Sam’s eyes were wide, as if she feared she’d revealed a secret. “You… Everyone knew he had been shot, right?”
“Well, yes. I’m just surprised you do.”
“We talked.”
That was obvious. “So, he told you about the shooting? That, uh…”
“That a woman shot him? Yes, he did. And I felt about two inches tall for being so judgmental about it at first, until I found out she was the elderly mother of a suspect and he felt sorry for her.”
Lily remained very still. This was more than even she knew. Not that she couldn’t have found out, if she had chosen to dig around in her new colleague’s past. She hadn’t, not wanting to be nosy. But she couldn’t deny an interest.
“This transfer to your team, it was kind of a new start for him, right? A chance to rebuild his career?”
Lily rolled her eyes. “More like a chance to bury it.”
Sam left the window and sat on the couch, eyeing her quizzically. “What do you mean?”
Taking the seat opposite her, Lily admitted, “They call us the Black CATs. But what they really mean is the black sheep.”
“You’re kidding. You guys are all so good.”
“We all have baggage.”
“Baggage,” Sam snapped. “I hate that word. What does it mean, anyway?”
“Okay, then, let’s say we all have reputations.”
“Even your boss?”
Lily curled one leg under her and made herself more comfortable in the chair. “Him more than anyone. Wyatt has a lot of integrity, and he sees things very black or white, right or wrong.”
Which made it even harder to tell him how far she’d gone into shades of gray regarding her job.
“He took a stand against a few things,” she said, not going into detail. “That earned him the enmity of some of our colleagues.”
Not pressing for more information, as if knowing Lily couldn’t provide it, Sam moved on. “And the rest of you?”
“Dean Taggert’s a badass former street cop with a temper.”
“That doesn’t surprise me.”
“Jackie has an attitude.”
Sam grinned. “Also not a surprise.”
“Mulrooney is a bit of a blowhard. Brandon’s a wild card.”
“And Alec?”
“The circumstances surrounding his shooting were… less than ideal.”
Sam rolled her eyes. “Especially for him. Getting shot and all.”
The woman was absolutely right, and Lily agreed with her. There was simply no way to explain bureau politics, that Alec’s survival might have been viewed with skepticism because the other agent had not survived. It wasn’t fair, especially now that she knew more about what had really happened. No more than what had happened to Wyatt was fair. It was just the way things went in an agency made powerful by J. Edgar Hoover, the king of intrigue himself.
“What about you? What’s your story?”
Lily wrapped her arms around one upraised leg, staring down at her own knee. “I’m a little too emotional.”
“Considering I’ve felt like screaming, crying, or punching someone since just about the minute you guys showed up in my life, I can see where that would be a problem.”
Unable to resist Sam’s sarcasm, Lily had to smile. She seldom spent time with anyone outside of the office these days, and had forgotten, since Laura’s death, how much she enjoyed simply hanging out and talking with another woman. As much as she liked Jackie Stokes, the other agent was older, and in a different place. Lily honestly couldn’t remember the last time she’d gone for a girls’ night out, or indulged in a man-griping session with a single woman her own age.
It had been at least two years ago; that was certain. Before Zach’s life had intersected with a monster’s.
The dark thoughts immediately pulled the smile from her lips and the good humor from her heart. Sam eyed her curiously, but before she could ask anything, Lily’s cell phone rang. Seeing Anspaugh’s name, she took a deep breath and answered.
“Where are you? What the hell’s this message you left, that you might have a problem?”
“Sorry, Anspaugh. Something came up. I’m at a hotel in the city. I have to stay with a witness all night.”
“Damn it, Lil, we need you!”
She bit back an annoyed don’t call me that response and said, “You guys know what you’re doing. It’s not like the suspect is going to realize a man is typing rather than a woman. None of us are children.”
“Yeah, but you can make it sound more legit; I know you can. Just that shit about knowing whether a real boy would call himself Peter Pan. I wouldn’ta thought of that, and you did.”
She didn’t know that Anspaugh had the sense to know a boy wouldn’t call himself Cinderella.
“And if the son of a bitch suddenly asks for a voice chat, you’ve got a whole lot better chance of pulling that off.”
Lily blew out an impatient breath. “I in no way sound like an eleven-year-old girl.”
“Well, you sure as hell sound more like one than me or my guys do.”
Closing her eyes, she rubbed at the inside corners of them with her fingers, trying to figure out a way to give everyone what they needed. “Look, if I can work something out, I’ll let you know, all right? Otherwise, you’re just going to have to proceed without me. I’m sorry.”
When she opened them, she saw Sam waving and mouthing something from the other side of the room. Lily covered the mouthpiece with her hand and raised a brow.
“I can stay here by myself,” the other woman insisted in a loud whisper. “You don’t have to babysit me; it’s not like anybody in the known universe knows where I am.”
Lily was shaking her head before the other woman finished speaking. “If I leave my assigned position, I would not only lose my job; I would deserve to.”
Sam opened her mouth to persist, then closed it again, realizing Lily was right and not arguing it. A woman of common sense, this one, which made Lily like her even more.
“Look, if you’re sitting on a witness,” Anspaugh was saying, “why don’t we swap? I’ll send one of my guys over to keep watch; you come do this, and you’ll be back there in two or three hours, tops.”
She waffled. It made sense. She wouldn’t be leaving Sam with anyone other than another FBI agent.
“Come on, I know you want this guy as bad as we do.”
“Yeah, I do.”
“He’s been on this site for weeks. No telling how many kids he’s already been in contact with. Christ, for all we know, he’s already molested some of them.”
Lily felt the blood drain from her face. Anspaugh definitely knew which buttons to push.
“Let me think about it…”
“We don’t have time for you to think about it,” he said, his belligerence showing.
She kept cool. “Then the answer is no.”
Anspaugh breathed heavily through the phone, his anger a living thing. Men like him didn’t like being told no. One more reason Lily wanted to finish this double life and stop working with the man. Because sooner or later, she knew, he was going to ask her a more personal question, and would like hearing no even less.
“Would you just think about it?” he asked, every word bitten out from what sounded like a rigidly clenched jaw. “If you’re in the city, I can have a car pick you up within a half hour. It’s only seven twenty. If you can swing it anytime before nine, call me, okay?”
“Fine.”
He disconnected without another word.
“Problem?”
“Another case,” she admitted, shaking her head and wondering how on earth she’d gotten herself into this situation.
“Why would you need to talk like a little girl?”
Reaching into her purse and pulling out a bottle of aspirin, Lily popped a couple of them to ward off the headache building in her temples. Then she admitted, “I’ve been helping another team try to capture a sexual predator.”
“Sick bastards.”
“Yeah. This one is especially bad.” At least, if they were indeed on the trail of Lovesprettyboys, he was. Whatever else he had or hadn’t done, the degenerate had definitely tried to set up the pay-per-view murder of a little kid.