He had also obviously not been kidding about everyone being together, because he was not alone. As their boss walked into the empty lecture hall they were using, Brandon Cole walked beside him. Their somber expressions said this was bad. Very bad.
Brandon’s hair was disheveled, and he wore faded jeans and an MIT sweatshirt, as though he’d yanked on the first thing he could find. His eyes were suspiciously bright, his shoulders slumped.
Wyatt was in even worse shape. The man’s white dress shirt was wrinkled, untucked, and smeared with dirt. His usually crisp pants actually had a tear, and his shoes were caked with mud.
Worst of all was his demeanor. His boss seemed to have aged a decade since last night. Dark circles ringed his eyes, and his stubbled face was gouged with both anger and grief.
This isn’t just bad.
Rising to ask what had happened, Alec heard his cell phone ring. He glanced at it, saw Sam’s name, but, knowing she was safe at the hospital, didn’t answer. He quickly punched the power button, cutting the noise midring. Because the tension on Wyatt Blackstone’s face said he had something to say and that he wanted to say it only once.
“Oh, no,” he whispered under his breath, suddenly having an awful suspicion.
Wyatt confirmed that suspicion with four baldly spoken words.
“Lily Fletcher is dead.”
Jackie let out a shocked cry; Mulrooney lowered himself onto the seat he’d just vacated. Taggert snapped an obscenity, stalked to a corner of the room, and slammed his palm against the wall.
Alec just stood there. This was painful for him, even after knowing Lily for only a week. For the rest of the team, who had worked with her day in and day out for months? With what he’d gone through in Atlanta, he knew they were in for an awful time.
Wyatt gave everyone a minute to regain focus; then he explained. Since Alec had known about the mission with the other CAT, he didn’t need as much backstory as the others. But when it came to what, exactly, had happened last night, he was all ears.
“Why the fuck wasn’t she protected?” Taggert asked after Wyatt told them about the sting.
“She was supposed to be. The agent in charge assured me she would stay in the surveillance van. Unfortunately, they were all tricked.”
“By?” Alec asked.
“The unsub hired a vagrant to scope out the house while he watched from a few streets away. When he realized it was a trap, he tried to flee the scene. Apparently his accomplice was too smart for him, anticipated a setup of his own, and stole the car keys so he couldn’t be left behind.”
“So the real target panicked,” Brandon said, his voice barely more than a whisper. Having shared an office with Lily, he had probably been the closest to her. “He had no other means of escape.”
And then he spotted the FBI van nearby.
“Apparently Lily and the surveillance specialist assumed everything was under control, the suspect in custody,” Wyatt said. “The other agent stepped out of the van and was shot down immediately.”
“And Lily?” Jackie asked, her voice tremulous and her eyes full of tears. The first time he’d ever seen any sign of weakness in the strong woman. Considering the sheer awfulness of it, he couldn’t blame her.
Wyatt didn’t answer directly. “The agent in charge called me at one o’clock this morning, just as I got back to D.C.” His eyes gleamed with suppressed rage. “Why he waited three hours to call me, I don’t know. I caught a chopper ride down to Williamsburg. They had put out an APB on the van.”
“And Lily?” Jackie repeated, sounding agonized at having to wait for the rest of it.
Wyatt’s head dropped forward. His voice low, he told them the rest. “The van was spotted on Route 17, between Newport News and Yorktown a couple of hours after the ambush, driving erratically, weaving in and out of traffic. Police pursued, but the vehicle crashed off the Route 17 bridge into the York River, right at the mouth of the bay.”
Good God. Alec had driven that bridge when stationed in Richmond. It was pretty damn high.
“They were pulling the van up when I hit town,” Wyatt explained.
“Was she… Had she drowned?” Jackie asked.
“They still hadn’t found either body by the time I left. The back door was open; both of them must have washed out. They’re still looking in the river, but they might have been swept into the Chesapeake.” His shoulders slumped and he shook his head, as if processing this whole thing for himself for the first time. “I thought I should fly up here and let you all know what happened before you heard it from someone else.”
Stokes rose shakily to her feet. “If there’s no body, maybe she’s all right. What are we doing here? We should be down there helping with the search!”
Wyatt put a hand on the woman’s shoulder, steadying her, maybe even steadying himself. “Jackie, the interior was soaked with blood.”
“The other agent…”
“No,” he insisted, killing her hopes. All their hopes. “He was shot outside the vehicle, but there was a large blood-stain soaked into the carpet inside, as if someone had been lying there for a long time. It was Lily’s blood type.”
“God,” Taggert whispered. “I can’t believe this.”
“He shot her, carjacked her.” Wyatt’s voice filled with audible, barely controlled rage. “And then he let her bleed to death in the back while he tried to evade the police.”
“Fucking bastard,” Brandon said as he covered his eyes with one hand.
“Even if there were some slim chance she was still alive despite the blood loss, she would never have survived the crash and couldn’t possibly have swum to safety.”
Everyone fell silent, thinking about it. Remembering Lily’s shyness, her sweet smile. The way she always seemed just a little sad.
Emitting a strangled sob, Jackie stalked out of the room, followed by Brandon.
Wyatt watched them go, then blew out a heavy, shaken breath. “I need to go home, shower, and change. Update me by phone if you find anything.” He leveled an even stare on the three of them, Alec, Kyle, and Dean, adding, “We still have a job to do. The Professor isn’t going to take a day off to grieve, and neither can we.”
Message received. After one more moment of silence, all three of them returned to their places around the table and began removing files from the box, one by one.
Without another word, Wyatt Blackstone slipped from the room, leaving them to it.
Sam liked Detective Myers, who had been on the Baltimore PD for two decades. He talked only a little, asked no obtrusive questions, and showed no sign that he resented driving her to the prison. A perfect escort.
She still hadn’t talked to Alec. She had tried him again, leaving a message about her field trip, stressing that she had an armed escort. Hopefully by the time she heard from him, this brief errand would be finished and she would be on her way back to the hospital.
As they neared the prison, Sam remembered she had promised to let them know what she was doing, and dialed the number from which Mr. Carter had called her. A male employee answered. When she asked if the attorney was there, he put her on hold for several long moments.
Finally, the guard came back on the line. “He’s waiting for you,” he said. “We’ll leave word at the gate. When you get here, follow the signs to the administrative parking lot. There’s an entrance directly into the main offices; park there and he’ll meet you at the door.”
Thanking the man, she relayed the directions to Myers.
“You must be a big shot,” he said with a wry grin. “I’ve never been invited to the superspecial parking lot.”
“I’d gladly forgo the privilege if it means I never have to come to this place again.”
They reached the complex probably no more than an hour after Carter’s initial call, the light Sunday-morning traffic helping to shorten the trip. As promised, the guard at the gate had been expecting them and directed them onto a private drive leading to the reserved lot. In it, two cars stood close to a door marked RESTRICTED ACCESS: AUTHORIZED ADMINISTRATIVE PERSONNEL ONLY.