Page 57

Nutsbe drove aggressively for the Iniquus campus. And they were ready for him as he squealed around the corner.
Roaring through the open gate, Nutsbe finally lifted his foot from the gas and let the vehicle coast to the guest parking lot.
“Hey, Olivia. We’re here. Are you okay?”
“OODA loops,” Olivia whispered.
Nutsbe pulled calmly into a parking space right in front of the atrium door. “I’ve concluded, Olivia, that you’re a dangerous woman to be around. I can honestly say that being your neighbor is more dangerous than anything I’ve done as a member of an Iniquus tactical force.”
“I’m sorry,” she whispered. She was white as a sheet and shaking with good reason. He was a little shaky, too. Today had been a lot for a nervous system to process.
“Look, I don’t know what’s going on here. Are things coming at you? Are they directed at me? We both have jobs that can put a crazy’s target on our backs. Heck, it could be happenstance, just a run of wrong place, wrong times.” He repeated his earlier thought, but it tasted wrong on his tongue.
“It doesn’t feel like that.” She didn’t raise her voice above that whisper.
“You okay?” Nutsbe asked, turning off the engine. “Anything I can do?”
“Honestly, I could really use that bathroom now.”
Chapter Twenty-One
Nutsbe
Beowolf was back at his kennel playing with his pals, and Panther Force was back in the war room with their thinking caps pulled on, going over the knowns with Olivia.
Now, there was nothing else to be said.
They’d spent the last hour examining the events that had occurred since Olivia’s soon-to-be ex had put a rock through her kitchen door window.
It was a lot.
Olivia showed her prosecutorial chops as the team listed the complications on their whiteboard.
There were imbalances in today’s disclosure.
Olivia mentioned that she was on a team that had just seated a grand jury in a significant case and wasn’t at liberty to discuss it. She’d mentioned that she was in the final days until a contentious divorce. And lastly, there was the Offsed trial, which both Olivia and Nutsbe were involved with now.
On his side, Nutsbe disclosed nothing.
That Russia, Albania, and a retired senior FBI honcho might want him eradicated was left unsaid.
The sniper? Olivia was right; everyone agreed the wind made it difficult to tell if it was a professional or a disaffected Joe Schmo shooting from the parking garage roof. They needed to wait for the crime scene reports to better evaluate.
The motorcycles that were following their SUV into the ambush?
They weren’t amateurs; they knew to hang back.
They weren’t professionals; they made beginner mistakes.
The motorcycles were an in-between.
But that was assuming that the riders were doing something nefarious. With the rearview film on the big screen, they decided it was a valid option for the bikers to stay a certain distance from the SUV in front of them when it was erratically changing lanes and speed, the way Nutsbe had done to test his theory that his vehicle was being followed.
Neither Olivia nor Nutsbe could identify the sound of those bikes as the ones that had been harassing their neighborhood.
At least with the back-camera footage, they could get the make and model. Nutsbe put that on his to-do list.
The ambush?