4. Reid
REID
PLAYLIST: SHADOW – LIVINGSTON
It is late at night, and my office is the only one with the light on. I am on the phone with a dear friend of mine, who is a researcher at Columbia and works on a predictive model for criminal behavior.
“You can give me whatever you have, I’ll run it through the test environment, but don’t expect too much,” says Jane.
“Didn’t you have some sort of breakthrough?”
“Yes and no,” she says. “It’s hard to validate what has not yet happened, but your case might be perfect, because there is a lot of data available on her. We’ll see. Give us a week or two.”
“Thanks,” I say. “I owe you one.”
“Don’t get too excited.”
“Ignore her, she’s loaded with negativity today,” shouts Amy from somewhere further away. “We’ll give you something. The model works fine.”
“It does not work fine,” says Jane. “You are an occluded optimist who forgets procedure and rules of science.”
I laugh, because Amy and Jane are the most perfect couple I have ever met. I mean, I know Jane, and I know how she was without Amy, and now, those two are just epic.
“I’ll let you two sort that out,” I say. “Give me a call when you know more.”
With that, we hang up, and I grin at my phone.
I’d like to have a relationship like theirs, too.
Unfortunately, I always attract the uncommitted, like Rachel; the highly volatile, like my last relationship, Anna, who I couldn’t leave alone and needed constant reassurance of love and attention; and the therapy-needing projects, like my first two relationships in my life, where I fell in love with a romanticized idea of them—at least that’s my $300 an hour my shrink tells me, who I saw exactly four times and then decided therapy is not my thing at all.
I don’t need therapy; what I need is to catch criminals who disobey rules and laws, which is why I dive into my work with all I have.
Suddenly, everything turns pitch black.
It takes just a second of darkness before the alarm blares and the emergency system runs on the generator. The entire floor looks down. I immediately draw my gun.
The line to the security front desk is dead.
I call the guard’s personal number with the phone in my hand.
“What’s happening?” I ask Mike when he answers. Mike is always on the night shift and has become a friend over the years.
“Blackout, followed by an elevator shaft breach,” says Mike.
“What floor?” I say.
“Can’t tell; vibrational alarm went off in E6. It is stuck between yours and the 24th. Everything else is dead, but the vibrational alarm systems run on a different circuit, together with the lockdown and emergency evacuation.”
My heart beats faster as I glance around. The elevators are a long way from our unit and, therefore, my office.
“I’m investigating,” I say.
“Wait for backup,” Mike says.
“I’m here now,” I say. “Backup will take ages with the building on lockdown. I am armed. Do you have any visuals?”
“Nothing, all breached.”
“So we’re talking professionals.”
“I believe so,” he says. I have eight men on their way. One is guarding the evidence hold.”
Evidence hold.
“Going there now,” I say and hang up. I don’t turn on my gun light. The exit signs and the light on the floor are enough for me to see what I need to see the moment my eyes have adjusted to the darkness. I walk slowly and silently towards the main corridor, listening closely.
But I hear nothing except my own heartbeat.
I move forward, pointing into every aisle and every box, but nothing. I am pretty sure whoever breached has one goal. The evidence holding storage. Why else would someone break into the FBI headquarters?
I pass the elevator. The doors are open, and a rope lies on the floor.
The elevator is half-visible, stuck between the levels.
I risk a glance into the shaft, with my gun light this time.
The rope is attached to the elevator. So that’s how they got in and risked setting off the alarm.
They had to get onto this floor before everything went into lockdown.
My breathing flattens as I walk past the elevator towards the holding storage.
Suddenly, I hear a commotion behind the door leading to the storage, and I retreat into an aisle.
A male scream.
The door flies open.
I see the shadow of a person rush past me.
I wait a split second for the rest, but no one else is coming.
This was only one person.
I can handle one person.
“Freeze!” I shout as I draw out my gun and point it at the person in front of me.
I immediately notice it’s a woman. Long legs, perfectly shaped, a round ass, and long dark hair braided into a high ponytail.
She turns.
And I realize who she is.
“Hand in the air, Avery,” I say warningly.
She smirks at me, brings two fingers to her temple, points them at the sky, and then lunges out of my shooting line.
I run after her, jump around the corner into an aisle, and shoot after her.
She is so fast that it takes all my power to go after her. And then, she is gone.
It is a split-second decision. Follow her, or wait for her at the one spot she needs to go back to to escape.
So I walk back to the elevators, carefully, glancing into every box office and aisle.
I spin left and right, but she is nowhere. Not to be seen, not to be heard. Like the ghost she is.
I don’t expose myself by standing in front of the elevator, but by waiting in the aisle to the left, which lets me monitor the entire corridor. She ran left; she must come from the left.
Only she doesn’t.
I know I made a mistake when I feel her behind me, but it is too late. She grabs me in a headlock, pushes me forcefully into the glass wall, the gun drops from my hand, and I feel something dig into my chest from the side. Something that feels awfully like a gun muzzle.
I try to get a hold of her leg with mine, but she knows what she is doing.
She kicks away my gun.
“Careful, Special Agent Shaw,” she whispers in my ear from behind. A wave of flowery and yet rich perfume washes over me, accompanied by the scent of alcohol.
Alcohol. On a job like this?
“Or what?” I ask, defiantly.
“Or you might get yourself burned.”
“You broke into the FBI headquarters,” I say, “The only one who gets burned is you.”
“I don’t think so,” she chuckles. “It’s a pleasure to finally meet you. Almost like meeting…a groupie.”
Anger surfaces in me.
She is such an arrogant and entitled woman that it makes the hair on my neck stand up.
“You will let me walk away,” she says, silently.
“And what makes you think I will?” I ask.
“Because you are overpowered, and I am reckless enough to risk everything.”
I scoff in disbelief.
“Your grandiosity will be your downfall,” I say through gritted teeth.
She laughs.
It is wild laughter, almost maniacal.
“Goodbye, Special Agent Shaw,” she says, lets go of the headlock, grasps my head from behind, and slams my head into the glass wall.
The pain surges through my head, and my vision blurs.
I sink to the ground and squint my eyes as I search for my gun on the floor, crawling.
A stabbing pain shoots through my head.
Then I find it.
I grasp it.
I aim without aiming, and shoot blindly towards the elevator.
I hear a scream.
A scream of pure panic.
A scream that suddenly clears all my senses.
I run towards the elevator, and I see Avery Zayne holding herself onto the metal elevator rails inside the shaft, leading twenty-three floors down into sure death.
The rope dangles on the elevator, out of her reach.
She looks up at me, panic in her eyes.
It’s the first time I’m seeing her up close.
My head is pounding, and it takes me a second to react.
I put away my gun, squat down while holding myself with one arm to the open door.
“Take my hand,” I say.
She is struggling.
“I can’t let go,” she finally says through gritted teeth. “I can barely hold myself with both hands.”
“I’m going to grab your wrist,” I say. The good thing is, I am very trained. I hit the gym six times a week, train in martial arts with several friends from the Marine Corps, and I am not fragile. I’m muscular. And I wouldn’t do it if I were not certain I could hold her weight with one arm.
“You sure you can hold me?” she asks in a mistrustful, even derogatory tone and slightly pursed lips.
“I guess we’ll find out,” I snap at her. “But I can leave you to it if you prefer it; good luck surviving,” I say and get up, aiming to walk away.
“Wait,” she calls after me.
I stop.
Her fingers slide.
It’s a decision of one second.
I squat again, hold myself to the door, grasp her wrist, and pull.
She is a lightweight, probably not more than 120 lbs.
I pull her up, push myself off the door, take two steps back, just enough for her knees to slide onto the floor.
She sinks to the ground and lies panting on the floor. Her arm is trembling underneath my grip.
I don’t let go of her wrist. Instead, I bring it onto her back and grab the handcuffs from my belt.
“Avery Zayne,” I say. “You are under arrest. You have the right to remain silent; anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to an attorney. If you cannot afford one, one will be appointed to you.”
With my last word, I click the handcuffs closed.
Pride and pure joy spread through me as I caught Avery Zayne.
I caught her.
Finally.
A wide grin spreads on my face as I kneel next to her. I take in the view and the feeling for one second. After all those years of hunting her, I got her. I. Got. Her.
I grab my phone and call Mike.
“Got the intruder, taking her to interrogation one. Please call in Rachel and Linda from the press; this will be the headline of the month.”
I hang up, put my phone into my pocket, and then grab Avery Zayne by the handcuffs to lift her up.
“Please don’t,” she says as I lift her. “Not the press.”
“This is not Make-A-Wish,” I say harshly.
“Please,” she says so pleadingly that it sounds as if she were about to cry.
“Why wouldn’t I?” I ask her.
“Because—“ she starts, hesitates, twitches with her head, rolls back her shoulders, and falls silent.
Her bodily reaction is extensive, rooted quite emotionally.
We get to interrogation one, only to find the room has been shut down due to the lockdown. My credentials aren’t working.
“Walk,” I tell her, and push her in front of me.
I take her to my office.
“Sit,” I say and place her on a chair, remove one handcuff, pull her hands to the front, around the chair’s armrest, and close it around her other wrists again.
She is cooperative, something I take with a grain of salt, because I know she is tricky.
She stares at the handcuffs, and I watch her closely. I am prepared for her to try everything possible to free herself.
“What did you steal from the evidence hold?” I ask her.
She remains silent.
“Okay,” I say. “Let me make this very clear. Theft of a major artwork in over a thousand known cases, interstate transportation of stolen goods, burglary of a federal facility, obstruction of justice in at least nineteen cases, tampering of evidence, conspiracy, smuggling, identity theft, and fraud in over a hundred cases, and we’re just talking federal charges.
I’d advise you to talk; otherwise, this will end very badly. ”
“Lawyer,” she says. Her foot is twitching up and down. She is biting her bottom lip. For a thief of her caliber, she is very, very nervous.
Or she is trying to play you, says a voice of caution in my mind.
“A lawyer won’t be able to help you,” I say. “Cooperation, however, does.”
“Oh yeah?” she asks. “And in what way? Are you offering me a deal? I talk, and then what? You’ll just forget about everything I supposedly did?”
Her head twitches again.
She swallows hard.
I don’t know what it is, but she seems to be in genuine distress.
She is a professional liar and thief; don’t let yourself be fooled.
“We most certainly won’t, but we’re talking lifelong high security, or a rather more…pleasant accommodation.”
She scoffs derogatorily.
She bites her bottom lip so hard that it bleeds. She licks over the red blood.
“What is the matter with you?” I ask her. “You seem awfully nervous.”
Her body stiffens immediately, and she becomes like stone.
“I need you to let me go,” she whispers.
I laugh out loud, because that she even thinks I would let her go after I finally caught her is obscene to me.
“Yeah, not happening,” I say, stand up, and walk over to my desk, where I lean on it.
“You must,” she says.
“And why is that?”
Her eyes wander into mine.
Her head tilts, and a self-sufficient smirk appears on her face.
When she speaks, her voice is dangerously cold, well aware of who she is and believes herself to be.
“I wonder, how is your sister doing?”
My face turns to stone.
How does she know about my sister?
She shouldn’t—
No one knows about her—
“I can help her,” says Avery. “I can help you.”
I chuckle in total disbelief because she really thinks I can be bribed.
“I am a federal agent,” I say. “Let’s not add bribery of a federal employee to the charges.”
She smiles way too knowingly.
How I hate people like her.
No one is above the law.
No one.
But what she says isn’t another lie.
“I didn’t think so,” she says. “I was right about you. But even behind all your perfect righteousness, you are human. And humans have secrets. Secrets they try to bury on a construction site in the middle of South Carolina on a Tuesday night in March of 2007, just before the concrete sealed the sins of that day seven hours later.”
All the blood in my body rushes to my feet.
I am falling.
Falling from a plane without a parachute.
How can she possibly know?
I stare at her while I see nothing.
I am back there.
Back in my childhood town.
When—
No—
My mind zooms in on the one mistake I ever made. The one time, the reason why I never break a rule. Because rules are there for a reason.
Suddenly, there is a bang.
“Well, isn’t that a cozy sit-in?” I hear a woman say. It takes me too long to realize someone has entered my office. Not just someone, but Hedda Lagner.
Gun pointing at me.
I was consumed by what Avery did; my entire body was on hold.
I want to draw my gun—
“Freeze and hands up,” Hedda says.
There is no point.
I do as she says.
She throws a handcuff key at Avery.
So they are working together.
Avery frees herself.
Her gaze is self-sufficient, that of a woman who knows she wins every time. A glare I want to hit out of her face. Not that I would, but damn, the desire is there.
She walks over to me, leans in way too close, and grabs around me to get to my holster.
So close that I can feel the warmth of her body radiating over me, I am rendered completely speechless.
She draws the gun from the holster with a single harsh pull.
“I believe it’s goodbye after all,” she says silently. “But we’ll see each other again.”
And with that, she removes herself and walks away. Past Hedda without a glance, bumping slightly into her shoulder in a way that revokes my earlier impression.
Hedda waits until Avery is gone long enough.
“You will stay here,” she says. “Wouldn’t open the door until bomb squad arrives.”
With that, she is gone, and she mounts a lock to the handle of the glass door, with a box attached.
“Fuck,” I groan out.