Chapter Four
Gabriel
“Whiskey, sweetheart, this is my job.” Gabriel looked down at Whiskey, who was navigating by scent, her nose in the air as she trotted along. The way her feet were dancing made Gabriel think that whatever smell was riding the wind had a happy memory associated with it.
Gabriel found himself focusing on the air as he breathed in. A few strides like that, and he thought he might be making out a hot dog, possibly on a street cart set up for people getting off work late and simply wanting something in their stomachs before they went home.
A hot dog, Gabriel remembered Daniel telling him, was the high-value reward that Whiskey got when she made a find on a search-and-rescue mission.
He’d have to be careful about what treats he handed out.
He should probably call Whiskey’s trainer and find out the dos and don’ts in case Whiskey ever did that kind of work again.
They arrived at the door, and when Gabriel stopped, Whiskey sat and looked up at him. “I had to bring you with me, but I know you're gonna be on your best behavior.”
No reaction.
Well, it was what it was. And since he was getting pulled in after hours with an emergency light flashing, surely they’d prefer he walk in with his dog rather than drive all the way home and back again.
His dog.
Gabriel didn’t think he’d ever see Whiskey as his. She would always be Daniel’s.
Moving down the hall, a coworker stopped him, his hand held out and deep sympathy lines on his forehead.
Gabriel switched the lead to his left hand and reached out for the shake.
“Heard about your brother, man. I'm gutted.” He pounded a fist against his chest, looked Gabriel dead in the eye, then shook his head as if he didn't have the words.
And that was fine.
Gabriel didn't need the words. He got that when people knew about his brother, they started thinking about their own relationships, their own siblings, their own mortality.
Old was not how people died. People died when people died.
Daniel was young and brave. He was fit and smart. Daniel was successful.
And then Daniel was dead.
That it happened so fast was shocking to everyone.
Him.
Daniel’s death was shocking to him.
There was no preparing for the impact of losing Daniel because there was no way that Gabriel could know the sensations that would flood his body.
If everyone who wanted to show their sympathy would give him a nod, touch their heart, and move along, the spigot of emotions wouldn’t turn on, and Gabriel wouldn’t drown.
Moving onto the elevator didn’t give him the seclusion he’d hoped.
There it was again, the condolence face, the outstretched hand, the good intentions.
“This is the famous Whiskey?”
“In the flesh.” Gabriel didn’t know this woman or how she’d know about Whiskey. He didn’t care. He had another floor to go; then he’d be away from this conversation.
“If there’s anything I can do, please let me know. You have Gail’s and my deep sympathy.”
“Thank you.” Should he know a person named Gail?
The doors opened.
This was his first time back in the building since Daniel’s death. He’d been working remotely. So all of this was expected and correct. It would die down.
In the hall, he saw his friend Steve Finley walking his way. “Hey, you’ve got two agents waiting in your office, and they're chewing their nails down to the quick.”
Finley gave Gabriel space by not looking at his face. Finley had been an Army Ranger like Gabriel, and he’d seen his fair share of the aftermath of war.
“Looky here. You’ve brought Whiskey to see what we do.” Finley crouched in front of Whiskey. “Hey there, sweet girl. Are you taking the tour? Are you thinking that you might like a job with the Bureau finding the bad guys?” Finley scratched under Whiskey’s chin, and her tail thumped with gratitude.
Finley pressed into his heels as he stood. “You’ve got this,” he said, reaching out a hand for the shake, and Gabriel wasn’t sure if he meant that as encouragement for the high-stakes case waiting for him, or if he meant that to bolster Gabriel, who was still in and out of shock over Daniel.
Probably both.
Gabriel started back up the hall, looking at his dress shoes, lest any other kind heart wanted to express their sympathy. Now was not the time.
“Gabriel Atworth,” he said, rounding into his office.
Two agents sat in the worn rolling chairs that Gabriel had found one day when he took something to the garbage room, and he’d wheeled them up the hall so that if anyone squeezed into his office, they’d be rewarded with somewhere to sit. The two men had been watching a video on their laptop.
Gabriel pulled out his chair and signaled Whiskey into the space under his desk.
Whiskey had rolled in the grass when Gabriel stopped by a tree in case she needed to pee. Now she smelled wet and musky, and it was a heavy scent in such a small office.
The size of his office was fine. It was all he really needed in his day-to-day life. It had no window, which was what he requested so he could turn off the lights and focus every bit of his brain cells and energy on whatever image needed his attention.
But with a wet dog and three big men, it was claustrophobic, and it was made that much worse when the guy closest to the door swung it closed.
“I’m Hinton. This is Walsh.”
“What’ve you got for me?” Gabriel asked. The chair let out its usual protesting squeak as he sat.
“Someone sent us a video this morning.” Walsh’s shoulder brushed against the wall as he turned the laptop toward Gabriel.
Gabriel didn’t look at it. He wanted context first, so he maintained Walsh’s gaze.
“The person has some IT knowledge. They stripped away any identifying information. They sent it to us from a temporary email generator so there’s no way to reach back out to the sender to ask for more information.”
“Why’d someone open it?” Gabriel asked.
“The subject line said, “FBI - Someone grabbed your boy, and he’s screaming.”
That would do it.
Gabriel dragged the laptop over to him. It was paused on the image of a man and looked as if it had been shot from high above. The guy was crouched at the knees and tipped slightly forward, enough that the FBI emblazoned on a blue windbreaker was legible. “Not AI?”
“Not AI,” Hinton confirmed. “Real deal. We don’t know who, and we don’t know where. We need you to hand us the address.”
“America?” Gabriel asked.
Hinton glanced at his partner before saying, “Probably.”
“How is it ‘probably?’” Gabriel asked, looking up. “Do we wear FBI jackets in foreign countries?”
The agents pressed their lips together.
“That’s a serious question. We operate all over the world, but I don’t. I’m here at the Hoover Building. And I don’t wear anything with the FBI logo. I wear business attire to court and business casual to the office. And my jackets have nothing emblazoned on the back.”
“We do when we’re out of the country if we’re there at the request of a foreign government to come and lend technical support.”
“But when you have people in the field, wearing their jackets, you don’t keep track of them?”
Again the special agents pressed their lips together.
“I’m serious here. This is specific to my finding this guy, which is why you’re here, right?” Gabriel knew these men were diligently holding their cards close to their chests. It was an ongoing irritation. He didn’t want specifics of cases—he most certainly didn’t want specifics of this case.
Rigid parameters defined his job. He was a geolocation specialist. Hand him an image, and he could, more often than not, pinpoint it on a map.
Gabriel didn’t want to know anything about the guy in the video; the whys and hows were outside of his scope. But narrowing down the country, that would certainly speed things along. “You need his location.”
“Exactly,” Walsh said. “We need to know where the person was standing when they recorded our guy getting captured and how and why the witness could hear screaming.”
“From this height, through the thickness of this glass, I guess it’s possible.
” Gabriel squinted at the screen. “But if the victim was screaming, it was either before or after this clip. With the streets empty like that? If there were screaming, there would be phone calls to 9-1-1. It’s more likely the witness realized something bad was going to happen to the agent, so they added the last bit to make whoever saw that email feel a sense of urgency.
The question is when? By my first look at the scene, it's morning just before dawn, so it’s possible it was today. ”
“Not last night at dusk?” Hinton asked.
“I’d show you how I know it’s morning, but right now, I’m more interested in understanding the jacket.
Obviously, he’s not working undercover. When do you wear a jacket?
” Gabriel ticked off on his fingers, “When you’re at an active scene, when there are multiple agencies at work, so they know what team you’re playing on, something where you need your agent to be immediately identifiable, right? ”
Neither man answered.
“How would it be possible that an FBI agent in a jacket with a logo was out and about and yet you called him ‘our guy.’ How is it that you haven’t got his name, and you don’t know what he was working on?”
“Investigators are working on that now. There’s a major push to figure it out. We thought that since you figure out locations from images, you could give us an address, which would narrow things down. We can’t put out a call for everyone to check in.”
“Why not?” He wasn’t being flip; that was a real question. The agent wasn’t undercover. He was wearing an FBI jacket.
“Because some people can’t check in.”
“They can if they’re public enough to wear their logo on a dark street.” Gabriel let his eyes rest on the image, looking to see if it was clue-rich. “Again, you don’t know when the video was taken. It could be years old.”
The agents shifted in their seats.
“Look, one of our own is out there with a gun at the head,” Walsh said. “No man left behind, right?”
“Absolutely. No man is ever left behind.” This was getting him nowhere, and time was ticking. Gabriel lifted his chin. “I have work to do.”
Their mouths curved into deep frowns.
“If you leave me your business cards, I’ll call as soon as I have something.”
Both men stood then waddled sideways to get out of the narrow space and left. Hinton pulled the door shut behind him.