Free Erased by Jordan Marshall Page B

turned her into this other person? A terrorist? And what about her family? How did Scott and Bree play into it? Were the real killers going to use Sara’s family against her?
    The thought made Sara angry. How could they? How dare they do something like that? It made her angry enough to want to kill, and that was an unfamiliar emotion for Sara. Her logical, rational mind knew that her fear was only fuel to the fire, but she couldn’t detach herself. She was feeling it. It was inside of her, this palette of emotion and rage and murder.
    Sitting there in the Roadrunner, white knuckles gripping the wheel, Sara realized she could in fact kill. Not only that, part of her actually wanted to. She wanted to find the bastard on the phone and rip his head off. First, though, she had to find her family. Sara couldn’t do anything to endanger them.
    Sara was sitting in the Roadrunner wrestling with this inner turmoil when a movement in the rear view mirror caught her attention. It was a police car. She froze, her entire being focused on the cruiser as it passed by and rolled towards the end of the block. Then she saw the brake lights come on, and the car started to turn around. Sara jammed the key into the ignition and slammed the Roadrunner into gear.
     

 
     
     
    Chapter 15
     
     
     
    It was one-thirty p.m. when Brandy arrived at Union Square. She had to park three blocks away. Traffic was locked up tight. The SFPD had pushed the protestors out of the square and they had flooded into the surrounding streets. As she neared the scene, Brandy heard the rallyers shouting and chanting political slogans, despite the fact that their leader was lying in a pool of blood a hundred yards away. The air was static with tension.
    Brandy was apprehensive. She didn’t like crowds. People in crowds did not think like normal people. They were a collective, a sort of reactionary hive mind. She knew how quickly situations like this could escalate beyond control. It didn’t help that these were political fanatics. Politics always got people extra riled up.
    Technically, Fortress wasn’t a politician. He was a mid-list rock star who used politics to stir up controversy and sell his records. Politically speaking, Fortress was inconsequential. That wasn’t Brandy’s assessment, it was Homeland Security’s. After a quick study, the federal government had determined that Fortress was not a political figure of consequence and therefore his murder was not a political assassination. It was more likely the act of a lone gunman with an emotional disorder.
    That was how the case had become the property of the San Francisco PD and one rookie FBI agent. Without even looking at the case, the government had already relegated it to the back of the drawer. That seemed shortsighted to Brandy, especially in light of what had happened the previous day. She didn’t believe in coincidences, especially not when it came to murder. She was in total agreement with Ashcroft on that matter.
    The trick was going to be in finding a link between the Bay Bridge murder and Fortress’s death. Ashcroft believed that a link was there. It was Brandy’s job to find it. And to do it fast.
    As she got closer, Brandy saw fire trucks and squad cars lined up along Geary and Powell Streets. The parking garage beneath the square was blocked off to all traffic. There was an ambulance inside the square, parked next to the stage. It didn’t look like it was going anywhere soon.
    Cops wearing shields and riot gear lined the sidewalks. The crowd pressed right up to the barriers and hurled insults at them, though it was obvious that the cops were just trying to maintain a safe perimeter around the crime scene. Brandy pushed her way up to the blockade and showed her ID. The cops stood aside to let her through.
    The square was a mess. Brandy had seen three-day rock festivals with less garbage. On their way out, the protestors had not only dropped all their signs on the ground, they’d also