Constant Fear

CHAPTER 33

Ellie put away her phone and set her gaze once again on Jake’s trailer home. A sizable contingent from the Winston Police Department was there, along with vehicles from the FBI, and the state police, too. From the number of strobes flashing, anyone would think Jake was a fugitive killer and the target of an unprecedented manhunt.

Leo Haggar came over to Ellie with a hostile look she knew was not directed toward her. It was just Haggar’s natural mystique.

“That was him,” Ellie said.

Haggar’s eyes narrowed. “Did he give his location?”

“No,” Ellie said. “But I think he’s in the school.”

Haggar whistled and one of his agents, a fit woman in a blue uniform and body armor, came running over.

“Everyone is in position to enter the premises. Are we still waiting for a warrant?”

“Forget the warrant,” Haggar barked. “Get in there ASAP. It’s my call, and I’m saying this guy will further endanger the hostages. I want to know everything there is to know about him. What he reads when he’s taking a dump. Where he shops. Who he’s screwing. Everything. And have forensics in there with you to secure all of the electronics. I don’t want a single byte of data lost. Got it?”

“Yes, sir.”

The agent turned on her heels to go, but Haggar whistled her back around. “And I want to see the blueprints to the school again. Hell, I think I have them memorized by this point, but have somebody get them to me anyway,” Haggar said.

The agent acknowledged the order with a nod and was off again.

“I’ll try to call him back,” Ellie said. Her voice came out too soft, too weak, too damn emotional.

Haggar’s ears must have been tuned to a different frequency, one that picked up subtext like it was amplified, because he gave Ellie a knowing glance.

“You might not know what he’s reading on the can,” Haggar said, “but I think you can tell me who Jake is screwing.”

Ellie’s face reddened. The twinkle in Haggar’s eyes surprised her.

“It’s okay,” Haggar said. “I already figured. But now you can tell me more.”

Ellie set her hands on her hips, pursed her lips, and looked to the sky. A constricting lump blocked her throat, and everything about Jake hit her at once: the blue of his eyes, the swagger in his smile, a scent sweet as his personality, a touch aware of her needs, the firmness of his body when he lay on top of her, the feel of him inside when she was on top. She loved Jake, but those words had never left her lips. Instead, they had tumbled about in her head, ready to spill out the moment he said it first.

If he’d opened up to her more fully, those three magical words would have come out faster than Kibo could chase down a stick. But Jake Dent had more secrets than he had shared with her the night of their big talk. And Ellie had a sinking feeling whatever they were would be found inside that trailer.

“Talk to me, Ellie,” Haggar said. “This guy is a real threat to our operation. We’re talking thousands of people potentially getting sick here from radioactive fallout if that bomb goes off. Not to mention the number of would-be terrorists an incident like that would embolden. Your guy is a match to that bomb’s fuse and I’m going to snuff it out, one way or another. Help me do it without spilling any blood.”

Ellie took a breath and told Haggar the story, beginning with her meeting Jake at the gun range and concluding with the details she had only recently learned.

Haggar listened with rapt attention. Despite the crisis unfolding around him, he had a remarkable ability to tune out the world and focus on whatever he deemed most important. Jake Dent was evidently very important to Haggar.

“Can you talk him out of there?” Haggar asked.

“I sure as hell can try,” Ellie said.

“I have seasoned hostage negotiators on hand who can help,” Haggar said. “Will you be willing to do whatever it takes?”

“Anything,” Ellie said.

The FBI agent Haggar had sent off to retrieve the school blueprints came running over with them in hand. She had an electric look in her eyes; Ellie guessed they had dug up something of vital importance.

“Sir, you should come inside right away. I think we have a serious problem on our hands.”

Someone handed Ellie a pair of gloves. She put them on as she followed Haggar into Jake’s trailer. This was not how she’d imagined being invited into his home, but here she was.

Ellie looked around and saw only a devoted dad doing his best to provide for his son, to create a home-but the light was dim and rather depressing, the walls were paneled wood and dark, the quarters cramped, and the furniture all looked secondhand.

Despite this, Ellie had to admire Jake for his effort. Being a single parent under any circumstance was not easy; and in addition to the worry over Andy’s diabetes, Jake’s salary could not have been very much. The trailer was not the ideal place to raise a child, but Jake had spruced it up by filling the home with photographs of a father and a son, memories of good times together, two people making a go of it best they could.

Seven or so gloved agents began tearing the place apart and their combined body heat turned the trailer sauna hot. For Ellie, it was as difficult to breathe as it was to move. A special agent, tall and dark-haired, greeted Haggar in the living room and led him and Ellie down a narrow hallway. Ellie excused herself to push by the crush of agents engaged in a carefully orchestrated demolition of Jake’s life.

The agent escorted Ellie and Haggar to Jake’s bedroom. He had the same excited look as the woman who had summoned them into the trailer.

“What do we got?” Haggar asked.

“Guns and a whole lot of crazy,” the agent said.

He opened a closet and cleared away some clothes to reveal a gun rack with five secured rifles, only two of which Ellie recognized as a Browning and a Remington.

“So he’s a hunter,” Haggar said. “These weapons all look properly secured to me. And they’re not on his person, so that’s another plus.”

“That’s what I said, until we found this.”

From within the closet, the agent removed a large backpack secured to an ALICE frame and brought it over to the bed. He opened the pack, tipped it over, and dumped out the contents. He took more stuff from various zipped-up pouches.

Ellie studied the items with growing unease. On the bed were several liters of water, a filtration system, clothing, a tent, a tarp, a sleeping bag, cooking gear, and a hygiene kit. It would have all made sense to her, except Jake had never mentioned a love of camping. Somebody who loved camping enough to own this kind of gear would have talked about it, she believed.

He unzipped another pouch. What he pulled out made Ellie shiver: a SIG SAUER P226, with ammo to go with it. Most campers Ellie knew carried a whistle to scare away the bears, not a high-caliber pistol.

Haggar eyed the items. “So he’s an outdoorsman who doesn’t want to be mugged in the woods,” he said. “I’m still not concerned.”

The agent said, “Yeah? Just wait.”

The agent removed from the closet a twenty-gallon plastic tote with an attached lid. He set the tote on the floor by the bed and took off the lid. The agent pulled out from the tote a tactical helmet with a J-arm attachment, which Ellie suspected accommodated a night vision optical. They took more items out of the container and piled them on the bed: ammo, laminated maps, several large knives, a compass, green Kevlar line, wire, duct tape, magnifying glasses, handcuffs, body armor, satellite phone, batons, and lots of books.

Their titles made Ellie’s stomach sink. She focused on a few of the meatier tomes: Surviving the End of the World, After the Fall: How Doomsday Preppers Will Look Like Prophets, The A-Z of Prepping, and Get Ready for the End of the World, whose title left little doubt about its contents.

“I’m not a profiler, sir,” the agent said with a gleam in his eyes. “But it seems we’ve got a loose cannon. This guy thinks the world is coming to an end, and I suspect he’s armed to do battle.”

Ellie watched the color drain from Haggar’s face and guessed hers had done the same. Heartbreaking as it was, without a doubt, Ellie knew this was the real secret Jake had been guarding.

Haggar unfolded the blueprints and spread them out on the bed, covering Jake’s survival gear like a blanket. He studied the plans thoughtfully; then he looked to Ellie.

“Does Jake Dent know how to access all the tunnels at the school?”

Ellie said, “He never said anything to me, but he’s in charge of maintenance, so I suspect there’s a good chance he does.”

Haggar whistled long and low. “If that’s the case, our problem just got a whole lot bigger.”