CHAPTER ONE
Gloriana Island, Angola
After Midnight
Rafa Lopez focused his sharp eyes on his workers as a starving wolf attends his dinner. The lights in the control room were low. Rows of LEDs blinked. Lines traced readings across monitors. Books and coffee mugs held down papers, combatting the ever-present blast of air conditioning.
In the corner behind him, Vanna Sánchez leaned against the wall. Tall, austere, and platinum blonde with deep blue eyes and the long-limbed muscles of a distance runner, she was easily the most attractive woman in any room. A cell phone in her hands held her full attention. At her feet was a small backpack.
At regular intervals, a tinny and distant voice came from a small speaker in front of a large, thick window. The glass revealed six transparent glass-walled laboratories on the floor below.
In the middle of each laboratory was a circular stainless-steel drain. Around the clear walls, stainless-steel benches held complex looking glassware and machines protected with thick seamless plastic covers.
Each room had its own class III biosafety cabinet, a large structure with built-in rubber gloves for conducting experiments inside a hermetically sealed environment.
Only one of the six rooms was occupied. Two workers, both in full protective suits, breathed air through a hose that connected to a panel on the wall. The suits were constructed of material as transparent as the lab walls. The first worker was a bald, heavyset Texan. The second was female, half the Texan’s weight, with Asian features and thick black hair trimmed short.
The Texan stood at the biosafety cabinet. His hands were deep in the rubber gloves, pipetting liquids into a multi-well sample tray like a miniature ice cube tray.
The Asian woman divided her time, alternately operating a high-power digital microscope and a liquid chromatograph to monitor reactions.
Results were fed to the control room where a young man categorized them before they were displayed on two massive television monitors in front of Lopez.
The televisions displayed graphs and images side by side in squares. The graphs portrayed biochemical changes taking place in the visual image.
The Texan’s pipette appeared in the corner of one image. He had a steady hand. A single drop of clear liquid formed on the end of the fine glass tube and dripped onto a pinkish sample in the multi-well tray.
The pinkish sample was a sliver of muscle. It contracted to half its size in a single convulsion. Had it been the complete muscle, such a jolt would have been powerful enough to tear tendons from bone.
“This is hopeless,” said the Texan with the pipette. His electronic voice grated through the speakers. “The electrochemical transfer process will have to be thousands of times slower.”
Lopez keyed a microphone. “Lower the molarity. Move down a decade.”
“A decade won’t do it. We need a different solvent. A lower ionization constant at least,” the Texan said.
Lopez pressed the microphone switch again. “Move down a decade, please.” Cool and calm, as if the researcher’s advice had not been spoken. Lopez combed back his salt and pepper hair with his fingers while he waited.
Knowing he was being observed every moment of the experiment, the Texan at the biosafety cabinet suppressed a sigh and simply nodded. He stood the pipette in a holder and placed the multi-well tray on a rack in a metal box.
The box was for the destruction of biological samples. It met all the international standards for safety considering its contents.
When the experiments were completed, an automated system would lower the box from the biosafety cabinet into an oven. For thirty minutes, the box would be subjected to temperatures beyond anything a living organism could withstand. The box would then open, and the charred inert remains would be disposed of.
In order to maintain the biological integrity of the box while it was being lowered into the oven, there was a stainless-steel door. The door was opened and closed by an electric motor, which applied enough torque to compress a silicone gasket around the edges and ensure a hermetic seal.
The Asian woman pressed a switch down, and the door began to close. The tray wasn’t fully seated, and the door impacted the wells. There was a momentary grinding noise, the motor winding tension into the door’s gear mechanism. The Asian woman flipped the switch up, and the motor stopped.
The Texan pushed on the tray. It didn’t move. He pushed harder. The tray scraped a fraction further into the box. The door kept its pressure on the rear of the tray. He placed both hands on the tray and pushed. It moved with a jolt. He lurched forward, banging against the cabinet glass.
The door’s mechanism released. Even without power, the precision gearboxes acted as a coiled spring and spun in an instant. The door snapped down.
The fingers of the Texan’s right hand were inside the box. The door scythed down. Debilitating pain shot through his nerves. He screamed long and hard.
A raging fire grew from his hand up his right arm. The door had trapped the tips of his left glove. He yanked the glove free, ripping the ends of the fingers.
The Asian woman rammed the operating switch to the open position as hard as it would stand.
The door lifted.
The Texan stumbled back, screaming as he dragged his shattered fingers from the thick gloves. The Asian woman shoved a chair behind him, and he collapsed squeezing his right wrist to control the pain.
The safety cabinet’s gloves bobbed in the air, inverted and pointing outward from the Texan’s rapid and agonizing exit.
It took only a fraction of a second for the Asian woman to realize why the gloves had gained their jaunty bounce. “Breach, breach,” she screamed.
Sánchez looked up from her phone. Lopez started a timer and moved closer to the window. The Texan’s hand was bloody. The biosafety cabinet’s gloves had been ruptured.
The young man in the control room slammed his hand on a large red button. Yellow lights flashed, and a woman’s voice calmly announced an emergency had occurred.
In Lopez’s opinion, the announcement was pointless. There were only five people in the building, and they were all well aware of what had happened.
Sánchez picked up her backpack.
The Asian woman pulled the air hoses from the panel on the wall and levered the Texan to his feet.
“What concentration level were they using?” Lopez said.
The young man stared, his mouth open. “We’ve got to get them out—”
“What concentration level were they using?” Lopez repeated, precisely as before.
The young man turned to his monitor. “Um, er…ten ppm.”
The Texan stood still, coughing.
“Move!” the Asian woman said.
“I’m going to open the next lab,” the young man said.
“No,” Lopez said.
Sánchez held her backpack in front of her.
The young man shook his hands in the direction of the Texan and the Asian woman. “But they’re exposed. We have to get them into another chamber, or they won’t stand a chance.”
“Wait,” Lopez said.
“Wait?” The young man screwed up his face. “Are you crazy?” He crossed the room in two steps and flipped the red safety covers off two large switches. “I’m opening lab 3,” he said into a microphone.
Sánchez took a pistol from her backpack. In one smooth motion, she stretched her arm out straight, looked down the gun sight, and fired. The sound from the small gun was a harsh pop, not the deafening boom a larger caliber weapon would have produced.
The young man yelped as he snatched his hand away from the switches and clutched it to his chest. He gaped at Sánchez. “What—”
Sánchez lowered her gun and put a bullet in his knee. He collapsed, screaming.
She stepped beside him.
He used his good leg to slide back a couple of feet. His wounded knee left a bloody trail across the floor. Panting with pain, he sat up. “You can’t do this!”
Sánchez took a step forward. A lunge. The heel of her foot crashing down on the man’s ruined knee. He screamed and swore.
“Enough,” Lopez said quietly.
Sánchez thrust the gun in the young man’s face and fired three times. The blast shoved his dead body back. His legs caught under him in a mangled heap.
She chose a blood-free patch on his shoulder and leaned on it with her foot. His body twisted and his legs popped free. He lay flat on the floor in a growing pool of blood.
Sánchez stood beside Lopez, watching through the Plexiglas windows.
Lopez opened a metal door that covered a series of electrical breakers. He ran his finger down the list of circuits and found the one marked chamber doors. He had to push hard to move the heavy-duty switch to the off position.
A muted thump struck the window. The Asian woman stared up through the transparent lab walls, still secure in her airtight suit, pounding on the glass.
Lopez turned back to the breaker panel. He hefted the breakers for the HEPA filters and oxygen supply to off.
The Asian woman hammered on the glass, her eyes wild. Her mouth moved, but two layers of bulletproof glass and her own safety suit muted her screams.
The Texan fell to the floor, twitching, and retching.
The Asian woman ran to the oxygen panel and reconnected her hose. A moment later, she jerked her head around to stare up at Lopez.
Realization dawned.
Her choice was to suffocate or expose herself to the contaminated air.
The Texan’s twitching stopped. He remained still.
Lopez checked his stopwatch and wrote in a notebook, Forty-nine seconds from exposure.
The Asian woman mouthed obscenities. At two minutes she struggled for air and sank to her knees. At three minutes, she cracked open her helmet, eyes filled with burning hatred. She panted and gulped.
Exposed.
Lopez pressed the button on his stopwatch. He watched until the Asian woman’s body stopped moving. He recorded the time in his notebook. Fifty-three seconds from exposure.
He shook his head. The Texan’s prediction had been wrong after all. “Forty-nine and fifty-three seconds,” he said. “Reducing the concentration isn’t going to improve that.”
Sánchez kept quiet.
“I need a new strain.”
“The American one?” Sánchez asked.
He nodded and sent a message. It was the middle of the night in the US, but the reply arrived within seconds.
Everything was planned and ready. He nodded with satisfaction. “We will be back in business in a couple of days.”
“What about more scientists?”
“I have that covered as well.” He picked up his notebook. “Get a cleanup crew. The next shift will be here soon.”
Sánchez offered a warm smile that reached her eyes. “My pleasure.”
CHAPTER TWO
Four months later
Monday, August 15
6:30 p.m. MDT
Denver, Colorado.
Jess Kimball’s office was on the top floor of the Taboo Magazine tower block, situated in central Denver at Broadway and Colfax. The view from her floor to ceiling window swept from the State Capitol, across the Civic Center Park to the District Courts.
When she finally glanced up from the article she’d been writing, shadows had lengthened and faded into the dark as the sun set. Street lamps had come on. The Art Museum was a beacon of sharp corners and odd angles bathed in spotlights.
Bright squares set in the side of tower blocks marked the late-night office workers.
Like her.
People who lived alone and had no reason to go home to an empty apartment. Jess had lived alone a long time, but she’d never get used to her son’s absence. She’d find Peter one day. When she found him, then she’d go home earlier, with joy in her heart every day.
But for now, she stretched her arms over her head to work the kinks out of her neck. Which was when she noticed the small red light flashing on her desk phone. Voicemail.
Invariably, messages this late in the day were the most difficult.
Morning calls came from people who knew what they wanted. They’d spent the night agonizing over worst-case scenarios, real or imagined. In the cold light of dawn, they made the decision to reach out to the media. To call Jess Kimball.
But late messages often came from people who had suffered for many hours that particular day. Pressure weighted their uncertainty until they could wait no more. Not much could be done after business hours, no matter what the problem. They knew as much before they called. But they wanted to hand off the worry. Move the relentless pressure from their lives to hers.
Jess was a lifeboat for such people. She depended heavily on Taboo Magazine’s readers to support her constant search for her son. And for many of them, she was the lifeboat they clung to when life’s uncertain seas became overwhelming.
She leaned back in her chair, stared unseeing through her office window, and pressed the play button on the voicemail.
The recording’s time and date were announced by the machine, and then a woman spoke. Jess recognized the voice immediately.
“Jess, this is Marcia McAllister. I’m sorry to disturb you, but I didn’t know who else to call.”
Marcia McAllister’s daughter, Melinda, had been living in Paris when she disappeared a while ago. Jess had reported the case, but the crime was never solved, and her daughter was not found.
At least, not yet.
Jess never gave up on the families who came to her for help. Giving up on their cases would be too much like giving up on Peter, and she simply would not do that. Not ever. No matter how long it took her to find her son.
Marcia McAllister was no exception. Jess had worked hard for Marcia, and she’d keep working hard until Marcia’s daughter was found. She had no plan B. No alternatives. She simply would not quit.
Jess hoped that Marcia was calling with new information on the case. The situation was, like so many others, heartbreaking. But through it all, Marcia had been a rock. She’d suffered the torment of not knowing what happened to her child, a torment Jess understood all too well. Marcia McAllister handled everything with more grace than many others Jess had helped over the years.
Marcia had pushed and cajoled and encouraged US and French authorities to investigate her daughter’s disappearance, but never once had she publicly lost her equanimity. She was a woman to be reckoned with as well as the kind of determined female Jess always admired. She simply didn’t have it in her heart to fail.
She leaned forward and turned up the volume.
Marcia cleared her throat. “I…well, not me, but a friend of mine. Nicola Cole. She’s worried sick. It’s her son. Good kid. Not that he’s a kid anymore. Ph.D. and all that. But he’s got himself into some trouble. Well, it’s not right, of course. He wouldn’t do that. A good kid. Oh, did I say that?”
The message rambled in a way that Marcia never did in person. Which was enough for Jess to conclude she must be completely distraught.
“Anyway, I’m sure it wasn’t Alex. Really.” Marcia coughed before she continued. “He’s a scientist working at that insecticide place here in Chatham. The one in the news.” Her voice became shakier with each word until she reached the end of what she was determined to say. “And, well, they’re blaming him for that explosion.”
Jess knew what she was referring to. The Kelso Products bombing had been all over the news around the globe since it happened Thursday afternoon. She’d have had to be living on another planet to be unaware of events in Iowa.
She’d worked with Marcia closely every day after her daughter disappeared two years ago. The case was cold, but still open, and they’d stayed in touch. Simply put, Jess trusted Marcia implicitly. Alex Cole could very well be innocent if Marcia believed it so.
She also knew the law had its own momentum and wasn’t easily swayed from its path.
Jess’s experience had proved time and time again that justice for crime victims depended on action.
Jess felt more than a little guilty, too. She’d hit a wall in Marcia’s daughter’s case. She’d let Marcia down. Maybe she could help now and make up for it, at least a little bit. The very least she could do was try.
She pulled up two large monitors covered with articles and pictures of the explosion and subsequent fire at Kelso Products before she returned Marcia’s call.
Explosions like this one were too often caused by terrorism, and the big news outlets covered potential terrorist attacks like ants covered picnics. Which meant there was plenty of video reporting already available over the past five days.
CHAPTER THREE
She watched the Kelso Products security camera footage first. The time stamp in the corner of the images established 12:42 p.m., Thursday, August 11, as the moment so many lives were changed. The images horrified her.
Five days ago, a massive powder storage tank exploded. The kind of explosion that didn’t happen out of nowhere.
The deafening pressure wave fanned out, smashing windows for hundreds of yards.
The explosion’s force rippled through the pipework to another tank. From there, it ran swiftly into the half-mile long production facility.
Flames burst from windows.
Sections of roofs collapsed.
The second tank split along one side, spewing burning contents over a line of trucks parked too close to the side of the building.
Jess moved to the next series of videos covering the new information as it became available.
Three workers at the plant had died. Each face was displayed in photos from family members during happy times, which made the losses more poignant.
Thirty-seven employees were injured. Most were treated and released, thank God.
Seventeen remained in Chatham General hospital.
Three were in critical condition, not expected to survive. If they died, Marcia’s young friend could be charged with no less than six murders. He would be sentenced to death. No wonder his mother was distraught. How could any mother cope with that?
The explosion and its implications brought FBI power to work alongside the local Chatham Police Department and other state agencies.
Ethan Remington was the lead FBI Investigator. Jess watched his most recent press conference. He told reporters the bomb had been planted in the first storage tank. The valves between the tanks were opened, and the bomb was detonated remotely, he said.
The FBI hadn’t formally released details of the explosive material, but the media had figured it out themselves.
The bomb had been small, which ruled out a fertilizer bomb, and the explosion massive, which meant it had to be a powerful material. There was only one common explosive that fit. Triacetone triperoxide, or TAPT.
Jess knew that terrorists used TAPT in bombs across the United States and Europe, including Paris and Manchester. But the Kelso Products bombing probably wasn’t a terrorist incident. Terrorists were quick to claim responsibility and grab publicity for their twisted causes, and no group or individual had claimed responsibility for this one.
A reporter was explaining now that ingredients to make TAPT were easy to obtain. TAPT didn’t burn like most explosives, either. The molecule simply burst apart and expanded fast, from a dense solid to a gas occupying a couple of hundred times more volume. Which caused a massive explosion and propelled a pressure wave comparable to dynamite.
“The ingredients to make TAPT are readily available,” an expert said, “but preparing TAPT is extremely hazardous. TAPT is detonated by shock. Sometimes even the stress inside the crystals formed during the production process can detonate the compound. Only someone with experience can make enough TAPT for a bomb as destructive as what we’ve seen at Kelso Products.”
The last video news report Jess found announced that one man had been charged today with detonating the bomb. Alex Cole. The same Alex Cole that Marcia McAllister had pled with Jess to save.
But could Jess really help? The evidence against Cole sounded formidable.
Remington’s sound bite said the bomb’s triggering command had been traced to Cole.
Corroborating evidence located thus far included emails, internet search histories, even the computer records from a coffee shop Cole frequented.
Jess shook her head. The media scrutiny was intense. Until something more exciting came along to fill the twenty-four-hour news cycle, they weren’t likely to let up on the pressure, either.
In response to questions, Remington said Cole had the means and the opportunity to commit the crime, but he admitted they’d found no motive for the attack. A motive wasn’t necessary to convict Cole, but in Jess’s experience, a missing motive was certainly odd.
Most people had reasons for the things they did. Even if those reasons were more than a little crazy.
Marcia was convinced the police had arrested the wrong man.
Jess needed nothing more to check things out. She owed Marcia that much.
She picked up the phone and dialed her favorite G-man, FBI Special Agent Henry Morris.
They’d met and worked together on one of Jess’s investigative cases that evolved into kidnapping, extortion, and murder. A tough case that led to significant trust became an unbreakable fatal bond when Morris killed a man to keep her alive.
Over time, she’d learned that Morris was solid in every way that mattered. He was physically and mentally strong enough to be a good match for her, unrelenting in the pursuit of justice, and brave, too. Not too old, not too young, and good looking as well.
A while later, after she’d learned that he wasn’t married, she no longer had any reasonable excuse to reject his invitations. As he’d continually pointed out.
And he gave her all the space she needed to do her most important job—finding Peter.
She grinned. How’s a girl supposed to resist a hero like that?
Despite his work ethic, Morris had a knack for keeping life in perspective and a sense of humor that didn’t solely consist of sarcasm. Later, after Morris transferred from the FBI’s Dallas Field Office to Denver, Jess found herself in the first serious relationship of her life.
There had been another relationship she’d thought was serious at the time, with Peter’s father. She’d been wrong then, which made her wary now.
“Jess,” Morris said when he picked up. She heard the pleasure in his voice and felt her face warming uncomfortably.
“I’ve been looking at the Kelso Products accident.”
He laughed. “And it’s really nice to hear from you, too.”
She smiled again, although he couldn’t see her. “I’ve got a few questions.”
“Who doesn’t?”
“Something about this whole situation doesn’t pass the smell test, Henry.”
“What do you know that you’re not telling me?”
“Nothing yet. But so far, Alex Cole has no motive for blowing that place up.”
“No known motive,” Agent Morris corrected.
“Fair enough. But people who know Cole well say he’s not capable of violence like that.”
“People who know the accused always say that, and it means nothing.”
She nodded to herself. “Which is why I need to go to Kelso Products.”
She heard him sigh through the wireless connection, but he didn’t object. As always, he respected her decisions.
“I’m leaving tomorrow. First flight out of Denver. I called because I need some help.”
He paused. “I’m not involved with the investigation, but I’ll do what I can.”
Jess put the gratitude that sprang to mind into her voice. Dating an FBI agent had its advantages. “Can you get me thirty minutes with the lead agent?”
“That I can do. Ethan Remington. Omaha Field Office. Good guy.”
“Thanks, Henry.”
“I guess this means dinner tomorrow night is off?” he asked.
“I’ll make it up to you,” she replied. “Look on the bright side. It was your turn to pay.”
She disconnected while he was still laughing.
She found Taboo’s travel website on her computer and booked a ticket to Chatham, Iowa. She continued scouring the wire services for anything and everything she could learn on the Kelso Products bombing before she saw Marcia McAllister tomorrow.
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