The Bureau Killer, page 4
The problem was, they weren’t listening. No matter what he did, the SFPD and FBI did nothing to amend their ways. The little blasts he’d caused so far contributed nothing to his endgame, and that sad little realization meant only one thing.
He had to make them bigger.
NINETEEN
Mason slowly came to. The headache faded and his ears stopped ringing, but his entire body still burned like a raging fire. The two suited men beside him waited while he downed a bottle of water from their stash and tried his best not to throw it back up.
“Who the hell are you guys?” he asked, screwing the lid back onto the empty bottle. He tossed it to the nearest guy, who fumbled it, then picked it up off the crowded van’s floor.
The farthest man spoke up, a stern seriousness in his eyes. He was a big guy—not as big as Mason but close. He wore thin glasses that took the edge off his mean looks. “I’m Special Agent Hulls, and this is Agent Dunne. We’re with the FBI.”
Mason’s jaw could have hit the floor right then. He’d expected some involvement from the FBI, but if you’d told him that morning he’d be sitting in the back of their van talking about a national terrorist, he would’ve laughed in your face.
“We’ve been tracking Jacob Fray all day,” Agent Dunne said, dropping the bottle into a plastic bag that hung off the back of the van’s front seat. He straightened the tie around his thin, weedy neck. “We know you had communications with him, so we need to know what you know. Every little detail, if you please.”
Mason looked him dead in the eye. “I don’t know much.”
“Then tell us what you do know,” from Special Agent Hulls.
“It’s next to nothing. He came to me about a few threats he had. Said he couldn’t involve the police or it would lead him into an early grave. For all his silence did him…”
“He didn’t explain why he was in trouble in the first place?”
“No. I tried to get it out of him, but he was a shady little fella.” Mason’s attention swung from one of them to the other. His forehead creased up as a thought struck him. “Wait a minute. How did you guys even know about Fray? He didn’t go to you with those threats.”
“Jacob Fray was one of us,” Agent Dunne said.
Mason reeled back in shock. His ribs tightened under the sudden movement. Pain burned up his chest. “There’s no way that’s true. He…” Mason gave it some thought, and suddenly it all made sense: the flashy car, his natural mysteriousness. It was a wonder he hadn’t spotted it sooner. “But why didn’t he come to you guys? Surely he knew you could keep a secret. I mean, you’re the FBI. You’re the Kings of Secrets.”
“He did at first,” Dunne said, crossing his arms. “But he told us not to act on it. As soon as he stopped coming to us, we got suspicious that more was going on.”
“And you didn’t get to the bottom of why he was targeted in the first place?”
“We only knew that Fray was getting too close to him somehow. We were planning on learning more as time went on, but that chance was taken from us.”
Dunne hitched a thumb over his shoulder at the noise in the street. Mason watched the chaos unfold, the sirens flashing, the spectators filming the smoldering embers on their phones, the police failing in their attempts to keep the crowd back. It was hard to think he had nearly gone into that house. He was lucky, really, although the pain in his body told him otherwise.
“If there’s anything we should know,” Hulls said, “now’s the time.”
Mason considered keeping this to himself. After all, he knew how the Feds worked. They would consume every word he had to offer, then haul him out on his ass. It sounded like a raw deal, but when he thought about it, two heads were better than one.
“I hope you’re ready for this,” he said, reaching into his pocket. He took the phone out, found the video message, then handed it over. Both faces glowed in the darkness of the van, and there was just enough light to see the horror register in their expressions. Mason now realized what he must have looked like when he’d first viewed the video.
Confused and utterly terrified.
TWENTY
They handled him like luggage, moving him out of the van and onto the driveway of his own home. Mason stumbled as his feet hit the ground, regained his balance, then turned back toward the FBI agents with a disgruntled scowl. Dunne was already back in the passenger seat.
“We can have your car delivered to you,” Special Agent Hulls said. He reached out his hand but didn’t look his way. It seemed as though acting cool was his top priority. “Keys.”
Mason thought about cooperating, but as much as he wanted to just head inside and sleep, he didn’t want to give these assholes the satisfaction of his conformity. “I’ll do it myself,” he told them. “Don’t want you guys scratching the paint.”
Hulls and Dunne exchanged glances. Dunne had to lean far over his shoulder to see his partner from the passenger seat. As he did so, Mason noted the gun sitting in the agent’s hip holster. It was no big surprise, but Mason liked to keep an eye on these things.
“We’ll take it from here,” Hulls said, reaching for the van’s door handle and pulling the door across its slider. “Just keep your head down and go about your business. The last thing we need is an amateur interfering.”
Mason gave no reply. He needed rest—and possibly medical attention, which could wait to be the last resort if all else failed—and he didn’t have the energy to argue with all the ego in the van. Instead, he just stood in silence as the door closed and both agents headed up the road in their ridiculously cliché vehicle.
“We’ll take it from here,” Mason replayed in his mind as he strolled back toward his house. The front door felt like a million miles away, and suddenly he felt exhausted. It was getting late, and he needed a clear head for what he was about to do. For disobeying a direct order from the FBI.
There was no chance he would just let this go.
TWENTY-ONE
The night was rough, but not as rough as the day that had preceded it. Mason woke up from his broken sleep multiple times throughout the night, and when he’d finally given up on resting, he got dressed to the sound of the radio, where all stations reported last night’s blast. Frankly, it was a miracle the press wasn’t all over his front lawn by now.
Mason ate a quick bite and then slowly made his way across town using public transportation. He stood holding his side. The headache and ringing had ceased, but now his ribs felt like they’d been charged by a raging bull. He clung on to them as more people climbed onto the bus and paid their fares. Mason wondered if any of them would be next in the Educator’s line of explosive victims. Who knew what that psycho’s plan was?
It was a little after eight in the morning before Mason found his car on the street of Jacob Fray’s house. The building had been reduced to rubble. Police tape cordoned off the area, and there was nobody but passing schoolkids to gawk at the destruction site in awe.
Still unable to believe how quickly things had escalated, Mason wiped some house debris from his hood and windshield, climbed in, then got an idea about where to go first. It was a family’s touch he needed, and if Diane was unable to give that, perhaps she would at least let him do the morning’s school run. Besides, it was the least he owed her.
When he finally got to Diane’s place, Diane agreed to let him take the chore. She glanced at where he held his ribs, opened her mouth as if to speak, then went quiet. Ask me no questions, I’ll tell you no lies, Mason thought.
They got MJ into the car, and Mason drove carefully to the school. Mason spent most of the time in glum thought, wondering just how he was going to get through this case. And he did intend to find this Educator whack job, no matter what the FBI told him.
“Dad, are you ever going to live with Mommy again?” MJ asked.
Taken aback by the question, Mason sighed. “I don’t know, little man. Maybe, maybe not. But no matter what happens, I’ll always be in your life.”
“Good.” MJ giggled.
Mason smiled at the sound of such youthful innocence. For that fraction of a second, life didn’t seem so bad. At least he had MJ to hang on to, and the hope that someday he could patch things up with Diane again. But that moment ended almost immediately.
“I don’t want that other man to be my new dad,” MJ said.
Mason’s heart thundered in his chest. His palms became slick with sweat as he turned the steering wheel, keeping one eye on the road and the other on MJ in the rearview mirror. “What man, MJ? What are you talking about?”
“The man who… the man who comes to the house all the time.”
“Mommy has a new friend?”
MJ nodded and went back to sucking his thumb as he looked out the window. He was the picture of naïve happiness, unlike Mason, whose entire body trembled with rage as heat came over him. It was stifling, suffocating. Diane was his wife, and it was impossible to see it any other way.
But who was this new “friend” of hers, and why did Mason feel so threatened?
He intended to find out.
TWENTY-TWO
The Educator stood among the crowd in a baseball cap, horn-rimmed glasses, and a stick-on beard. The people around him were rude, pushy, and loud. Most had cameras, and all had questions, though they were directed at the FBI and police chief standing at the front. The Educator took this time to marvel over how easily he had managed to stand in plain sight.
I could blow them all to pieces right now.
That much was true. There was an explosive device strapped to his chest, in case of an incident where he might be recognized. He had no intention of using it, but if push came to shove, then he wouldn’t hesitate for a second.
Up front, the FBI agent was telling some new lies. The Educator listened with growing hatred, balling his hands into tight, giant anvils.
“We have many leads on the terrorist who calls himself ‘The Educator,’” a tall, serious agent said over the top of his wired sunglasses. “Many of our agents are now working on bringing him to justice, and I want to assure you all that the safety of San Francisco’s citizens is our top priority.”
Some people in the crowd clapped, while others pushed forward with more questions for their precious lawmen. It was the chief of police who shushed them and—somehow—managed to settle them all quite easily.
“None of you have anything to worry about. The Educator’s reign of terror is almost at its end. You can expect to hear his true identity and see him behind bars in the very near future.”
Some roared applause again, kissing the asses of these ridiculous men. The Educator, however, knew every word of it was a lie. There wasn’t a cat in hell’s chance that they were even close to stopping him. It was all just political bullshit designed to keep the peace, and the Educator saw that as nothing but a challenge—a sly, underhanded way of daring him to come out of the woodwork and turn himself in.
Well, that’s not likely, he thought as a wide grin surfaced on his face. Because there was so much more to do in this pitiful city they all so cherished. And all it would take to put them all down for good was the click of this one little button.
It would be so easy…
TWENTY-THREE
In all the chaos of the previous day’s events, Mason realized he had left his Beretta under his pillow. If he was going to somehow find the Educator—which he was adamant about doing, no matter how unlikely it seemed—there wasn’t a doubt he needed backup of the nine-millimeter persuasion.
The house felt calm and still when he got home. Empty and lonely felt more suitable a description, however. Mason exhaled deeply and headed down the main hallway, and until that moment, everything was crystal clear.
That was when he heard the thud.
Mason froze in the middle of the hallway. A hand came up to reach for his gun, and then he reminded himself exactly why he’d come home in the first place. The thumping sound had definitely come from his own bedroom, and stark fear shot through him as he made a snap decision on what to do—whether to burst in and fight or turn and run.
A thousand theories flickered through his exhausted mind. Had the Educator come to finish the job? Was he lingering in the next room, ready to shoot Mason with his own gun? Maybe there was a bomb that had already detonated, and he was stuck in a moment that dragged on for an eternity—the final moments before his untimely death.
Mason had no intention of fleeing. He had stood his ground against too many tyrants to turn and run now. He crept across the hallway with his fists clenched, one slightly raised and ready to swing a mean right hook. He reached for the doorknob, and the thud came again. He stopped and checked the thin, metallic divider under the door, where a reflection of something inside moved. Where it waited to strike.
This is it, Mason thought. End of the line.
Refusing to allow his rambling thoughts to seize control, he twisted the doorknob and shoved open the door. He saw the figure standing right in front of him, startled. Mason wasted no time. He rushed forward and clamped his hand around the intruder’s neck. The intruder lost her balance and fell onto the bed. Mason was on top of her, anger roiling through him. Fist raised like the reared head of a viper ready to strike.
And then the rush stopped. The adrenaline died and was replaced with bafflement and shock. The woman pinned under his weight gasped as he released his viselike grip, coughing as she rolled out from under him and caught her breath.
“It’s nice to see you, too,” she said. A smile widened her lips.
Mason caught his breath but still couldn’t believe his eyes.
TWENTY-FOUR
“What the hell are you doing here?” he asked, still winding down from the excitement.
Evie Black—loyal but absent sister—stood across the room from him, rubbing her neck as she leaned against the windowsill. Her mousy-brown hair was a mess, frayed by the rough tumble she had just taken. She propped her glasses farther up her nose. “I saw you on the news. Figured you might need someone in your corner.”
Mason’s head was a mix of emotions. He was sincerely pleased to see her after so many years, but did it have to be like this? “Yeah, I… how did you even get in here? How did you know where I’m living now?”
Evie smiled again, showing off perfect white teeth she had adopted from their father. She was otherwise a spitting image of their mom, God rest her soul. “I bumped into Diane a few days ago. She pointed me in the right direction.”
“And gave you a key, I take it?”
“No… you know I can pick locks, right?”
Mason knew. He had always known. Evie had always been a little shady, learning every trick in the book to get her one step ahead of the game as a modern-day journalist. After leaving him to pursue a career in New York some years ago, Mason had only had the pleasure of his sister’s company a handful of times. Unfortunately, none of those incidents had been since Amy’s death. Mason kept the lid on that pot, however.
“Well, welcome to my humble abode. Mi casa, su casa, I guess.” Mason went to the far end of the bed and took his gun and holster out from under the pillow. He shrugged off his trench coat with pain roaring through his ribs again as he equipped his weapon.
“Why are you doing this to yourself?” Evie asked.
“Spare me the lecture.”
“I’m not lecturing you, Mase. Just—”
Mason shot her a cold, hard stare. She knew how much he hated to have his name shortened, but the look of apology she gave made him think she might have just forgotten.
“What I meant to say,” she continued, “is that you should go to the hospital.”
“I’m fine.”
“But are you? Are you really?”
Mason shrugged his coat back on and stood in the hot, muggy bedroom. He squinted across at his sister, wondering just how much she knew about the current state of his life. How much she had researched on his current case, not putting it past her to have somehow hacked his phone. It wouldn’t have been the first time, nor the last.
In the absence of his words, Evie finally piped up. “Look, why don’t you just fill me in on everything you have so far, and then I have a big surprise for you. Think you can put your ego aside for a second and share a little info?”
Mason shifted his weight to the other foot, thinking. “You’re not printing this.”
“Didn’t plan to. I just want to help. Besides, print is dead.”
“And we will be, too, if we’re not careful. Now what’s this surprise?”
Evie shook her head, grinning. “Nuh-uh. First you tell me everything you know about the Educator, and then you can have it. What, you didn’t think it’d be that easy, did you?”
“No, I’m not that naïve.” Mason pulled the chair out from under the dressing table and sat on it backward, spreading his legs wide and using the backrest to support his aching chest. “You’d better take a seat. This is a long story.”
Evie sat and listened.
TWENTY-FIVE
It had been the longest half hour of his life. By the time they were done, Mason’s chest felt ready to explode, and Evie’s thirty minutes of pacing up and down the bedroom did nothing to help soothe his anxiety. On the bright side, she stayed quiet the whole time, absorbing every little detail he had to offer. It was a lot to unravel, but little of it was useful.
“And you’re okay with this?” Evie asked. “Even if the Feds are working around the clock to catch this Educator guy, you still want to get wrapped up in it?”
