When (31 page)

I looked down. The numbers continued to flicker back and forth, but more slowly. It was almost like a pulse getting slower and slower. “Yes, he’s alive,” I told him. “But
I’m not sure for how much longer.”

Only a few moments later, we arrived at Culligan’s warehouse. Faraday pulled up to the large bay door and ordered me to stay in the car. He then ran to a man bent with age, who was
standing in the entry. I rolled down my window so I could hear, and watched Faraday flash his badge and then get right up into the old man’s face, pointing at him and yelling that he was
going to arrest him for obstruction unless he told him where he could find Wes.

The old man waved his arms a lot, clearly unafraid of Faraday. “I told you on the phone, pal, that I don’t know where the hell that lowlife is! He never showed up for work today,
okay? And the other half of his crew called off sick! Says he’s got chest pains…My aunt Fanny, he’s got chest pains!” My mind flashed to the memory of Rick sitting next to me on
Mrs. Duncan’s couch, his deathdate prominently hovering above his forehead, and I was shocked to realize that today was his deathday. With a pang, I knew that Rick had been right; it’d
be his heart that would give out on him. “Always something with them two!” the old man continued angrily. “Most unreliable crew I got!”

Faraday balled his hands into fists and looked like he was ready to pick the man up and shake him for information. I felt I had to do something so I jumped out of the car and rushed over.
“Does he know where Wes lives?” I asked, trying to distract Faraday from violence.

The old man turned to me. “He lives on Thirteenth Street,” he said, waving his hand in the general direction of the street behind us.

“What house number on Thirteenth Street?” Faraday barked.

“How the hell should I know? You want me to pull his file, that’s gonna take me a while. They’re at headquarters with HR.”

“What’s Wes’s last name?” Faraday growled.

“Miller,” the old man spat.

And before Faraday could turn away I asked, “Do you know what kind of car Wes drives?”

The old man turned large impatient eyes at me. “They’re hiring kinda young down at the FBI,” he said, but then he added, “He drives a pickup. A Ford F-150.”

“Is it a dark color like gray or charcoal?” I pressed, the adrenaline coursing through my veins making my heart pound.

“Yeah,” he said. “It’s black. Why, you seen him?”

I didn’t answer; Faraday and I simply turned and ran back to the car. He threw it into gear, and we peeled out of there. “Buckle up!” Faraday yelled, as I was pulled hard to
the right by the force of his hairpin turn.

While I struggled to get myself strapped in, Faraday pushed a button on his dash. A woman’s voice came on the line. “Grand Haven FBI, Agent Butler speaking.”

“Christine!” Faraday yelled. “I need an address for Wes Miller on Thirteenth Street in Grand Haven!”

We heard nails clicking over a keyboard then, “Six-eight-six Thirteenth Street, and, sir?”

“Yeah?”

“Wes Miller has a record. Convicted of three counts of sexual assault and two counts of rape in twenty ten. Sentenced to six years in Sing Sing. It looks like he only served three and a
half.”

“When
exactly
did he get out?” Faraday growled, baring his teeth as he wound through traffic.

“July tenth, twenty fourteen, sir.”

Faraday snuck me a glance, and then he gripped the steering wheel even tighter. “Christine, I need you to send every available agent to that address. Code ten-seventy-eight and a possible
ten-fifty-two. Tell everybody we’ve got an ANA!”

There was an audible gasp, and then she said, “On it, sir!” The line went dead and Faraday clicked the dash again to end the call.

“What’s ANA?” I asked, feeling helpless and anxious.

“Agent Needs Assistance,” he said distractedly. “We only use it when one of our guys is in serious trouble.”

I looked again at the photo. It was taking longer and longer for the 2051 date to come back onto Wallace’s forehead. I was so worried that we weren’t going to be in time.

Faraday screeched to a stop in a run-down neighborhood in a bad section of Grand Haven. He jumped out of the car almost before it’d come to a complete stop and raced to his trunk. There he
got out a bulletproof vest and threw it over his head, latching the Velcro sashes. He then moved back to the open door and leaned into the car, across my legs, to pop open the glove box. He pulled
out a carton of bullets and a gun clip, then slammed the glove box closed again and began to load his gun. “You’re to stay put, Maddie,” he said, his voice level and firm.
“Under
no
circumstances are you to get out of this car. Do you understand?”

“I understand,” I said, so scared I was trembling.

In the distance I could hear sirens. Lots of them. They seemed to be coming from all directions. Faraday finished with his gun, pulled back on the barrel to load the chamber, and with one last
firm look at me, he shut the door.

I had the urge to call out to him to stop—I felt a terrible foreboding, but he was already across the street, running over to a white house with peeling paint and a rickety-looking porch.
I watched him creep up the steps and ease his way over to the window while gripping his gun with both hands. Faraday peeked into the window, then pulled his head back. He crouched and ducked low
under the pane to stand up on the other side and peek in again.

The sirens drew nearer and I whispered, “Please, please,
please
…wait for them!” But he didn’t. Faraday moved more agilely than I would’ve expected, and slipped
over the railing to the brown grass. He then darted around the side of the house, and I lost sight of him.

For several seconds nothing happened, and I waited and watched with bated breath. Then, almost as if a curtain had been pulled back, all sorts of cars with flashing lights appeared on the
street. The tires screeched, and the sirens cut out almost instantly, but the strobe lights continued to flash. Cops emerged from their vehicles with guns drawn and vests on. They descended like a
dark blue swarm on the house, and I found myself crouching low in my seat. A few agents went up to the door, others stayed on the lawn, and still others went to the right and left of the house.

For a moment, nobody moved except to make eye contact with one another and signal back and forth with their hands. In that small window of silence, I heard a slight buzzing sound coming from the
dashboard, and when I could pull my eyes away from the scene outside I looked down and saw a police radio set under the dash. Quickly I reached over to turn up the volume, and as my thumb and
forefinger made contact with the knob, everyone on Wes’s lawn flew into action. The door to his house was kicked in and several people darted inside. My fingers turned the knob and the
interior of the car erupted with sound. It was like everyone was screaming at once. “Ten-fifty-two!” someone shouted. It was so gravelly that I couldn’t tell if it was Faraday or
not.
“Ten-fifty-two, ten-fifty-two, ten-fifty-two!”

And then at the door of the house, all of those agents and officers who’d gone inside came rushing back out as if the house was on fire. Suddenly, amid all the shouting I heard,
“…gas! GAS! GET OUT! GET OUT!”

I put a hand up to cover my mouth as the most unnatural sound reverberated from inside the house right before a giant ball of flame came shooting out, and windows and sections of the roof
literally blew up in a huge, deafening explosion that cracked the glass on the driver’s side doors of Faraday’s car. Officers and agents threw themselves to the ground, and I dove down
onto the seat, too. Bits of debris pummeled the roof of the car. and I shrieked at every thump. Shouts from the radio were drowned out for only a second or two before picking up again, this time at
double the intensity. I found the courage to lift my head and peek over the rim of the door out the window, and the scene was chaotic. The house was fully engulfed in flames, and one of the patrol
cars was on fire. All around, agents and officers were scrambling to help one another get away from the house. People in neighboring houses began running out of their homes to see what was going
on, and those agents and officers on scene tried in vain to wave them to get back inside.

I waited and watched, unable to believe my own eyes and fearing the worst for Agent Faraday. Had he been at the back of the house when it exploded? If he had, he was probably dead. Without
taking my eyes off the scene, I felt around for the photo of Faraday and Wallace. That’d let me know if both men were still alive, but it wasn’t next to me or under me. It must’ve
gotten tossed on the floor when I dove for cover.

And then, as if a prayer had been answered, Faraday appeared with singed shirt, carrying Wallace with two other agents. I saw a lot of red on Wallace’s chest, and I grabbed the photo,
which had, in fact, fallen to the floor. Pulling it up, I realized that his numbers were still flickering back and forth—but 2051 was now getting more play. He was still alive, and I thought
he’d make it if they could only get him to the hospital in time.

As if on cue, an ambulance pulled up and Faraday shouted to the two men helping him—who were also a little singed—to move toward it. Two paramedics jumped out, and within seconds
they had Wallace on a gurney and were putting him into the ambulance bay.

More sirens sounded in the distance and I knew that the fire trucks were on their way.

The moment the ambulance took off, Faraday limped his way over to me and pulled open the door. “What’s the picture say?” he demanded, his face, clothing, and hair smudged with
soot.

“I think you got to him in time. His numbers are still flickering, but the twenty fifty-one date is a little stronger now.”

Faraday jumped in the car, and without another word he put it into gear and headed off in the direction of the ambulance.

I peered behind me. “Should we really be leaving?”

“They can handle that mess for now,” Faraday said, pressing his foot to the accelerator.

When we reached the hospital, Faraday’s phone was going off repeatedly. He ignored it. After parking in an illegal zone, he flashed his badge to a hospital worker, who looked like she
might protest, and pulled me over to the ambulance, which was parked with the back doors flung open. Faraday went right over to the gurney where Wallace was being unloaded, and ran alongside it
when he was wheeled inside. “Kevin!” he yelled. “Buddy, you gotta fight! You hear me? You gotta fight and stay with us!”

I hurried along behind the gurney but was soon crowded out by emergency room staff. Faraday was finally tugged away by a woman in scrubs who grabbed him by the elbow and tried to get a look at a
bad cut on his arm. “It’s fine,” he said moodily, trying to shake her off.

She lifted up his elbow. “You need to let them work on your friend without you in the way.
And
, in case you hadn’t noticed, you also need stitches.” She tugged him back
down the hall toward me. “Don’t make me sedate you!” she snapped when he resisted.

I had to work to suppress a smile. Faraday caught my eye and motioned to me with his chin. I followed him and the nurse to a curtained area. The minute he was seated on the gurney he said,
“He’ll need blood. I’m O negative; I can donate to anybody. Hook me up and let me help him.”

The nurse scowled. “Oh, you FBI boys sure know how to give orders, don’t you?”

Faraday was looking around wildly. I knew he was worried about Wallace. I lifted the photo, which I’d brought with me, and peered at it. “What’s it say?” I heard him ask
me.

Wallace’s numbers were flashing less and less frequently and settling for longer and longer periods on 8-7-2051. “He’s doing better,” I said. Lifting my gaze, I saw the
nurse eye me curiously—but she continued scrubbing Faraday’s arm and prepping it for the stitches.

I waited with him while he was stitched up, and when the nurse finally left him to answer a page, I moved over to his side. I’d been keeping an eye on Wallace’s photo, and I
hadn’t seen it change in almost two minutes. “Anything?” he asked me.

I turned the photo so he could see it. “I think you can put this back on your desk, sir. He’s gonna make it.”

Faraday let out a huge sigh and grabbed the photo to hug it to his chest while turning his face away from me. “He’s my best friend,” he said after a few minutes, lifting his
gaze back to look at me. “And you saved his life, Maddie.”

“Me? You’re the one who found him.”

“I never would’ve gone looking if you hadn’t seen his photo. He’s got a gunshot wound to the chest. That son of a bitch shot him.”

I’d guessed as much from all the blood. “Do you think Wes Miller was inside the house when it blew up?”

Faraday ran a hand through his hair. It came away covered in singed black hairs. He looked at his palm with some measure of surprise before answering me. “I have no idea. They’ll
need to put out that fire first and then go looking for a body, but I doubt he was inside. His truck wasn’t in the drive or on the street, so he’s probably running for the Canadian
border by now. If I was him, that’s where I’d be headed.”

“Can you catch him?”

Faraday lifted his phone and tapped at the screen, wincing as his injured arm moved. “Oh, we’ll catch him,” he said. “Or die trying.”