Act of Terror by Marc Cameron Page A

to protect me. This place is chockablock full of evil, beb.”
    â€œIt’s a woman.” Palmer held open the door to a small unfinished storeroom. “This is ... was her house.”
    Quinn stepped through the narrow doorway to find a small room awash with blood.
    As a younger man, just starting out in the business, he’d been amazed at the amount of fluid inside a human body. There was a reason they called it “wet work.”
    The pallid corpse of an amber-haired female was thrown back over a collapsed stack of cardboard boxes. She looked to be in her late thirties—maybe Quinn’s age. Her throat had been cut, all the way to the bone—Quinn guessed with some sort of wire. She was naked but for the beige bra that was bunched up cruelly under her armpits. A high-school yearbook and a small wooden music box—presumably things precious to the woman—had fallen out of the boxes and lay below the ashen white of the woman’s trailing wrist. Droplets of coagulating blood pooled below the tips of curled fingers. High cheekbones and the steep angle of her jaw made Quinn guess she might have a hint of Asian blood. Her storm-gray eyes were thrown wide in a silent scream of terror.
    Quinn turned away after he’d taken in as much as he thought he needed. Each time he saw a woman who’d been hurt or killed—and he’d seen far too many—he couldn’t help but think of Kim. “Anything I can learn from this one?”
    â€œFBI techs say she was raped,” Palmer said.
    Bodington leaned a hand against the door frame. “Too early to tell if there’ll be any DNA. Son of a bitch bit a chunk out of her shoulder though—probably trying to subdue her. My guys can get a good cast of his teeth from the wound. Looks like the old girl put up a fight.” He nodded to the tip of a female finger, complete with oddly untouched pink nail polish, lying on the concrete floor. “Killer probably used a garrote. Old girl must have gotten a finger inside the piano wire before he yanked it tight—”
    â€œThe old girl’s name was Nadia,” Veronica Garcia interjected from the doorway, behind Director Ross. She was icy, detached. “Nadia Arbakova. She worked for the Secret Service in their Protective Intelligence Division.”
    â€œWas she on Drake’s list?” Thibodaux asked.
    â€œNo,” Palmer mused, almost to himself. “Oddly enough, she was not.”
    â€œShe’s on my list,” Garcia offered.
    â€œOh.” Bodington gave a sarcastic smirk. “You’ve been in the field a half a day and you already have your own list?”
    To her credit, Garcia ignored the pompous attempt to keep her in her place.
    â€œShe has a relationship with an agent on the vice presidential detail. He’s one of the priorities you gave me.” She looked at Palmer, who gave her a reassuring nod. “I’d planned to review her background information with her this morning.”
    â€œSo,” Bodington mused, “you just happened to drop by at exactly the right time to find two dead bodies in the basement?”
    â€œI decided to stop off and chat with her this morning,” Garcia said. “Her house is on the way in from mine. Thought I’d kill two birds with one stone, so to speak.”
    â€œDamn appropriate metaphor.” The FBI director smirked, nodding at Haddad’s body. “Maybe that’s exactly what you did.”
    Quinn had had enough. “You need to shut your mouth,” he hissed, suddenly losing patience.
    The FBI boss blustered, rising up on the balls of his feet as if he might actually get physical.
    â€œCalm down, Kurt.” Palmer held up a hand. “He’d kill you before you could make a fist.” He turned to a grinning Garcia. “Please continue, Agent Garcia. What’s the boyfriend’s name?”
    â€œJames Doyle,” Veronica said. “He’s