Reed took the ribbing—that’s how it went for cops—winced a little at the cold fury on his face, and figured he’d take some heat from his CO over the dick remark.

“You hit the Internet already, Quartermaine.”

One of the other uniforms tapped a computer screen. “McMullen’s blog.”

“Crap.”

“Aw, she calls you young and studly, and…”

“What?”

“She brings up the DownEast Mall. Don’t sweat it, rook. Nobody reads her bullshit.”

Everybody read it, Reed thought. Including cops. Just like plenty had read the book she’d published the year before. Massacre DownEast. With her buzz, the likelihood of the damn phone video going viral—and national—catapulted to the top of the heap.

He knew the word had already started burning when Essie—now Detective McVee with the Portland PD—stepped in, signaled to him.

She walked him into the currently empty roll-call room.

“You okay?”

“Yeah, sure.”

“Something left a mark.” She tapped a finger to his bruised jaw.

“Hit the back of his head on the takedown. It’s okay.”

“Get some ice on it. The media’s going to play with this a little. Young hero of DownEast Mall becomes hero cop—with a bite. And like that.”

He shoved at his hair—cop short, as his sergeant insisted he keep his loosely curling mop trim. “Shit, Essie.”

“You’ll deal. Your sergeant’s going to give you a little flick over the ‘dick’ remark. But he, and every cop in Portland and its ’burbs, is going to give you a nice golf clap over it. Don’t worry about it, and don’t worry about McMullen or the rest of the media. Keep your head down and do the job.”

“Well, I was,” he pointed out.

“That’s right. And what the dick’s video showed was a cop doing his job, maintaining his composure and control—with the exception of a muttered word. A word the video also shows was well earned by said dick. You did it right, Reed, and I wanted you to hear that from me, since I feel I had something to do with getting you in that uniform.”

“You had a lot to do with it. I felt … I had to get him. When I saw that woman bleeding on the floor, I had to get him. It wasn’t like a flashback sort of thing. I didn’t flash back to that night or anything like that, but it was sort of like when I knew I had to get that kid.”

“Instincts, Reed. You’ve got them.” With approval, she gave him a fake punch on his bruised jaw. “Keep using them, and learn from Bull. He’s a solid son of a bitch despite his bullshit.”

“He rides my ass—that’s not a complaint. Especially. He was gentle as a priest with LaDonna Gray. I guess that’s something I’m learning from him—how to handle victims so they don’t feel so victimized.”

“That’s a good one. How about you come to dinner next week?”

“I could eat. Are you still seeing that professor?”

“Some cop you are.” She held up her left hand, wiggled her fingers to show off the ring.

“Holy shit, Essie.” He started to reach out, stopped himself. “I can’t hug a detective in the precinct. It’ll wait. He’s a lucky guy.”

“Damn right. If you need to talk, you know who to call. I’ll text you about dinner.”

He went straight to the locker room to change out of uniform. He’d been off shift since before he’d filed the paperwork. He found Bull hanging up his own uniform jacket.

“You finished getting kissed from the Detective Bureau?”

“Can’t kiss her. She just got engaged.”

“Huh. Cops oughta know better than to get married.” He pulled on a plain white T-shirt. “Did you call that civilian witness a dick when you fucking knew he was recording you?”

“It’s on the recording, so I’d be stupid to deny saying it.”

“Well.” Studying himself in his locker mirror, Bull scraped a hand over his crew cut. “Looks like I’m going to buy you a beer.” He shut his locker. “You might make a half-decent cop after all.”

CHAPTER SIX

Patricia Jane Hobart devoured McMullen’s blog along with a bowl of veggie sticks with gobs of hummus.

She’d been a tubby child, routinely indulged by her mother with cookies, snack cakes, and her favorite M&M’s. Her interests—computers, reading, watching TV, and the occasional video game—merged well with her appetites. She’d often consumed an entire bag of Oreos (she preferred Double Stuf, chilled in the fridge) washed down with a liter of Coke while immersed in a spy novel, a murder mystery, the occasional romance, or testing her hacking skills.

While her father (redneck loser) and mother (hapless idiot) battled their marriage to dust, she enjoyed playing one against the other and reaping the rewards of more chaos—and more cookies.

By the age of twelve she carried one hundred and sixty pounds on a height of five feet two inches.

She played her teachers and neighbors as slyly as her parents, wearing the mask of a stoic child bullied by her peers. She was, in fact, bullied, but she invited it, embraced it, and used it to her advantage.

While the adults stroked and cosseted her, she plotted and executed vengeance with the stealth and focus a CIA operative would admire.

The boy who dubbed her Patty the Porker took a flying header off his Schwinn when the chain she’d compromised snapped.

She considered his fractured jaw, broken teeth, hospital stay, and the thousands for dental work his parents had to shell out almost enough payback.

The ringleader of the girls who’d stolen her underpants while she was in the shower after gym and then creatively tacked them to a drawing of an elephant before posting them on the bulletin board nearly died when the peanuts Patricia crushed to powder and slipped into her thermos of hot cocoa sent her into anaphylactic shock.

By the time she hit her teens, Patricia was a virtuoso of vengeance.

Occasionally she enlisted the aid of her brother, the only person in the world she loved almost as much as herself. Her schemes engaged him—she plotted several for him as well—enough to keep their bond strong after the divorce.

She hated that JJ lived with their worthless father, hated that he actually preferred it. She understood why. He could run wild with no repercussions, sneaking beer and weed while she remained stuck with their whiny martyr of a mother.

But JJ depended on her. He wasn’t particularly bright, so he needed her help with schoolwork. He had impulse-control problems, and needed her to remind him that payback worked best when carefully crafted.

She enjoyed nothing more than carefully crafting payback.

At seventeen, her brother too often showed the world the angry, violent, bitter beast. On the other hand, Patricia’s quiet, studious, kid-with-a-weight-problem fa?ade hid a cunning, brutal psychopath.

Perfectly aware that teenage boys—and she considered all men on that level—would stick their dicks in anything, she had sex with both Whitehall and Paulson. She calculated it as a way to control them—useful tools—and to make them believe they controlled her.

JJ knew better, but blood was thicker.

She devised the plan. A mass shooting that would shake the core not just of the community she despised, but the city—the entire country. She worked on it for months, selecting and rejecting locations, refined and refined the timing, the weaponry.

She told no one, not even JJ, until she’d settled on the mall. The mall, where giggling teenage girls who treated her like dirt ran in packs. Where perfect parents with their perfect kids had pizza and went to the movies. Where old people who should just die already walked in their ugly tracksuits or rode around on scooters.

She considered the mall a perfect location for payback on everyone and everything she despised.

Even after she told JJ, she swore him to secrecy. He could tell no one, could write down nothing they discussed. When the time was right, when she had everything in place, all contingencies nailed down, they could bring in his two friends.

She walked miles in the mall—joining those revolting old people for their preopening exercise, and letting them make her a pet.

She took photographs, made maps, studied mall security. Took off a little weight as cover, and directed JJ to get a part-time job at the mall.

He chose the theater, so she worked that sector in for him.

By her calculations, Operation Born To Kill would go green mid-December, giving her time to work out kinks, and capitalizing on the holiday crowds for the most impact.

They would take out hundreds.

But then JJ, literally, jumped the gun. And hadn’t even told her.

After all the work she’d done, he’d let his impulses rule him. She found out about the shooting from a bulletin when the local news broke in during a rerun of Friends.

She’d had to scramble to destroy her notes, her maps, her photos, every scrap of six-months’ work. She hid her laptop in a neighbor’s broken down garden shed. She’d bought the laptop—used exclusively for the mall project—for cash when visiting her grandparents in their big-ass, fancy house in Rockpoint.