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“Short version for now,” he said. “Blackout posted a video on YouTube.”
“No.”
Joe took out his phone, tapped on the screen, and said, “Brace yourself, Blondie.”
He handed me the phone.
CHAPTER 76
I DIDN’T KNOW how much more bracing I could stand. Was I about to watch Blackout murder Cindy? But the image on the small screen was not of Blackout at all. It was of a woman tightly tucked in a sitting position, knees up, head down, inside the kneehole of an old desk. This could have been one of the metal desks we’d seen in Blackout’s warehouse videos.
Was it really Cindy?
What I could see of the woman’s hair looked blond. She appeared to be wearing jeans and the baby-blue sweatshirt she’d worn when Blackout dragged her across the floor. Was she alive? I couldn’t tell. Blackout appeared, unmasked and his natural voice came up under the photo. This is what the YouTube audience had seen and heard.
He said, “Heads up to Warden Hauser and Sergeant Boxer. Here’s the deal. You spring Evan Burke and I’ll tell you where to find Cindy Thomas. I’ll call you, Sergeant.”
Blackout’s face was replaced with a close-up of Cindy at thePoisoned Pen signing. This was exactly as I remembered her; sitting behind a card table heavily stacked with books, pen in hand, smiling up at a reader. She looked radiant.
Joe said, “This has gone viral. It’s on TV news, too.”
I found my phone on the sink in the bathroom, battery dead. I took it to the living room, plugged it in, and found missed calls. Oh, my God, oh my God, they were all worried. Henry Tyler, Brady, Alvarez, Clapper, Claire, and three calls from Richie.
Julie was at the table banging her fork against the side of her plate.
“You have to feed me. It’s your job.”
I did my best to eat fast while tasting nothing.
Cindy, Cindy, Cindy.
I kept seeing her at that table, signing copies ofYou Never Knew Me,smiling up at her fans. I’d seen no danger. Not a bit. Blackout must have taken this photo from Cindy’s phone. Or had Blackout been inside the store, standing right next to me?
Twenty minutes later, Julie was in her daddy’s chair watching the Disney Channel and I had Joe to myself again.
We spoke across the table.
Joe said, “Steinmetz is putting me on this case as a nine-to-five liaison between the bureau and your team. Blackout is radioactive and he will not stop until he is caught.”
“Joe. Is she still alive?”
“I think so but who knows? He likes the attention. And he’s slick. We don’t know where he is, who he is, but we’ve got manpower to throw against him now that Steinmetz is on board.”
That night, after I tossed, flopped around, kicked off blankets to the point of waking Joe, I took my phone into the livingroom. In between returning calls, I read stories about Cindy in news feeds and newspapers across the country.All about Cindy Thomas. How had she been captured? Who was she to the fugitive Blackout? Police are turning over every stone.
Dawn lit up Lake Street. I felt half dead, but I couldn’t wait to get to work.
CHAPTER 77
BY TEN THAT morning, Brady and I—along with Team Blackout and two FBI special agents—were in our war room, that depressing corner office lined with dirty windows and morgue shots taped to whiteboards leaning against the southern wall.
The FBI liaisons were Joe and his former partner Mike Wallenger, both of whom had started their careers with the Behavioral Science Unit at Quantico. Mike was bearded, pushing fifty, and at six three as big as Joe. The last time I’d seen Mike, we were at the flash point of a major drug sting involving tunnels from Tijuana to San Diego, hundreds of kilos of fentanyl and a half dozen refrigerated trucks loaded with trafficked military weapons.
All told, six people had died.
But this was a different time and instead of drug mules and FBI sharpshooters, we were faced with one anonymous killer who was using me as his conduit to the cops, and Cindy as the bait.
As team leader, I began the meeting with a review of the Blackout tapes that had been combined into one horrible sequential reel. It started with Ralph Hammer getting his head blown apart, continued through the killing in Pasadena and inside the car outside Vegas. Then Blackout’s warehouse and apartment series and closing with his offer.
