on GPS. Even if she had kept running, she wouldn’t have gotten far without ditching it. “And you still haven’t handed the girl over. We need to protect her. This community has lost too many people trying to ensure her safety in your care.”
“What’s the other option besides me-leaving Mariella under armed guard all day like she’s in solitary confinement?” Moni asked. At the sight of the sheriff’s raised eyebrow, she realized that this man had more concern for the child’s welfare than Sneed. Maybe it came from having kids of his own. “If you’ll excuse me, sir. This is quite an emotional matter for me. I know Mariella is a witness, but she’s also like… like my daughter. I feel like we’ve been together all my life, and all her life. No one is more dedicated to making sure the Lagoon Watcher and his creatures don’t hurt her than me.”
Professor Swartzman mounted a protest to the charges against his research buddy, but Sneed drowned him out with his latest rant.
“I only wish you’d show half as much dedication to solving this case. This task force doesn’t need a mother nurturing our witness and baking her brownies. It needs a ruthless interrogating bitch. That’s not you, Moni. People like you, are only out for yourselves. You feel all fine and dandy about protecting your loved ones, even if they’re dirtier than sin. You could give a shit if this county burned.”
Moni had no doubt what he had meant by, “people like you.” Her father had told her the same thing. He accused her of being selfish every time she asked him for the smallest thing-from a chocolate bar to her first car. He had berated her until she grew so terrified that she didn’t ask for anything.
Sneed’s words had shoved Moni into a corner and drained her of the will to strike back. She faced Aaron and nodded. His cue had arrived.
“You’re totally wrong about Moni, Mr. Sneed,” Aaron said. Flexing his stubby fingers, the lead detective would have strangled the surfing scientist in the middle of the table if the sheriff hadn’t been there. “She’s been thinking about all of us. That’s why she sketched out this awesome plan that’ll keep Mariella safe and bag the Lagoon Watcher. I only helped her a little, so it should still work.”
Aaron’s description of the plan held Sheriff Brandt’s attention so well, that Sneed didn’t unfurl any of his objections, which he obviously had, because he looked like a man kissing an onion the whole time. Sneed nearly fell out of his chair when the sheriff agreed that using Mariella to lure the Lagoon Watcher into a sting operation would effectively protect the girl and catch the suspect.
“We’ll set you up in a hotel that has every inch on camera and then we’ll give a little boost to the surveillance equipment and security personnel at the girl’s school,” Sheriff Brandt said. “Now don’t you go running off with her to any place that we haven’t put under watch.” He pointed at Moni in the most non-threatening way possible. It felt more like a reminder from a gingerly grandparent.
“Don’t worry, sir.” Moni’s braids bounced off her cheeks as she shook her head. “I would never put Mariella in harm’s way.”
“What about the other kids at her school?” Sneed asked. “Isn’t it putting them in harm’s way if you invite the Lagoon Watcher to their campus?”
Sneed doesn’t give a damn about those kids, Moni thought as she curled her lips and narrowed her eyes at him. He wanted to scuttle the whole plan so he could take Mariella away from her.
“If you trusted that the people in this room can do their jobs, then you wouldn’t doubt that we’ll prevent the Lagoon Watcher from harming those children,” Moni told Sneed. The sheriff nodded. Then another spoil sport spoke up.
“You’re wasting your time here,” Professor Swartzman said as he crossed his string cheese arms. “The Lagoon Watcher isn’t after the girl. He’s not behind the bacteria, and the animal attacks. The notion is just plain nonsensical. Harry Trainer doesn’t have the capabilities to genetically engineer an organism like that. It would take millions of dollars in funding, and a lab that’s much more elaborate than what we saw in his home.”
“Your point’s well taken. I suspect Mr. Trainer has a covert source of funding and a larger facility in an undisclosed location nearby,” Brigadier General Alonso Colon said. “It’s clear that his operation has spread beyond one man’s capabilities. Just look at the scale of the damage. How much of the lagoon is infected with bacteria now, professor?”
“Again, I must respectfully disagree with your assumption that Mr. Trainer has something to do with this. He’s only studying it, just like we are,” Swartzman said. Moni grimaced. The Lagoon Watcher had been doing much more than studying her and Mariella when he spied them from across the street before the car chase. “Anyway, the mutated strain of thiobacillus has been detected all the way to the north end of the lagoon near Scottsmoor down as far as the Sebastian Inlet. It hasn’t gotten through the inlet into the ocean. The chemical levels in a body of water that large are much harder to change than in the relatively narrow Indian River Lagoon.”
“No infected animals are escaping into the ocean either,” Aaron added. “Weird, huh?”
“It’s not weird,” Swartzman countered. “If their body chemistry has been altered to adapt to the bacteria’s preferred environment, then they’d thrive in the lagoon where the conditions suit them. And they’d foster its growth any way they could, even if it harmed people.”
“That’s what I’m worried about,” Sheriff Brandt said. “Whoever’s behind this has planned for a lot of casualties. I’m afraid General Colon has more on that.”
The members of the task force focused on the military man. Many eyebrows were raised as he puckered his normally proud face in embarrassment.
“A number of days ago, what we suspect were mutated creatures from the lagoon broke into Patrick Air Force Base and stole sixteen powerful explosives. Each one can release enough force to destroy a major structure. While we’re still investigating how the theft occurred, despite the best efforts of our security, it’s imperative that we recover those explosives promptly.”
Moni’s heart swelled bigger with every beat as she imagined a cascade of fire tearing through the wall of the conference room-or worse. The African artwork would fly off the shelves in her living room before the burst of fire dumps the shattered wooden boards and nails of her roof down atop her and Mariella. If the Lagoon Watcher couldn’t capture Mariella or behead her, he might settle on simply blowing her up, along with any unfortunate soul in the same building. Still, sixteen bombs seemed excessive for one target. If her plan didn’t stop him soon, the current victim count could turn out as only a warm up before the true massacre.
“Now that everyone knows how much is at stake, I say we’re putting way too much trust in Moni’s cutesy little plan,” said Sneed, who ignored the fact that everyone else besides him and Swartzman had already committed to it. “This woman has messed up every task we’ve given her except for keeping the girl alive, which hasn’t helped us one bit because she hasn’t said a damn thing. What makes everybody think she’ll get it right this time?”
Moni had no answer for him.
Chapter 32
For once, Moni wished she could trade places with Sneed. While she sat behind the tinted windows of an undercover SUV in the staff parking lot of Challenger 7 Elementary, Sneed hung out in the security room of the school’s administration building and watched the video monitors. She hated waiting without seeing what was happening. That head-slicer, or one of his foul creations, could be on their way any moment.
Moni had done nothing with Mariella for three days besides shuttle her between the hotel and school. At no time were they out of range of at least six officers. That didn’t put her at ease. None of those officers, especially Sneed, cared about Mariella as much as she did. They made their priority catching the suspect, with the girl’s survival a distant second, Moni thought.
That Thursday, Sneed had one officer with him. Another two were stationed in a house facing the playground. One was undercover as a construction worker on the cafeteria roof and another one-a hefty man with a beer gut and a shaved head who had been one of the late Harrison’s closest friends-sat beside Moni in the SUV. Gary DeWitt didn’t even glace at Moni after she told him to stop smoking in the car with the windows rolled up. He exhaled a puff of smoke into the windshield so that it rebounded into Moni’s face. She started coughing.
“My eyes are watering,” Moni said. “I’m supposed to be looking for the suspect, but I can barely see.”
“Excuse me, but I smoke when I’m grieving,” DeWitt said. “I’m sorry, you must have forgotten what grief is.”
