Falling(32)

“The fuck is your aunt up to?” Liu said.

“Well, I’d ask her, but I’m off the case.”

Liu’s eyes narrowed to slits. “You’re going to play it like that, huh?”

Theo stared at her without blinking. Leveraging access to his aunt so he could stay in the game was a risky career quid pro quo. But Theo knew he was probably toast at the bureau anyway and at that moment he couldn’t have cared less. The only thing that mattered was helping Aunt Jo.

The two stared each other down. Slowly, Liu leaned over until her face was an inch from his. “If you step one foot out of line, if you disobey a single order,” she said, her voice a whisper, “your badge is mine at the end of this. I promise you, Theo. You will never work in law enforcement again.” Tilting her head slowly, she said, “Is that understood?”

He tipped his head. “Yes, ma’am.”

The director rubbed her eyes and began to pace. Several agents arrived and Theo held up a finger to keep them from coming closer. Liu ignored them anyway, turning toward the burning house with an exhale, resting her interlaced fingers across the top of her head.

“We need to find out if the captain knows his family is dead,” Liu said, finally. “That changes everything.”

Turning quickly, she addressed the agents directly.

“Is the media here?”

“Yes, ma’am,” one of the agents said. “Nobody’s spoken to them yet.”

“Good. Official line is this: investigation’s ongoing, but the explosion is due to a gas leak.” The agents nodded. “Has Coastal Airways released a statement on the mask photo? Have they acknowledged any issue with the flight?”

“No.”

The FBI had informed the airline, the FAA, and Air Traffic Control of the situation—but requested they wait to close the airspace, ground planes, and shut down airports. A panicked public response to this kind of threat would be colossal, and if the FBI secured the Hoffman family, it could all be avoided. All the agencies—including officials on the ground in Washington—were ready to enact evacuation and defense protocols at a moment’s notice, but they agreed the most prudent option was to give the LA FBI time to find the family.

“And yet,” Liu said, “we didn’t secure the family. So now we have a dead family and a pilot under duress whose mental state we can only guess at. Plus a dead civilian who had nothing to do with this. Have we ID’d him and contacted his family?”

An agent strode off, saying he’d get on it. Liu sighed, and ran a hand down her face.

“Theo, get in touch with your aunt. I want to know what’s happening up there. I need to know if the pilot knows about his family. And I need to know what his intentions are at this point.”

Theo nodded, taking out his phone.

“I want Bravo, Charlie, and comms out of here,” she continued. “Our presence looks fishy and I want to avoid questions if we can. Assemble somewhere not far, we may need to move. But I want us out of camera shot.”

She paused, looking at the house.

“Now that the family’s dead, we don’t know what we’re looking at. It’s probably more of a case for the FAA, Homeland Security, ATC, and East Coast FBI. But we have a lot of pieces to pick up and we don’t know anything for sure.”

Liu took out her phone and Theo watched her out of the corner of his eye. There was a hesitation to the way she punched the buttons. He knew she was about to make the call back east. The call to let them know she had failed. The family was dead and the threat was not pacified. He knew that, after the call, massive evacuations would begin at the most important and symbolic institutions in the country. Those in power would be sheltered and innocent civilians would be forced to flee. Pandemonium and terror would run rampant in the nation’s capital, and she was the one who had to make the call.

Theo now understood why she seemed so angry in her office. However this situation went down, it went down on her.

The fire captain approached the group and Liu stopped punching buttons. She pocketed her phone and her shoulders seemed to relax a little.

The fireman took off his hat, wiping his brow with the back of his arm. Sweat dripped off his face onto his fire suit.

“The fire should be out within the hour.”

Liu thanked him. “When will it be safe for us to go in for recovery?”

He cocked his head. “Recovery?”

“The bodies. When can we recover the bodies for identification.”

His eyes narrowed, confused. “The man on the front porch was the only victim. There were no other human remains, ma’am. The house was empty.”





CHAPTER THIRTEEN


THE EASTERN HORIZON GLOWED A deep shade of sapphire, the rich blue fading as the sun dragged itself deeper beneath the world behind the plane. The view from the cockpit was like looking over the calm surface of a lake; the stars, a reflection of the city lights below.

Feeling detached from everything else in the world, Bill listened to the sound of dead air in his headphones. Nothing.

Ben peered around the cockpit with a puzzled look. “What’s that clicking?”

Bill stopped to listen. The men stared at each other in the silence.

“Oh, sorry,” Bill said, holding up his pen. He clicked it a few times. “Nervous tic. Drives my wife nuts.”