Page 89 of Vengeance of Childhood Proportions

Mal

As soon asI left Ester Pascal’s apartment building, I was on the phone. I didn’t even wait for Carr to say a greeting before I spoke.

“She’s fuckingalive, Delroy! Holly Marteen is alive. I don’t know how or why or anything, but she wasalivein 2013! She turned eighteen! She didn’tdie. Her parents had her committed. I have no fucking idea why she has a gravestone or who bought it, but I am going to find out.” I lifted my hand to hail a taxi, needing more speed to get me back to the helicopter. “I’m on my way back! I’ll change my flight plan to Juneau.”

“Mal!”

“It’s been her the whole time,” I pushed on as a cab signaled they were pulling over. “Holly Marteen is our unsub! She is avengingher ownrapes! I need an order to exhume her grave.”

The yellow cab started to pull over.

“Mal!”

“I have a sworn statement from a witness she was in the Alaskan State Hospital. It might be enough to be able to get a warrant?—”

“Mallory! Shut the fuck up and listen to me!”

I paused, my hand on the cold metal of the rear cab door. I couldn’t recall a time when Carr hadeverspoken to me like that. He was generally respectful to a fault.

“There was an incident last night.”

Based on his voice, I didn’t think so, but I still had to ask. “Another DB?”

“No. The safe house.”

The safe house? We had several, but I’d chosen one in a residential neighborhood, believing the killer’s—Holly’s—MO to not attack the innocent would keep her from going after it. If, by some miracle, she even found out where it was. That was a big stretch, too. That was the point of the safe houses, after all. It wasn’t like the addresses were posted on the FBI’s website. How the fuck could she have found it, anyway?

“What happened?” I demanded as the cabbie leaned between the two front seats to yell at me to get into the cab. I stepped back, not wanting to have this conversation with a witness. The cabbie gunned it, speeding off, with me still standing at the edge of the sidewalk.

“It was attacked. All four were taken.”

Fuck, fuck, fuck… She had them. She had all of them. The last five on her list to die. She had them all. It was so poetically simple. She was saving Principal Hagley for last. Sheriff Renfrew was dying, anyway. Would she still kill him as she was about to kill his son?

The safe house was supposed to be secure. How the fuck had she even known about it? We’d had six agents on the four prisoners/witnesses. Since there was a current argument about whether they were victims or criminals, it had been decided they would go to a safe house instead of a jail cell. Who had made the order? It wasn’t Carr. He’d been the one to pass the news onto me and I had been the one to choose which safe house.

Where had I been when I’d made that decision? Was it possible I was somewhere I could have been overheard? I should have been in the office. Who would have been around? Carr, Mira, some of the interns…?

“Mira?” I asked. “Are they blaming her?”

“I’ve got Mira.Youneed to get your ass back to Atelihai Valley. Your little field trip this morningnever happened.”

My back stiffened. “Carr, did you hear what I said? I know who the killer is!”

“Mal,” he snapped. I heard a door close and his voice changed to have a slight echo, as if he’d stepped into the private bathroom attached to his office. “Listen to me very carefully. They’re out for blood—and they don’t care whose. Six agents were sedated last night, as well as the residents of the neighboring house. The Deputy Director is on his way and he willpersonallybe overseeingevery stepof this case moving forward. There’s even talk that he’s going to call in the National Guard. Get to Atelihai Valley, keep your fucking head down, and we all might just survive this with our careers intact.”

The National fuckingGuard? What the fuck? “She’s not a danger to anyone not on her list!” I argued.

“You think they care? This is no longer about proof, victimization, or whois or isn’t alive,” he added through clenched teeth. “It is now a political nightmare and media storm.”

“We have to move Hagley?—”

“Mal,” Carr snapped, interrupting me again. “In a few hours, this won’t be your case anymore. You’ll be another peon yes-man. Get back to Atelihai Valley, keep your fucking head down, and if you evenbreathea mention of exhuming the body of a sixteen-year-old suicide victim, I willpersonallyoversee your transfer to Phoenix, Arizona, and tell them to break the fucking AC unit in your office.”

I held still. I had a lot of respect for Delroy Carr. We’d worked together for a lot of years, long before either of us got any promotions. I knew him well enough to know when he was bluffing and when he wasn’t.

“Yes, sir,” I bit out. “I’m headed back to Atelihai Valley now.”

“Good,” Carr snapped. After a moment, he added, “You’re a good agent, Mal, but there’s a reason I passed you over for every promotion or transfer that’s come across my desk asking for you. You don’t give a damn about the politics—and that’s half of what this job is. Justice has always mattered more to you than fame. It makes you a phenomenal agent, but you would never make a good AIC. You’d tell anyone who pissed you off to go fuck themselves with your feet up on your desk.”

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