“I have confidence in your abilities, Officer Kelly,” Yorkton said. “If he’s there to be found, you’ll find him, I’m sure. And you have access to almost every resource that I do. But I will do some checking on this end.”
“Thanks. I’ll keep you updated.”
She ended the call and drove on. A deep, irrational part of her didn’t want to know damage estimates or the death and injury toll from the Chase Tower bombing. She couldn’t make herself listen to the radio news. She was in the middle of it now, and even worse, so was Sean.
Her own brother.
Her hero.
Her handsome, intelligent, intuitive big brother. The one who kept things neat and tidy and who could cook gourmet meals and who was popular with small kids and animals. When the Kellys gathered in Chicago for the big Memorial Day reunion-dozens and dozens of relatives, from as far away as California and Vermont, and one time some distant cousins had come from County Wicklow, Ireland-the young children were drawn to Sean as if magnetized. She’d finally realized it was because he was one of them, childlike to the end. He rarely considered consequences, whether it was rolling down a hill with his little cousins or drinking whiskey for breakfast or being sexually manipulated by a vixen like Daryn McDermott. He had an innocence that betrayed all he’d done and all he’d seen. Faith supposed she no longer had that, and the children could sense it, gravitating toward their cousin Sean instead of their cousin Faith.
Sean. If only he’d thought about the consequences.
If only were the two most useless words in any language. That sounded like something her father would say. The thought made Faith a little sad.
Downtown was cordoned off after the bombing, so Faith had to backtrack to the Tenth Street exit and drive several blocks west, before working her way back to the courthouse. She saw a handful of FBI and ATF officers she knew on the streets, talking in small groups. She thought she also caught a glimpse of Detective Rob Cain, huddled in a knot of uniformed officers a few blocks away from Bank of America Plaza.
She parked in the garage, then walked right in the front door of the federal courthouse. There was no lockdown in progress. The security guard simply nodded to her as she put her SIG Sauer in the tray and passed through the metal detector.
“Ms. Kelly,” he said.
“Hey, Clayton,” she said. She went through the detector without setting it off, then retrieved and holstered her SIG. “Much excitement over here?”
“Nah,” Clayton said. “They locked us down for a while, but we were on top of it pretty quick.”
“I had to leave,” Faith said. “I’ve been out of the loop for a couple of hours.”
Clayton looked at her but knew better than to ask questions. “Well, your friend is upstairs.”
“Which friend?”
Clayton smiled. They both knew she didn’t have that many friends that would visit her at the courthouse. The guard motioned to the top of his own head and drew a little circle with his index finger.
“Bald spot,” he said.
Faith smiled. “Thanks, Clayton.”
“He said he’d wait for you down in the Marshals’ office.”
She took the ornate stairs to the second floor and turned down the hallway. To her surprise, Hendler was standing in the hall across from her office door. He was wearing his dark blue FBI windbreaker over his standard white shirt and red tie, with charcoal gray suit pants. Faith, who’d once prided herself on “dressing for success,” felt suddenly scruffy in her uniform of blue jeans and a polo shirt. Her only jewelry was the tiger’s-eye gem Sean had sent her from Arizona, encircled by stainless steel wire and worn on a thin black string around her neck.
“Hey,” she said. “Clayton said you were waiting with the Marshals.”
“No one I knew was around. Seems Hagy and Leneski had to run out on a last-minute protective detail.”
“Do tell.” Faith unlocked the bare door to her office and they went in. Once inside, the door closed, she leaned down and kissed his cheek. “You don’t look half bad, for having gone through a bombing. Who’s doing what over there?”
“Dunaway’s running it now. She runs the antiterrorist squad these days anyway. She lives for terror, you know.”
Faith pictured petite, elegant Cara Dunaway living for terror. She smiled. “I know.”
Hendler plopped into one of the guest chairs. “Man, we got off lucky this time.”
“How do you mean?” Faith perched on the edge of her desk and kicked off her sneakers.
“Of course, I guess the families of the six people who died won’t say we got off lucky.” Hendler rubbed his face. “When you called and we mobilized to Bank of America, we were ready for the worst. Another Murrah Building. We evacuated, set up a perimeter, it was one smooth operation.”
“I didn’t know about Chase when I called you,” Faith said. “I guess Bank of America was a diversion, and they planned to hit Chase all along.”
Hendler looked at her strangely.
“What?” Faith said, growing impatient. “What’s that look about?”
“The woman you drove to Edmond…she’s the missing one, right? The one Rob Cain was working on. How much are she and your brother connected to what went down a few blocks from here?”
“Neither confirm nor deny.” She’d said the same thing many, many times by now. “What kind of casualty figures do you have from Chase? Six dead. What else?”
“It could have been much, much worse. It was a relatively small cache of C-4. Six dead, twenty-nine taken to hospitals, thirteen of those treated and released, mostly glass cuts, bruises, smoke inhalation. The ones who died were people nearest the suitcase of C-4, which was placed right outside the bank’s revolving door. Structurally, the building will be fine. Lots of ground-floor damage, but nothing approaching the scale of the Murrah Building. Still…” Hendler bowed his head. “Six dead. One was a two-year-old boy, Faith. His mom was going into the bank to make a deposit. She was one of the ones treated and released. The little boy was standing almost on top of the suitcase, right by the door. The mom was two steps ahead of him.”
Faith leaned forward, steadying her hands on Hendler’s knees.
“Faith, I don’t know what this is,” Hendler said. “And I don’t know where you and Thirty are in it. But terrorism just came back to Oklahoma City.”
Faith found Sean half an hour later, passed out on the couch in her living room, an empty bottle of Jack Daniel’s placed carefully in the center of the coffee table.
That’s Sean, Faith thought bitterly. He might pass out dead drunk, but he’ll be damn sure he doesn’t spill anything or knock anything over. Wouldn’t want to make a mess, after all.
“Hey!” she called, kicking at the edge of the couch.
Sean stirred slightly, moved an arm, stayed asleep.
“Wake up!”
He didn’t move.
“Shit,” Faith muttered.
She slapped his leg. He rolled over, away from the edge of the couch.
Sean was wearing heavy-soled hiking boots. Faith grabbed one, unlaced it, and pulled it from his foot. She started hitting him lightly with it, working up his body.
Sean finally started moving. “Hey,” he said thickly.
“Wake up! Wake up before I get to your head!”
She hit his rib cage with the boot and he rolled over defensively, finally coming up in a half-sitting position.
“What the hell, Faith,” he said. “Let a guy get a nap.” He squinted; then his hands went to his temples.
“Some nap. I specifically told you not to stop anywhere, not to get a drink. I wanted you to come straight here.”
“What…well, shit, Faith.” Sean pressed his hands tightly to his head. “I…shit, I can’t think.”
“Now that’s a surprise.” She flung the boot at him. He put up his hands in a halfhearted effort to deflect it. “Ow! What’s the matter with you?”
“I told you to come straight here!”