Kendra almost hid a double-take and Meredith knew she’d hit a nerve. ‘You always seem so . . . level. Even when you’re talking about eviscerating people. You’re . . . serene.’
Meredith laughed softly. It was a common misconception. ‘No. I’m not. I’m really not. But I don’t dwell on those violent thoughts, either. That’s one of the reasons I’m so diligent about social gatherings like this. If I’m busy and if my heart is happy, there isn’t room for the anger. I have a lot of anger, so I make, keep, and cultivate a lot of friends. Keeps me grounded. I also exercise. Do yoga. Meditate. If you want, I can give you tips.’
‘God, would you?’ Kendra looked grateful – and so young. She was normally such an old soul that Meredith sometimes forgot that she was barely old enough to legally drink.
‘Absolutely. Let’s compare calendars after breakfast. Which smells like it’s about ready.’
They were all serving themselves, buffet style, when Bailey’s husband came into the kitchen, dressed in a suit and tie. He snuck a pancake, rolling it up to eat with his fingers like a burrito.
‘Ryan!’ Bailey gave him an exasperated look. ‘Get a plate.’
‘Can’t.’ He dropped a kiss on her mouth. ‘Gotta run. I’m late. Hope’s still asleep.’ He looked over at Delores. ‘Angel’s lying at the foot of her bed, if you wonder where she went.’
Angel was Delores’s huge dog – it looked to be a wolfhound crossed with a Great Dane with a bit of St Bernard thrown in. The dog also doubled as a security blanket and bodyguard after a killer had left Delores for dead. She rarely went anywhere without Angel.
Delores looked dismayed. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t know she’d wandered upstairs. I’ll go and get her right now.’
‘You’ll do no such thing,’ Ryan said gently. He was a big man, a former army chaplain, and he always struck Meredith as incredibly gentle. ‘She’s keeping Hope company.’ He glanced at Bailey meaningfully. ‘We have to get her one. You know that.’ He looked back at Delores. ‘Hope’s been asking for a dog for a long time. She’s nine now – that’s old enough to take care of one, so I think we’ll be visiting your shelter soon.’
Bailey rolled her eyes, but it was with affection. ‘You just want it for yourself.’
He grinned. ‘Not untrue. Blame your in-laws for that. I have to get to work. Love you.’
‘Love you too.’ Bailey smiled when he stole another pancake and blew a kiss to the women as they awwwed in unison. ‘That man is as big a kid as Hope. My sister and her husband visited from Georgia a few weeks ago and brought their basset hound. Ryan and Daniel took Hope to the park and threw a ball with that dog for hours. Now all Hope talks about is dogs.’
‘I’ve got a few you’ll like,’ Delores said. ‘Well trained and low maintenance.’
‘How many animals do you have?’ Wendi asked Delores once they’d all sat down.
‘Thirteen cats and ten dogs, but only half of the dogs are adoptable right now. Why?’
‘Well, assuming I find another house, I’m thinking of introducing a new vocational training program for our older girls,’ Wendi said. ‘We’ve already got a culinary training program and one for web design, but I think working with animals would be a good addition. The demand for vet techs is growing – and working with the dogs would be good therapy for all of our girls, no matter what they decide to do with their lives.’
‘It sounds amazing,’ Delores said. ‘A win for everybody.’ She hesitated. ‘How is the house hunt coming along?’
Wendi shook her head. ‘Not good. Any property that anybody wants to donate is one step away from being condemned, and I haven’t found one with affordable rent – no place that’s safe and nice. Or big enough. But I’ve still got six weeks, so it’s a long way from over.’
From the corner of her eye Meredith saw Audrey’s eyes narrow thoughtfully, but it was Scarlett Bishop who spoke first. ‘Don’t discount those properties too quickly. We can mobilize a fixer-upper crew. Marcus and his friend Diesel build houses for worthy causes. I’ll ask them.’
Audrey nodded. ‘And they’re nice houses, too. We could do a fund-raiser for materials and furnishings. I’ve done them before. I know who to ask.’
‘She does,’ Dani confirmed. ‘She has raised some serious cash for the free clinic.’
‘And I may have a lead on a house for your girls,’ Faith added. ‘I’ve made a few calls, but I have some more work to do before I can give you details. It’s a fixer-upper, but it’s . . . well, it’s got character. Don’t get your hopes up just yet, but know that we’re trying to help.’
Wendi’s eyes lit up. ‘God, anything you guys can do . . .’ She choked up. ‘Thank you.’
They spent the rest of the breakfast planning until Scarlett got a text. ‘Sorry, girls,’ she said as she pushed away from the table. ‘Gotta roll.’
‘Is everything all right?’ Bailey asked, concerned.
‘Yeah. It’s work. My partner needs me to meet him.’
Meredith frowned. ‘I thought you were still on medical leave.’ Scarlett had bruised ribs from a case she’d worked the week before.
‘I’ve been back on desk duty for a few days.’ She rolled her eyes. ‘Don’t worry, Mom.’
Her departure broke up the meeting, and the group made quick work of the dishes, restoring Bailey’s kitchen to rights before saying goodbye.
‘Are you free tonight?’ Kendra asked as she walked Meredith to her car. ‘I’d like to get started on those anger management techniques as soon as I can. I can bring dinner.’
‘I don’t turn down food. Say around eight?’ Meredith got out her phone to plug in the details, only to see that she too had received a text while she’d been in Bailey’s kitchen. It was from Special Agent in Charge Zimmerman, who managed the local FBI field office, asking her to call him ASAP. She was normally contacted by CPD, not the FBI. This should be interesting.
‘Eight is good,’ Kendra said. ‘I’ll see you then.’
‘Until then, do not let yourself give in to your anger.’
Kendra nodded. ‘I’ll try.’
‘Try hard.’
Three
Cincinnati, Ohio,
Thursday 13 August, 8.50 A.M.
Kate had returned to her hotel room, but only long enough to shower and change her clothes before hurrying into the office. Now she understood Decker’s urgency, his frantic need to tell someone. Had he been cognizant the whole time he was in a coma?
God, I hope not. To have the knowledge bouncing around in his head for a week and not be able to tell anyone? To know that children were in danger and be helpless to stop it? That he’d been able to calm himself the way he had was testament to a very strong will.
God. Kids. She’d given up asking how anyone could target children years ago. She just accepted the existence of pure evil masquerading as walking, talking, breathing human beings. And then did her damnedest to put them in a little box. Usually that box was a steel cage in a prison, but if it was a pine box six feet under so that they were never able to walk and talk among the innocents again? That was deeply satisfying, though it was nothing she’d ever tell anyone in the Bureau, because it’d have her ass in a shrink’s office before she could blink. Although odds were good that the people she respected the most were thinking the same thing and also vowing to never tell anyone either.
The atmosphere in Special Agent in Charge Zimmerman’s office was grim when she arrived, but she figured that her new boss had just cause. He’d had a really shitty week.
Zimmerman stood staring out the window, arms folded over his chest, his mouth tight and his expression drawn. She’d only known him for a week and this had been his expression at least eighty percent of the time. He’d lost two of his agents the week before, both shot by the traffickers. And that didn’t include the near loss of Decker.
br />
Kate had delivered notifications to many families over the course of her career, on behalf of both the FBI and the US Army. Each left her heart shredded, her soul drained. Zimmerman looked like that now, standing at the window. He’d get past it. We all do, one way or another.
At least the two fallen agents had family and friends to grieve them. If Decker had died, who would have grieved him? I would have. Because he’d hooked her attention the moment he’d looked up at her the week before, on the ground with her rifle in his back.
But last night, when those blue eyes had popped open, focusing on her face like she was his lifeline . . . he’d hooked her imagination at the very least. As for the rest, they’d have to see.
Deacon Novak had already arrived and was sitting at Zimmerman’s small round table staring at his laptop, earbuds in his ears. He looked up at her, his impossible eyes unwitchy at the moment. They were weary and bleak and she hated to see it. She far preferred him sarcastic and irreverent.
He pulled the buds from his ears. ‘I played it for him,’ he said quietly.
Meaning Zimmerman, she understood. She and Deacon had listened to Decker’s recording of August fourth while sitting in his SUV in the hospital parking lot. Silently Deacon had driven her to her car, no longer nagging that she should sleep when she said she’d meet him here in an hour.
‘I figured that out myself,’ she said, relieved when one side of his mouth quirked up.
‘Smartass.’
Zimmerman turned then, heartache still written on his face, but his eyes were determined. ‘The others will be here momentarily. We’ll play it for them and come up with a plan of action. Have a seat, Kate. There’s coffee in the pot and bagels if you’re interested.’
She was interested. She’d felt nauseated when she’d first listened to the CD, but now she was hungry. Ravenous, actually. ‘No to the coffee, but a bagel would hit the spot.’
Zimmerman gave her a look of horror that she wasn’t entirely certain was in jest. ‘You don’t drink coffee? Are you human?’
She smiled at him. ‘I drink coffee, but not after an all-nighter. I get too jittery.’
Deacon snickered. ‘And then the human part comes into question. Especially if she’s hungry, too.’ He feigned fear, quailing when she lifted her brows at him. ‘I’m just giving him fair warning that you can be . . . intimidating when you’re hangry and sleep-deprived.’
Her tendency to become intimidating was a symptom of the ADHD that had gone undiagnosed until she’d been in the army for a year. That doctor had damn near saved her sanity. He’d certainly saved her military career. She’d been a bare step away from the very brig she guarded as one of the MPs.
Now she knew what to watch for. Don’t get too tired. Ha. Don’t get too stressed. Double ha. Don’t let your sugar drop too low. And always have something to do with your hands. The first two came part and parcel with a career in law enforcement, but the final two she could and did manage pretty well.
Zimmerman sat next to Deacon, his own coffee cup full. ‘It’s okay. I get hangry, too. I keep an emergency stash of protein bars in my desk if you ever get desperate.’
‘I usually do too, but thanks.’ She got a bagel, then took the chair on the other side of Deacon, glancing at his screen to see that he’d been listening to Decker’s audio file. ‘I called Agent Troy on my way from the hospital to the hotel, so he’ll be here. Who else is coming?’
‘We are.’ A woman Kate’s height with a long black braid came through Zimmerman’s door, followed by a man in his early fifties with thinning hair and a face that had been beautiful once, but to which age had not been terribly kind.
Detective Scarlett Bishop was Deacon’s new partner in the joint task force with CPD, and Kate liked her very much. Scarlett was tough, but she had heart. And she had Deacon’s back.
The man was Kate’s new partner, Special Agent Luther Troy, and based on what she’d observed so far, she was going to like working with him, too. Troy was smart and funny, possessing a rapier-sharp wit that she’d already learned could cut deep or skillfully whittle. A wit that expressed itself as a verbal swagger that would have earned him a slap across the face from Kate’s mother. Her father wouldn’t have been that gentle, because Troy was a member of one of the many, many groups her father despised.
Troy had broached the topic himself when they’d initially been paired up the week before, looking her squarely in the eye. ‘I’m gay,’ he’d said. ‘Is that going to be a problem for you? If so, tell me now. I need to be sure you’ve got my back.’
‘Not for me,’ had been her quick and truthful reply. ‘You watch my back, I’ll watch yours.’
He’d seemed mostly satisfied, but Kate had detected a hint of wary I’ll-wait-and-see in the way he’d nodded. She supposed he’d had to be hyper-vigilant. Not fair, but it was reality, especially in law enforcement, where it was still a challenge to be anything other than a straight, white male.
Kate had to forcibly stop herself from running her tongue over her capped front tooth, a little souvenir of the time she’d voiced her disapproval of the blatant prejudice that had been the cornerstone of the house in which she’d grown up. To this day she wasn’t sorry about what she’d said. She was only sorry she hadn’t been fast enough to duck her father’s fist. Or her mother’s resounding slap across the face once she’d managed to pick herself up off the floor.
And you are thinking about them, why? Because she’d slipped when she’d told Decker that she’d grown up with four brothers. She’d been rattled at the wordless, hostile exchange between Deacon and Decker. She’d told Decker that she hadn’t known what it was about, but she had. Tired, emotionally raw, and rattled, the fact that she had brothers had just . . . escaped. Word vomit.
She hated word vomit. She hated thinking about her family even more. So don’t. Think instead about the way Decker turned his face into your palm there at the end. As if he’d been parched earth and her touch was rain.
She drew a deep breath, her pulse beginning to race. No, don’t think about that, either. Think about the two people that just sat down at the table who are giving you strange looks because you look like you’ve lost your fucking mind.
‘Good morning,’ she said to both of them, proud that her voice gave away none of what she’d been thinking. ‘Scarlett, you look like you feel better.’ Part of the team that had apprehended the traffickers, Deacon’s partner had bruised a few ribs in the process.
‘I do. I can at least breathe again.’ Scarlett put a plastic bowl full of cookies in the middle of the table. ‘And I’m going insane on desk duty, so here y’go.’
Troy’s eyes lit up. ‘Tell me those are chocolate chip.’
Scarlett nodded. ‘With pecans. Please eat them. I have another six dozen at home, just waiting to leap onto my butt and say “Honey, I’m home.”’
Deacon had already dug into the bowl and sent it around the table. ‘Nine months as partners and I just now find out she can bake. These are amazing.’
‘Because I just got a new oven. It makes a huge difference,’ Scarlett said, studying Kate intently as she spoke. ‘How are you, Kate?’
‘I found an apartment and arranged for my stuff to be moved, so I’m settling in.’ It wasn’t what Scarlett had meant, but Kate didn’t want to go there. ‘How is Marcus?’
Marcus O’Bannion was the publisher of the Ledger, one of the city’s major newspapers. He’d been a critical resource in the apprehension of the traffickers – but in exactly what capacity, Kate wasn’t entirely sure. She’d been surprised at how much he had known about an ongoing investigation – and that he’d been included in the final op. The man could totally handle himself around weapons, but he was a civilian – and a media person, which was even worse.
Deacon hadn’t been terribly forthcoming with the details, which made Kate think they
hadn’t run the case exactly by the book. Scarlett wasn’t talking either, but she’d fallen head over heels for Marcus so she was in no way an unbiased source of information. Marcus seemed like an honorable man, though, and Deacon trusted him. That meant a lot.
Whatever the case, Marcus had paid dearly for the exclusives that had covered the front pages of the Ledger for the last week. He’d lost too many people he’d loved when one of the traffickers went on a shooting spree at the Ledger’s main office.
‘He went back to work today,’ Scarlett said. ‘It’s better for him to be busy. He’s had some trouble sleeping, but that seems to be getting better.’ She’d looked like she wanted to ask if Kate had had trouble sleeping too, but had decided not to at the last minute.
Kate was grateful. She didn’t need anyone else telling her how tired she looked.
Troy brushed the crumbs from his fingers, then leaned in to whisper, ‘Bishop’s being kind. I won’t be. You look like shit, Coppola. Why aren’t you sleeping?’
‘Strange hotel bed,’ she whispered back. ‘I’m looking forward to sleeping in my own bed.’
Troy’s brows rose in reluctant admiration. ‘Wow. You lie really, really well. Now don’t get me wrong – I count that as a benefit in a partner. Just don’t lie to me.’
She sighed quietly. ‘Bad dreams, okay? Backstory not relevant. I’ll be all right.’
‘Better,’ he said. ‘You tried to sneak in a zinger with the “I’ll be all right” at the end, but nine points from the Russian judge for the effort.’
She had to laugh. ‘Shut up,’ she said with no heat.
‘That I can do.’ He turned his attention to Zimmerman, who was brushing his own crumbs away. ‘Has everyone else heard this recording?’ Troy asked him. ‘I still haven’t.’
‘We’re still waiting for two people,’ Zimmerman said.
‘One of them is finally here and very sorry that she’s late. The sky just opened up as I was parking my car.’ A redhead hurried in holding a dripping umbrella, her face flushed and dewy. Not sweaty, Kate noticed with a little envy. No freckles, no sweat. Porcelain skin. And dewy.