By the time Justine knocked on his door the next morning, Foster had only been asleep for about three hours. Much of his night had been spent trying to determine what was so strange about the victim’s freaky hairstyle. And after giving up most of his valuable sleep time, the best answer he could come up with was the weird coif was created by a very specific, very old type of flat iron curler.

  Which by itself wouldn’t have been that strange. But according to his little program, “That type of flat iron curler was popular back in the 1920’s. The 1920’s, man! Can you believe that?”

  “No,” Foster said last night before finally conking out from exhaustion. “No, I can’t.”

  So where did that leave him? Well, between the old piece of metal in her leg and the old piece of metal used to curl her hair, the only thing that made sense about any of this was absolutely nothing.

  So after a full minute of knocking, he eventually able to crawl out of bed long enough to open the door. Without any warning, the bright Elmira morning poured in and made him throw both hands up as some crude shield from the sun. “What is it?”

  “About time you woke up!” Taking advantage of his temporary blindness, Justine barged past him and slid back under the still active hologram. After opening a new search window, she asked Foster and Hoover a kind of serious question with a smirk plastered across her face. “Half the night and the best thing you could come up with is she’s retro?”

  “I don’t remember you offering any suggestions before we left for the diner. Besides,” Foster turned away from the morning skyline in disgust. “And how do you know I was up half the night?”

  Smirking even more, she pointed a finger at her ear and the well-hidden earpiece within. “I also had trouble sleeping.”

  “What?” Foster said, his hand instinctively reached toward his own earpiece. “Hoover?”

  “Oh yeah,” still upset about being left out of their little dinner date, his little program had left her earbud open as a sort of juvenile revenge. “But don’t let her give you too much shit? All she did last night was check her Facebook status. By the way. Who is Bradley, Agent Rushing?”

  “No one,” her smirk faded quickly as she closed the window she had just opened. “He’s just an asshole I never met.”

  “Really,” Foster said with an air of disbelief. “If you say so.”

  “I do.”

  As much as he like to her Agent Rushing call that guy an asshole, Foster knew that the time had come to get his answers. Answers that were not in this crappy motel room. So after a quick shower and shave, he packed up his gear, and the two of them set off for the mobile lab where the rest of the team was already mobilized. Once they arrived, everyone settled down, and Saunders began his morning briefing.

  “Whatever progress we make today is it, ladies and gentlemen. By sundown, the director wants everything packed up and brought back to Bleaker. Further analysis will be done there.”

  He made sure to look at Justine and Foster who sat beside each other in a couple of chairs next to the window. “And if it isn’t too much trouble, let’s steer clear of any more bank robberies today. I don’t think my pension could take it.”

  Everyone nodded their heads but none more fervently than Mosley.

  “If you don’t mind,” the haggard looking scientist pulled Saunders to the side while Justine and Foster scrambled out of the conference room. “I think I’m going to stay here with Barbara. Some delicate calculations need to be run, and I feel my time would be best spent here supervising the work.”

  Now Saunders wasn’t a computer genius, but he knew that Hoover was doing most of the heavy lifting. And he know that Barbara was merely running interference against nosy agencies. And answering phones hardly seemed dignified work for one of the smartest people on the planet. Putting all these facts together, they all pointed to only one conclusion.

  The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  Mosley wanted to bow out of the field work gracefully.

  “If you think that’s the best course of action, Doctor.” Saunders never grinned or made light of his decision. He simply accepted it. “Then, who am I to argue?”

  Mosley wanted to thank the senior agent for not giving him a hard time. But Saunders was already out the door and headed for the Tahoe before his brain could react. Part of him, the CERN scientist part, wanted to chase after the team and prove his courage. However, since his feet would not currently move, such a demonstration proved all but impossible.

  Seeing him struggle, Barbara reached out and grabbed his shoulder in a consoling manner. “What’s the matter?” she asked. “Did something go wrong yesterday?”

  “There’s a list.” Mosley said plopping down in front of a terminal, too embarrassed to recount everything that had happened out in the field. Out in the field and in that bank. “But at the tip top of it, I really don’t like dead things.”

  A few minutes later, Malcolm carefully pulled the Tahoe into the town’s only Starbucks. Everyone in the car dutifully ordered something from the inviting drive-thru menu except for Justine. This oversight was mainly attributable to the loud argument she and Hoover were having over the tactical merits of breaching a building without sufficient backup.

  The stubborn A.I. found her position at best problematic. While Justine found his lack of courage made him a “pussy.” It wasn’t until someone shoved a hot cup in her hand that she finally noticed where they were.

  “What’s this?” Justine asked as she took a sip of her mystery beverage. “Hot chocolate… I didn’t order this.”

  “I did,” Foster said, tearing into his coffee cake with controlled abandon. “During Hoover’s background check, I noticed that you order one every day, wherever you are.”

  “How could you possibly know that?”

  “Puny credit card companies are no match for the most powerful code breaker in the world!”

  “Boundaries guys,” she took another drink and reluctantly savored it. “I told you before. We need to talk about boundaries.”

  Ten miles away from this awkward conversation, on the third floor of Vincent Memorial, a small, overcrowded ICU ward had been transformed into a hasty high-security cell.

  Between the comings and goings of the staff, Sheriff Meadows looked down onto the courtyard and watched a small sea of microphones and cameras ebb and flow around a makeshift podium. News requests from all the major players had been inundating his office since last night and the thought of facing all those reporters later today made his stomach churn.

  “The feds should be on their way right now,” he told one of the deputies guarding the prisoner. “They have a few questions for this piece of shit.”

  Questions? What questions could this piece of shit answer? They all say the security feeds. They all knew what that man had did to their friends.

  So instead of questions, Meadows found himself secretly hoping Saunders would take the lead on the press conference. He hated explaining death and murder to strangers. Worse still, he had to make phone calls later today to the family members of the victims. Not that anyone touched by this madman’s actions needed his phone call to explain.

  He just wanted to call each family member and express his condolences personally. He owed the victims that much.

  A moment later, the sheriff backed away from the window and edged closer to where the young killer laid handcuffed to a bed rail. The doctors said that whatever Agent Rushing did to him cause three broken ribs and cracked his sternum in two places. The ER doc thought the guy had been in a head-on collision with a semi.

  When pressed about the details, he didn’t know how to tell him what really happened. How could he? He didn’t even really know himself. What could he say? “That’s just what a ray does to people.”

  “Sheriff,” a sullen, black-haired deputy stood at the door. “I received a call from dispatch. Agent Saunders and his team are in route. They should be arriving in less than ten minutes.”

  “Thank you,” he said as the deputy held steadfast by the entrance. Recognizing the look of a man who wanted to say something, Meadows let him momentarily overstep his bounds. “What is it, Scotty?”

  “Sheriff,” the usually jovial deputy was close to tears. “My cousin worked at the bank… a teller. Don at the morgue told us this animal beat her so badly that her parents are going to be forced to have a closed casket funeral.”

  Words failed the Sheriff. “I’m sorry, Scotty.”

  “Why did that FBI lady have to leave him alive, sir? Couldn’t she have double tapped his ass and been done with it?” The tears welling in the deputy’s eyes doubled, but more anger existed there than sadness. Last night’s conversation with Joseph was still fresh in his mind like an open wound. “I don’t understand. He had it coming.”

  Sympathizing completely, the family man inside Meadows wanted nothing more than to commiserate with his subordinate. Hell, maybe even do the deed himself. But in his heart, he knew the law came first.

  So instead of allowing that anger to grow, he comforted himself with the knowledge that there was no way this prick would ever see the light of day again.

  “Neither do I. But I do know final judgment is a concept beyond our position.” He turned away toward a window that offered the heartbroken sheriff a haven from anyone catching sight of his own watery eyes. “Our job is to arrest the psychos of the world. And pray we get to them before something like this ever happens.”

  Also turning away, Scotty said something the sheriff already knew. “We were late this time, boss.”

  In response, Meadow’s nostrils flared wildly, and his face became flush with the unresolved anger within himself. “Yes, we were.”