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Garcia performed a turnover to the Agent in Charge, an experienced and serious man, Will Fletcher. “We’re taking the electronics. It was agreed upon up the chain of command,” Garcia told AIC Fletcher.
“Yes, we have that directive,” Fletcher said.
“I know you guys have a lot on your plate today with the shooting at the university. Any updates on your men yet?”
“No, they’re still being worked on,” Fletcher said. “Is this everything you found?”
“Yes. You’ll note how clean this place is when you search it. We didn’t disturb much,” Garcia said. Then it dawned on him there was something they didn’t find that they should have. “Where are your passports?” Garcia asked, his eyes sweeping over the seven men who they now had seated on the couch and on the kitchen table chairs lined up beside it.
“Safe deposit box at bank,” one of the men said.
“Which bank?” Garcia pushed.
“The one on campus,” he said.
Laura Lee knew it was a limited banking facility when she was a student. They had no safety deposit boxes at that time. “Hound dog, can you verify if that facility has safety deposit boxes?” she transmitted, stepping away from the detainees. “It didn’t when I was a student here,” she whispered to Garcia and the AIC from the FBI.
“That’s a negative. No safety deposit boxes,” Caleb Smith confirmed.
“No boxes,” Garcia said aloud. His gaze flickered to Fletcher. “Good luck with them. Let us know where their passports are if you get that info out of them. We’re going to leave them and this scene to you now.”
Fletcher presented his hand. “Thank you for your help here and at the university. I am told without your two men; chances are at least one of ours wouldn’t have made it.”
They drove back to the university to retrieve all of their vehicles. Laura Lee handed the key fob back to Mike as she got out of the car. He’d driven. BT jogged to catch up to her as she walked towards the car she’d driven to the university that morning, as a few of the others returned to their cars as well. The police tape no longer cordoned off the entire area, just where the men had been shot and surrounding the entrance to the building. The bodies had been removed, but the pavement was stained with blood.
“I’ll catch a ride with you,” BT said.
She handed him the key fob to that vehicle. “You can drive.”
She settled into the passenger seat and her gaze settled on the shattered glass door. The images from the shooting flashed through her mind, the sight of the bright red blood expanding over the three men’s chests. The sound of gunfire, Garcia’s, and BT’s body’s jerking back before they crumpled to the ground. The shouting voices as all the men on the scene called to each other and the pain-filled screams of the men who’d been shot reverberated through her senses.
“Are you okay?” BT asked her. Everyone was off comms now. They would have a debrief at the hotel with Shepherd after they arrived back.
“I should be asking you that,” she said. “You were shot here. Thank God your bullet-proof vest stopped the rounds.”
“I’m sure I have a few nasty bruises,” BT said. “Felt like I’d been kicked by a horse, not that I’d know what that feels like.”
“That’s not what I meant,” she said.
“I know,” BT agreed. “And yes, it stays with you. I’ll have nightmares for a while that it could have been bad.” He shifted to drive and pulled away.
Sierra
Laura Lee was quiet until they pulled into the parking lot of the hotel. “I want full Operator training. I don’t ever want to be in a situation I can’t handle, or help with, as a full member of the team. The truth is, I wouldn’t have known the first thing about how to search for that shooter. And I got lucky with that guy who ran from the house.”
BT nodded. “I’ll tell Shepherd.”
He parked the car behind the building and the two of them entered the hotel through the back door. They went directly to Garcia’s room. He had his computer tablet open on the desktop and was already logged into a video chat room. Even though they had been in one of the first cars to pull away from the Criminal Justice Building, Mike and Jimmy were the last to arrive. They came into the room with two large bags of takeout food for the team.
Laura Lee’s stomach growled. She gazed at her watch. It was fourteen hundred hours. Despite everything that happened, she was famished. Food was passed out as Shepherd joined the chat.
“Good job, team,” he said. “I know the scene went to shit fast, but none of that was our doing. It is unlikely that Jin Ma was the shooter. As Bubbles demonstrated, the time needed to get from the gym to the science building and in position to shoot couldn’t be achieved in the time he was out of our sight.”
“Were there any cameras to capture who could have been the shooter?” BT asked.
“Possibly,” Shepherd said. “The FBI is going through all footage.”
“He may not have been the shooter, but Jin Ma and all those supposed students he lives with are guilty of something,” Garcia said.