Free Checkmate by Steven James Page A

other three statues were all turned toward her and she held up a baby to signify Charlotte’s dreams of the future. She was emerging from dogwood flowers—the state flower of North Carolina.
    A hornet’s nest appeared in the branches, a reference to the time when Cornwallis called the people of Charlotte a nest of hornets because of how persistent and relentless they were in defending their land.
    The bard clicked the final photograph.
    During his time in the city he’d spent countless hours in Uptown Charlotte, doing research in the Carolina Room of the library’s main branch. Because of his familiarity with the city, he knew that, since the iconic sixty-floor Bank of America Corporate Center was identified as the primary terrorist target in Uptown, police officers stood guard around the base of the building all day—a security measure that had been instituted sometime after 9/11.
    Today, in light of the attack on the NCAVC, the sidewalk surrounding the Bank of America skyscraper was closed off.
    That was smart, but, really, it wasn’t this building that they needed to be worried about. The real threat was somewhere else nearby, and when everything played out this weekend, the story was going to be even more memorable than an attack on a skyscraper ever would’ve been.
    Using his phone, he uploaded the photos to the site he was using to record his story. The page wasn’t live yet,but when everything came to completion, when the dust had settled, these pictures would prove to be the key to everything.
    The drive to Columbia was another hour and a half. He would go down there, meet up with Corrine, and spend the night with her before bringing her back up here tomorrow.
    After returning to the parking garage, he checked the back of his van, made sure that the eye bolts he would be cuffing her to were secured to the floor, then left Uptown and merged into the congested, sluggish traffic heading south out of the city.

11
    I spent the afternoon and evening filling out paperwork and going back over the collected data about the bombing and about Jerome Cole’s death.
    I uploaded everything I had to the online case file on the Federal Digital Database—dragging and dropping the photos and video, adding them to what the ERT had posted, inserting and merging my report with the ones that were already there.
    As I did, I reviewed what we knew.
    (1) No trace evidence had been found that might indicate who tortured and killed Jerome or how many people might have been present when it happened. The light switch had been wiped clean. No prints.
    (2) Every major media outlet was leading with the story, and tips were pouring in to the hotline that had been set up. When you have something this high profile, it’s not unusual for hundreds of tips to come in every hour, and in this case our team was overwhelmed trying to follow up on them all.
    (3) Jerome was last seen having dinner at a friend’s house. He’d left there around eight, and one of his neighbors remembered him returning home, driving up his driveway “sometime before nine.” We didn’t know yet if the killer was waiting for him in his house when he arrived.
    (4) Field agents were working with local law enforcement to canvass Jerome’s neighborhood to see if anyonehad noticed a car parked nearby or saw anything unusual leading up to his murder. They were also scouring the business district near the gas station where the semi had been found, looking for anyone who might have seen the guy leaving the truck or driving off in another vehicle.
    (5) Twitter went crazy in the aftermath of the bombing, mostly in support of the FBI.
    Using algorithms the NSA had developed, we located all the microblogs and messages—mostly from overseas and known Islamic extremist groups—that were in support of the bombing.
    A joint team of our agents and NSA personnel were following up on the source of all those tweets.
    So far,