By the time the calamari arrived, O’Dell realized she needed to change the subject. She asked Ben, “Can you take Jake and Harvey for a couple of days?”
Ben had become her dog sitter for her overnight assignments. Even their dogs got along great, and Ben had a huge backyard to accommodate them. It was as though they already shared custody.
“Sure. Digger will love having them. Where is Kunze sending you this time?”
She told him about the floater they’d pulled from the Potomac. Sharing her suspicions of it being a drug hit, and even how she had found Senator Delanor-Ramos in Kunze’s office. Any details she shared she knew Ben would keep to himself. His position at USAMRIID had conditioned him to keeping classified information classified, and therefore, made him the perfect confidant.
“You think it has something to do with the senator’s husband?” Ben knew where she was headed.
“His trial is coming up.” George Ramos was being held without bond in a federal prison in Florida.
“She’s on the Senate’s Homeland Security Committee. Maybe she was just going over Senate business.”
“Since when do senators come to Quantico for meetings?” O’Dell gave him a look, and he shrugged as if he already knew it was lame.
“Still, you don’t know that her visit had anything to do with this victim.”
“A package in the Potomac,” she said. “Stan thinks the guy was probably killed hundreds of miles south of here. Someone delivers a body, calls it a package, and deposits it within view of Washington, D.C. — do you really believe it’s not politically connected?”
“Could be a coincidence.”
“I don’t believe in coincidences.”
They sat back as the waiter brought their burgers and salads.
“Two more?” He pointed to their glasses but spoke directly to Ben. And Ben looked to and waited for O’Dell.
“Sure,” she said, knowing full well she wouldn’t allow herself a second. She’d take a few sips, and Ben wouldn’t notice, or at least he politely wouldn’t acknowledge it.
When the waiter left, Ben leaned across the table. “So I’m guessing Kunze isn’t sending you someplace? Where is it that you’re headed?”
“Andalusia, Alabama.”
“How exotic. Probably not a vacation destination.” He stared at her, elbows planted on either side of his food, hands clasped with no intention of beginning his meal until she explained.
“Kunze wants me to investigate,” she said as she picked up her fork and stabbed at her salad, trying to diffuse the concern in his eyes. “In order to do that, I need to find the original crime scene.”
“In Alabama?”
“That’s the address on the victim’s driver’s license. Seems like a good place to start. Besides, I’m guessing there are probably a lot of fire ants somewhere around there.”
21
The first thing that went through Amanda’s mind was that she had traded an angry, skinny, old woman for an angry, large, black woman. Both of them seemed like they would rather kill her than deal with her.
She couldn’t believe Ryder Creed had chosen to put her fate in the hands of this woman. He looked like such a nice guy. She hadn’t seen anger when she looked into his face. His eyes were a deep sky blue, like on a warm, sunny day when there isn’t a single cloud. She hadn’t seen a hint of anger in them — frustration, suspicion, impatience, but not anger.
Those eyes had convinced Amanda that he could be trusted. She was second-guessing that decision now. All of this simply reinforced what she already believed — that she couldn’t trust anyone but herself, even when she was sick and hurting.
“You need to take her to a hospital emergency room,” the woman, named Hannah, said while her eyes lasered up and down Amanda’s cramped body. “That’s my best advice.”
“They’ll kill me,” Amanda muttered. She had already said this three times to Ryder Creed, and she made sure her eyes remained focused on him and him alone. Did she really need to guilt him into rescuing her a second time? She didn’t have the energy to do that.
“Maybe you should have thought of that before you swallowed their product.”
“Hannah, she’s just a kid.”
It was still too soft for a scold but Amanda was relieved that Ryder Creed had finally said something, anything, that sounded like he might defend her.
“She’s only fourteen,” he added.
“That what she told you?” And the black woman rolled her eyes. She didn’t believe a word of it.
“It’s true.” Amanda shouted it, surprising herself. She had lied about her age for so long, always trying to look and sound older, and here she was telling the truth and this woman only raised her eyebrows at her.
She grabbed her stomach. The pain hadn’t gotten any worse but she didn’t want them to know that. Instead, she needed to keep reminding them that she was hurting… bad. Right now, it was her only salvation.
“I think one of the balloons might have ruptured,” she told Ryder Creed, mustering up some tears.
“None of them ruptured, missy,” Hannah told her with a bite on the title “missy.” In fact, the indifference on her face hadn’t changed in the least, even the risk of a ruptured balloon didn’t seem to alarm her. “If one of them had ruptured, you wouldn’t be here telling us about it. You’d be dead. But I don’t suppose they told you that, did they?”
“It just hurts so bad.”
“Did your boyfriend use latex condoms?”
“My boyfriend?” How could she know about Leandro?
“The man who talked you into doing this. I bet he talked real sweet to you, didn’t he?”
Amanda felt her face go red. She was already hot and sweaty. Maybe they wouldn’t notice.
“The balloons… they’re condoms, isn’t that right?” the woman asked. “Did he use latex ones?”
Amanda only shrugged. Leandro had said he used the best, the strongest. He tied them so carefully. But she didn’t know what condoms were made of.
“I don’t know,” Amanda finally said.
“You might be allergic to latex,” Hannah said.
The woman crossed her arms over her chest and glanced at Ryder Creed. For the first time, Amanda thought she saw a hint of sympathy in the woman’s face.
“It didn’t hurt this bad the last time.”
And then immediately she realized her mistake, even before Hannah scowled at her. Any hint of sympathy disappeared. She could hear the disdain in the woman’s voice.
“Just how many times you done this?”
“Hannah, come on. You know they made her do this.”
“They put a gun to your head?”
“Hannah—”
“I just want them out of me!”
“The ER will know what—”
“No! They’ll kill me. Don’t you understand that?”
Amanda curled herself into the corner of the sofa, pulling her knees to her chest. She watched them out of the corner of her eye, from underneath sweaty bangs and long hair that she’d let fall into her face to hide behind. She felt tears stream down her cheeks, but she muffled her sobs. She could see them staring at each other and they seemed to do it for the longest time, as if neither one wanted to give in to the other.
“Upstairs bathroom,” Hannah finally told Ryder. “Get me the laxative from the top shelf in the medicine cabinet.”