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CHAPTER TWELVE

I rode by Mickey’s bike the first time in my half-frantic, growing panic, my legs churning, my throat stripped from screaming his name.

Only on my second pass up the road did I spot a flash of red. Half-hidden in the grasses, a clump of daisies jutting through the spokes as if in silent sympathy, the bike lay crushed, violated.

Beaten.

It lay in the weeds, tossed haphazardly aside as if a nuisance. A red Mini Viper, with platinum racing stripes on the fender, a foam cushion across the front bar, padded handlebars and dirt-bike wheels. Mickey got it for his eighth birthday only two weeks before he disappeared.

The front tire rim sagged, as if it had hit a boulder, dumping the rider over the handlebars. Dimples marked the paint, and a scrub across the red revealing the silver frame told the story of a struggle against the dirt road.

As if Mickey had scrabbled to his feet, tried to right the bike.

And was taken mid-action.

There’s a hiccup in time when tragedy occurs, a moment before it becomes personal, the information still clinical, still objective before it settles into a person’s brain, trickles into their bones, poisons their blood. It’s in this moment the instinct of disbelief kicks in, an invisible hand that snakes out to stiff arm the truth.

To protect.

To prepare the body for the onslaught of truth.

I felt it as I stared at Mickey’s bike, my breath catching.

I know it now as Burke pulls up to the morning’s carnage in my Camaro—he’s driving—and it’s a good thing because I could barely think enough to put on pants, my soiled dress shirt, grab a suit coat.

Frankly, I only move now because Burke is out of the car and striding ahead, toward Booker, who watches the scene with folded arms.

Burke hasn’t spoken to me since we left my apartment, his question still ringing in my head. How did you know?

I had no answer for him as I walked out of the bathroom, because my only explanation feels pitiful and even irreverent. I dreamed it?

This can’t possibly be a dream.

The pungent odor of burned flesh hazes the air, turning my gut. The smoke bites my eyes, and sirens rend the air. The drizzle of spray coats my neck, and behind the raucousness, I can hear Minneapolis’s finest shouting as they work to douse the fire.

It’s a house turned coffee shop. Why didn’t I remember that? I had all the pieces—the barking dog—not a German shepherd, but a Doberman running the length of the yard across the street, imprisoned behind chain link. And, down the street, an ice cream truck, parked in a driveway. Maybe I imagined the bells ringing.

The house is an old Victorian-turned unique venue. Now, it’s simply a house fire, flames consuming the upstairs windows, the porch collapsing, the front windows blown out. Glass glints orange against the flames.

Smoke blots out the skyline, just the finest edge of sunlight through the black.

I’m without words, caught in the catastrophe, one thought like a fist in my still hammering head. I could have stopped this.

Should have stopped this. Right?

I join Burke, the questions tangled in the chaos of my brain.

“Four dead, one on the way to HCMC,” Booker says without preamble. Hennepin County Medical Center. Two more ambulances are coming, but the only victims remaining are covered in tarps.

Burke glances at me. “This place was on the list.”

I frown, because the last thing I want John Booker to know is, well, everything.

Booker looks at me anyway, frowning. “What list?” He wears a stony, all business expression.

“A list of coffee shops,” I interject before Burke can throw me under the bus. “Possible other targets.”

Booker raises an eyebrow. Frowns.

That’s the moment my gaze falls on his wrist. On his watch. The watch I’m currently wearing. It’s a lightning bolt, right through me. The watch.

The one I’m also wearing. I look at it.

It’s still ticking.

“Rem thought it was going to happen again,” Burke says, the Judas. “And he was right.”

Booker’s frowning at me and I parlay the words into action. “The bomber could be in the crowd, right now, just like last time. We should be looking for a familiar face.”

For the first time, something reasonable appears on Burke’s expression and he doesn’t look like he’d like to pin me to the wall for some questioning. Instead he heads back to the car, and it takes me a second to realize he’s probably going to consult the pictures Eve gave us yesterday.

Booker is still staring at me, however. “Possible other targets? Why?”

“Bombers usually have reasons for their targets. Why a coffee shop? Why this coffee shop? There has to be a connection between these two.” Or three, I think, but I’m keeping that to myself for now.

Booker draws in a breath, then nods. But his gaze lingers on me, as if searching for something. He finally turns away. “Find that reason. Now.”

I hear ticking in my head as I follow Burke to the car. He’s retrieved the pictures now and has them spread out on the hood of the car.

Beyond him, Eve has arrived, her CSI side-kick Silas in tow. She looks tired, her kinky hair pulled back, and she wears no makeup as if she, too, got yanked out of bed.

She’s probably reeling, trying to find her footing, like me.

“We should interview people, see if anyone saw anything,” Burke says as I join him. He glances up at the crowd, as if searching.

Onlookers have assembled, just a handful of them this early in the morning, and God help me, I suddenly don’t remember anything . Did we interview anyone before? Did we track down the employees, cross-reference any of them with the other store? Did we discover commonalities?

Did we suspect that this was all connected? It’s a strange deja vu because I know I’ve been here before, but my memory is liquid.

“You see anyone watching?” Burke says, his voice cut low.

I glance at the pictures, casually, then scan the growing crowd. This area of town is rife with young professionals, many on bicycles, a few standing at the bus station. Neighbors congregate on porches, at the doors of their homes. A few cars have drivers standing with their doors open.

I’m going to need help.

I find Eve, still struck by the scene, judging by the look on her pale face.

“We need crowd pictures. Lots of them.”

She turns, her eyes wide. My tone is dark, brusque, but this is no longer a what-if.

“Now.”

She frowns, and I know that face. The one I get when I’ve pushed her, when she’s debating a retort. But we don’t have time for feelings, not when the suspect could be vanishing into the crowd.

I feel the passionate, darkly focused Rembrandt I’ve left behind working his way to the surface.

Good. Frankly, I need him.

“Right.” She has her camera and she starts snapping shots, along with Silas.

I return to Burke. He’s interviewed a couple spectators, written down names, and now he’s leaning against the car, staring at the crowd, then back at the pictures, comparing.

“Anything?”

He glares at me, his eyes dark.

“Tell me, right now, that you don’t know anything about this,” he says, low and nearly under his breath. But his tone contains enough of an edge that it leaves a mark.

“Of course not. I told you, it was— is —a hunch.”

He nods then and holds up a picture to the crowd assembled behind the fire trucks.

Why this coffee shop? My question to Booker needles me. It’s not a chain store, rather an artsy hole-in-the wall. I remember donuts being served from the back patio during an art show I attended shortly after I moved to the neighborhood. Donuts and organic coffee.

The explosion has littered said coffee—beans and grounds—along with glass and debris onto the street. A piece of burlap is soaked and tattered on the pavement. My gaze lands on it, and something about the logo—four leaves, four beans—nudges me.

I’m not sure why I pick it up, but a memory sloshes through my brain.

It’s cut off by the sight of a woman advancing on the scene. She’s young, dark hair and with a jolt, I remember her. Only, not from the past, but from my present. My real life.

Mariana Vega, real estate investor and current mayor of St. Louis Park, my district. She’s younger, of course, her hair long and in tangles, but she still possesses the take-no-prisoners approach she lives by in city council meetings.

The kind of stance that can deny a guy a building permit—appeal pending—for a second story on his garage, an addition that would make the perfect office. Maybe a place where a writer’s words wouldn’t get tangled, stuck?—

“She looks upset,” Burke says.

She’s yelling at Booker, gesturing to the shop. Her face is streaked with tears, however, and she’s almost sympathetic.

“She’s the owner.”

I’m not sure how I know that, but it feels like the right answer. And, despite our history and my clear memory of her cold-hearted verdict against my muse, I feel a twinge at her distress.

Although, maybe the insurance is her seed money for her massive empire. A random and unlikely motive, but I tuck that information away, and return to the pictures spread out on the Camaro.

“Hey,” Burke says quietly. His tone makes me look up. He’s staring past me, toward Eve, but beyond. “See the guy in the neon green shirt?”

I glance at the man. Maybe in his late twenties, he’s well over six feet, with inky black hair and a dark gaze that is seared on Mariana.

“Does he look like this guy?” Burke points to a man in a shot at yesterday’s scene. The man in the picture is standing across the street from the bombing, holding a coffee cup.

Could be. Dark hair, and although he’s wearing a baseball cap in the picture, the face seems similar.

Everything inside me ignites. Please.

“Close enough,” I growl and in a breath I’m sprinting.

I shoot past Eve even as I hear Burke give a shout. But I’m not slowing down.

I want him. Just to question, to put the pieces together, but my gut is screaming— yes.

Maybe this, right here, is why I’m here. I still don’t know how, but maybe, cosmically, there is a God out there who follows my nightmares, the cold clench the past has on my life.

And maybe He’s dishing out do-overs.

Neon has spotted me and a spark of panic flashes across his unshaven face a second before he turns and runs.

See? Instincts.

The bugger is fast, has longer legs and is in shape.

But so am I. This younger me has chops and I’m churning up the sidewalk like a man on fire. “Stop!” I yell because I’m supposed to, right? But there’s not gonna be a response.

Neon doesn’t even glance over his shoulder as he motors down the sidewalk.

He passes Aldrich, Bryant, and cuts south on Colfax.

I motion to Burke, hopefully behind me, to keep going and I follow Neon between two houses, across an alley, and over to Dupont.

He crosses the median, to the honking of a car, and thinks he’s going to lose me in the cemetery.

Hardly. I ran track in high school. And I have my young lungs back.

Burke’s yelling behind me, but I’m not losing this guy. He’s agile and fast, as if used to running. That’s my brain already applying judgment, I know, but it fuels me as my lungs burn.

Lakewood Cemetery is 250 acres of mausoleums and headstones cluttered with trees and footpaths.

I know this place.

I gesture Burke to angle down the footpath while I veer right to cut off Neon. He heads across open ground, past an alley of headstones and markers, trampling over them with impunity.

Spotting Burke, he cuts right. Well, Burke would scare me, too, sprinting right at him like a defensive end.

But Neon is my prey and when he trips over a marker, I leap.

He’s bigger, more solid, than I anticipate and shrugs me off even as we slam into the grass. I’m rolling and on my feet before he can find his. I take him down with a fist to the jaw.

My hand explodes, but Neon takes the hit like he’s expecting it. He shakes it off and lets out a curse.

“Get down!” I yell, but he’s not having it. Incredibly, he lunges at me.

That’s all I need to unleash everything inside me. The queasy, irritating deja vu that has me stuck in the past. The horror of the desecration of so many lives and frankly, even the sweat pouring down my back and the burn in my fist.

I’m here because of him.

He’s tackled me, but I trap his legs, pull his head down into my shoulder and slam my fist into his ear. He struggles, so I hit him again, and when he pushes away from me, I flip on him, my knee in his gut and crunch my fist into his face.

It’s all blurring now—the shouting, the heat rolling off me, the cursing of the man fighting back.

He lands a couple blows in my ribs, but I’m impervious. Then Burke pulls me off, shoves me away “Step back, Rem!”

He grabs Neon in an arm bar, flipping him onto his stomach. “You—stop moving. Stay down!”

Neon stops struggling and I sink to the grass, breathing hard.

Burke shoots me a look. “What’s wrong with you?”

Me? I stare at him. “What—he was in the crowd!”

“Maybe,” Burke says, his hand still on Neon’s back. Now, he leans in close to the man. “Talk. Why’d you run?”

Neon swallows, glares at me, shakes his head. There’s a confusion on his face that doesn’t make sense, and there’s nothing clicking in, no memory that might clear this up.

“Let him go!”

The voice travels across the green, sharp and resonant, authority in the tone. Booker?

What is Booker doing here? He strides up, a little out of breath. And behind him—Mariana? She’s parked her car on the street and is running across the grass in her bare feet.

“Let him go!” She echoes Booker’s words and I get a sick feeling.

Burke has risen, backing off Neon who rolls over, spit in his eyes. And by the way Booker glares at me, I know I’m going to have some explaining to do. I’m still sitting on the grass, however, catching my breath.

“This is Ramses Vega—Mariana’s son,” Booker says and extends a hand to the man. “You okay?”

Ramses looks at me as if he’d like to have another go at me, and barring Booker, (and maybe Burke) he would.

Let’s go, buddy, I say with my eyes as I climb to my feet. My shirt is torn, grass stains my suit pants. I don’t even try to brush them off. This is why I stopped wearing dress clothes to work.

“I have my reasons, boss,” I say to Booker and he considers me for a moment even as Mariana runs up and throws her arms around Ramses. He embraces her, dark eyes glued on me.

“What is your problem?” Mariana shrieks, and there go my chances of getting that garage addition.

“He was at yesterday’s bombing,” I say quietly.

Ramses presses his thumb to the corner of his mouth, and he’s sporting a doozy of a goose-egg under his eye. I’m sure I have my own war wounds, but you don’t see me whining.

“And today’s.”

Only now do I realize that Mariana has turned to him and is translating for him.

No wonder he looked so confused.

He responds in Portuguese, a deduction I make when it pings in my brain that Mariana is Brazilian.

“He was there yesterday,” she says, her voice a little shaky. “He was going to class. He attends English class at the Calvary Baptist Building, at the immigrant school there. The coffee shop is a block away from the school.”

My memory can’t confirm that, but it doesn’t matter because Booker is apologizing to Mariana, taking her hand, wearing apology on his face.

Listen, don’t go that easy on her, I want to say, but Booker is a nicer guy than me.

Ramses and his mother head back to the car as Booker rounds on me. “Another instinct?”

“He was at both places,” I say. “C’mon, boss.”

Booker’s looking at me again as if trying to see through me. “You can do better than this,” he says finally and turns, heading back to the scene.

Burke however, lifts a shoulder, gives a half-grin. “He nearly took you.”

I shake my head, not ready to let this go. Because it’s a little weird to me that that Mariana ran an entire election campaign, her face plastered on signs and leaflets around my neighborhood for the better part of a year and not once did I see—or hear mention of—her immigrant son.

As if he simply didn’t exist.

That question is a burr under my skin all the way back to the scene. The crowd is dispersing, the fire trucks packing up, the fire fighters walking through the now charred, smoking house.

I spot Eve taping off the scene, and I want to go over to her, but maybe I don’t have time to smooth things over.

Because—I feel it in my gut, along with the realization that I’m in way over my head—this is real.

And I’m running out of time.