Safely back in the warm Tahoe, Malcolm pressed the icon on his smartphone that brought up his missed calls. A new screen appeared showing the same number twenty-five times along with twenty-five new messages. For a second, he thought about pressing the reply button, but the urge soon faded.

  He didn’t want to talk to the Director right now anyway.

  Besides, he was busy at the moment. For the past half an hour, the police had been making their way up and down the street trying to look busy. And each time one of them passed by the Tahoe, some local pig would inevitably ask him what he was doing there. On their most recent stop, he said.

  “Waiting for pizza delivery.” He told each one of them with a hint of joking around. “Why, do you want a slice?”

  Growing tired of his smart-ass comments, one of the younger patrolmen decided to respond with a thick New York ‘fuck you’. Malcolm found the kid’s false bravado hilarious. He let him ramble on for a few seconds before finally flashing his government ID. Instantly, the kid stopped his tirade and promptly ran back down the street with his tail tucked between his legs.

  Laughing, Malcolm was just about to try and catch a quick nap when the phone went off again. He looked at the screen to see the director’s caller ID taunting him. “Well, I guess 26 is the charm.” Sighing heavily, the sour babysitter answered his phone. “Hello?”

  “Malcolm?!” The director’s voice was strained but interminably firm. “Why isn’t anyone answering their phone? What the hell is going on down there?”

  “Right now?” Malcolm surveyed the scene while lazily counting the total number of cop cars lining the street. “Eight police cruisers are having a block party. Why? Did you want me to save you a beer?”

  “Stop being a smart ass, Purvis. You were supposed to report in over six hours ago.” The words blaring out of the phone’s speaker were hurried and angry. Edgar Fitz Hume hated being out of the loop. “Why is everyone ignoring me?”

  “Honestly,” he kicked his small feet up onto the dash of the Tahoe. “No one really likes you that much, Edgar. Hell, if I didn’t owe you a favor, I would still be drunk in that bar on South Beach where you found me. As for everyone else’s reasons, I have no idea.”

  “Fuck you, Malcom!” The director paused then purposefully slowed his words down. “Fine. Can you at least tell me what the situation is? I have the local news on in my office, and there are reports of a bank robbery going on in Elmira at this very moment. Please tell me those locals aren’t trying to rope you into anything.”

  “Why would you ask that?”

  “Because I don’t fucking know where you are right now!”

  “You don’t know where we are?” Malcolm couldn’t understand why a sub-director of the NSA had to call his team for their whereabouts. Then, a stupid question hit him. “Aren’t you tracking us by our GPS right now?”

  “No,” Fitz Hume was embarrassed to say. “The technicians are feeding me some bullshit about a funny type of signal coming off your phones that’s scrambling our triangulation algorithms. The best they can come up with is that you’re all within the city limits.”

  “That’s correct.” Another cruiser went racing by his position toward the bank. “We are within the city limits.”

  “That’s great.” The director tried to say sarcastically. “Ok. What about the bank robbery? Please tell me Saunders didn’t let himself get caught up with that mess. The team is supposed to be keeping a low profile.”

  “Good news on that front, Edgar. Saunders is not actively involved in the bank robbery. As for me, all I’ve been doing is driving the team around in the Mystery Machine van.”

  Fitz Hume exhaled a sigh of relief as his dread began to recede like the tide. Getting caught up in some local problem was the last thing he wanted for the team right now. Unfortunately, it was at that moment that he remembered another question that could ruin his day. “Please tell me that Agent Rushing doesn’t have a gun.”

  “No gun, sir.” Malcolm laughed at the thought of the director having a mild stroke upon hearing what he was about to say next. “But… she is inside the bank.”

  At about the same time as Fitz Hume’s stroke, Justine sighed in frustration.

  “You’ll be safer in here,” she said, trying to force each one of the shell-shocked women back into the break room. But nine slain coworkers strewn across the break room floor left little chance they’d heed her warning. So, instead of forcing their obedience on the matter, Justine chose to hurry the haunted souls back down the hallway to the small supply closet.

  Once there, they scrambled inside without saying a word.

  “Lock the door and hide,” Justine whispered over their sobs. She felt bad for abandoning them right now, but right now was the best way to protect them. She had to stop him. After the door shut, she lingered long enough to hear the tale tell click of a lock. When the bolt clicked, she asked, “Does anyone have eyes on this guy?”

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  Foster’s voice immediately responded. “Thirty seconds ago, he ran past one of the lobby cameras. Where is he now? I have no idea.”

  Justine tried to block the images of those slaughtered people out of her mind. But like a song that just won’t quit playing in your head, those haunting memories seemed to find a way to burrow in and linger.

  “Tell me how important this guy is again, Foster. Because he’s done some fucked up shit in here.”

  Fully aware of her capabilities, Foster pleaded against Justine’s tendencies. “Don’t kill him. He’s important.”

  “No promises.”

  Nearing the first corner, she hastily bent down on one knee. In the distance, Justine saw a shadow move across the half-open lobby door. An instinctual flick of her finger sent another shot hurtling forward without really thinking about who it might be. The more highly charged bolt of plasma almost blasted the door off its hinges.

  “Jesus,” she said, surprised by the amount of damage a stun gun could do. “This thing packs a hell of a punch. You don’t think this thing will cause him too much damage. Do you? Although,” Justine sprinted from her position toward the newly broken door. “If you guys saw what he did in that break room, I don’t think you would mind me breaking a few of his bones.”

  “Just don’t touch his jawbone, and we’re fine.” Hoover was beginning to grow on Justine.

  A rapid peek into the lobby revealed the top half of the front doors above the counter. To her relief, they were still shut. Though in the distance, a series of rhythmic thumping sounds reached her attentive ears. Judging from the echoes, Justine felt safe enough to move into the lobby and behind the first computer station.

  Thump. Thump. Thump. The noises drew her along the counter toward a small half door that separated the teller space from the rest of the lobby. For a second, she felt silly for jumping across the thing to get back here.

  “Judged,” a contemptuous voice erupted from the corner office, making her cringe. “I am no different than the ones who breathe. Why?”

  Justine pushed open the door.

  Directly to her left was the row of glass offices. Near the last one, a shadowy figure stood upright in a menacing pose. Distorted by layers of transparent wall, the man’s actions were distorted. Her first thought was to fire and keep on firing.

  But, for Foster’s sake, another warning seemed justified even though her ribs were still stinging from their earlier wrestling match. She edged closer to the man before shouting at the top of her lungs. “I want you out here and on the floor. NOW!”

  Thump. Thump. Thump.

  Always the hard way, it took every ounce of control she had to keep from just blasting away.

  “I’m not going to tell you again, asshole.” Taking a wide berth around the first two offices, Justine wanted to make sure she kept ample distance between herself and the scumbag. Slowly, as the angle on her target improved, the happenings in the office became clearer. And all she could think of was the word wow.

  For some insane reason, the stranger had stripped off his shirt, faced the inside wall of the office, and had his palms planted firmly against it. Her years of training told her that he might be surrendering. However, when the basket case started slamming his head into the sheetrock, she knew this wasn’t the case.

  Okay with letting him bludgeon himself to death, she decided to let this odd behavior continue for about ten good whacks. On the tenth whack, the stranger staggered sideways and roared. “Breathe! I must breathe until I die.”

  Her words ignored. Justine fired a warning shot over his shoulder that ripped into a cheap painting of downtown Elmira like a hot knife into butter. To this more than obvious threat, he turned around and hissed. “I must breathe, or I must die!”

  “Let him breathe,” Foster echoed the stranger’s words into her earpiece. “I know you’re pissed, but he really needs to keep breathing.”

  “Stop whining,” Justine shrugged off the scientist’s pleas before returning to her target. “Why did you kill all those people?”

  For the first time since seeing the killer back on his hill of horror, his eyes were neither dead nor wild. They were lucid, calm, and focused. And that change in demeanor unnerved her more than all those bodies. “Breathing does not a life make. I am the violent end, and I must breathe until I die.”

  Justine watched the man’s facial muscles twitch ever so slightly, and his left shoulder dip a second before he launched himself forward. Beyond the point of caring and in too much pain for round two, she didn’t warn him again. The plasma round escaped the Slinger’s barrel at incredible speed and hit him dead center in the chest. The stranger stopped, backed up a couple of steps, then clutched his chest while coughing up specks of blood.

  When he looked up into Justine’s eyes, the monster seemed disappointed to remain standing. “I did not deserve this. I must breathe until I die.” Again, forgoing all pretenses for safety, the madman blindly charged forward in a rage, blood trickling from the corners of his mouth like a coked up vampire.

  “No,” she said coldly. “They didn’t deserve this.” Not wanting to take any more chances, Justine thumbed the weapon to eight and squeezed the trigger.

  This time, the plasma round took the stranger completely off his feet. He hurtled back through the air in kind of a half summersault as he crashed against one of the office chairs in a loud splat. Crumpled up in the form of a deformed pretzel, his body lay motionless and still.

  Instincts told her to fire again to be sure. But she was already in enough trouble with Fitz Hume. And then there was Foster.

  “He’s down,” Justine said.

  “Excellent job,” Foster sighed. “Are you OK? And what was all that about breathing?”

  “That’s your department, Foster. I bag them. You tag them.”

  “Is he still alive?” Hoover remained focused on the task at hand even if Foster had lost his mind to puppy love. Also, thanking people for doing their job was never his style. “That’s what’s important.”

  Justine bent over his bloody, contorted body and felt around for a pulse. After some searching, she found a faint but steady heartbeat. “Yes,” she said, after taking a tentative step back toward the entrance of the bank. “But you better unlock the doors and send in the paramedics. This guy needs a doctor right now.”

  “On it,” Foster replied.

  Satisfied that the scene was secure, Justine cycled the plasma gun back down to the number four setting. For the briefest moment, she grimaced at the pain radiating down her side. But even with her ribs on fire, she couldn’t help but smile.

  After all, she had her very own ray gun.