Page 22 of One Final Target

“Turning left on East Forty-Eighth, toward Waterman?”

“Yep. Can I call the lab, make them speed it up?”

“You can try,” Smiley said.

Doug kicked the dirt. “Yeah, I understand.”

Sam and Smiley left him and walked to the end of the lot, where Doug indicated the car had turned.

“This is the part of the job I hate,” Sam said.

“What, victims being victimized again by the system?”

“Yeah, that poor guy.”

“Then I hope your rental agent friend will come through. And maybe we’ll get lucky with camera footage. More and more people are investing in doorbell cameras, especially with the rise in porchpirates. There are probably a couple of houses on this street fitted with them.”

They hit pay dirt at the third house on East Forty-Eighth. The resident had a top-level camera system at his front door and an unobstructed view of the street. He downloaded the footage for the last twenty-four hours to Smiley’s phone.

Sam was happy to have something to search. He wanted to find this guy as much as he’d wanted to find anyone. For Logan, for Doug, and most of all for Jodie King.

CHAPTER12

JODIE GOT HOME,threw her keys on the counter, and sat in her recliner, body numb. Jukebox was most likely dead. And she was second-guessing her use of confidential informants. He’d been willing. To Juke it was a big game, a fun diversion. Juke never would have seen the danger. Jodie should have. But serving the warrant on Hayes was routine. How could she have known he’d be put in mortal danger?

“Ahhh.” She grabbed her head in both hands and rested her elbows on her knees. Her anguished heart cried out to God to answer the question he never seemed to answer.

Why?

She fell into a dark place, a place she’d been in the first week after the IED, a place where the guilt and grief were crushing, andall Jodie wanted was out. She should have died with her team. She’d been so cavalier with Jukebox’s help, and she hadn’t seen the risk, and it cut her like a carving knife.

I was so arrogant. Hayes wasn’t terribly important, but I wanted another feather in my cap. Juke simply became a tool to help further my career, and he lost his life as a result.It was suddenly glaringly clear to Jodie that her job, her title, the feeling of having everything in her control, had been her god.

Acknowledging her failure only compounded her misery. Though the blast hadn’t killed her, it had certainly taken almost everything she trusted in away from her.

Jodie lost track of time. Processing the probable loss of Jukebox was the straw breaking the camel’s back. She wanted the pain to stop, wanted to be free of the accusing voices in her head and the ten-ton load of guilt.

She had a gun.

She’d told Gresham that the shrink didn’t think she was crazy or suicidal. Was he right? she wondered now.

Just then a thought pinged in her brain as if she’d been pierced with an arrow.If I die, then whoever set the IED will win.

Jodie stiffened as soon as the thought entered her head.

“No, no,” she whispered. “I won’t quit. I refuse to let them win.” Some of the guilt fizzled and burned away, incinerated by her anger.

The bad guy had to be held accountable. Seeing him locked up—or better yet dead—would be the only result Jodie could accept. She would never be free of all the guilt and the pain until the situation was resolved to her satisfaction.

She stood and picked up some paper and began tearing it into pieces, dwelling on all the bad she’d dealt with since the IED.

A knock at the door startled her. The last thing Jodie wantedwas to socialize. In this dark space all she wanted to do was nurse the anger and the self-pity.

She opened the doorbell app on her phone and saw her uncle Mike. Conflicting emotions raged. Stay alone and stew or tell Mike what she’d discovered?

She needed to tell him about Jukebox. Hopefully this would take him off the suspect list.

But Jodie really didn’t want company. Another side effect of the IED. Before, she had lived an extroverted life. She loved being with and around people. Now she’d transformed into an introvert, borderline shut-in. Mike probably came in person because she’d been ignoring his phone calls.

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