Read Black Friday for Free Online Page B

advertised that he was open to a relationship. A real relationship, something Nick Morrelli rarely considered. But Maggie turned him down for whatever reason. Perhaps she just wasn’t ready. That’s what he wanted to believe. Being rejected was a new concept for him.
    But last summer they crossed paths again. Another case with ties to the one four years ago and for Nick it brought back all those memories and some feelings he didn’t realize he still harbored. Feelings that slammed him hard. Hard enough that he canceled his wedding engagement.
    Then he did the only thing he knew how to do. He pursued Maggie with cards, e-mails, flowers, requests to spend time together despite her living in the D.C. area and him in Boston. Nick thought he was being the proper suitor. That is until he discovered there was someone else in her life. He had let her slip away, blown his chances. This time it was too late.
    He’d let her slip away to a guy named Benjamin Platt. Nick had looked up the license plate on a Land Rover he saw parked outside of Maggie’s house. Platt was an army colonel, a medical doctor, a scientist, a soldier. He wasn’t sure that even a tall, dark and charming quarterback-turned-lawyer stood a chance to compete with that.
    “Can we concentrate on Christmas?” he asked after too much silence. He could already see Christine knew she was right. He took no pleasure in the fact that to his big sister he seemed to be an open book.
    Before Christine could respond two store clerks interrupted them, coming into the center of the store.
    “There’s been an explosion at Mall of America,” one of them announced. “There may be dozens of people dead.”
    Customers throughout the store came up the aisles to hear the news.
    “That’s one of ours,” Nick told Christine. He barely got his cell phone out of his jacket pocket when it began to ring.

CHAPTER
10
     
    Mall of America
     
    A sante wasted little time fighting through the wave of hysteria. It was ridiculous. This was why he never stuck around afterwards to watch. There were some he had worked with in the past who enjoyed this chaos—the smell of fear, the clawing and clamoring to survive, the screams and cries of human nature at its most vulnerable. Or, as Asante considered it, human nature at its most pathetic. And from simply a glance, he knew that to be true.
    Years ago he learned never to be fooled. Those who bragged that a crisis brought out the best in people would soon have you forget that the exact same crisis would also bring out the very worst in people. Asante stood at the top of the escalator looking down as the wildfire of panic raced through each floor of the mall and he resisted the urge to smile. People shoved each other, stepping over the injured, dropping and leaving behind their precious belongings. If they thought this was bad, wait until they saw what was to come. This was but a distraction.
    He followed the GPS signal as he shoved through, keeping close to the walls where he knew any cameras still functioning could not pick up his image as easily. He walked quickly when he wanted to run. Time was slipping by. It had taken him longer than he expected to fight his way through the crowds amassing at the exits. The signal seemed to be taking him right back to where the carriers began—in the food court.
    Asante stopped suddenly. He dropped down to the floor, kneeled and doubled over his duffel bag, pretending to be hurt while a security guard ran by. He didn’t want security seeing his PARAMEDIC cap and escorting him through to the wounded. He’d find his own wounded.
    While on the floor he turned on his wireless headset that fit close and tight over his left ear. He had strapped the small computer, just a fraction bigger than a smartphone, to the inside of his arm so he had both hands free and could still follow the green blinks on the computer screen’s map. He poked in a number on the keypad and then turned up the volume on his headset. In