Backfire Read Free

delivery, but neither Brady nor Briggs can tell us much that’s helpful.”
    “I’d like to speak to both Briggs and Brady myself later,” Savich said as he stood.
    Roper nodded. “I’ll send both of them up.”
    Savich shook his head. “No, let me come down to the mezzanine to your turf.”
    Cooper McKnight sat forward. “Unless this guy’s a loon, he’s got to be from one of our cases. We could start with the most recent gnarly one—Bundy’s daughter. Even though Comafield’s close relatives seemed normal as apple pie, who knows? Maybe there’s a nutso in there.”
    Roper looked at Savich. “I’ll leave the video. Let me know when you want to speak to my people.” He paused in the conference room doorway, a big man, built like a thick, knotted rope, Savich had always thought, and added, “I don’t like this punk coming into our house like that. There are a lot of brains in this room, so take care of this for us.”
    Sherlock read the note again. “
For what you did you deserve this.
Something
you
did specifically, Dillon, so it’s got to be a case you were personally involved with. There’s Lissy Smiley, for example—that was up close and personal. But it could take weeks to make sure there’s no one, absolutely no one, who would care enough about any of the dozens of perps we’ve brought down to do something this nuts.”
    Dane Carver said, “I wonder what the threat is, exactly?
For what you did you deserve this.
What is
this
? Is he targeting someone specific?”
    All eyes turned to Sherlock.
    Sherlock splayed her hands in front of her. “It doesn’t have to be me. All right, all right, I’ll be really careful. We’ve got the guy on camera, we’ll get a good facial reconstruction. It’s our best lead.”
    Savich saw everyone was looking at him now. He tried to keep his face blank, but it was hard. He realized he was clutching his pen too tightly. It was Sherlock, he simply knew the threat was directed at Sherlock. Who else? He wanted to say something, but nothing came out. He couldn’t stand himself.
Get it together.
He said, his voice sounding calm and in control, “If any of you come up with anything we haven’t mentioned, let me know. I’m going down to the security section, speak to Briggs and Brady. Sherlock, you and Dane start work on this.”
    On the elevator ride to the mezzanine, Savich remembered the shoot-out in Mr. Patil’s Shop ’n Go in Georgetown. Was it only three weeks ago? The woman he’d had to shoot, her name was Elsa Heinz. Who else knew Savich had shot her? Everyone, of course. It was in the papers, his name included. Was someone who knew her out for revenge against him? A loved one for a loved one?
    He put her out of his head. Threats were part of the job. Both he and Sherlock knew that. They and the CAU would deal with it.

Georgetown
    Washington, D.C.
    Friday morning
    Five a.m.
    Sean leapt impossibly high, caught the football from his mother, and took off toward the end of a park that was really a baseball field, with Savich on his heels. Savich couldn’t catch him because Sean’s legs were stilt-long, eating up huge swathes of ground, and he was rounding bases for some reason, clutching the football tight to his chest, heading for home, and John Lennon was suddenly singing into Savich’s left ear in his flat whiny-smooth voice about imagining people getting along, like that would ever happen.
    Savich reared up in bed and automatically looked at the clock.
Five a.m. Not good. No telephone call was ever good at five a.m.
    He picked up his cell. “Savich.”
    “Dillon, you’ve got to come, quickly, it’s bad, it’s really bad, I’m afraid—” Molly Hunt’s voice, choking and thick with tears and fear. Dillon thought,
Not little Emma, who’d survived so much—
    “I’m putting you on speakerphone so Sherlock can hear you. Tell us what’s happened, Molly.”
    Sherlock was leaning up beside him, her face pale in the predawn, her hair tangled wildly