Fireproof (Maggie O'Dell #10)

“Oh yes, of course, we wouldn’t want to keep you from standing by. So you know nothing about the fires? You’re just sort of here in case they need you?”


Then Jeffery must have realized he would lose his only opportunity, because Sam saw him switch back from antagonist to newscaster. “Certainly you must have heard something. I mean, you are on the inside of the perimeter. What’s the mood? They must be frantic to get those people out. Or do they already know it’s hopeless?”

Sam shifted the weight of the camera and in doing so adjusted her finger until the viewfinder went black. Her thumb found the mute button. The lights stayed on as if nothing had changed.

“I’m not authorized to give you any information.”

“What’s the harm in giving us a general sense of the mood? What it’s like to be behind the scenes?”

“I believe he already said he had nothing to tell you,” a woman’s voice said.

Jeffery’s head snapped to see the woman approaching them.

“Special Agent Maggie O’Dell. So pleased you can join us today.”

Sam moved the camera at his instinctive wave, but kept her finger in place. She was going to be in such trouble. Already her mind scrambled for an explanation. She had managed to get footage while sliding down a wall of mud during a hurricane. There would be no believable explanation for this blackout. And unless Jeffery heard the thumping of her heart, he seemed totally unaware of her secret.

“Mr. Murphy’s not authorized to give you a statement.”

In the back of her mind, Sam’s inner voice prayed, Please don’t say he’s your brother. Please don’t say I know him.

“I was just leaving,” Patrick said. He looked over at her before turning and Sam saw Jeffery notice. If there was any doubt that he recognized they knew each other, his smile wiped that doubt away.

“So Agent O’Dell, perhaps you can tell us what’s going on? Are there any fatalities? We’ve been waiting for some word to let our viewers know if everyone in that basement is okay.”

“I have no idea.” And she started to turn to follow Patrick.

“Maybe you’d like to comment on the profile piece we aired about you last night.”

Sam could see the agent’s shoulders push back, but she continued to leave. Sam hoped O’Dell wouldn’t unleash her anger. Sam would never be able to compensate for not getting it on film. Jeffery would certainly fire her.

And now Jeffery, ever the performer, turned so the camera captured a better angle of him before he delivered his blow. “Perhaps you’ll offer some comment after the interview tonight with your mother.”

O’Dell stopped this time. “Excuse me?”





CHAPTER 47




The last time Maggie sat in Dr. James Kernan’s office she had been even more on edge. Her world had been turned upside down by a serial killer named Albert Stucky. Several years before, he’d gotten away, leaving her cut and bleeding in a Miami warehouse, but only after making her watch while he gutted two women.

Albert Stucky ended up in prison, but during a transport he managed to escape, killing his two security guards. For his second rampage he decided to kill women who had the misfortune of simply coming into contact with Maggie: the pizza delivery girl, Maggie’s neighbor, a waitress.

It had been his sick game of cat and mouse, seeing to it that she received or found pieces of the women—a spleen in a cardboard pizza box, a kidney on a hotel room service tray. How could anyone blame her for being on edge? For feeling the need to be on alert 24/7, constantly looking over her shoulder?

Her old boss and mentor, Kyle Cunningham, had pulled her from the field, his idea of protecting her, not punishing her. Though at the time it certainly felt like punishment, working the teaching circuit. Talking about killers instead of tracking them, instead of hunting down Albert Stucky.

Jeffery Cole’s profile included some of the very things she had worked so hard to compartmentalize. But the exposé wasn’t the only thing conjuring up old memories and fears. If Ramirez had seen a man behind Maggie’s house last night, who was he? And why was he there in the middle of the night, in the middle of an ice storm? Was it the same man in the tunnel? She had no evidence, nothing to support her suspicions except a gut instinct.

It would sound ridiculous if it hadn’t, in fact, happened in the past. All of her memories of the Stucky murders came back to Maggie as she sat in her old professor’s office, waiting for him. In some ways it seemed like a lifetime ago. Right now it felt like yesterday, listening for the shuffle of his footsteps as she breathed in the remnants of cigar smoke, Bengay, and old leather.