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Jenna glanced back at Grey, who was now pushing only one mug across the table and making a vroom sound with her lips.

  ‘Right behind you,’ Jenna said.

  Saleda nodded to Jenna to close the conference room door behind her. Jenna’s supervisor crossed her arms and leaned against the wall. The way her high, sable-colored ponytail stretched her eyebrows up ever-so-slightly at their corners gave Saleda’s already stern face a menacing kick.

  ‘We have twenty-one dead people whose families are being told right now their loved ones aren’t coming home. For the tiny amount we have to go on to profile these terrorists, we haven’t even come close to finishing the grainy, video-related guesswork on our plates, and another attack could be imminent. If Grey is kooky but can help us put these profiles together faster, then I’ll bring her every coffee mug in my kitchen cabinets at home to play with while she does it. But if her quirks are going to be just one more chaotic, moving part of this circus I’m trying to make sense of—’

  The wild metallic copper flashed in again. ‘Saleda, I understand your concerns. And believe me, I know this is more than unorthodox. If you’d rather I kick Grey out of here and we just work with one of the other departments’ consulting forensic linguists on this, I wouldn’t fault you,’ Jenna said. She’d half-hoped that Saleda would meet Grey and immediately veto the idea of bringing her in as a consult.

  But she’s the best.

  ‘But you think we need her …’ Saleda prompted.

  Jenna nodded. ‘Grey’s brain is a virtual repository of not just literary facts but of critical literary analysis by her and by others – a nearly limitless vault of author names and historical writing themes and styles. She’s a great self-taught linguist, too. No other consulting linguist or literature expert could possibly know and understand as many books as she does and be able to approach the situation with quite the same type of critical eye.’

  ‘And by that you mean she has a way of looking at things differently, sees things others might miss,’ Saleda said, uncrossing her arms. ‘The problem is, in this case, what if she is actually seeing things other people miss for a reason?’

  Jenna shook her head emphatically. ‘She won’t. She’s schizotypal, falls on the autism spectrum, too. But she isn’t schizophrenic or delusional.’

  ‘Can’t schizotypals have schizophrenic episodes?’

  ‘It’s rare. And there are warning signs one might be coming,’ Jenna replied.

  Saleda looked over Jenna’s shoulder at the closed door, seeming to imagine the team and Grey behind it. ‘And you diagnosed her?’

  Jenna nodded. ‘She was a patient. Years ago.’

  ‘Is she reliable? Can we trust her?’

  Jenna smirked. ‘Trust her? Probably. Is she reliable? Definitely not. More impulsive than Dodd heading into a crime scene before the rest of us have even heard about it.’

  ‘Well, shit. What’ve we got to lose?’ Saleda cocked her head toward the conference room. ‘Get in there and tell her welcome aboard.’

  Jenna shrugged and turned the knob. Saleda was right. After all, she’d dealt with worse.

  Fifteen

  Irv mumbled to himself angrily as he logged into the main desktop in his office. Easy for them to say, he should know to use a burner phone and all that other MacGyver bullshit.

  Instead of launching right into a search for literature-obsessed websites, the image of Grey Hechinger’s rat-like face in his mind made him open the intense firewall program he had set up to monitor his network activity. Weird whim, but that batshit crazy librarian version of Luna Lovegood had him on edge. Watching the scan run always made him feel nice and in control even when everything else didn’t.

  Never telling Jenna that. She’d diagnose me with OCD, paranoid computer tech disorder, and procrastination by agitation-itis.

  Irv pushed the chair back and kicked his feet up to the desk. They wanted him to think like Jason Bourne, they could stash him some burner phones and fake IDs in a locker in Shreveport. He’d done his best to get the job done, and he had found Grey Hechinger.

  Not a field agent, never pretended to be one.

  He took a swig from the open can of Dr Pepper on his L-shaped desk, forced himself to swallow. Of course it was warm and flat. Instead of spending that fifteen minutes of his break with his nice cold soda near the drink machine down the hall while he checked on the battle dragons he raised online from eggs to leviathans, he’d had to run to the front gate and put out fires with guards, then take Grey to the team and take a tongue lashing.

  Irv glanced left over the desk at the free superheroes calendar he’d gotten from Comic-Con last year. Only a couple more weeks until vacation, and not a minute too soon. Keeping this obnoxious secret from the team wasn’t quite like hiding plans for a surprise birthday party from someone. Time to figure out what to do next would be great, but just the break from making sure things stayed under wraps was needed more than anything.

  Too bad vacation is more like prison than Fiji, this go ’round.

  The scan results filled in the salmon-colored box on his screen in real-time, and Irv’s eyes followed them.

  All in a day’s wor—

  ‘What the …’ Irv said, yanking his feet down and sitting up with a jolt. He hit the pause button to freeze the log.

  Hitting keys fast and scrolling up, his heart thundered. What in the name of the number 42 was this?

  Not a single entry on the long list of files before him was flagged by the watchdog software he had set up to monitor all the systems in this headquarters office of the Behavioral Analysis Unit. Amidst all the other mundane traffic logs, a series of entries caught his attention. About thirty files a page, seven pages or so. Every one showing they were viewed under his login credentials.

  The system would never flag the over two hundred files, because by all appearances an approved tech analyst had retrieved them.

  Only he hadn’t. Irv knew he hadn’t because the scan claimed the dates the files had been accessed was two years from tomorrow, in the future.

  Someone covering their tracks?

  ‘Son of a bitch,’ Irv muttered, his keystrokes fast, but not as fast as he wished they could be. ‘Who the hell are you, and what do you want?’

  He sent the onscreen results to his printer, then canceled the routine scan. A few command lines later, and a new scan began, this time specifically filtered to show only files from the fictitious future date.

  ‘Oh, you’ve messed with the wrong … you’re going to wish— You asshole, how the hell did you …’

  Fuming, he grabbed the stack of pages from the printer and thumbed through as the new list populated. So far, nothing new. Same file names, same directory, same login info. He reached the final page as the scan completed, then stopped short. There on the screen, one lonely line of text shone in black and white – a text file that didn’t have a match on his printout because it was in a directory so many cyber miles away from all the others, it would have taken his original scan hours to turn up.

  ‘What have we here …’ he muttered, opening the rogue file.

  A thoroughly ordinary, boring error log stared back at him, the kind applications automatically created anytime they encountered a problem, so techs or developers could troubleshoot them if needed. At first glance, all the listings appeared normal. Irv narrowed his eyes. Something was weird about this. The hacker couldn’t possibly have had anything to gain out of this file, and he clearly didn’t need anything out of the rest of the directory. That left only one reason to access it: to leave something behind. He searched more closely, reading each line carefully.

  He lingered on one of the most recent listings and its error message:

  THIS IS AN INFORMATIONAL MESSAGE ONLY. NO ADDITIONAL USER ACTION IS REQUIRED DUE TO RULES 2-33.

  ‘Error number fifteen,’ he read the rest of the line aloud. ‘Error type 0B03 … source, home call prompt core info double limb false-dot-php …’

  A crazy realization struck h
im. No fucking way.

  ‘You son of a bitch,’ he said again, this time with a different feeling entirely. ‘What the hell? Why?’

  His rage now converted to energy, Irv resumed typing, beginning the process of tracing every single step the uninvited guest had taken. The thirst for vengeance was gone. Right now he just needed answers. Every damn one of them.

  Sixteen

  From the raised voices behind the door, Jenna didn’t need to be inside the conference room to know Grey was already making quite a name for herself.

  And the name is nuisance.

  ‘I’ll give you that Wing Man UNSUB following around the Blunt Force UNSUB is probably Mr Watson,’ Porter argued.

  ‘And you’re right. You could probably tell us more about what traits and mannerisms the pair here that apparently call themselves Watson and Holmes share with the fictional characters if the images of them on the video were enhanced. But since Irv can only run the software on one UNSUB’s image at a time, we have to wait for the one he’s already running on Slender to finish before requesting the new one. In the meantime, just take a seat and let us do our jobs. When we reach something we need you to consult on, we’ll bring it to you.’

  Nice try, but Grey Hechinger wasn’t just going to get comfortable and read quietly in the corner until you needed her. Now that they’d caught Grey’s interest, they had it.

  I’ll rescue you today, Porter, but you owe me one.

  ‘Grey, I brought a notebook for you,’ Jenna said, pulling out one of the conference table chairs and setting the legal pad on the table in front of it. She pulled the black ink pen from her pocket and set it on top. ‘I need you to write down any instances on here you can think of where Sherlock Holmes is in a bank, investigating a bank, or maybe even is on a case that involves something similar to a bank: any place that stores valuables for the public, high dollar things. Especially any crimes related to those sorts of places that look like heists but then didn’t end up being robberies at all. After you get that list, think about those storylines and note anything in those particular stories that might be controversial. Social issues, race issues. Political or religious scandals, maybe. Would you start that for me?’

  ‘For the record, I totally could’ve handled that,’ Porter said as they walked a few steps away from the table to a quiet corner closer to the video screen where they could talk out of Grey’s earshot.

  ‘I’m sure you could’ve gagged her,’ Jenna joked. ‘But this way she feels like she’s working on the case using the skills that caused us to bring her here in the first place. It’s more likely to keep her out of your hair indefinitely. Plus, there’s the added bonus of the small chance it could actually yield something relevant.’

  Porter narrowed his eyes comically. ‘Hey, I said I could handle it. I didn’t say I’d handle it well.’

  Jenna laughed, returned to the video footage from the bank. She took a sip of her dark roast, her gaze catching the third figure to enter the bank. The Long-Sword UNSUB.

  Metallic gold flashed in.

  Jenna nudged Porter with her elbow, pointed at Long-Sword UNSUB. ‘What about this guy? He came up when we were trying to figure out what he and Machete UNSUB were doing when they went off-screen, but we haven’t really scrutinized some of the more obvious things that could go toward his profile.’

  Porter gave her a sidelong glance, raised his eyebrows. ‘Such as?’

  ‘Well, he’s the only one killing people with a sword that looks like it could’ve walked out of a history museum,’ Jenna said, leaning forward and squinting, trying to make out any detailing that might be carved into the blade or its hilt.

  ‘True. And if this crew wasn’t made up of a bunch of knife maniacs stabbing people with exploding diving blades and machetes, I’d say the weirdo would catch my eye,’ Porter said, ‘But in this case, the only thing that might stand out would be, I don’t know, a nice, regular M16.’

  ‘Or maybe a chainsaw,’ Teva said as she joined them at the projector.

  ‘Don’t give ’em any ideas. Kung Pow UNSUB with the butterfly swords left enough stray body parts in there to bring up my last seventeen meals. I’d hate to see a chainsaw in that mix,’ Porter said.

  Jenna’s eyes found the perp Porter had called Kung Pow UNSUB. On the screen, the figure swung her blades deftly, gracefully, their slices wicked and effective.

  Metallic gold flashed in again. The same color as a few moments before while watching Long-Sword UNSUB fight.

  ‘Maybe you’re on to something there,’ she mumbled, holding the metallic gold in her mind as she glanced from the Long-Sword UNSUB to Kung Pow and back again.

  ‘I know I am!’ Porter laughed. ‘Less dismemberment equals fewer second appearances made by pancakes. I didn’t realize this was a concept that needed further investigation …’

  Jenna rolled her eyes, but she focused back in on the same two UNSUBs. ‘I’m not talking about your throw-up jokes, Gilbert Godfrey. I’m talking about Kung Pow and the butterfly swords. At first glance none of these UNSUBs stands out; they’re all different and brutal. But actually, Kung Pow stands out for a few reasons—’

  ‘Kung Pow UNSUB is a double-wielder,’ Teva filled in.

  ‘Yep. Two blades aren’t practical in a fight for most. Might even be a hindrance for an amateur,’ Jenna said. ‘But for Kung Pow, they aren’t. Which made me realize why he’—she paused, put her pointer finger on Long-Sword UNSUB on the screen—‘stood out in my mind. The same metallic gold flashed in twice while watching this video: when I watch Long-Sword and when I watch Kung Pow.’

  ‘The colors,’ Teva said quietly, her tone half awe, half annoyed.

  ‘Again,’ Porter said with a sigh. Full-on annoyed.

  ‘You know me. Always gotta show off,’ Jenna said. I do so enjoy explaining how the brain phenomenon I was put on this team to use connects things to colors in my mind only to see faces staring back at me so blank they look like they’re trying to process every concept in Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History of Time at once. And yet, despite getting the same reaction every time, instead of simply accepting the leg up my color associations give us, you still insist on conducting these little Synesthesia for Dummies seminars any time the colors come up, followed by a tribunal to determine whether or not the color association should be trusted as evidence in the investigation. ‘You want to hear it or not?’

  ‘Of course,’ Teva said.

  ‘The metallic gold I see when I watch both of them fight I associate with skill. Skill that comes from training. Those two aren’t amateurs. They know how to fight, and not just because they knew this day was coming. These two were recruited for this job because of their skills,’ Jenna said.

  Saleda had joined them and nodded, whipping out her phone and texting. ‘I’ll get Irv on local martial arts centers, particularly members or students in them who might belong to hate groups or have police records.’

  ‘Good. And don’t forget the local colleges. Check for martial arts clubs, fencing clubs, anything of that nature. Cross-reference those students with any who might be history or literature majors or have involvement with campus organizations with literary ties or book clubs,’ Jenna added. ‘While we work on that, though, I think Grey can put down her catalog of Sherlock bank novels. I’ve got a real job for her now.’

  Seventeen

  ‘So, metallic gold meaning the two of them have mad skills with a blade translates somehow into an assignment for the Loony Librarian? How?’ Porter asked.

  ‘I think when you say Loony Librarian, you’re referring to our expert literature and linguistics consultant, but yes.’

  Jenna crossed the room to the whiteboard where Saleda had drawn boxes, one for each UNSUB, and written what was known about each. Some boxes were more spare than others, often noting no more than how many kills and what number they were through the door. Others noted the type of weapon or weapons used, if they could be made out from the grainy video. Inside four boxes, names of li
terary characters were written with a question mark and circled: Scout, Richelieu, Holmes, and Watson.

  ‘We think they gave themselves classic literary aliases. They’re leaving behind messages using classic literary quotes. So, our next step should be figuring out the aliases of the other nine UNSUBS. Right now, the aliases are a jumping off point to telling us more about the killers. The more individual UNSUBs we can profile, the more we can piece together what they’re about as a group and how we might find them,’ Jenna said.

  ‘Don’t you think it’s possible it’s just a gimmick? You know, they needed to be able to call each other names while running their … heist … or whatever it was … so they just said, ‘OK, everybody pick a celebrity name,’ or ‘Let’s all be superheroes!’ Why assume it’s anything more than just the first category that came to them?’ Teva said.

  ‘That should be obvious, Rookie,’ Dodd said, clapping Teva on the back as he reached the group. ‘Sure, they could just be names, but the note and witness message aren’t even the only things that say literature is at the very core of this case. We know the UNSUBs picked aliases rooted in it, but we also know – to some degree anyway – they’re playacting it. We just saw a guy beat someone half to death with a weighted riding crop, for fuck’s sake. Maybe just the one sick perp has a hard-on for Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s characters and used this outing as an opportunity to cosplay and promote his terroristic agenda at the same time. But look around. Crazy weapons that don’t even make sense when a few AK-47s and a grenade would’ve done. From the look of some of that hardware, these perps must’ve robbed the Smithsonian or knocked over an antique store on the way to the bank.’

  Teva’s face turned red, and she looked down. Quiet.

  Dodd was right, but damn, he could be an ass. Especially lately, he’d seemed to have it in for Teva.

  Jenna shook the thought. Focus.

  ‘Dodd’s right. I didn’t bring butter with me to grease his big head when it gets stuck going out the door later,’ Jenna said, taking a long pause to shoot him a menacing glare, ‘but he’s right. Their actions, words, and the couple of names Ashlee Haynie managed to remember hearing all make it seem like examining the aliases to enhance their individual profiles is warranted.’