The 13-Minute Murder Read online

  “There are bound to be lookouts,” Mason says. “So it’ll be critical to observe how they react. Using your night vision and thermal imaging cameras, pay close attention to any suspect movement or defensive repositioning. If you glimpse just one bad guy running into just one shed, that’s a piece of tactical intel we’re otherwise sorely lacking.”

  But if, as expected, the suspects refuse to cooperate?

  “Well, then…we’ll make them. Four-points access, on my order. Full sweep of the property, clearing and moving. Sniper overwatch has the green light. Tac teams are to reassemble and form up outside the farmhouse, then engage the final breach. Any questions?”

  A chorus of “No, sir” echoes throughout the high-ceilinged room.

  Mason takes a deep breath. Then he goes down the line, looking each of the forty-six agents directly in the eye.

  “Stay smart out there. Hear me? Aim to live. Shoot to kill.”

  And with that, he dismisses the agents. They begin a final gear and weapons check, then start climbing into the fleet of armored trucks and personnel carriers that will be shuttling them to the farm.

  Mason is about to do the same…when he spots trouble.

  Agent Britt Baugher, a lanky, pimply-faced twenty-six-year-old barely out of the academy, appears to be scribbling onto his forearm with a black Sharpie.

  “Grading your performance ahead of time, agent?”

  Baugher can only stutter, embarrassed to be caught. “I, I…I was just…”

  Mason grabs the young man’s arm. B+ is written directly on the skin.

  “You could tattoo your blood type on your forehead; it won’t speed up a blood transfusion one second.”

  “Yes, sir, but—”

  “Now I know this isn’t your first time executing a warrant. And you know all your medical info is on your ID badge. Or did you forget yours at home?”

  Baugher looks down at his boots. “It’s just…Have you heard about those ATF agents who stormed Waco? They knew the raid was gonna be rough. So they wrote their blood type on their arms.”

  “I did,” Mason says, frowning. “But that was more than twenty years ago. And how’d it turn out for them? Besides,” he continues, looking the agent in the eye, “none of us is gonna need a blood transfusion. ’Cause none of us is going to get shot. Clear?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The young agent nods and hurries into his assigned armored truck.

  With nearly the whole team ready to move out, Mason heads over to the giant, metal-plated lead personnel carrier he’ll be riding in with Agent Taylor.

  But before he gets in, he slips his hand behind his Kevlar vest. He removes his flip-front wallet, which contains his FBI badge and ID card.

  He slides out the roughly three-by-two-inch piece of plastic. On the front is the Bureau’s famous blue-and-yellow shield. Mason’s agent number. His signature. A photo of him taken a few years back, his hair a bit longer, the wrinkles at the edges of his eyes and mouth a little less noticeable.

  Then Mason flips it over. On the back is printed a wealth of vital information. His age, height, and weight. His allergy to penicillin. And on the very last line, AB−. His blood type. There just in case.

  “No,” Mason says suddenly, angrily.

  Then he climbs into the armored personnel carrier beside Agent Taylor. And keys the radio.

  “All units, this is Bravo Command. Let’s roll out.”

  8 minutes, 10 seconds

  They’ll be here soon. I have to move fast.

  I can’t let them catch me. Not like this.

  I’m curled up on the floor in a heap of tears. A few cardboard boxes are strewn around me. The emotions I’m experiencing are overwhelming—and contradictory. Relief, worry, satisfaction, dread. You name it, I’m feeling it.

  I thought I was ready, finally, to sort through some of Alex’s belongings.

  I was wrong. Again.

  After my failed attempt to enter his room a few weeks ago, interrupted by the local sheriff showing up at my door with Alex’s friend Danny, the last person to see my son alive, I cut myself a little slack.

  Then I got caught up in the wedding, and its flurry of final preparations. Scrambling to get the house spic-and-span for the few dozen guests who would soon be traipsing through it, I swept and dusted and vacuumed and polished every inch.

  Well, almost every inch.

  My dead son’s bedroom was left completely untouched, the door still shut tight. And it was going to stay that way.

  Until I noticed, in the wee hours after the wedding…

  It had been opened.

  This was after the last song had been played. The last drops of beer and bourbon had been drunk. The last of our friends and family had gone home. Even Stevie and Kim, who live in the farmhouse themselves, had left. (They’d be sleeping at Hank and Debbie’s that night to give Mason and me the place to ourselves.)

  Loopy and exhausted from all the stress and joy of that wonderful day, I didn’t just let my strapping new husband carry me over the threshold. I teasingly ordered him to lug me all the way across the lawn, up the stairs, and into our bedroom. Good sport that Mason is, he happily obliged…but demanded, with a sexy wink, that I find some “creative ways” to pay him back.

  We had just reached the top of the steps when I noticed the door to Alex’s bedroom was slightly ajar.

  I gasped. I covered my mouth in shock. I leaped out of Mason’s arms, nearly tripping over the train of my wedding dress.

  It was obvious enough what had probably happened. One of our guests must have been searching for the bathroom, and decided to keep the honest mistake to herself.

  But none of that changed the fact that Alex’s bedroom door was open.

  For the first time in months.

  I slammed it shut as quickly as I could, then leaned my head against the door frame. And let out a single sob.

  Mason came up behind me and wrapped me in his muscular arms. He just held me as I struggled to pull myself together. It was such an emotional day already, and now this.

  “Too bad we splurged on the honeymoon suite,” Mason whispered with a smile.

  I laughed. I had to. I needed to.

  God bless this man, I thought. An average new husband might be less than thrilled at the prospect of spending what should be his steamy wedding night chastely comforting his grieving new wife instead. But Mason was anything but average. He’d managed to make a sad moment tender and loving and funny all at once.

  “I’m sorry,” I managed to whimper, turning around to take in his handsome face.

  “Nothing to be sorry for,” he insisted. “That’s the nice thing about spending the rest of our lives together. We’ll have plenty more nights to try again.”

  Try again.

  That’s what I’m doing right now.

  And failing.

  Our wedding was a few weeks ago, and Mason had been gone for almost all of them, working on an important case that had taken him all over the state. But tonight was a special occasion. He was going to be nearby, he said, and had managed to get the night off. So I had decided to cook a big family dinner.

  It would be the first time all of us—Stevie, Hank, Debbie, Kim, Nick, J.D., Mason, and me—gathered around the table since we’d tied the knot. It would be a celebration dinner of sorts, too. Our farm was saved. My “hell of a plan” was almost complete. Things were looking up for the Rourke family. We were all riding high.

  So I decided I might finally be ready to start going through Alex’s stuff.

  Not his bedroom. I knew I wasn’t prepared for that yet.

  But I’d remembered my son had a few boxes of old junk hidden away in the attic, some odds and ends he hadn’t touched in years. So I figured, in the hour or so it would take for the pie crust to set and the chicken to finish roasting, those boxes would be as good a place to start as any.

  And so far, they seem to be. Inside I find some old textbooks and dusty paperbacks. A stack of CDs from
bands I’ve never heard of. A tennis racquet, still almost brand-new, that Alex had used just once before losing interest in the sport forever. It’s all stuff I can easily donate or throw out, without a second thought.

  I’m nearly through all the boxes. It’s only taken a few painless minutes.

  But then I reach the bottom of the last box.

  And I find something that takes my breath away.

  It’s a drawing Alex made when he was in first grade: two stick figures, a boy and a woman, both wearing giant spacesuits, floating in the starry night sky. His teacher, Mrs. Cunningham, had written in blue marker in block letters at the bottom: “When I grow up, I want to be an astronaut, so I can go to outer space with Mommy.”

  Reading those words feels like a knife straight to the heart.

  For so many months now, I’ve mourned the life that Alex had been leading in the present. I’ve barely thought about the one he was going to lead—in the future.

  His dreams of being an astronaut may have been a childhood fantasy, but his future had been very real. He’d been spending time with girls. He’d started talking about college. He was going to have a career someday. A home, a wife. Children of his own. Alex would have reached the stars like he wanted to—in his own way, on his own terms—if only he’d had the chance.

  I clutch the drawing to my chest and collapse onto the floor, letting this profound new wave of grief wash over me.

  And I stay there. Paralyzed. Minutes ticking by. Tears streaming down my cheeks.

  Oh, Alex. My baby. Will this pain ever go away?

  I know the chicken is still cooking in the oven and my family is on their way. I know I can’t lie here forever. Maybe just a little bit longer…

  When I hear something outside—a vehicle pulling up in front of the farmhouse.

  I look at my watch. It’s early yet. The guests aren’t supposed to be arriving for quite some time. Who could it be? I force myself, finally, to get up.

  I walk over to the attic window and peer down. The sun is setting, and the vehicle is hard to make out. A few people exit. But I can’t tell who they are.

  It must be Stevie and Hank and their wives. Right?

  Who else could it be?

  3 minutes, 20 seconds

  “This is the FBI!”

  Mason is crouching behind the hood of a giant Lenco BearCat armored personnel carrier, talking into the 150-decibel speaker system mounted on its roof. He’s raising his voice, but Mason could whisper and his words would still echo across this dark, quiet, sweltering slice of Texas for a quarter mile.

  “Your property is surrounded by armed federal agents!”

  That’s putting it lightly.

  Before beginning his callout, SWAT Agent Taylor received confirmation from all his team leaders—and passed it along to Mason—that each group had taken their positions along the four sides of the property.

  “We are in possession of a search warrant for the premises and arrest warrants for all individuals on site!”

  As the agents had approached, the power had also been cut to the farm—but to Mason’s surprise, that didn’t make much difference. The lights inside the main farmhouse went out, then flickered back on a few seconds later: diesel generators, most likely.

  “This is your one and only warning! Come out peacefully, with your hands interlaced on top of your—”

  “Sir, take a look at this!” whispers Agent Norris Carey, the burly thirty-nine-year-old leader of the primary tac team closest to Mason and Taylor.

  He shows them an LCD screen, a live feed of a thermal camera sweeping the acres in front of them. The land is scattered with prickly bushes and stumpy trees—many of which seem to be giving off glowing orbs of white-hot heat.

  “What in the hell am I looking at?” asks Taylor, confused and alarmed.

  “I…I just don’t know,” Carey responds. “Trees and shrubs, they don’t give off this kinda heat signature. Teams at every position are seeing the same thing.”

  Mason immediately knows what’s happening—and snorts in displeasure.

  “Damn, are these smart sons of bitches.…”

  He had witnessed this simple but effective defensive technique used just once before: on the sprawling estate of a Mexican drug lord outside Ciudad Juárez while taking part in a joint U.S.–Mexico strike-force assignment. He’d never seen it stateside.

  “Heat lamps,” Mason explains. “Trying to thwart our thermal scopes. Gotta be wired to the generators, kicked in automatically as soon as they did. To hide the heat signature of any gunmen who might be hidden in the foliage.”

  “Christ almighty,” Taylor says under his breath. He quickly counts up the number of heat orbs he sees on the screen. “So there could be twelve concealed shooters on our perimeter alone?”

  “Or none at all,” Mason replies. “But they know we’ll have to check and clear each one. Slows us down more than coating the grass with tar.”

  Mason keeps his cool, but Taylor grows enraged. He grabs a subordinate’s night-vision binoculars and looks out at the distant farmhouse.

  “I don’t see a damn one of them coming out waving a white flag,” he barks.

  Mason is praying tonight ends peacefully and decides it’s worth a bit more breath. He keys the bullhorn radio again, and goes a bit off script.

  “We all know how this is going to go down! No mystery about it. All of you on this farm are going to jail for a very long time—for what you’ve done, for the money you’ve stolen, for the people you’ve hurt…for the cowards you’ve been! I’m offering right now a chance for you to be men. Any fool can pick up a gun. It takes real courage…to put one down!”

  Mason waits. And holds his breath, praying he got through to them. Even the gruff Taylor gives him a begrudging nod. Well said.

  “We’ve got movement!” exclaims Agent Carey.

  Mason looks back at the farmhouse. Sure enough, its side door has opened. A figure emerges, holding a rifle above his head…

  Then quickly lowers it and opens fire.

  “Damn it!” Mason shouts, ducking down behind the vehicle and reaching for his walkie-talkie.

  Gunshots pierce the quiet night, ricocheting off the armored car’s metal plates.

  “Shots fired, shots fired!” he yells in the radio. “All units, move in!”

  The giant armored truck roars to life. Mason, Taylor, Carey, and the dozen agents in their team fall in line behind it as it plows through the wood-and-barbed-wire fence along the farm’s perimeter—and keeps on moving, gunfire still ringing out.

  The raid is just beginning.

  5 minutes, 15 seconds

  A sleepy farm in west Texas has become a brutal battlefield.

  It’s been that way for almost an hour.

  Mason, his unit, and the other three teams closing in have all been slowly but surely making their way across the few acres of land toward the main farmhouse.

  One bloody inch at a time.

  Multiple skilled sharpshooters are perched in the second-floor windows of the farmhouse, giving them a scarily good elevated position.

  The fighting is slow. Brutal. Hellish.

  The Feds, even with all their training and gear and armored vehicles—and outnumbering the suspects at least three to one—are taking nothing for granted.

  More than a few agents have already gotten shot and pulled out. None is wounded seriously, but the teams’ numbers are beginning to thin as they get closer.

  And now, they’re very close.

  The farmhouse is just a few dozen yards away.

  “Two o’clock!” Mason yells, spying a crouched shooter leaning out of a prickly sage bush on their flank.

  Without waiting for his teammates to react, Mason raises his M4 carbine and fires three rapid, perfectly placed shots—two to the chest, one to the head.

  “Neutralized!”

  The suspect is dead before he hits the dusty ground—right beside the rusty metal space heater nestled in the brush beside him.r />
  The team keeps moving.

  Mason sticks his head up and scans the terrain up ahead. Virtually all that stands between his team and their side of the farmhouse is a small, rickety woodshed.

  God only knows what could be inside.

  “Form up at the entryway,” Agent Taylor orders, in an urgent whisper. “Two plus one. Cam it and breach, on my go.”

  As soon as the armored vehicle gets between it and the farmhouse, four SWAT agents peel off from the team and hurry into position: two on each side of the shack’s closed wooden door.

  Mason, Taylor, and the others provide cover as one of the agents slips a tiny, flexible camera—about the shape of a black licorice Twizzler—beneath the door. He rotates it all around, giving a second agent holding a smartphone-size digital monitor a 180-degree night-vision view of the inside.

  “Looks clear,” the agent whispers.

  So Taylor gives the cue, and a third agent produces a metal crowbar—and wrenches open the door with a wood-splitting crunch.

  Mason watches as the four agents burst into the tiny space, the red laser beams atop their guns whipping all around, aiming at every nook and cranny.

  Discarded auto repair tools and engine parts line the walls. But otherwise the shed appears empty…

  Until a gunman suddenly jumps up from behind a tool chest and unleashes a torrent of gunfire.

  The agents inside duck for cover and shoot back, riddling his body with bullets.

  But not before one of the Feds on the outside gets hit.

  “Goddamnit!” Mason groans, cupping a bloody shoulder.

  “That son of a bitch get you?” asks Taylor with concern.

  Mason leans his back against the rear side of the armored vehicle for support. He pulls out a flashlight and examines his wound.

  His shoulder was only grazed, but it hurts like hell. Mason can feel it, the pain hot and sharp, throbbing in sync with his pulse.

  “One of us can escort you back to the perimeter, sir,” offers Agent Carey, the team leader. “Rest of us, we’ll keep on pushing toward the—”