“Yes.”
“That’s all?”
“That’s all.”
“Nothing more specific?”
Tessa threw her hands to her hips. “Can somebody please tell me what’s going on!”
“Richard Basque was in the meeting,” I told her. “Paul is obviously looking for anything he can find to use against me.” Then I replied to Missy, “No. Nothing more specific.”
That seemed to at least partially satisfy her. “Anything else? Any more surprises I need to know about?”
“Probably.” I saw an unmarked car with Officer Lee Anderson behind the wheel drive up and park across the street. “But none that I can think of right now.”
It had to have been less than three minutes since I called Doehring. An amazingly fast response. Anderson must have already been in the area.
I averted my eyes so I wouldn’t draw undue attention to him. “Let’s go,” I said to Missy. “I’ll drop you off at your office.”
She was free. Free. She scanned the woods as she crept through them, keeping an eye out for anyone, any movement at all. It had taken her a long time to loosen the strap around her neck and even longer to get the other arm free. But after that the legs had been easy. Free. She arrived at the stream where she’d seen the corpse last night when she first entered the body farm with the man who had left her to die. Stopping upstream from the body, she stripped off her reeking, insect-infested clothes and washed herself, scrubbing, scrubbing, scrubbing to get the stench and dirt and rot off her body. Then she rinsed the clothes and wrung them out as much as possible, and she soaked her ankles in the cool water to relieve the pain of the ripped flesh where she’d been bitten by the scavenging animals. The Academy’s admin building wasn’t far, less than a half mile from the trailhead. If she could just get to the parking lot she could steal a car, drive to a bank, drain the money from her betrayer’s account, and be gone. But be smart. He had turned on her, yes, betrayed her, lied to her, tried to kill her. Yes, yes, yes. But- A terrible chill ran through her as she was forced to admit that he was smarter than she was, smarter than any cop or FBI agent she’d ever run into. He would find her, yes, he would; it was inevitable. And considering what he’d done to her last night-strapping her to a rotting corpse-she couldn’t even begin to imagine what he would do to her if he caught her now. Or what he might do to her baby. Even if he didn’t come after her, he would certainly plant evidence that would lead the authorities to her. He had the means to fake IDs. He was good with disguises. He could cover his tracks better than anyone she knew. He would disappear and she would end up in prison for life. And worst of all, they would take her baby away. Foster care. She’d gone down that road herself and she was not about to let her baby grow up that way. She put on her wet clothes. It was the end of her career, yes. The end of her old life, yes, okay, she knew that, but for the sake of her baby she needed to make sure she wasn’t found. Ever. Then it struck her. There was one way to keep her baby with her and also stay free from both the one who had betrayed her and the FBI. To live, she would have to die. To the rest of the world. But thankfully the one thing she was good at, the one skill she had, was setting people up for murder. And this time, she would set her betrayer up for hers. She headed to the parking lot, considering what it was going to take for her to make her death as believable as it would need to be. Predator. Prey. This time she was going to have to be both.
After dropping off Missy at her office, I needed a minute to sort through my thoughts, figure out what to do next. Too many cables tugging at my attention.
Tessa was upset.
Basque was in town, apparently trying to help Lansing in this custody case.
Dr. Lebreau was still missing.
The killers were still at large.
My arm really hurt.
If there was ever a time for coffee, this was it.
I took Tessa to an indie coffeehouse in downtown DC. She ordered a small soy milk latte; I went for a twenty-ounce Kenya AA and managed to down it and get a refill before she came out of the bathroom.
Now we were walking through a tourist-riddled park near the Capitol on our way back to the car, which I’d had to park about three blocks away.
Above us, the tangled branches of the trees lining the path seemed to snag the late afternoon sunlight, letting only jagged pieces of the day land around us.
Shadow and light, blinking at me every step of the way.
For no stated reason, Tessa and I both moved urgently toward the car.
So many thoughts corkscrewing through my mind.
I wanted to hear what Lien-hua might have discovered about the lack of DNA evidence, figure out what was going on with Margaret and her abstruse reference to abortion, go over my geo-profile again…
I’d had my phone’s ringer off since the beginning of the custody meeting, and now I glanced at the screen and noticed I had a missed call from Cheyenne.
Great.
Just one more thing to work through.
Yesterday morning Tessa had told me I was being flirty with both of them, and I had to admit she was right.
So now, considering that I seemed to be patching things up with Lien-hua, I needed to make sure my flirtiness with Cheyenne came to an end. Feeling a narrow stab of guilt and not really wanting to go through my texts and perhaps find another message from her, I pocketed the phone.
Took a drink of coffee.
Tessa gestured toward a Metro station. “So, I guess I’ll head home then.”
“I’ll take you. The car is just at the end of the block.”
“You’ve been with me for like over three hours. You need to stay here, get back to this case.”
“That can wait,” I said. “I don’t like it that Basque is here.”
“I get that, but you’ve got an undercover cop following him, so-”
“What makes you say I have a cop following him?”
She looked annoyed at having to explain herself. “Basque shows up, then you make an urgent phone call before leaving the lawyer’s office, then you stare at a guy with a mustache who pulls up outside the building in a sedan. Cops are easy to spot. Who else besides serial killers and cops have mustaches these days?”
“Pakistanis.”
“Yeah, okay, and so do cowboys, but this guy was a cop.”
I bowed out of the mustache debate. “I’m not leaving you alone. I don’t trust Lansing.”
“But in the meeting, Ms. Schuel said she’d get a restraining order if he showed up anywhere near me. He wouldn’t dare follow me.”
“And how do you know she said that?”
Tessa rolled her eyes. “She was yelling when she said it-look, Patrick, I’m fine. I have some stuff to do at home anyhow. I’ll take the VRE. You need to stay here.”
“I don’t think so.”
Our car still lay fifty meters away through the strangled sunlight.
She followed me grudgingly.
We walked.
Shadow to light.
“I’ll make a deal with you,” she said.
“What’s that?”
“If you can look me in the eye and answer one question, then I’ll shut up and I won’t argue. You can bail on this case, come home, and babysit me.”
I didn’t like where this was going; I went for some coffee.
“Well?”
“Go on,” I said.
“You have to be honest.”
“I’ll be honest. What’s the question?”
“You have to promise.”
“Tessa. All right. I promise.”
Shadow to light.
“Look me in the eye.”
Good grief.
We stopped walking, and I looked her in the eye.
“Now, tell me that the Bureau has a better chance of finding these killers, of saving people’s lives if you’re not helping. If you can tell me that, then I’ll go home with you and I won’t nag you.”
“That’s not fair. Besides, it wasn’t even actually a question.”
She stood in that slumpy-teenage-girl way and gave me a critical stare.
“Tessa, there are plenty of good people working this case. It’s not like-”