“Yeah, right.” Javier wanted to kick the man’s ass. “Tell that to the jury.”

McBride turned his back on the photographer and walked a short distance away, motioning for Javier to follow. He stopped, turning to face Javier. “You need to chill. I don’t blame you for being angry, but I can’t let you harass people in my custody no matter how badly they deserve to have their asses kicked.”

“Got it. Sorry, man.”

McBride lowered his voice. “How is she?”

“She’s coping.”

It bothered Javier that none of Laura’s friends knew the full weight she was carrying on her shoulders. How lonely these past two years must have been for her, keeping her heartbreak and worry for her little girl to herself, living with a sense of guilt and shame that should never have been hers to carry.

“Does she know about Tower yet?”

Javier shook his head. “I’ve kept the TV off, and she’s been staying away from her laptop except to connect with her mom through Skype. She hasn’t read the papers either because I recycled them.”

“Good call. How much does she know about Killeen?”

“She’s called the hospital twice to get an update on Killeen’s condition, but they won’t release any details. The last we heard, doctors had upgraded Killeen to fair. That seemed to ease her mind.”

McBride squinted against the bright sunlight, his gaze fixed on the city beyond. “Killeen was good at her job. I hate to think her career might be over.”

Javier knew from experience the regret McBride was feeling. Killeen had been wounded on McBride’s watch, and he would carry that with him. “She knew the risks, and she asked to be assigned here.”

“Yeah.” McBride didn’t sound convinced.

Neither was Javier.

Javier had spoken those words more times than he could count—for wounded men, maimed men, dead men. He’d said the same thing about himself.

Just words.

“West tells me you might be facing a disciplinary hearing for getting yourself involved in Laura’s situation.”

“West has a big damned mouth.”

McBride grinned. “I just wanted to let you know that I’d be happy to speak on your behalf if it comes to it. I still have a few connections inside NSW.”

For a moment, Javier didn’t know what to say. “Thanks, man. I appreciate it.”

“You let me know.”

“Will do.”

Nearby, two uniforms escorted the photographer across the roof toward the exit, one of them carrying the bastard’s hardware.

“I swear if you break my camera, I’ll sue for every dime you got!” The photographer was still shouting by the time they all reached the street seven stories below, his threats now laced with profanity. “I’ll have your fucking badge!”

As they walked past, Javier couldn’t stop himself. “Motherfucker.”

* * *

LAURA HAD JUST hung up from talking with Alex at the paper when her cell phone rang again. Thinking it was Alex calling to clarify something, she answered without checking the display. “Hey.”

“Hello, Laura. Am I catching you at a bad time?”

“Gary.” He was the last person on earth she wanted to talk to.

“You’ve been ignoring my calls.”

“You ignored your promise.”

“I was just doing my job. You’d have done the same thing.”

“I’m sorry you think so.”

“Hey, you came to me, remember?” His voice was soothing, as if he were speaking to an upset child. “You asked for help in countering Tower’s allegations, and I did my best to provide that. By showing that footage, I generated sympathy for you. Yes, it helped boost our ratings, but all that means is that more households got your message. What’s wrong with that?”

He’d never understood the human element of journalism.

“You forced me to watch that footage on live television.”

“Well, it paid off for you. The poll on our website shows that ninety-six percent of our viewers believe Tower is simply trying to save face with his accusations against you—not that I suppose any of this means much to him now. Do you think he was behind it all, some kind of vendetta? He must be involved somehow.”

“What are you talking about?”

“You haven’t heard?”

“Heard what? And this is all off the record, by the way. No interview.”

“Tower was found shot in the parking garage where the sniper hid.”

Laura got to her feet. “Tower was shot?”

“Your handlers really are sheltering you, aren’t they? Yes, he was shot. He’s on life support in ICU. They’re not sure he’s going to make it.”

Derek Tower. Shot. On life support in intensive care.

Laura was so stunned that it took a moment for Gary’s insult to sink in. Her face flushed, cheeks burning with anger. “Is there anything else?”

Her handlers?

“Mostly, I wanted to say I’m sorry the interview put you in danger. If I’d had any idea what was going to happen, I would’ve insisted we send a crew to your place rather than having you go to the studio. I care about you, kid.”

Yeah? Well, I think you’re a jackass.

“Thanks, Gary. I need to go.” Not bothering to wait for his good-bye, she ended the call and sat on the edge of her bed.

Why hadn’t anyone told her about Tower?

As soon as she asked the question, she knew the answer. They’d been trying to protect her, trying to prevent her from becoming emotionally overwhelmed. How weak she must seem to them, how helpless, how fragile.

She’d thought she had her life together again, but the past two weeks had proved her wrong. She needed to be stronger, to quit waiting for Al-Nassar’s goons to attack her or kill her. She needed to fight back somehow.

How would she have handled this four years ago?

She would have investigated the bombing and the shooting, doing her best to uncover the perpetrators and expose their motive.

Her thoughts turned to what Gary had told her. It couldn’t be a coincidence that Tower had been shot at the parking garage. Was he working with Al-Nassar’s men? If he was, why would they shoot him? Maybe he’d gone there to tidy up loose ends by killing the shooter and had been shot himself. Or maybe he was the shooter and he’d been the loose end. But why would Tower want to kill her?

I want the truth about why my men are dead. Since you’re the key to my getting that info, terminating you wouldn’t make much sense, would it?

None of this made sense.

There was only one place she knew to start looking for answers.

She walked to her chest of drawers and took out the thick manila envelope Janet had left for her.

* * *

JAVIER FOUND LAURA in her office reading something, a look of intense concentration on her face, her hair twisted into a knot at her nape, a purple highlighter in her hand. Documents were spread across her desk.

“Working on your VA article?”

She didn’t look up, her gaze fixed on the page in her hand, her blond brows bent in a frown of concentration. She answered almost absentmindedly, still focused on whatever she was reading. “Something happened two months ago. He must have met someone new or fallen in with the wrong crowd.”

“Who?”

She didn’t say. “Or maybe I don’t have all the files.”

He walked over to her and reached for a stack of documents. They were intel communiqués of some kind, memos about Ali Al Zahrani. On the back, each was stamped “Classified” in bright, bloody red. “Where did you get these?”

Laura’s head snapped up, her gaze colliding with his, an unmistakable look of guilt on her face. “Uh . . .”

Busted.

“Did McBride leak these to you?”

She took the pages from Javier’s hand. “I can’t reveal my source.”

He saw the envelope on her desk, recognized it—and it clicked. “Agent Killeen. She gave them to you. They were in that envelope that you found on the floor when we got back home last night.”

Laura glared at him. “You can’t breathe a word to anyone, especially not Zach.”

Javier was an expert at keeping secrets, but he wasn’t used to keeping them from his team, and for the moment, McBride and the others were his team. “What are you hoping to do with all of this?”

She sat down, began to arrange the piles. “I just want to understand. I need to know how a good kid like Ali could wake up one morning and decide to be a terrorist. What could make him suddenly turn his back on his family, his community, his life?”

“Maybe it wasn’t as sudden as it seems.” In Javier’s experience, the seeds of terrorism were planted early in a kid’s life.

“His browser history was full of searches about video games and topless Hollywood stars, and then two months ago, he created a new subdirectory on his computer and started searching for information on jihad and how to mix ANFO.”

“The kid moved from boobs to bombs fast.”

“Too fast.” Laura tucked the papers back inside the envelope and turned to her computer. She opened her browser, typed in a URL. “My gut tells me something must have happened to send him over that edge, and I need to know what it was. I want to create a list of the stories I was working on a couple of months ago. Maybe I wrote something that offended or provoked him.”

Javier sensed the tension in her. He could feel how hard she was fighting to be tough, to hold herself together. He bent down, looked at her computer screen, and saw that she was on the Denver Independent website. “You’re making this way too personal. “

“His mother said he cried when he thought I’d been killed. So why would he try to kill me himself three years later?”