steel as a commercial-grade marine cooler. A frayed tie-down floated from its handle bracket. Frayed, not cut. So maybe its owner hadn't intended to ditch it, after all. She grabbed the tie-down, which was made of bright yellow- and-blue strands twisted into a half-inch-thick rope, and looped it through her harness to keep the cooler from bobbing away in the rotor wash of the helicopter.
She signaled Kesnick: her left arm raised, her right arm crossing over her head and touching her left elbow. She was ready for them to deploy the medevac board.
The bobbing container fought against her, pushing and pulling with each wave, not able to go any farther than the rope attached to her belt allowed. It took two attempts but within fifteen minutes Liz had the fishing cooler attached to the medevac board. She cinched the restraints tight, hooked it to the cable, and raised her arm again, giving a thumbs-up.
No records broken, but by the time Kesnick hoisted her back into the helicopter, she could tell her crew was pleased. Not impressed, but pleased. It was a small step.
Lieutenant Commander Wilson still looked impatient. Liz barely caught her breath, but yanked off her Seda helmet, exchanging it for her flight helmet with the communications gear inside. She caught Wilson in the middle of instructing Kesnick to open the latch.
'Shouldn't we wait?' Kesnick tried being the diplomat.
'It's not locked. Just take a peek.'
Liz slid out of the way and to the side of the cabin, unbuckling the rest of her gear. She didn't want any part of this. As far as she was concerned, her job was finished.
Kesnick paused and at first she thought he would refuse. He moved to her side and pushed back his visor, avoiding her eyes. The child-safety latch slid back without effort but he had to use the palm of his hand to shove the snap lock free. Liz saw him draw in a deep breath before he flung open the lid.
The first thing Liz noticed was the fish-measuring ruler molded into the lid. It seemed an odd thing to notice but later it would stick in her mind. A fetid smell escaped but it wasn't rotten fish. More like opening a Dumpster.
Inside she could see what looked like thick plastic wrap encasing several oblong objects, one large and four smaller. Not the square bundles that might be cocaine.
'Well?' Wilson asked, trying to glance over his shoulder.
Kesnick poked at one of the smaller bundles with a gloved finger. It flipped over. The plastic was more transparent on this side and suddenly the content was unmistakable.
His eyes met Liz's and now the ever calm, poker-faced Kesnick looked panicked.
'I think it's a foot,' he said.
'What?'
'I think it's a goddamn human foot.'
CHAPTER 2
NEWBURGH HEIGHTS, VIRGINIA
Maggie O'Dell peeled off her blouse without undoing the buttons, popping one before it came off. Didn't matter. The blouse was a goner. Even the best cleaners couldn't take out this much blood.
She folded the shirt into a wad and dropped it into her bathroom sink. Something wet was stuck to her neck. She grabbed at it, threw it in the sink.
Pink. Like clotted cheese.
She'd been so close. Too close when the fatal shot came. Impossible to get out of the way.
She swatted at her neck and yanked at her hair, expecting more pieces. Her fingers got stuck in sweaty tangles, damp, sticky. But thank God, no more chunks.
They hadn't expected the killer to still be there. The warehouse appeared empty, only remnants of his torture chamber remained, just as Maggie had predicted. Why the hell had he stayed? Or had he come back? To watch.
Maggie's boss, Assistant Director Raymond Kunze, had made the fatal shot. And afterward he was already taking it out on Maggie, as if it were her fault, as if she had forced his hand. But there was no way she could have known that the killer was there, hiding in the shadows. No profiler could have predicted that. Kunze couldn't possibly hold her accountable, and yet she knew he would do exactly that.
Harvey, her white Lab, grabbed one of her discarded, muddy shoes. Rather than taking it to play he dropped to his belly and started whining, a low guttural moan that tugged at Maggie's heart.
'Come on and drop it, Harvey,' she ordered, but instead of scolding, she said it quietly, gently.
He could smell the blood on her, was already concerned. But the shoe plopped out of his mouth.
'Sorry, big guy.'
Maggie swiped the shoe up and placed it in the sink with her soiled blouse. Then she knelt down beside Harvey, petting him. She wanted to hug him but there was still too much blood on her.
'Wait for me outside, buddy,' she said, leading him out of the huge master bathroom and into her bedroom, telling him to sit where he could see her through the doorway. She scratched behind his ears until he relaxed, waiting for his sigh and his collapse into lay-down position.
The smell of blood still panicked him. She hated the reminder. With it came the memory of that day she found him, bleeding and cowering under his first owner's bed, right in the middle of his own bloody ordeal. The dog had fought hard and still had been unsuccessful in protecting his mistress, who had been taken from her house and later murdered.
'I'm okay,' she reassured him, as she dared to take a good look at herself in the mirror to see if what she said was true.
It wasn't so bad. She'd been through worse. And at least this time it wasn't her own blood.
Her tangled, dark-auburn hair almost reached her shoulders. She needed to get it trimmed. What a thing to think about. Her eyes were bloodshot but it had nothing to do with this incident. She hadn't been able to sleep through the night for months now, waking every hour on the hour as if some alarm in her head triggered it. The sleep deprivation was bound to catch up with her.
She had tried all the recommended remedies. An evening run to exhaust her body. No exercise at all after seven. Soaking in a warm bath. Drinking a glass of wine. When wine didn't work, warm milk. She tried reciting meditation chants. Cutting out caffeine. Reading. Listening to CDs of nature sounds. Using new therapeutic pillows. Lighting candles with soothing aromas. Even a little Scotch in the warm milk.
Nothing worked.
She hadn't resorted to sleep meds ... yet. As an FBI special agent and profiler she received phone calls in the middle of the night or the early-morning hours that sometimes made it necessary for her to rush to a crime scene. Most of the meds--the good ones--required eight hours of uninterrupted sleep time. Who had that? Certainly not an agent.
She took a long, hot shower, gently washing. No scrubbing, though that was her first inclination. She avoided watching the drain and what went down. She left her hair damp. Put on a clean, loose-fitting pair of athletic shorts and her University of Virginia T-shirt. After bagging up her clothes--at least those that couldn't be salvaged--and tossing them in the garbage, Maggie retreated to the great room. Harvey followed close behind.
She turned on the big-screen TV, pocketing the remote and continuing on to the kitchen. The fifty-six-inch plasma had been a splurge for someone who watched little television, but she justified it by having college football parties on Saturdays in the fall. And then there were the evenings of pizza, beer, and classic movies with Ben. Colonel Benjamin Platt had become a close ... friend.
That was all for now, or so they had decided. Okay, so they hadn't really even talked about it. Things were at a comfortable level. She liked talking to him as much as she liked the silence of being with him. Sometimes when they sat in her backyard watching Harvey and Ben's dog, Digger, play, Maggie caught herself thinking, 'This could be a family.' The four of them seemed to fill voids in each other's lives.
Yes, comfortable. She liked that. Except that lately she felt an annoying tingle every time he touched her. That's when she reminded herself that both their lives were already complicated and their personal baggage
