No Good Deed (3 page)

“Harris—SAPD?”

“Corrections. Isaac Harris. He’s married and I think he has a kid.”

“Where is he?”

Proctor motioned at a pair of US Marshals, introduced Lucy to them. They escorted her down the street to a restaurant that was being used to contain the children. Sitting on a bench outside was a man in uniform, dirty and bloodied, rocking a little girl with long dark braids who couldn’t have been more than six.

Lucy asked one of the marshals in a low voice, “Have you contacted the school?”

The marshal said, “Yes. They’re sending over staff and contacting parents. We’re setting up a tent to process each family, make sure all children are accounted for and picked up by legal guardians.”

“Do you have a roll call?”

“We’re working on it. Forty-two children are assigned to the bus, and we have forty here. We don’t know if the other two were inside when it exploded.”

Lucy glanced inside the restaurant. The staff had served water or juice to all the kids, and several SAPD officers were sitting with them. Some were crying, some were staring blankly, and some were blatantly curious. But all had their innocence stolen today.

“Can you leave me with him?” She motioned toward Isaac Harris.

The marshal nodded and went back to his station.

Lucy assessed the officer. Tall, broad, early thirties. He was sitting like a sentry outside the restaurant, watching everyone who went in with a critical eye. The little girl clung to him, her face buried in his chest, and he cradled her like an infant. Both Harris and the girl were bleeding.

“Officer Harris?” she said as she approached. “I’m FBI Agent Lucy Kincaid. I’m also an EMT. I noticed you and this little girl are bleeding. Can I—”

He cut her off. “We’re fine. We’re fine.”

“I’d like to clean the cut on her face. We don’t want it to scar, do we? What’s her name?”

“Mary.”

“Hi, Mary,” Lucy said and sat down.

Harris tensed and stopped rocking. He stared at Lucy with deep suspicion. The girl clung to him even tighter.

“My name is Lucy. May I look at the cut on your head?”

Mary didn’t move.

“Isaac,” Lucy said, “if I don’t clean her wound, it could get infected.”

He hesitated, then nodded. In a soft voice, he whispered to the girl, “Mary, can you turn your head just a little so Ms. Lucy can help?”

The girl immediately obeyed, but didn’t open her eyes. Lucy pulled on her gloves, gently pulled back Mary’s hair. The wound was superficial—it had bled a lot, but the bleeding had stopped. She might need a couple of stitches. Lucy pulled gauze and a disinfectant from her medical bag.

“Mary, I need to clean the cut on your head. It’s going to sting a little bit, but that means the medicine is working.”

The girl flinched but didn’t cry when Lucy touched the antiseptic to her head.

“You are very brave,” Lucy said. She finished cleaning the wound, then bandaged it. “Father Mateo will be so proud of you.”

Mary looked at her for the first time, eyes wide, but didn’t talk.

Lucy smiled. “Father Mateo is a friend of mine. Would you like to see him?”

Mary gave an almost imperceptible nod. Then she closed her eyes again and settled back into Officer Harris.

“Isaac,” Lucy said, “Mary may have a concussion. She needs to be checked out at the hospital.”

“I’ll take her,” he said.

“You can go in the ambulance with her, would that be all right?”

He nodded and kissed the top of Mary’s head. He had his own injuries and she wondered if he was more seriously hurt than he’d initially let on.

Lucy figured that once Isaac could leave Mary in a safe environment, like a hospital, he would be able to let go. She didn’t understand exactly what he’d gone through—Mary’s reaction was normal, but Isaac’s wasn’t.

“Before you go, I need information, Officer Harris.”

“I told the marshals everything I know.”

But he wasn’t looking at her.

Lucy said, “I know Agent Rollins.”

He tensed. Mary whimpered, and he whispered in her ear.

“I know what she’s capable of,” Lucy continued. “What I don’t know is what happened in the van.”

He scowled at her. “They killed my partner and the only reason they didn’t kill me was because I put my gun down. I could have taken her out. I thought about it…” His anger disappeared, and he whispered, “I didn’t know about the bomb. I never would have thought about it if I knew.”

“How many in the escape?”

“Three that I saw. Probably more. All masked. Plus Rollins. They must have had a car stashed somewhere, but I didn’t see it. When she told me I had five minutes—”

“Five minutes?”

“Five minutes, twenty seconds before the bomb went off. They’d already set it before they breached the van. If I hadn’t let them in—” He closed his eyes and took a deep breath.

“The bomb would have gone off no matter what.”

He nodded. “She said that I could go after her or save the kids.”

“You did the right thing.” He had to believe that. Lucy didn’t know if mistakes were made, but there was no doubt that Nicole would have killed those children. She was playing the odds. And this time, she’d won.

The bomb was a distraction. It diverted attention from Nicole’s escape. Isaac Harris didn’t see where Nicole and her henchmen had gone or what they were driving because he was focused on getting the kids off the bus.

Tears pooled in the corner of his eyes. “They killed Trevor. He’d just gotten married. He’s dead because he did his job. I didn’t, and I’m still here.”

“Listen to me, Isaac,” Lucy said firmly. “You did your job. You saved forty children. Forty kids with parents and grandparents and aunts and uncles and siblings who would all be suffering right now if not for you.”

“What do I say to Gina? I was at their wedding…” His voice cracked.

“You tell Gina that Trevor died a hero. He died doing his job. Isaac, if you hadn’t put down your gun, you would be dead. And so would everyone on that bus.”

“I never wanted to be a hero.” His voice cracked. “Not like this.”

She squeezed his hand. What else could she say?

“I didn’t get everyone,” he whispered.

“How many?”

“The driver. And—I don’t know.”

“The driver was already dead.”

“You don’t know that.”

“No, but an autopsy will be done and we’ll find out.”

“What if I missed someone?”

“They’re doing a roll call.”

He didn’t say anything.

“Isaac, I need more information. Did Nicole say anything, did one of her people say anything, that can help us find her?”

He shook his head. “No. Nothing.”

Lucy waited. She didn’t talk, just let Isaac remember on his own. Because there was more, there had to be.

“She knew,” he suddenly said.

“What did she know?”

“That I had five minutes to get the children off the bus. She asked her partner the time, and then told me I had five minutes and twenty seconds. She knew about the bomb, knew about the timing. She must have planned the entire thing.”

“That’s good, Isaac. She was in solitary. There weren’t many ways she could have planned and put together this operation. We’ll find out how, and then we’ll find out where she went.” She suspected there was something else in Isaac’s head, but she didn’t know how to get him to remember.

Out of the corner of her eye Lucy saw Brad Donnelly approaching, but she held up her hand to keep him away.

“How did the men get into the back of the transport?” she asked.

“I opened the door. I had to. She said I had ten seconds or they would start killing the children.”

Mary whimpered in his arms and he hugged the girl tightly.

“You did the right thing,” Lucy said again.

“And they killed Trevor. I did the right thing but they killed a good man.” He closed his eyes.

“Isaac?” Lucy said quietly. “I know a thing or two about survivor’s guilt.” She slipped her card into his pocket. “Call me anytime you need to talk. But remember this—you did what needed to be done. You’ll replay the scene over and over in your head, but in the end, you need to know that had you done anything different, Mary would not be here right now. Do you understand?”

He nodded but didn’t look at her.

“I’m going to send over a paramedic. You can go with Mary to the hospital.”

He looked up through the window at the rest of the children. “I can’t leave them. Someone has to watch over them.”

There were a dozen medics and cops in the restaurant tending to the needs of the children. But Isaac didn’t see them. Maybe he was blind to everything but the kids.

“Father Mateo is coming,” she said. “He’ll take care of these kids, I promise.”

Lucy got up and walked over to Brad. “It was planned down to the last detail. They had the bomb set on a timer, multiple gunmen, knew the route, how to breach the van. They left nothing to chance.”

“They’re gone. Helicopter lifted off from a soccer field two miles from the explosion. We have multiple witnesses—they couldn’t identify Nicole from her photo, but agree there was a pilot plus a man and a woman.” He squeezed his fists together and said through clenched teeth, “Tobias was behind this.”

“Maybe.”

He stared at her as if she were speaking in a foreign language. “
Maybe
? Who else?”

“Nicole herself.”

“He’s in charge. We knew that from the beginning, from when you overheard him three months ago threatening Vasco Trejo. He’s the one who orchestrated the slaughter of his rival gang. He ordered the hit on Worthington less than two weeks ago. He bombed the DEA evidence locker.
It’s him
.”

“He’s involved, but she’s important. He wouldn’t spring her if she were a nobody.”

“She knows too much. He had to get her out.”

“Then why not kill her? It was easy enough to kill the guards, to plant a bomb on a church school bus. If Tobias wanted her dead, Brad, she’d be dead.”

Lucy didn’t know when she’d come to that conclusion—it might have been formulating over the last two weeks, since the explosion at the DEA evidence locker; it might have been even longer, when they first took Nicole down. There was something about her that told Lucy she was a player, not a follower.

“Lucy,” Brad said, then stopped as the truth sank in. “You’re saying she wasn’t just an agent on the take.”

“No. She’s the ringleader. I’d bet my badge on it.”

CHAPTER THREE

Lucy tended to several minor injuries while the paramedics triaged the most serious. Most of the injuries were related to the explosion—cuts, burns, scrapes. Two bystanders who’d been hit by stray bullets during the initial gunfire had already been transported to the hospital before Lucy and her team arrived.

Five people involved with the transport had been killed—three guards in the van, and the two DEA agents in the rear SUV. The lead SUV had two US Marshals; they’d both been incapacitated and were in stable condition at the hospital.

Less than an hour after the explosion, the fire was completely out and arson investigators had begun processing the scene. SWAT were methodically clearing each building. SAPD were retrieving all security cameras from the area so they could piece together a visual of what happened, and the FBI were interviewing witnesses.

Lucy spotted Father Mateo Flannigan as he walked from the staging area to the restaurant where the children were. She caught up to him and put a hand on his arm. “Tell me what you need, Father.”

He rested his hand on hers and squeezed. His face was pale and drawn, his eyes troubled, but he was calm when he said, “I need the children away from here.”

“Have their parents been notified?”

“My staff has been working with the police to contact parents. They said forty children came off the bus. I confirmed that two students, brothers, stayed home today.”

“Sick?”

“I didn’t ask. I spoke to their grandmother and she said their mother dropped them off this morning. Why is it important? We know they weren’t on the bus. This should be good news.”

It might be nothing, but investigators needed to check out all anomalies. “I need their contact information.”

“I gave it to your people. Lucy, I know you’re doing your job, but the kids need me now. And I need them.”

“Of course.” Lucy stepped aside and let Father Mateo console his flock. She’d done all that she could here. She watched as Officer Isaac Harris hugged a petite woman who clutched Mary in her arms. Her mother? That would give Isaac some peace, she hoped.

Lucy walked back to the staging area and found Leo Proctor, who was coordinating all the SWAT teams—FBI, SAPD, and DEA. “I need an agent to check something out,” she said. “It might be important.”

“DEA is lead on the investigation, marshals are running the manhunt. What’s going on?”

“Father Mateo Flannigan, the head pastor at Saint Catherine’s, said that two boys who were supposed to be on the bus went to their grandmother’s instead.”

“And?” He sounded rushed and irritated.

“Gut feeling. They may be sick, but we won’t know until we check with their family. Father Flannigan spoke to their grandmother but he may not have asked the right questions.”

“Give the intel to the DEA, then report to Casilla.”

Lucy couldn’t find Brad in the immediate area, so she sent him a text message about the boys. She went back to the restaurant, where parents had started arriving to pick up their children. At a table both SAPD officers and civilian staff were recording everyone’s information, verifying identification, and releasing the children. Father Mateo helped facilitate the process.

None of those children would ever be the same. A burning anger filled Lucy. Nicole Rollins had stolen their innocence. She’d set this entire thing up with full knowledge that the kids would be traumatized and possibly killed. Her sole motivation was to escape. Five dead cops and dozens injured.

How could Nicole have ever become a DEA agent? How could she work for more than a decade in a profession she detested? How could she see what violence did to the victims and then perpetuate it herself? When Lucy first met her, while they worked together on Operation Heatwave, she’d thought Nicole was smart, methodical, and a bit cold. A lot of cops—especially those who had high-stress jobs—could be icy. Lucy was herself aloof, especially when processing a crime scene. She saw the scene through the eyes of the killer as well as the victim in order to not only understand the victimology, but to capture the killer.