Page 19 of One Final Target

When he showed up, it was neither pleasant nor welcome. But Jodie put up with it. He hurt. He lashed out, and she was his target.

“What are you doing here?”

“Hello, nice to see you too.” There was an edge to his voice. While everyone else told her the IED was not her fault, Ian blamed Jodie for what happened.

“Sorry, Ian. I have a lot on my mind. I didn’t mean to be so short with you.”

He didn’t look mollified. “Can you explain what happened yesterday?”

Jodie sighed. “No, I can’t.”

He stood and glared at her. “Why’d you go up there? Looks like you almost got another cop killed.”

Jodie felt the words like a blow. She swallowed and kept any rancor out of her tone. “How was I to know I’d be the target of a sniper?”

“You’re the boss,” he sneered. “You know everything, don’t you? When to schedule raids and when not to.”

Jodie pinched the bridge of her nose, not having the energy to argue with Ian. He’d been her right-hand man on RAT. They’d worked well together for years and had been friends outside of work. But when he’d come to see her in the hospital, all he brought with him was blame. And she had no good reason why she hadn’t waited a day—she was simply impatient to get the job done.

Dr. Bass explained Ian’s behavior with the cliché “hurt people hurt people.”

Uncle Mike asked her to make a formal complaint and tell IA about the harassment. Jodie couldn’t. She listened to Ian; she took his barbs and arrows. Something inside said she deserved it.

“What happened this weekend has reopened the investigation. Maybe we’ll get some real answers now.”

He snorted derisively and kicked a rock from the pavement, looking over Jodie’s head for a moment.

“Will it solve anything? Will it bring back all those remarkable people who died?” Ian directed his gaze back to her, pain in his eyes. “Why didn’t you just wait twenty-four hours?” he whispered.

“We can’t keep going through this. Maybe if you’d been there, nothing would have changed—have you thought of that?”

“Yeah, maybe not, but maybe I could have died with my friends. Maybe I should have.”

She frowned. “Ian, please—”

He silenced her with a wave of his hand and sniffed. “No pity, just keep me in the loop if you find out something useful.”

“I will.”

He turned on his heel and strode to his car.

She watched him drive away, heart heavy. She understood his pain. How often had she felt like she should have died as well? She couldn’t fault him for berating her and she wouldn’t stop him.

After a few minutes, she went inside her apartment to the small alcove that served as her office. Here, she had a whiteboard set up. On it was every bit of information she had about the investigation into the IED. Jodie might have quit her job, but she had no intention of quitting the investigation. She checked her email even though it was too early for Tara to have sent her any new information.

She closed her email window and clicked to different news sites, stopping when she saw that the San Bernardino Sheriff’s public information officer was giving a press conference. She didn’t hear anything new.

Her phone interrupted the QandA from reporters. From the caller ID she saw it was Dr. Bass, the department psychologist. Even though she’d quit, he’d kept in contact. He had certainly heard what happened. Jodie let the call go to voice mail, then closed her computer.

She wasn’t interested in talking to Bass, exploring her future, and coming to terms with what had happened. All Jodie wanted was true resolution, which to her meant being able to avenge the deaths of her team, her friends.

Ian’s visit left her feeling unsettled. It reminded her how different life was now. She flipped around the channels on the TV but couldn’t sit still to watch anything. Peeking out the window, certain Ian’s car was long gone, she decided to do something he would not have approved of. Jodie grabbed her keys and purse. She climbed into her car with two destinations in mind. The first was Huntington Beach. She’d been looking for her confidential informant Jukebox. His being missing was the most perplexing part of this.

At one time Jukebox had wanted to be a cop, which was how Jodie had met him. In the end, he was too laid-back for a career in law enforcement. But he lived in two worlds, following the waves in the summer and the snow in the winter. He’d become Jodie’s informant when she was working narcotics because he saw and heard a lot. When Jodie left narcotics to lead the task force, she kept in touch with Jukebox.

Jodie usually tapped Jukebox for anything narcotics related. When Hayes’s file came across her desk, checking in with Jukebox was natural. Jodie studied Hayes’s rap sheet and saw another connection: he’d attended the same high school as Juke.

Where was the man now? If Jukebox had been in the mountainsthe last couple of months, he should be back now. Since snow in the mountains of Southern California wasn’t ever reliable, sometimes he went to Mammoth to ski. But Jodie was certain he would have told her if he was leaving. Besides, she’d expected to hear something from him after the IED. But there was silence. Because no one had heard from him, Smiley and Tara had put him in the possible suspect column. He had disappeared after the blast like Hayes, so they believed he might have been complicit.

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