Marcus’s mouth twitched, but he didn’t quite smile.“Hey.”
“Hey,” she echoed.“What’s with the faces?I was just with Gabe.He says—”
“Kate,” Torres interrupted, voice low.“Maybe sit down.”
Kate’s pulse gave a small, instinctive lurch.“Why?”
Marcus opened his mouth, closed it again.His eyes flicked toward the corridor.
That was when she heard it — laughter.A woman’s laugh, smooth, deliberate, too loud for the setting.A man’s baritone followed, saying something about the Yankees, then more laughter again.
Kate froze.
She knew that laugh.
The door opened behind her.
“You’re back,” Victoria Winters said.
Kate’s boss looked as if she’d stepped out of a different universe entirely — immaculate charcoal suit, silk scarf knotted at her throat, expression halfway between amusement and warning.Captain O’Hare loomed at her shoulder, red-faced from grinning.
“Kate,” Winters said, in that flat New England register that could make your own name sound like a charge.
Kate forced her spine straight.“Ma’am.”She glanced involuntarily at Winters’ companion, Torres’s boss whom she’d met, briefly the day before, though ‘met’ wasn’t really the right word.He’d passed by in a blur and a handshake.
Winters smiled at him with political warmth.“Captain O’Hare and I go back a long way.When was it, Jack?Quantico conference in 06?”
He chuckled.“That’s right.You gave a talk about interagency communication.Scared the whole room straight.”
“I aim to please,” Winters said, then turned her gaze back to Kate.“I’m in town for a Bureau liaison meeting.Thought I’d drop by and see how my people were doing.”
Amid the clutter of half-drunk coffees, open files and blown-up photographs, her eyes sought out one single thing.
The drawer.
Kate felt the blood drain from her face.
Gift-wrapped in see-through plastic, it crackled as Winters turned it over in her hands.The underside gleamed faintly under the fluorescent light.And the two words stared up like a curse.
Green Gables.
Winters’s tone sharpened.“You can imagine my surprise when I find one of my agents investigating a highly sensitive homicide, already of national media interest, and discover that she’s once again personally connected, by the presumed killer, to a key piece of evidence.And that this connection has not, until now, been disclosed.”
Kate tried to speak.“Ma’am, I—”
Winters lifted a hand.“Don’t.I’ve already spoken with Captain O’Hare, who was kind enough to show me the evidence log.And with Agent Reid, who—” she gave Marcus a faint, razor-edged smile— “did his best to explain.”
Marcus stared at the floor.Kate’s chest constricted.“Ma’am, he didn’t—”
Winters sighed, and with it, the mask seemed to drop.When she next spoke, it was in the voice of the other, more-frequently seen Winters: humane and reasonable.“I know he didn’t,” Winters said.“What concerns me, Kate, is the pattern.Every time Elijah Cox surfaces, you’re somewhere near the ripple.He makes it about you.And every time that happens, you insist you can manage it.That’s when you bother to include me in the conversation,” she added.
“Icanmanage it,” Kate said, voice steady, but quiet.“It’s two sides of the same coin.No one knows Cox better than I do.That’s why he’s taunting me — he wants a reaction.And if we cut me out, we lose the best chance of drawing him in.”
Winters’s smile didn’t reach her eyes.“We do not use our agents as bait.”
“I’m not—”
“You are.Whether you mean to be or not.And that’s exposing you to an unacceptable risk.I can’t countenance that as a human being, let alone as your commanding officer.”
