part0039

L iliana Sanchez’s head pounded as she carefully picked her way through the devastation inside one of the world’s most famous museums. She probably had a concussion, and was definitely in need of medical attention, but there was a job to do.

It was stupid, but judging from the moans and groans surrounding her, there were people in much more need than her. She sidestepped what she assumed was an arm, though might have been a leg. She hated that she couldn’t tell. It was carnage everywhere, unlike anything she had witnessed in her entire career. From the look of things, it had been some sort of shrapnel bomb designed to inflict maximum damage to flesh, not infrastructure.

Something moved to her left and she turned to see the scorched corpse of a man lying in a pile of bodies. Somebody was moving underneath him. “Give me a hand over here!” She stepped over the remains of a woman and took a knee beside the entangled bodies. With the help of one of her fellow officers, they gently rolled the man off of whoever was underneath. He groaned, causing them both to jump back. “Medic!”

Sanchez turned her attention to the relatively unscathed teenage girl that had been trapped underneath. A woman, her arm and leg draped over the girl, shrapnel mottling her side, moaned as they helped the girl to her feet.

“Yeah, I think so.”

“What’s your name?”

“Petra. Petra Marchand.” She suddenly noticed the two who had been draped over her. “Mom! Dad!”

Sanchez held her back as the paramedics tended to her parents.

“Are they going to be okay?”

“If they survived this, they could probably survive anything.”

The young girl watched as her parents were loaded onto stretchers and rushed from the scene. “Wait, did you find my brother?”

“I’m not sure, but I’ll check for you. What’s his name?”

“Jean Luc Marchand.”

Sanchez paused. “Wait, did you say your name is Petra Marchand?”

“Were you the one who was live streaming this?”

Sanchez smiled. “Good girl. Now, go with your parents. We’ll look for your brother. If you’re up to it, I want to ask you some questions later.”

She shrugged. “Yeah, sure.”

“Chief Inspector, you have to see this!”

She turned to have a tablet shoved in her face, a video playing that appeared to be security footage showing a man and a woman leaving a building then climbing into a waiting vehicle. “What am I looking at?”

“We think it’s footage from one of the rear fire doors.”

“Do we know who they are?”

Petra leaned in. “They’re friends of my father’s.”

Sanchez looked at her. “Do you know their names?”

“Yeah, they’re both professors. I think they’re from America. I can’t remember. Acton, I think? I can’t remember her name.”

“Get me the guest list.”

The tablet was tapped a few times and handed back. She scrolled down and found the name. “Professor James Acton.”

Petra’s eyes widened. “Yeah! I think that’s it. I think my dad called him Jim.”

“And Professor Laura Palmer?”

“Yes, that’s it, that’s her.”

“And you’re telling me that those two people are friends of your father?”

“Yes, though I don’t know how well he knows them. Actually, I think he met her for the first time tonight. I think he knows him from years ago.”

“But they’re friends?”

Sanchez eyed her with a slight smile. “My kind of friends, or your kind of friends?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, my kind of friends I’ve actually met and see them regularly. Your kind of friends are quite often ones you’ve never met, and you only know them from the Internet.”

“Umm, I think it might be a little bit of both. I think he hasn’t seen him in years.”

“Okay, so your father invites these two, and they leave only minutes before the bomb explodes. And what’s that they’re carrying?”

Petra leaned in and shrugged. “I think it’s the Bible that they were here for. My father showed it to me when we first arrived.”

“Okay, you go get yourself checked out, then I’m going to have questions for you, okay?”

A man nearby groaned. Petra flinched. “Oh, he’s alive. Great.”

Sanchez immediately picked up on the disdain. “Is that a bad thing?”

“He’s the leader.”

“He’s the leader. He’s the one who did all this.”

Sanchez motioned to some paramedics and pointed at the suspect. “Check him out. And make sure he doesn’t die. I want to find out what the hell is going on here.” She shook the tablet. “And issue a warrant for Professors James Acton and Laura Palmer. There’s no way they’re not involved. And freeze all their accounts. I don’t want them to have access to any money that might help them get away.”