The Terror (A Sarah Roberts Thriller Book 18) Read online

  “What now?” Sarah asked. She wrapped her hands around the warm coffee cup. “No questions?” She studied Hammock’s face a moment longer. “You appear perplexed. Are you not happy with me?” She went to sip from the cup, then stopped, the cup suspended by her mouth. Her eyes met Hammock’s over the cup’s lid. “You’re being pulled from the case. We’re done here, that’s it, isn’t it? That’s why you’re waiting for me at the door?”

  “You’re to come to Officer Lee’s office. He’ll talk to you there.”

  Sarah tried not to smile, but couldn’t restrain herself as she rose to her feet, stretched, and took her first sip from the cup. “Someone didn’t like what you were doing in here, eh?” Hammock maintained a stony expression. Sarah stopped at the door mere inches from Hammock. “Let me tell you a little secret. I’m not here to bother you. I’m here to catch the bad guys.” She offered Hammock a pensive expression. “Don’t worry, I’ll be out of Kelowna in less than a week. You’ll never see me again.”

  “Is that a promise? Or a premonition?”

  “Both.”

  Hammock walked down the corridor toward the elevators. Sarah followed, sipping her coffee, already waking up from the aroma.

  Minutes later, Hammock knocked on a door with Officer Lee’s name engraved on a plaque to the right of the door.

  “Come in,” someone shouted from the inside.

  Hammock opened the door and moved aside to let Sarah enter.

  “Corporal Hammock,” Lee said.

  Sarah took in the room, then headed toward the sofa where Parkman was getting to his feet.

  “We need two more coffees in here,” Lee said.

  Parkman wrapped his arms around Sarah. She involuntarily winced when he touched her sore shoulder.

  “That’s not my job,” Hammock protested.

  “Just get the fucking coffees already.”

  Sarah glanced back at Hammock. The woman genuinely looked pissed off.

  Lee held his hand up in a calming gesture. “I’m sorry. It’s been a long day. The paperwork alone will take a week and we need to talk to Sarah. Could you please, with sugar on top, bring us two more coffees?”

  “Take your sugar on top and shove it up your ass.” Hammock backed out of the room and slammed the door.

  “Wonder what got her so riled up?” Lee said as he turned to face Sarah. “Wouldn’t have been you, would it?”

  “I try not to have that effect on people. Sometimes it just comes out.” Sarah sat beside Parkman.

  No one spoke for a full minute. Sarah placed her cup on the small table in front of the sofa, then eased back and rubbed her face. Fatigue was also part of the job and right now she wanted to sleep for fifteen hours.

  “Lee,” she said.

  “Yeah?”

  “I’ve always had trouble with the people I try to help.”

  Lee pulled his office chair out and plopped down in it. “Shouldn’t be that way.” A moment of silence filled the room. “But I understand,” he added.

  “You guys are accountable to bosses who are accountable to the public. I’m not. We’re on two different trains heading in the same direction. Sometimes it’s advantageous for us to cross paths.”

  “Agreed.”

  “But when we do, I’m asked to do it your way—”

  “It’s not my way,” Lee cut in.

  “I know. I’m talking about doing it by the book or whatever you guys call it here. That doesn’t work for me. Assaulting you, taking your car and your weapon saved lives. Doing it any other way, would not have saved lives. I saw that in the blink of an eye. It became an instant understanding for me, thanks to my sister. I did what I had to do, regardless of the consequences and I’d do it again.”

  “I know that now. Parkman explained.”

  “You have to ask yourself if you’re prepared for the fallout of having me here. Or maybe the question is, what’s worse? Your homegrown terrorist running loose, or my collateral damage and your terrorist is dealt with?”

  They exchanged a glance. Lee turned to Parkman, then swiveled his chair to face his window. Sarah waited.

  “I want you here,” Lee said after a long pause. “I just wish you could be calmer about things. Do what you have to do in a quiet, safe manner.”

  “You’re looking for Kermit the Frog or Barney the purple dinosaur then. You will never get calm and quiet out of me. That’s not how this psychic thing works. Sometimes I’m told what to do with only minutes to spare. Then I’m given an understanding of how to do that very thing. It’s rarely quiet. Or calm.”

  She almost forgot her coffee. After two more sips, the phone on the desk rang.

  Lee picked it up. “Lee here.” He paused, stared at the ceiling a moment, nodded his head, and said, “I understand, sir.” Then he gently placed the receiver back.

  “What?” Parkman asked. “That call wasn’t good, was it?”

  “No, not good,” Sarah said. “That was his boss.”

  Lee nodded and fidgeted with something in his lap.

  “Your boss told you to debrief me, then send me on my way, didn’t he?” Sarah asked.

  Lee raised his head, and nodded. “He said you weren’t needed in Kelowna. We already have one dead officer from the bomb squad. He asked me how many more cops will die while you’re here.”

  “Bit unfair, wouldn’t you say?” Parkman said.

  “Tell them I’ll leave.” Sarah raised her coffee above her head. “As soon as we stop this guy.” She lowered the coffee. “In the interim, Parkman and I will stay low and feed you information.”

  “Just tell me you’re leaving,” Lee said. “I’ll report that. It saves me a lot of bullshit. Then you can do what every free citizen does from wherever you are. Come and go as you please. Keep in touch with me, though. I’ll follow up any lead you give me.”

  “That debriefing? Was that what Corporal Hammock was trying to do?”

  Lee nodded.

  “Tell me about the couple in the red minivan.”

  Lee looked flustered. “What’s there to tell? The girl was being interviewed as a potential suicide bomber who got scared and changed her mind. She jumped from the van—”

  “It wasn’t her,” Sarah cut in. “She didn’t know about the bombs.”

  “We know that now.”

  “What about the chairs?”

  Lee raised his eyebrows in a gesture of surprise but didn’t question her on how she knew about the chairs. “The fire marshal as well as the bomb squad are still on the scene. They’ve found fragments of a recliner that was sitting in the back of the van. Apparently,” Lee leaned forward and adjusted his glasses to read something on a document on his desk. “Apparently, John and Susan had answered an ad in one of those online buy and sell websites. They drove to Penticton to pick up a piece of discounted furniture for their new home. They recently moved in together. Unbeknownst to them, the seller was our perp. What they picked up was a bomb stashed deep inside their new recliner.” He lowered his glasses and sat back. “They were the unwitting delivery system for the bomber.”

  Sarah leaned forward. “Can she ID the seller?”

  “Yes. Barely. John, her boyfriend did the deal and the money exchange. Susan waited in the van. She only saw the perp once when he helped John load the recliner. And her view was limited as it was through the mirror on the passenger door. But she said she saw enough that if she were to see him again, she’d be able to identify him.”

  Sarah clasped her hands together, cracked a couple of knuckles, then sat back. She steepled her fingers and listened for Vivian.

  “The Penticton location won’t matter,” she said. “The perp left it and won’t return as he now knows that place is burned.”

  Lee nodded. “My boss sent a crew down anyway. They’ll scan the place for prints, hair fibers, anything they can find.”

  “Was it a house?” Parkman asked.

  Lee shook his head. “No. It was an empty storage unit rented with fake ID.”

/>   “The unsub delivered the backpack to the coffee shop in the bookstore himself,” Sarah said. “He watched me toss the device into the back room.”

  “What?” Parkman snapped. “He was there?”

  She nodded slowly. “I almost bumped into him, but didn’t know it was him until after I’d dealt with the bomb.”

  “Why not?”

  She turned to look at Parkman. “There was a timing issue regarding the backpack.”

  “Right,” he nodded. “Understood. Do you recall anything about him?”

  She shook her head.

  “Anything from Vivian?” he asked.

  She shook her head again.

  “Okay.” Parkman glanced at Lee. “That’s confusing.”

  “Vivian’s being blocked at times. Never happened like this before.”

  Both men stared at her. They were probably waiting for a better explanation. Something compelled Sarah to push off the sofa and walk to the window beside Lee’s desk. This feeling, a certain drive from within to head to the window, didn’t come from her. In the few seconds it took to cross the floor, the room around her dimmed briefly. Sound diminished and darkness clouded her peripheral vision.

  Drawn to the window was more of a calling, a yearning, and not something precipitated by Vivian. This was different. Utterly opposite in fact. At the window, she looked down at the sprawling city of Kelowna and wondered what compelled her to do so. Why here? Why now? What was out there? The nature of her reasoning to walk to the window was so foreign she didn’t want either man in the room to notice the change in her.

  “Any idea why she’s being blocked?” Lee asked. He sounded like he was talking through a large tube. His voice contained an odd echo to it now.

  Time passed as Sarah stared out the window. Then Lee and Parkman were talking again. “Our unsub has no conscience. He is the worst kind of killer because he feels nothing. He met the people that would deliver his bomb to Kelowna for him knowing they would die. What did it matter if they saw his face?”

  Sarah spun from the window. “Which means Susan could be in trouble. She’s seen his face. Can you keep her survival out of the papers until this is over.”

  Lee shook his head. “Already too late.”

  “Shit,” Parkman muttered.

  “What about you, Sarah?” Lee said.

  “Me?” Had he noticed the sudden change in her? “What about me?”

  “You said our unsub saw you at the mall. He’ll hear Susan lived. By tomorrow, if not sooner, our unsub will have put it all together. He’ll know who you are and what you’ve done to sabotage his progress.”

  “And?” Sarah asked.

  “And it lends one to think that your safety could be at risk as well.”

  “I’ll be fine.” Sarah fought the internal urge to be at the window. She moved toward the middle of the office where she stood a moment, listening for her sister.

  “But if Vivian’s being blocked,” Parkman added. “How can you be sure you’ll be fine?”

  Sarah ignored Parkman’s comment. She didn’t want to dwell on her personal safety as it was pointless. She was staying on until this was done, whether or not she was safe. This guy had to be stopped. Whatever compelled her to be at the window in the first place rose tenfold. Obediently, she walked back to the window and looked at the street below.

  “Lee, listen to me,” Sarah said, keeping her voice even.

  “I’m listening.”

  “This guy has to be stopped.” She waited. When no one spoke, she added, “But your people want me out.”

  “I know. I will try to reason with them—”

  “Don’t.”

  “Sarah?” Parkman said from the sofa.

  It suddenly occurred to her she hadn’t seen a toothpick in his mouth for at least two days, which was a strange thought considering what they were dealing with.

  On the street below, nothing appeared out of the ordinary. A man walked along the sidewalk on the other side. Something drew her eyes to him. She watched as he stopped, head bent slightly downward in thought. Then, after a moment’s pause, he turned and looked up at her. His right hand rose and he began gesturing in the air like he was trying to tell her something.

  Just like the guy in the suit on the second floor of the Medical Services building.

  Sarah frowned as she watched the man. Could he see her at the second-floor office window? Wouldn’t there be a glare of some kind as the sun set in the west?

  The arm gesture was the same, repeated over and over. It looked like he was trying to spell out a word or give her a number of some kind.

  “Sarah?” Lee said behind her.

  She studied the man on the street, focusing on the message.

  “Sarah?” Parkman said from behind her, his hand on her shoulder. “You okay?”

  She edged sideways, looked at Parkman, then pointed at the man on the sidewalk.

  “Can you read what he’s trying to say?” she asked.

  Parkman peered out the office window, following her fingertip. He looked at her, then back outside.

  “Who are you pointing at?” he asked.

  Sarah stared down at the street below. “That man on the sidewalk, right there—”

  The man was gone.

  “I don’t see anyone on the sidewalk, Sarah. A block back there’s a woman pushing a stroller. She’s walking with a man. But that’s it.”

  The gesturing man was gone. But not just gone. He’d vanished. As if he wasn’t there in the first place.

  She rubbed her eyes when a chill shook her body.

  Vivian? You want to explain what that was?

  From left to right, the sidewalk was relatively empty with only a few people walking its length. No one resembled the gesturing man.

  Parkman’s hand on her shoulder applied pressure. He tried to turn her away from the window. The expression on his face was one of concern.

  “C’mon,” he whispered. “Come sit down.”

  Sarah took one more look out the window, then followed Parkman to the sofa.

  “You okay?” he asked softly.

  She nodded as she dropped down on the cushion hard. The urge to be at the window had disappeared. Whatever had compelled her to stand and walk across the room was gone.

  “You don’t look okay.”

  She inhaled a deep breath, then released it.

  “I’m fine,” she whispered. “Let it go for now.”

  Parkman waited a heartbeat, then nodded.

  “You were telling me not to reason with my superiors,” Lee said. “But Sarah, if I don’t, you will have to leave.”

  She sat on the edge of the sofa as Vivian entered her thoughts. A wave of information flooded her. She got more than she wanted all at once.

  “Whoa,” she murmured.

  “Whoa what?” Parkman asked, his concern for her renewed.

  She met his eyes and studied his face a moment. He’d aged in recent years. He was a good-looking man who had chosen her instead of a regular job and a girlfriend. Their exploits together didn’t allow him to have a normal existence. But that was something he knew and accepted, and she loved that about him.

  According to Vivian, they had to part ways for this fight in Kelowna. She didn’t like it, but Parkman would be safe in Kelowna with the authorities.

  The emotions she struggled with were entwined with the knowledge Vivian imparted upon her. Sarah now understood what she had to do and how to go about it.

  “Lee,” she said as she turned to face him. “Don’t reason with your superiors. Just tell them who I am and what I have done in the past. Explain my mission here. With my help, I can stop this guy.”

  “I can do that,” he said, both hands flat on the desktop. “But after what happened today, it’ll be a hard sell.”

  “There’s poison coming.”

  “Poison?” Lee sat forward. “What are you talking about?”

  “When I know more, you will. Keep your cell phone on. I’m also being tol
d something about a sharpshooter. I don’t know what that means yet, but it has something to do with our unsub.”

  “Like he’s ex-military or SWAT? Maybe a sniper?”

  Sarah shrugged. Vivian was gone. The man on the sidewalk was gone. She came back into herself, feeling grounded.