Girl of Rage Read Online Free

final step, Bear closed his eyes and waited, because he knew if Simpson hit him, he was going to feel it.
    The punch didn’t come. After a few seconds, he opened his eyes. Gary Simpson had turned away. “They don’t know if she’s going to make it, Bear.”
    Bear muttered under his breath, “Motherfuckers.”
    “Who did this?”
    “Don’t know yet. It was partly an inside job. And I didn’t tell you that. We’re working on it, all right? Whoever did this—we’ll find them. They won’t get away it. I promise.”
    Simpson leaned close. Bear braced himself, but Gary didn’t have any fight left in him. Instead, he whispered in Bear’s ear. “Don’t just find them, Bear. Kill them. Do you hear me?”
    “Yeah, buddy, I hear you.”
    Twenty minutes later, Bear was back on the road. He was grateful, for the ten thousandth time, for Leah’s parents. As they had in more than one crisis in the past, they’d stepped in, Leah’s mom watching the kids while her dad held a vigil at the hospital. He ached to go to them right now. What kind of father stayed at work at a time like this?
    The type of father Bear was. He couldn’t go to his kids right now, because he needed to find out who had hurt their mother. So, he drove from the hospital to the Thompson family’s condominium in Bethesda.
    The crime scene.
    Despite the very late hour, traffic was snarled on Wisconsin Avenue. A cluster of police vehicles—both federal and Montgomery County, Maryland—spread out in front of and around the 20-story building, blue lights flashing. One lane of Wisconsin was blocked. Bear pulled his car to a stop, parking half on the sidewalk, and a local police officer in a heavy rain poncho approached rapidly. Bear flashed his badge and said, “I’m Bear Wyden. Diplomatic Security.”
    The cop backed off immediately. They knew who he was, of course.
    Bear sprinted through the rain to the entrance of the building. Two more local cops were there, and they scrutinized his ID while he stood there dripping on the tile floor. One of them made a quick phone call, presumably to ensure Bear was cleared to enter the crime scene.
    “Forensics team is upstairs,” the officer finally said.
    “Thanks,” Bear replied. Then he walked toward the elevator.
    The ride up to the 20 th floor seemed to take hours, and the soft music playing in the elevator didn’t help. Finally, the doors opened. A uniformed officer—this one from Diplomatic Security—blocked the elevator.
    “Bear,” the officer said. Now that he’d verified Bear’s identity, he stepped back.
    The FBI forensics team had spread out across the entire top floor of the building. From the door of the elevator, the hall went off in two directions, with two doors at each end, a total of four penthouse apartments. As he stepped off the elevator, Bear saw that large sections of the floor were taped off.
    Ejected cartridges littered the floor near the elevator, each of them neatly marked. It was clear, from here, what had happened. The shooters—as best they could tell there were three of them—sailed past the ground floor security by flashing their IDs. They rode up the elevator just as Leah was calling Bear to ask why a relief team was coming on duty.
    On arrival, they opened fire the moment the elevator opened up. Mick Stanton had been halfway down the hall to the left. Twenty-eight years old. Unmarried. He finished law school at Georgetown and decided a future of poring over the books and writing briefs didn’t suit him, so he’d joined the Diplomatic Security Service two years before. A promising young agent, shot in the head.
    The shooters shifted their fire to Leah. They’d missed her with their first round of bullets, probably because she’d instinctively ducked. She took out one shooter, midway down the hall, and wounded another before she got hit.
    The position of the dead shooter was marked clearly on the floor. That one was Ralph Myers.
    Ralph Myers. Bear had known him ten