Scorched (27 page)

“Thank you.” Kelsey reached over and squeezed her hand. She realized how much she’d desperately needed the very brief bit of girl talk. “I’m glad you came by.”

“Anytime. You take care.”

“I will.”

“Gage.” She gave him a curt nod and walked out.

Kelsey glanced down at the medicine in her hand. She looked up as the door opened again and Gage stepped out. The door thudded shut and she stood there, staring at it. What now? She went to the window and shifted the curtains. Gage stood in the parking lot, hands on hips, towering over Mia. He was at least a foot taller than she was, but Mia had her arms crossed over her chest and didn’t look at all intimidated. Kelsey couldn’t hear the words, but clearly they were arguing.

Kelsey watched, astonished, as Gage leaned down and kissed Mia’s forehead. Mia looked equally surprised.

She stepped away from the window. Gage reentered the room and started unpacking food. The scent of French fries filled the air.

“What did you say to her?” she asked.

“Nothing.”

“Nothing?”

“I told her to put the claws away.”

Kelsey stared at him.

“She cares about you. I get it. But I’m sick of being treated like I’m pond scum.” He glanced up at her. “And I don’t want her bad-mouthing me while I’m trying to make things right with us.”

“You are?”

He plopped an enormous order of fries in front of her. “I told you that. What, you didn’t believe me?”

Kelsey didn’t know what to believe. And she didn’t know how she felt about his effort to sweet-talk her friends and “make things right” when she was almost
certain it meant starting up a relationship he didn’t really want.

Kelsey distracted herself by addressing the deadly illness they’d almost been exposed to. She took out a pill from each of the brown bottles and set them on the table.

“Take one a day,” she instructed. “It’ll give you peace of mind.”

Gage sneered. Kelsey popped her pill and washed it down with a slurp of syrupy-sweet Coke. Gage handed her a cheeseburger.

“Thanks, but I don’t feel like eating,” she said.

“You stressed?”

“Just a little.”

“Why don’t you take a hot bath?”

“That sounds really good.” She stood there, waiting for the innuendo.

He continued to unpack food.

“I’ll just soak in the tub for a while, see if I can get some of these kinks out.” She waited. No suggestive look. No lewd comment. “Are you feeling okay?” she asked.

“Considering my career has gone to shit? I’m feeling pretty good, actually.” He sank into the chair in front of what appeared to be two super-size meal deals. “Why?”

“Nothing.”

“Okay, here’s the plan.” He unwrapped his burger. “You go have your soak. I’ll have some of this food. And then we’re going to sit down at the table and map this thing out, because I’ll be damned if I’m going to sit around and wait for any more shit to come down. It’s time to make a battle plan.”

Kelsey’s ring tone sounded and she crossed the room to dig the phone from her purse. After a brief conversation, she turned to Gage.

“We’ll have to postpone the battle plan. That was Gordon Moore.”

His eyebrows arched. “How’d he get your number?”

“No idea. But I’m urgently needed back at the Delphi Center.”

CHAPTER 17

By the time Kelsey got things into position and arrived at the lab, everyone else was already gathered in the visitors’ conference room on the ground floor. Moore stood up when she walked in, and the impatient look on his face told her they’d been waiting on her.

“Sorry I’m late.” She looked around the table and was startled to see not only Ben Lawson, but his boss, Mark Wolfe, who ran Delphi’s cyber-crimes division. Mark had a laptop open in front of him. Kelsey sent Ben a questioning look as she took a seat at the table.

“Where’s Lieutenant Brewer?” Moore asked.

“Close by.” Kelsey smiled to mask the threat behind the words.

Moore glanced at the door, then at the conference room window, which had a view of the woods behind the building. Kelsey pretended not to notice the agent’s look of irritation.

“I’d hoped you both could weigh in on this, Dr. Quinn.”

“It’s Kelsey,” she said. “And I don’t think you’re
going to be seeing much of Gage until you drop the warrant for his arrest.”

Moore gave her a hard stare, and she knew he was debating whether to take up this topic in front of the others.

“Call me Gordon,” he said. He glanced at the window. “And maybe you’ll be able to give us what we need without him.”

“Hi!” Mia breezed into the room, looking windblown and frazzled. She dropped into the chair beside Ben, and Kelsey could tell she wasn’t surprised to see the other people here. Obviously, she’d been told more about this meeting than Kelsey had.

“Let’s get started,” Gordon said. “Mia, you want to share the results?”

“I’m still running the DNA on the beer can from the house in Utah,” Mia said. “But after swabbing the can, I took it down to the fingerprint lab and they came back with a hit almost immediately.”

“That was quick,” Kelsey said.

“That’s because the print belonged to someone we know well,” Gordon said, and she caught the edge in his voice. “Mark knows him, too, from his days with the FBI. Mark?”

Kelsey held her breath. This was going to be the proof they needed of Trent’s involvement. Maybe it would corroborate her story enough for Gordon to drop the warrant for Gage and arrest Trent instead. She slipped her phone from her pocket to make sure the line was open. She wanted Gage to hear this.

Mark cleared his throat and looked at the faces around the table. With his dark good looks, the former
criminal profiler had always reminded Kelsey of George Clooney. Mark was somewhat new to the Delphi Center, but he’d already established an impressive reputation by spearheading the lab’s new cyber-profiling unit.

“When I worked at the Bureau, I did consulting for various law-enforcement agencies both here and overseas,” Mark said. “They brought me in on the Bali market bombing of 2009, which killed thirty-three people, including four Americans. I helped develop criminal profiles on some of the suspects.”

Kelsey leaned forward, puzzled by his lead-in.

“One of the people I profiled in that case was this man.” Mark tapped his computer mouse and turned to face the screen at the end of the conference room. An enormous photograph of a smiling boy in a football uniform filled the screen.

“Meet Adam Ramli aka Asmar Husin.”

Kelsey gaped at the image. The kid in the photo couldn’t have been more than sixteen. He had dark, tousled hair, braces, and a slender build that was dwarfed by his bulky shoulder pads.

“Where’s he from?” Kelsey asked.

“Peachtree, Georgia.” Mark looked at her. “Here’s a more recent photo.”

The next image showed the same person, but all the features had matured: elongated nose, full beard, deep-set eyes. But the real difference was the facial expression. The youthful smile had been replaced by a defiant stare. And instead of holding a football, he held an assault rifle.

“Adam played wide receiver for his high-school football team,” Mark continued. “He was on the debate
squad. He was elected president of his senior class. He’s smart, charismatic, and five years ago he became a committed member of the Asian Crescent Brotherhood, a terrorist organization headquartered in Indonesia.”

Silence settled over the room.

“How old is he?” Mia asked.

“Twenty-four.”

“And he’s American?” Kelsey still couldn’t believe it.

“Born and raised,” Mark said. “He speaks English with a Southern accent. He’s got an American birth certificate. A U.S. passport. Without the beard and weaponry, he looks like the kid who might take your order at Applebee’s. He’s the jihadist next door. In short, he’s our worst nightmare.”

A new photo appeared on the screen, this one showing Adam Ramli crouched in the dirt beside what looked like a homemade bomb. Again, he held an assault weapon in his hand, and on either side of him were heavily armed men. Adam looked straight at the camera.

“Can you confirm that this is the man you saw in Utah two nights ago?”

Kelsey glanced at Gordon and realized the question was directed at her. She looked at the photograph again.

“That’s him.”

The room went quiet.

“He was using a white sedan,” she added. “A Buick or maybe a Ford, late model. It looked to me like a rental car.”

“It’s good information.” Gordon looked at Mark. “Fill us in on the rest. Whatever you know.”

“Well, the Bureau’s case file on this guy is probably
a foot thick, but I’ll hit the highlights. Adam’s father was born in Indonesia. He was raised Muslim but hasn’t practiced since he came to American thirty years ago to attend medical school.”

“What sort of doctor?” Kelsey asked.

“Orthopedist.” Mark smiled. “Another bone doc, like yourself. His mother is from Atlanta. Used to work as a nurse, which was where she met her husband. Jennifer Ramli is a strict Southern Baptist and took her kids to church while they were growing up.”

“Kids?” Mia asked.

“Adam has a sister, Marissa. She’s a file clerk at a law firm in San Francisco. Anyway, shortly after Adam graduated from high school, he took a trip to Jakarta to visit relatives. Within months of that trip, during his freshman year of college at Georgia Tech, he started going to a local mosque. About this time, Marissa left home and moved to the Bay Area with her boyfriend. She’d had a falling-out with her parents, from what we can gather. Adam did, too. In April of his freshman year, he withdrew from school, cleaned out the checking account his parents had provided for him, and bought a plane ticket to London. Our investigation shows that this was when he met face-to-face with some people he’d previously only known online. He started visiting a mosque headed by a man on the Bureau’s terrorist watch list.”

Mark tapped a button and a video appeared on the screen. Kelsey recognized the footage she’d seen at Blake’s place.

“When Adam Ramli turned up at this Al-Qaeda training camp in Indonesia, he himself was placed on the watch list.”

“So, he’s Al-Qaeda or Asian Crescent Brotherhood?”

“Now he’s ACB,” Mark said. “Which is just as bad—maybe worse, because we know less about their operations. This offshoot of Al-Qaeda is extremely violent. Not long ago they kidnapped a group of missionaries in the Philippines. Thirty-one people were beheaded. All the female victims in the group showed signs of brutal sexual assault.”

Kelsey had heard about the attack while she was working in the Philippines. She watched the men on the screen as they conducted target practice.

“Stop the video.” She leaned forward. “That man there.” She looked at Gordon. “That’s James Hanan, the man whose bones our team recovered in the jungle on Basilan Island.”

“That’s correct,” Gordon said. “Our investigation shows that the week before Blake Reid’s death, he took a phone call from one of our lab technicians at Quantico, where he’d sent a sample for analysis. The technician confirmed the identity of those bones.”

Kelsey sat back in her chair. A sick feeling washed over her. The favor she’d asked Blake to do may well have gotten him killed.

“What is Hanan’s connection to Adam Ramli?” she asked.

“Besides being Asian Crescent Brotherhood? They’re both Americans. We’re seeing an increase in Americans joining some of these groups, and it’s very alarming. The groups gain an advantage because American membership helps them spread their message in English-speaking countries. Also, these guys possess U.S. passports, and if
we don’t know they’ve been radicalized, they can move in and out of our borders with little or no trouble.”

“Hasn’t his passport been flagged?” Kelsey asked.

“Absolutely,” Gordon said, “but the border’s porous. Or he could have come in on a fake passport. Or a stolen one. Someone with his accent and knowledge of the culture would be able to blend in easily and not draw attention to himself.”

“So, with Kelsey’s eyewitness account, plus the fingerprint evidence from Utah, we have to believe he’s here now,” Mia said.

“Which brings us to our next problem,” Gordon said. “Dr. Richard Spurlock. Until his recent death, the retired microbiologist was one of our country’s foremost experts in anthrax.”

A new photo appeared on the screen, and Kelsey got her first look at Richard Spurlock alive. He appeared thin, bald, and nervous behind a pair of wire-rim spectacles. He gazed straight ahead at the camera.

“This is a driver’s license picture?” Mia asked.

“It’s from his employee badge at Dugway Proving Ground, which is a high-security biological and chemical weapons testing facility in the Utah desert. Spurlock worked there for eight years and handled some of the most sensitive biological research ever conducted by the U.S. government.”

“Retired?” Mia asked.

“He was let go in 2005,” Mark said, “after a series of minor security infractions. Entering the lab at non-designated hours, failing to turn in routine reports, that sort of thing.”

Kelsey looked at Mark. “You profiled him, too?”