Black Friday. Alex Kava

aren’t any more bombs in the mall. Some of these sickos get their kicks from waiting for and taking out the first responders.”

      Maggie remembered all too well. That was exactly the case two months ago when she and Assistant Director Cunningham responded to what they believed was a bomb threat. A quiet suburban neighborhood. An ordinary house. Only the woman and her daughter who lived there had not been the real targets. She didn’t want to think about it. Didn’t need to relive it again for the hundredth time.

      She glanced at A.D. Kunze fingering his too-tight collar and loosening his tie as he shoved into his mouth the last bite of a bagel loaded with cream cheese. Between chews and as he wiped at the corner of his lip he asked, “So how many dead?”

      At that very moment, Maggie realized how much she missed Cunningham, his brisk but polite manner, that crinkle of concern indented in his brow, his quiet authority that seemed to enter the room with him. She even missed his nagging. Kyle Cunningham had been Maggie’s mentor for over ten years. She’d learned so much from him, taking her cues not only on how to work a case but how to relate to colleagues, when to remain quiet, what to look for, even how to dress. In some ways Cunningham had replaced her father. And losing him felt like losing her father all over again. She didn’t need her degree in psychology to understand that was why she was having nightmares again. Nightmares of going through her father’s funeral over and over, still from the eyes of a twelve-year-old.

      “It’s too early.” Wurth brought her back to the inside of their jet and not alongside her father’s coffin. He was sidestepping Kunze’s question. “You know how these things are in the preliminary stages. We can’t rely on mall security to give us an accurate read of what’s happening.”

      “Why not?” Maggie asked and surprised Wurth with her challenge. “You believed their report about three bombs, three men with three red identical backpacks.”

      Kunze stopped eating and actually sat forward, interested in Wurth’s answer.

      The deputy director looked from Maggie to Kunze then to Senator Foster who continued to sip his martini but raised an eyebrow to show that he, too, was waiting for the response.

      “Right now they think the explosions were confined to the third floor. But the day after Thanksgiving the place was packed. Estimates are anywhere from 150,000 to 200,000 people inside. Depending on the detonation power inside each backpack…” Wurth shrugged—his best guess was as good as theirs. “We don’t have a body count, if that’s what all of you are looking for. But I will tell you that early reports indicate it’s bad, very bad.”

      Chapter

      18

       Mall of America

      Asante had missed his opportunity. He hated loose ends.

      He watched the young woman escape his reach and wedge herself even further inside a mob that pressed tight against each other as they swarmed to get out the mall exit closest to them. Asante didn’t recognize the young man who waved at her. It wasn’t Dixon Lee.

      Here on the first floor, cops in uniform with rifles yelled at people to get their hands up. The cops wore Kevlar vests and blue jeans, their badges in plain view, strapped to their arms or thighs. They tried to cut a path through a swarm of shoppers at the side entrance for firefighters and paramedics to enter.

       Real paramedics.

      Asante resisted the urge to pluck off his own cap and stuffit into the duffel bag. Instead he left it on, parroting the cops, telling people to get out of his way. Only Asante headed the opposite direction. He hurried for the back service exit for a second time in the last hour, walking quickly, not rushing, shouldering past one throng of people and cutting through another. The service exit wasn’t marked so no one crowded toward it. He slipped out the heavy door. The alarm that he had dismantled earlier remained silent though it wouldn’t have mattered now with the chorus of alarms and whistles and screams.