Jeffery Deaver - The Devil's Teardrop

Parker blamed his mania on a cocktail of exhaustion and adrenaline.

He called the Whos and promised them he'd be home in a half hour. Robby told his father about the air horn someone had blasted at midnight, waking up the Bradleys down the street and causing a neighborhood stir. Stephie described the sparklers in the yard with breathless, sloppy adjectives.

"Love you, Who," he said. "Be home soon."

"Love you too, Daddy," the girl said. "How's your friend?"

"He's going to be fine."

Cage was talking to an evidence tech from PERT and Parker was jockeying to get downwind of the smoke from the bus. There was an unpleasant scent-worse than the burnt rubber of the tires. Parker knew what it was and the thought of inhaling any of the Digger's ashy corpse nauseated him.

A dead psycho smouldering before him, and Parker, at the tail end of an evening like none other he'd ever had… Yet it's the mundane things in life that poke up like crocuses. He now thought: Hell, I don't have enough cash to pay Mrs. Cavanaugh. He patted his pockets and dug out a small wad of bills. Twenty-two bucks. Not enough. He'd have to stop at an ATM on the way home.

He glanced at a piece of paper mixed in with the money. It was the transcription of the unsub's notes on the burnt yellow pad. The references to the last two sites of the attacks that he'd found on the pad of paper Tobe Geller had saved from the burning safe house.

… two miles south. The R…

… place I showed you. The black…

"What's that?" Cage asked, kneading his wounded rib.

"A souvenir," Parker said, looking down at the words. "Just a souvenir."

Edward Fielding paused at the end of the corridor, gasping under the weight of the money on his back.

He looked toward the reception area thirty feet away and saw the short blond hair of Margaret Lukas. Beyond her was the guard, reading the newspaper. The lights were out in the corridor and even if they'd turned toward him it would have been difficult to see him clearly.

Adjusting the money more comfortably, he clutched the pistol in his right hand and started down the hallway. His leather soles tapping faintly on the tile. He noted that Lukas was facing away from him. He'd put one bullet in her head. Then as the guard looked up, he'd kill him.

Then home free.

Tap tap tap.

He closed the distance to his targets.

Perfect.

Margaret Lukas, gazing at the Christmas tree in the lobby, stretched like a cat.

She listened absently to footsteps coming up the hall behind her.

Two weeks ago the entryway here had been filled with presents that the agents and staffers had donated for homeless families. She'd volunteered to give away some of the toys but at the last minute she canceled and, instead, worked twelve hours on Christmas day, investigating the killing of a black man by two whites.

Tap, tap, tap…

Now she wished she hadn't canceled on Christmas. At the time she'd reasoned that giving out toys was frivolous when she could be doing "serious" work. But now she admitted that the thought of seeing small children on the holiday was more harrowing to her than kicking in the door of a redneck gun nut in Manassas Park.

Coward, she told herself.

Tap, tap, tap…

She looked out the glass windows. Crowds, people returning from the Mall. She thought about the Digger. Wondered about the shoot-out, about who'd fired the shots that killed him. She'd been in two firefights in her career and remembered mostly confusion. It was so different from in the movies. Never any sense of slow motion-a gunfight in real life was five blurry seconds of utterly terrifying chaos and then it was over with.

The vivid images came afterward: caring for the wounded and removing the dead.

Tap… tap…

A buzzing phone startled her.

In front of her Artie answered and she absently watched his grizzled face.

"Front desk… Oh, hello, Agent Cage."

Suddenly the guard was frowning. He glanced at Lukas then focused past her. His eyes went wide. "Well," the guard said uneasily. "Detective Hardy?… He's who? What do you mean?… But he's right here, he's-Oh, Jesus."

Artie was dropping the phone, fumbling for his weapon.

Tap tap taptaptaptap…

Instinctively Lukas knew that the footsteps, now running toward them, were an attackers. She fell forward just as the rounds from the silenced pistol snapped into the back of the couch where she'd been sitting, ripping Naugahyde and bits of stuffing from the upholstery.

She looked behind her, twisting around, scrabbling for cover behind a potted plant.

It was… Wait, it couldn't be! It was Hardy.

Firing wildly, Artie shouted, "It's him! He's the killer. He… Oh, my. Oh, no…" The guard looked down at his chest. He'd been hit. He slumped to his knees, fell behind the desk.

Another bullet snapped through the back of the couch, near Lukas's head. She curled for cover behind the anemic palm tree so many agents had ridiculed. She cringed as a bullet was loudly deflected by the chrome pot.

Lukas was on automatic. She didn't even try to figure out what had happened or who this man really was. She looked up quickly, searching for a target. But she had to duck fast as another bullet chopped though the thick green blades of leaf inches from her face. She rolled to her left, against the wall, rose and drew a target. In a portion of a second she checked the backdrop behind Hardy and fired three fast shots.

The heavy 10-millimeter slugs just missed him and dug huge chunks out of the wall. Hardy fired twice more at her then vanished back down the corridor.

She ran to the wall beside the hallway, pressed her back against it.

The tapping footsteps receded.

Another voice from the far end of the corridor called, "What's going on? What's going on!"

Somewhere along the hallway a door slammed.

Lukas looked around the corner quickly then went back to cover. She'd seen a man down at the end of the hall, in silhouette. She dropped to her belly, drew a target, shouted, "I'm a federal agent! Identify yourself or I'll fire!"

"Ted Yan," the man called. "In Software Analysis."

Lukas knew him. He was a friend of Gellers, an agent. But she thought: Great, I've got a computer nerd for backup.

"You alone?" she shouted.

"I'm-"

Silence.

"Ted?"

"No. There're two of us… Susan Nance is here with me."

Nance's voice cracked as she called, "Oh, Margaret, he got Louise in Security! She's dead. And Tony Phelps too."

Jesus. What was going on?

Ted said, "We're by the-"

"Okay, quiet," Lukas barked. "Don't give away your position. Did anybody go past you?"

"No," Ted called. "He couldn't've gotten by me. I heard a door slam in the hallway here. He's somewhere between us."

"Cover me," Lukas called.

Watching her back, Lukas ran to the guard station. Artie was unconscious but wasn't bleeding badly. She picked up the phone but Cage was no longer on the line. She hit 911, identified herself as a Justice Department agent and called in a Code 42 at FBI headquarters.

To her knowledge nobody'd ever done this, not in the entire history of the Bureau. It meant an assault on headquarters. It had become a joke over the years-when somebody 42'd, it meant they'd totally screwed up.

"You armed?" Lukas called.

"Service," Ted called. "Both of us."

Meaning their Glocks or Sig-Sauer service pistols. Lukas thought about her MP-5 machine gun, sitting in her truck at the moment. She would have given anything for the weapon but didn't have time to get it now.

She studied the corridor, which was still empty.

Eight doors in the hallway. Five on the right, three on the left.