors slamming.

Hunter’s eyes flashed fire.

‘Stay with Carlos,’ he ordered Agent Fisher as he jumped to his feet and readied his weapon. ‘Keep applying pressure to the wound and call for an ambulance now. I’m going after this sonofabitch.’

‘I’m coming with you,’ Agent Fisher came back.

‘No. You’re staying here with Carlos. Keep him talking. Don’t let him doze off. And call for that goddamn ambulance.’

Hunter rushed out of the enclosure, determination and anger driving him like an autopilot.

Out in the corridor, Hunter checked left and right: nothing but rain coming down from roof leaks just about everywhere.

Which way, Robert? he asked himself mentally. Right or left, which way? Pick... now.

He chose right, away from the front door they had squeezed through and toward the enclosure that was still lit. He walked slowly. Each couple of steps came with a full three-hundred-and-sixty-degree check — left, right, behind him, move on. He had taken his seventh step when heard a weird noise coming from his headset. It lasted for just a second. He paused and looked both ways. Nothing. He took a step back.

Vruuummm.

There it was again. It sounded like static interference.

‘What the hell?’ He moved his head forward then backward a couple of times.

Vruuummm, vruuummm... vruuummm, vruuummm.

Hunter narrowed his eyes and once again looked right then left. He saw nothing. He couldn’t dwell on it any longer. He had to move on, but as he took another step forward, he heard Agent Fisher call him.

‘Robert.’

Hunter looked in the direction her voice had come from.

She was standing by the door to the fourth enclosure on the right, the one he had just passed. Her gun was pointing straight at him.

‘Please drop the gun, Robert,’ she said, her voice shaky.

‘What?’ Hunter tried to blink the confusion away.

‘The gun, Robert, drop it.’

Hunter’s brain froze. Absolutely nothing made sense. ‘What?’

‘NOW, Robert.’

Hunter lifted his left hand to signal her that he would do as he was told. Slowly, he placed the gun on the ground.

‘Kick it,’ she commanded.

Hunter kicked it to her.

‘You shot them, didn’t you?’

‘I didn’t know I would have to shoot them,’ she said, tears once again coming to her eyes.

‘There’s no strike team coming, is there? No ambulance either.’

Agent Fisher shook her head. ‘I didn’t know I would have to shoot them. I didn’t want to, but he’s got my daughter.’ Her eyes wandered right. ‘No. He deserves an explanation. They all did.’

‘What?’

Hunter followed Agent Fisher’s eyes, but there was nothing there. Suddenly he realized what he’d been missing. Agent Fisher wasn’t addressing him. She was addressing whomever she was talking to through the earpiece in her right ear. That was why she had her hair down all the time — to hide the earpiece.

Hunter’s eyes moved around the place one more time. The static noise he’d heard just a moment ago. He now knew it had been electronic interference against his own headset. Broadcasting cameras, probably.

Somebody had been watching them this whole time.

Hunter felt a tight knot grip his throat from the inside. How could he have been so oblivious?

‘He’s got my daughter, Robert,’ Agent Fisher said again, tears now rolling down her face, her voice uneven. ‘She’s fourteen years old and she’s got Down syndrome. If I don’t do what he tells me to... he’s going to kill her.’

Hunter kept his eyes on her weapon arm. It was almost as shaky as her voice.

‘She’s all I have and I’m all she has. Can’t let him do it, Robert. I can’t let him take her from me.’

Hunter’s gaze moved to her face. Her eyes were begging him for his forgiveness.

‘I’m sorry, Robert,’ Agent Fisher said. There was sincerity in her tone. ‘I’m so, so sorry, but I have to protect my daughter.’ She steadied her weapon hand.

Hunter had no idea how many times Agent Fisher squeezed the trigger this time, but he only heard the first shot, and for some reason, that single blast sounded a lot louder than any gunshot he had ever heard.

Several hours earlier

On Wilshire Boulevard, somewhere on the short stretch between Beverly Hills and Westwood Village, was a canyon of high-risers one row deep. The buildings seemed a little out of place in Los Angeles, as though someone had stolen a piece of Manhattan’s Upper East Side and placed it inside LA’s suburban grid. The apartment the FBI had allocated to Special Agent Erica Fisher was situated on the sixth floor of one of those buildings.

Agent Fisher had left the FBI Headquarters late and driven to a little Vietnamese café she had discovered just a block away from her building, but instead of having her food at the café, just like she had done the three previous times she’d been there, tonight she got her dinner to go. She still hadn’t spoken to her daughter today and she wanted to give Heather a call before her bedtime.

Agent Fisher had just placed her food on the kitchen counter when the video intercom by her front door rang, which made her frown. She wasn’t expecting any visitors, though Agent Williams sometimes dropped by unannounced.

‘Hello,’ she said into the microphone.

The person she saw on the video screen was a young and clean-shaven man, wearing a brown baseball cap.

‘Parcel for Erica Fisher.’

Agent Fisher wasn’t expecting any deliveries, but the FBI had a habit of sending her files without forewarning her.

‘Can you leave it with the concierge?’

‘I need a personal signature, ma’am.’

The agent studied the man through the small screen. ‘Which courier company are you with?’

‘Deliver LA, ma’am.’ The man raised his credentials so the camera could pick it up. ‘We deliver at any time. Day or night.’

‘Stay there, I’ll come to you.’

It took Agent Fisher less than a minute to get downstairs again.

‘Erica Fisher?’ the man said as the agent met him in the building’s lobby.

‘That’s me.’

The young man handed her a square cardboard box — twenty inches by twenty inches and about seven and a half deep.

She looked at it with intrigue. It was clear that that box hadn’t come from the FBI.