“I mean, I guess, if you want to call it that.”
“I want to see it.”
I just about dropped my espresso. “What?”
He raised an eyebrow. “I want you to show me exactly what you wrote about me, the information you have about me, the opinions you expressed.”
“But—why?” I was thinking furiously, trying to remember exactly what I’d written. Notwhetherit would be offensive, more likehow muchoffense would be taken. After Villiers had told me my first draft sounded too admiring, I’d rewritten and tried to sound more objective. More negative, really.
And then I remembered Captain Walsh talking about me getting moist, and I wondered if it would be embarrassing in other ways to show Messina what I’d written.
Angelo finished his coffee and began rinsing out the cup in the sink. “If we’re going into some kind of twisted partnership together, Bax, I’d like to see what you think of me up front. And apart from that, it will be a sign that I can trust you. Because if anyone at the FBI knew you’d shared that information with me—the very subject of your investigation—you’d be fucked, not to put too fine a point on it. Wouldn’t you?”
“Very fucked,” I agreed.
“So, then. You want to see my cards, you show me what you’ve got first.”
“But…”
“Wasn’t that the point of it?” he asked, an edge of cruelty in his tone that I hadn’t heard before. “To match wits with me? Show me how clever you are? Of course, you never really thought I’d read it. But now’s your chance.”
Well, fuck. Maybe I wasn’t the only behavioral analyst in the room.
“What’s it going to be, Bax?”
“The file’s on my computer, which is at my apartment,” I muttered. “But my boss is living in the same building, too. My FBI supervisor, I mean. He has a room a few floors above mine. The FBI is putting us up there while we’re here.” It was a Hail Mary attempt; there was no way Villiers was waiting up in that crappy apartment to see what time I’d get in. But therewassomething else I wanted from that apartment. “If wedogo back,” I said hesitantly, “I could pick up that thing I need.”
“What thing? Thisthingyou mentioned in the shower?”
“Yeah.” He raised an eyebrow, waiting for me to continue. “It’s a—a photo album. I need it.”
He gave me an incredulous look. “You need a photo album? Don’t all you kids have every picture you’ve ever taken backed up in the cloud somewhere?”
The last thing I wanted to do was have to explain. “Not the pictures in this album,” I said, and I was regretting that now. “Come on. I want the photo album, and you want the dossier.”
Angelo gave an unpleasant smile. “I’m sure you have a backup of the dossier online, don’t you, Bax?” The smile got wider as he studied my face.
He could tell he was right.
I wasn’t an accomplished liar, which was one reason no one had ever suggested undercover work for me as a career option in the FBI. “Yeah, I guess,” I admitted, “but—”
“I already told you, you won’t be going back to your apartment. Not if you want to come with me. And not if you want to stay a free agent, considering—” He turned on the television, which was mid-story.
…sources saying that the prime suspect is one Special Agent Baxter Flynn, who had been working with the task force. Allegedly Flynn turned on his colleagues when—
“What thefuck?” I exploded.
Chapter Eleven
Angelo
The thing about Baxter Flynn, I was discovering, was that he had something of a double-faced morality to him. Criminals were bad. Sharing classified documents was okay, since he had good intentions.
And I had no doubt that everything Bax did was done with good intentions. He was fiercely determined to solve this crime, for example. He liked the idea of justice in the abstract. For things that he didn’t consider directly connected, like policies and procedures, he managed to find convenient loopholes. That was the decision I came to, listening to his convoluted explanation for why it was alright for him to have kept a copy of the task force’s classified dossier, which went well beyond his master’s thesis in terms of covert intelligence, on an insecure online drive.
Butthinkingthat he probably was as he presented wasn’t anywhere near actuallytrustinghim.
Even as he stared and ranted at the television news accusing him of being the Central Park Slayer, I got him to open the file for me so I could make my own copy on a flash drive. A little light reading before bed, I’d decided. Our first priority was to get out of Manhattan before some enterprising task force member managed to piece together Flynn’s movements that night, and tracked him straight to my door.
