Black Friday. Alex Kava

as a freshman. His father had gone to law school, so Nick went to law school, only he had no interest in practicing law or filling the vacancy his father had left for him in the law firm his father had started.

      Nick had even run for and had been elected county sheriff, the position the elder Morrelli retired from as a living legend. But Nick had embarrassed his father, again, by tracking down a killer his father had allowed to go undetected under his own watch. It should have made up for all the rest. Nick had succeeded after all. But that wasn’t the way Antonio Morrelli looked at it. Instead he saw it as his son embarrassing him, showing him up and making him look bad publicly.

      Nick’s move to Boston had probably been the first thing he had ever done on his own and for himself without the influence of the elder Morrelli. His father had never been a district attorney. Had never argued high-profile cases involving anything close to what Nick found himself a part of, from drug trafficking to double homicides. These were the types of cases Nick tackled on a regular basis as a Deputy County Prosecutor for Suffolk County. And yet it wasn’t enough. Apparently it wasn’t, because here he was, returning home still searching for something. Hopefully his father’s approval didn’t remain on that search list.

      It must have been what his mother was thinking. She made it sound like Nick was moving back to be close to his father whose deteriorating condition would most likely make this his last Christmas. And his sister, Christine, seemed to think Nick had moved back to play role model to her fatherless teenaged son. That was partly true. He cared about Timmy and wanted to be in the boy’s life. But the truth was, at least when Nick admitted it to himself, his reasons were not quite so lofty or noble. In fact, they were fairly selfish.

      Yes, he wanted to be close to his family during this last holiday together but he also wanted to be away from the sudden loneliness in his life. There was an emptiness that permeated his Boston apartment and even leaked over into his job. It definitely felt as though he had lost something, but it wasn’t his ex-fiancée Jill Campbell. Surprisingly, her absence from his life had little to do with the loneliness he was experiencing. What was worse, leaving Boston didn’t help either. The emptiness followed him. This hollowed-out feeling was something that he was carrying around with him. Maybe that wasn’t the right way to describe it but it was definitely what it felt like.

      His new job at a high-level security corporation kept him distracted. He liked the new challenge. And the position actually paid very well…or at least it would. Eventually. He had only started a month ago.

      “I know you’re a little miserable,” Christine said, interrupting his thoughts.

      “I’m not miserable.”

      “It’s okay to admit it.”

      “I’m not miserable.”

      She was giving him that look, that “you’re so full of crap” look.

       Okay, so maybe he was a little miserable. Miserable went well with hollowed out.

      “It’s understandable.” Christine seemed to think they should discuss his life in the middle of Lanoha’s Nursery. “You recently broke off your engagement. What’s it been? Five months?”

      “I’m not miserable because of Jill,” Nick insisted through clenched teeth, hoping his sister would get the idea to lay off and at the same time realizing he had probably verified her accusation. If she knew him as well as she thought she did, she’d know it had nothing to do with Jill.

      “If it’s not Jill,” Christine said, pretending to keep it casual by fingering the price tags on some holiday wreaths, “then it must be Maggie.”

      It was like she stuck a dagger in his side and Nick had to keep from wincing. He had spent the last month convincing himself that Maggie O’Dell had moved on and had no interest in being a part of his life. He had given it his best shot. Anything more and he’d become some psycho stalker. It was over. Time to move on. He told himself this over and over. His head heard him loud and clear. It was his heart that ignored him.

      “I know,” Christine said, taking his silence as confirmation. “It’s complicated.”

      But it wasn’t all that complicated. Nick had met Maggie four years ago, working a case when he was sheriff of Platte City, Nebraska. She dropped into his life as an FBI profiler, smart and witty, tough but beautiful. Nick had known a lot of women—he’d been with a lot of women—but he’d never met anyone quite like Maggie O’Dell. There had been instant chemistry. At least that’s how Nick remembered it. But she was married then.

      They’d stayed in touch and after her divorce he gave her plenty of opportunity to be charmed by him, even advertised that he was open to a relationship. A real relationship, something Nick Morrelli rarely considered. But Maggie turned him down for whatever reason. Perhaps she just wasn’t ready. That’s what he wanted to believe. Being rejected was a new concept for him.

      But last summer they crossed paths again. Another case with ties to the one four years ago and for Nick it brought back all those memories and some feelings he didn’t realize he still harbored. Feelings that slammed him hard. Hard enough that he canceled his wedding engagement.

      Then he did the only thing he knew how to do. He pursued Maggie with cards, e-mails, flowers, requests to spend time together despite her living in the D.C. area and him in Boston. Nick thought he was being the proper suitor. That is until he discovered there was someone else in her life. He had let her slip away, blown his chances. This time it was too late.

      He’d let her slip away to a guy named Benjamin Platt. Nick had looked up the license plate on a Land Rover he saw parked outside of Maggie’s house. Platt was an army colonel, a medical doctor, a scientist, a soldier. He wasn’t sure that even a tall, dark and charming quarterback-turned-lawyer stood a chance to compete with that.

      “Can we concentrate on Christmas?” he asked after too much silence. He could already see Christine knew she was right. He took no pleasure in the fact that to his big sister he seemed to be an open book.

      Before Christine could respond two store clerks interrupted them, coming into the center of the store.

      “There’s been an explosion at Mall of America,” one of them announced. “There may be dozens of people dead.”

      Customers throughout the store came up the aisles to hear the news.

      “That’s one of ours,” Nick told Christine. He barely got his cell phone out of his jacket pocket when it began to ring.

      Chapter

      10

       Mall of America

      Asante wasted little time fighting through the wave of hysteria. It was ridiculous. This was why he never stuck around afterwards to watch. There were some he had worked with in the past who enjoyed this chaos—the smell of fear, the clawing and clamoring to survive, the screams and cries of human nature at its most vulnerable. Or, as Asante considered it, human nature at its most pathetic. And from simply a glance, he knew that to be true.

      Years ago he learned never to be fooled. Those who bragged that a crisis brought out the best in people would soon have you forget that the exact same crisis would also bring out the very worst in people. Asante stood at the top of the escalator looking down as the wildfire of panic raced through each floor of the mall and he resisted the urge to smile. People shoved each other, stepping over the injured, dropping and leaving behind their precious belongings. If they thought this was bad, wait until they saw what was to come. This was but a distraction.

      He followed the GPS signal as he shoved through, keeping close to the walls where he knew any cameras still functioning could not pick up his image as easily. He walked quickly when he wanted to run. Time was slipping by. It had taken him longer than he expected to fight his way through the crowds amassing at the exits. The signal seemed to be taking him right back to where the carriers began—in the food court.

      Asante stopped suddenly. He dropped down to the floor, kneeled and doubled over his duffel bag, pretending