Janie Crouch - Special Forces Saviour

Once he had her settled in the car, he squatted down so he could look in her eyes again. Hers were still pretty unfocused.

“Hey.” He wrapped the jacket more securely around her, then grabbed it by the lapels to bring her in a little closer. “I’m just going to finish my conversation with Steve and Jon and then I’ll take you home, okay? Five minutes.”

She nodded.

Derek kissed her forehead, then closed the door, jogging back toward Jon and Steve who were walking toward his car. Both of them were still looking at him with odd expressions.

“What?” he barked when they didn’t say anything.

“Nothing.” Jon shook his head. “Just wondering how I can call myself a behavioral analyst and miss certain facts that are right before my eyes.”

“What are you talking about?”

Jon shook his head again. “Absolutely nothing. Is Molly okay?”

Derek glanced back at his car. “Exhausted. A little shaky. Not unexpected, given the circumstances.”

“I believe her when she says that they didn’t have any flammable materials out in the lab at the explosion site. Molly’s record is impeccable when it comes to safety. Hell, when it comes to anything,” Steve stated.

“But she’s been working long hours. Was tired. Could’ve made a mistake she wouldn’t normally have.” Derek’s grim expression matched the other men’s.

The director nodded. “And if that’s the case, we’ll deal with it. I share in that responsibility.”

Jon turned and looked back at the building. “But if human error or some other accident wasn’t the cause of the explosion, then we have to think about what is.”

“What are you thinking? That it was some sort of attack against Omega?” Derek asked.

“Maybe not so much attack as sabotage,” Jon responded.

Each man processed that for a minute.

“It seems a little extreme, I know,” Jon continued.

“Until you take into consideration someone killing himself rather than being questioned, and perps burning that house to the ground today to keep evidence out of our hands,” Derek finished for him.

“Exactly.”

Derek grimaced. “Whatever we took into evidence must have been pretty important to blow up the whole damn lab for it.”

Steve had been quiet up until now. “And if this is all connected, then we also have to think about who knew we had that specific evidence here.” He shook his head.

“Nobody really knew, but us,” Derek said. “Unless you think we have some sort of mole?”

There had been moles in other divisions of Omega Sector in the past. But the Critical Response Division was not a clandestine section of Omega. They worked out in the open, not generally undercover or in the shadows. And although they didn’t talk publicly about investigations, Derek had no idea why a terrorist would keep a mole inside the Critical Response Division. Information was pretty open there.

“Not necessarily, at least not within our division,” Steve responded. “But perhaps amongst the people we’ve been reporting to every day.”

“The government committee?” Derek asked.

“Actually, I was thinking about that very fact last night, after Congressman Hougland was giving you a hard time,” Jon said. Derek wasn’t surprised to hear his friend doing what he did best as a behavioral analyst: piecing everything together.

“What did you come up with?” Steve asked.

“Like we’ve already talked about—obviously there was critical information at the location yesterday, based on the lengths the suspects were willing to go to try and keep us from getting it.”

Both Derek and Steve nodded.

“This lead was also unique because we weren’t here at Omega when you got the info, Derek. We were in the air following up on something else and switched our focus to the new lead.”

They’d been on one of the small Omega jets traveling back to Colorado from a lead in Chicago.

“Yeah, that’s true. We moved quicker on this lead than we have some of the others,” Derek agreed.

“We also didn’t follow exact protocol since we were already out. We hadn’t called in our exact location, just decided to go to Philly, and then the building, immediately, since the option was available.”

Derek was beginning to see the pattern Jon was suggesting. “Unlike every other lead we’ve investigated for the last two weeks. Where we’ve followed protocol pretty much to the letter. And all have led to nothing.”

Steve grimaced. “You’re thinking sabotage.” It wasn’t a question.

Jon shrugged. “It’s hard to believe that every single lead we’ve followed has been completely dead. Although I guess that’s possible.”

“No, I agree with Jon,” Derek told Steve. “Sometimes it felt like the people we were after were one step ahead of us. Almost ready for us.”

They’d had the normal factions attempt to take credit for the bombing, both international and domestic groups. All had been investigated and all had come to naught. Then all other aspects of the investigation—the bomb site, witnesses, the type of explosions—had also led nowhere.

Maybe everything had led nowhere because someone was deliberately running interference on the perpetrators’ behalf.

There were very few people who could have done that effectively. A dirty agent inside the Critical Response Division could, but having one there was unlikely.

And since Derek and this investigation had been under such close scrutiny by high-ranking government officials, any one of them could be responsible, too. Which was uglier, but made more sense in a lot of ways.

“Gentlemen,” Steve said. “It looks like there’s every possibility that we’ve got some high-ranking US official who is tied in with the Chicago terrorist attack.”

Jon pointed at the now-destroyed lab. “And we’re looking at the third extreme example of what that person, or people, might be willing to do to keep us from making any progress on the case.”

“Whoever it is has also put us back at square one in terms of evidence.” Derek could feel his teeth grinding, knowing they’d been so close to a real breakthrough only to lose it. “Nothing in the lab survived that explosion. It was definitely important, but now it’s gone.”

All three men looked at the smoke still rising from the building. The fire was out, but the smoke would linger for a while.

“Well, they may have successfully destroyed whatever evidence we’d gotten yesterday, but they also tipped their hand a little too far,” Jon said. “They’ve given us an edge they don’t know we have by revealing they have inside knowledge. We should use that to our advantage.”

The director nodded at both men. “I agree. I’m going to start keeping much more careful track of what information is going to which offices. The committee we report to every day hasn’t been the only ones requesting information. I’ll see what I can narrow down. And I damn sure won’t be sharing actual pertinent info about the case any longer.”

Steve turned away from the lab. “Go home, get some rest,” he continued. “Tomorrow you guys head back out to the house in West Philly, see if anything there can be salvaged. Track down where the lead came from and see if you can get any further info.”

Derek nodded. He needed to get Molly home, let her rest. But then he’d be coming right back, or at least working out of his house. Sleep could wait for him. He glanced over at Jon and knew the other man felt the same way.

“I’ll let you know when the building is open,” Steve said. “This fire is meant not only to destroy evidence, but to misdirect us. Give us a lot of other stuff to be worrying about. We’re not going to let that happen.”

“Damn right we’re not,” Jon said.