8:48 a.m.
FBI Building
Fourth Floor Underground
Hardy rounded the corner and looked through the window of Charity’s office. She was fixated on her laptop. He wondered when she had come into the office this morning. “Good morning,” he said, walking into the OR, taking his usual seat at the conference table. He had stopped to get a cup of coffee and a bagel. Setting his cup on the table, he took a big bite of the plain blueberry bagel—just the way he liked it. Charity walked past him.
She placed her laptop on the table and sat across from him. “I got to thinking last night about our hit man from the bar. Maybe we’ve been too narrow-minded in our search parameters.” She glanced away from her laptop and raised a forefinger. “What if—” Hardy was staring at her; his mouth was full of food, but he was not chewing. She cocked her head. “What?”
He swallowed. “Did you get any sleep last night?” He did a double take at her clothes. She was wearing the same outfit she had on the day before and her hair was flat to her head, locks of hair protruded from different areas. “For that matter, did you even leave here?”
Self-conscious about her appearance, Charity combed her hair with her fingers and straightened her clothes as best she could. “I fell asleep in my office, but woke up a few hours later. My mind was bothered by something.” Lost in her thoughts again, she forgot about her personal grooming. “What if we missed the person who took Sayed’s phone, because we were looking for a man?”
Hardy leaned forward and pushed the coffee across the table, until the paper cup peeked at Charity from around her laptop. “What do you mean?”
Charity saw the cup. She gaped at it as if she had never seen one before. She peered over the laptop.
“You need that more than I do.” Hardy shoved the last of the bagel into his mouth.
Charity stopped what she was doing and grabbed the cup with both hands. Lifting it to her nose, she closed her eyes and smelled the aroma before tilting the cup toward her waiting and eager lips. Taking a slow sip, followed by a second and third sip, she lost her train of thought. This is good. She dragged out the last word. The taste lingered on her tongue. Glancing at Hardy, she mulled over the kind gesture. He gave up his coffee for me. Last night, he argued with Jameson and left without even acknowledging me. Today…he does this. Not knowing what to make of his behavior, she put the past behind her and started fresh. “Thank you.” Her voice was barely audible.
Hardy nodded his head and swallowed. “If I’d known you were planning a sleepover, I’d have gotten you some breakfast, too.” He pointed his chin at her. “You were saying.”
Charity took one last drink and nodded her head emphatically, placing the cup on the table as if it was a precious commodity. “Where was I?”
“You said something about looking for a man, instead of—”
“Oh, yes, that’s right. All this time, we’ve—I’ve—been searching the video footage for a man. What if it was a woman who killed Sayed and took his phone?”
Hardy leaned back in his chair, interlocked his fingers behind his head, and stared at the wall. Her theory was something he had not considered.
“I mean it’s not that far of a stretch to think that a woman could have pulled this off. She could have charmed her way close to Sayed and taken him by surprise.” Charity’s fingers glided across the laptop keys. “So, to that end, I went back over the video footage from last night and found instances where four different female figures were near that trash receptacle right before Sayed’s phone stopped moving.” With a forceful stroke on the laptop’s touchpad, she added, “Take a look at this.”
Hardy moved around behind her. The laptop’s screen was divided into four smaller screens, each one showing a different image.
Charity pointed. “These two here, I was able to input their images into facial recognition software; they’re nobody’s—ordinary people with normal jobs, just out on the town, having fun,” she flung a hand into the air, “whatever.” She touched the third split-screen. “This one here, I haven’t been able—”
“That one,” Hardy pointed at the fourth quadrant, showing a woman with long bleach blonde hair, “What about her? Were you able to get anything on the blonde?”
Charity followed his finger. “Ah, you mean our mystery woman.” She tapped the touchpad a couple of times and images appeared. “I found several individual stills from different cameras in the area.”
Hardy rose to his full height. “Tell me you got—”
“And, not one of those stills showed a clear picture of her face. It was almost as if—”
“She knew exactly where the cameras were and intentionally turned away at the right time.”
“Exactly,” said Charity, pivoting back to the computer.
Hardy leaned forward and scanned the images. “The second one from the left,” he pointed, “can you make it bigger?”
Charity enlarged the image, but it became blurry. “That’s the best I can do, while maintaining some kind of clarity.”
“That’s good enough.” Hardy studied the image, while slowly nodding his head.
Charity rolled her eyes toward him. “Do you know her?”
“Yes and no,” he replied. Hardy stared. Even though the photo was grainy, he could clearly see the woman was wearing a short black mini skirt under a black overcoat. He also caught a glimpse of red under the coat and above her skirt. The long bleach blonde hair was the final clue. He walked to his chair and stood behind it. Resting his crossed forearms on the chair’s back, he pointed at Charity. “You know her, too. She’s the woman I bumped into at Goodmans.”
“I do?” Charity frowned, thinking of how she would know the woman. She raised her eyebrows. “You mean that sexy, sultry voice I heard over the radio belonged to her?”
Hardy nodded.
“Do you think she had something to do with Sayed’s death?”
Hardy thought for a moment, re-living the moment in the bar. He shook his head. “I’m not sure, but my gut tells me, yes. She looked like someone out on the town trying to pick up men, but there was something different about her. Beneath her beauty, charm and feminine wiles, she had a…a cold and determined demeanor. I’ve seen that same look in the eyes of many hardened men…killers.” He paused. “Now, that I think about it, I saw that in her eyes, as I held her in my arms.”
Charity’s eyes widened and she tilted her head slightly. “You held her in your arms?”
Realizing the implications of his words, he waved a hand at her. “It’s not what you think.”
Charity was about to say something cute, but she heard the elevator door open and turned back to the laptop. “I’ll run her voice from that conversation through my computer and see if I can get any hits on her speech pattern. I wouldn’t hold my breath, but it may turn up something.”
Director Jameson heard the last part of their conversation, as he entered the OR. Sitting at the end of the table, he eyed Charity. “What have you got?”
Charity told Jameson everything she had discovered, and Hardy followed up with his observations about the woman from the bar.
Jameson slowly nodded his head, staring at the table in front of him. “That’s an interesting theory, Cherry; however, without any concrete evidence to back it up, we’ll have to put it on the back burner. Only pursue that lead when you have dead time.” He held Sayed’s phone in his hand. “Our top priority is coming up with a plan to deal with this.”
Hardy, who had been standing behind his chair, spun it around and sat. “What did we find?”
Charity took a drink of coffee and leaned forward.
“Our tech guys upstairs hacked into a Gmail account that had been activated less than a week ago. There were no messages sent or received during that time; however, there was a message in the draft folder,” Jameson took out a piece of paper from his pocket and opened it, “that read, ‘Allah be praised. All of you should be proud. Your time has come.’ There is a date, a time and an address.” He handed the paper to Hardy.
Hardy read it again. “Smart,” he said. “That’s what I would have done, too—only use the draft folder and never send out any messages. Only the people who have access to the account can see any communications.” Hardy slid the paper to Charity and checked the date on his phone. “So, it’s going down at nine o’clock tonight. Do we know what’s at that address?”
Jameson opened his mouth to answer, but Charity beat him to it.
“There’s a two-story house in a nice little neighborhood, just north of Bedford Hills.” She had brought up the address on her laptop. “There are several houses nearby and a lot of trees. It’s going to be tough to get eyes on that place.”
Jameson pointed at her. “But, that’s exactly what I need you to do, Cherry. We have less than twelve hours to come up with a plan and be in place before these people begin arriving at that location,” he gestured at the note, “if that’s what’s going to happen. Sayed was one of them. We don’t know how many more there are, but we need to be ready.”
Hardy looked up. “Sir, I think we need more manpower on this.”
Jameson shook his head. “I don’t want to bring in any local police. We don’t know what these people are up to, and I want to keep this quiet, until we know what they’re planning.”
“I’m not talking about the police. Where’s AR-1?” Hardy was referring to a three-person team Jameson had put together to support Hardy when he was on missions. Tom Henderson was the team leader and one of the best snipers Hardy had ever seen in action. Eva Draper was the medical specialist and Tyler Pendleton was an expert in explosives. All of them were former Special Forces operators and had extensive training in weapon’s handling, covert assaults and search and rescue. In fact, the ‘AR’ in AR-1 stood for Assault and Rescue.
Standing, Jameson retrieved his phone from his coat pocket and tapped the screen. “I’ll have them here within the hour. They need to be a part of this, too.”