‘Emma—’
‘It’s fine. It’s what you had to do.’ If he apologizes, if he sounds – even for one instant – like he feels sorry for her, she doesn’t know if she’ll be able to handle it.
There’s nothing like that. But his voice holds a warning. ‘We’re gonna have to talk about it.’
‘I know.’
‘We might have to talk about ittoday.’
‘Yeah.’ She stares hard at the fascinating buttons on the elevator control panel. ‘Who else has read it?’
He hesitates before the admission. ‘Carter has a copy. Martino. Jack Kirby. The Pittsburgh chief of detectives, Clyde Horner, has excerpts.’
Everybody, then.She swallows that down, nods. ‘Right. Well, plenty of law enforcement people have read the file. It’s been across a lot of desks.’
The sound of the elevator’s hum in the pause. ‘I had to listen to the tape of your deposition, Emma.’
Her gaze jerks over. Bell’s eyes are very dark and deep. No pity there, but something else – something vigilant. Appalled. A burning fury, almost as hot as her own profound anger. And something else, an emotion she can’t plumb the reaches of. The intensity of it resonates in her bones. She has to look away.
‘We’d better …’ They’ve reached the atrium floor. She clears her clogged throat. ‘We’d better move or we’re going to miss our ride.’
They congregate on the roof. Wind is snapping Emma’s jeans against her calves, and the noise of the chopper is ridiculous. Whatever Bell had to do or say to get Kristin on the flight, he got it done, because she’s standing there looking like a kid in a candy shop.
Her hair gets in her mouth as she yells, ‘I’ve never been in a helicopter before!’
‘You’ll be fine,’ Bell yells back.‘Hold on to your skirts. Lewis, have you flown before?’
Emma nods. She was evacuated by chopper to Cleveland after she collapsed during the raid on Huxton’s cabin. She was in the hospital for a month. It was three years ago, and she doesn’t remember much about that flight at all.
This flight is different. A SWAT officer is accompanying them – Emma suspects he is part of her protection detail while she is off base without a qualified field agent. She’s strapped in, given a headset with earmuffs, squeezed between Bell and the SWAT officer, whose name is McCreedy. She can’t really see much. She experiences a lot, though: the heaving rotor thrum that seems to embed itself in her marrow, the whining roar of liftoff, the gut roll as the huge machine banks and turns.
Kristin looks gleeful the whole time, and Emma focuses on that. Someone else is finding the experience pleasurable; it puts her own nausea into perspective. She watches Kristin exclaim and smile around, as her hair whips in the cabin like white seaweed. Bell finally slides an elastic band off one of the file folders in the satchel at his feet and passes it over.
The helicopter cuts flight time from an hour to thirty-seven minutes, and there’s no talking en route. When Emma is finallyunstrapped, once she has crouch-walked on wobbly legs to the car that’s taking them to the location, she has plenty of questions that need answering.
‘Are we going to the Pittsburgh field office?’
‘No, ma’am.’ McCreedy tosses their luggage into the trunk, moving fast. It’s beginning to rain. ‘I’m supposed to escort y’all to the Pittsburgh City-County Building on Grant Street.’
‘We’re not stopping at county health?’
‘No, ma’am.’ He opens the door of the Plymouth for her. ‘My orders are to deliver you to Special Agent Carter, and I’ll be following those orders directly.’
She and Kristin pile into the back seat as McCreedy jogs around to the driver’s side. Bell slides into the front passenger seat and immediately turns around to speak to Emma. His hair has been blown a little wild from the helicopter. ‘You’re thinking about the autopsy results?’
‘Yes.’
‘Has the new girl been identified yet?’ Kristin is disentangling the elastic band to return it.
Bell shrugs. ‘Carter said yes, but I’ve got no more details.’
The streets are slick, and McCreedy drives fast and careful. Bell explains that police operations units in Pittsburgh are divided into zones, but for a citywide operation like this, they’re using the big City-County Building on Grant Street as home base, and that’s where the briefing is being held.
Carter meets them inside. Pittsburgh COD Clyde Horner, in his gray and black uniform, with the puffy eyes of the overworked, is ushering stragglers through the door. Carter flags his attentionand they organize, through a series of gestures and facial expressions, that Emma and Bell and Kristin are supposed to sit somewhere at the back.
The interiors are grand and, in Emma’s view, jarringly opulent – the briefing room has buffed dado walls and a high, ornate ceiling. None of the two dozen or so congregating officers seem to pay the surroundings any mind. It’ll look impressive for the press conference to follow the briefing, so that’s useful.
Emma scans the crowd, trying to screen out the overwhelming odor of male perspiration from all the polyester-blend duty shirts. Dr Karl Friedrich is standing near the front in his bow tie and a sports jacket. Carter stands between Friedrich and a red-faced man in a gray suit. She sees McCreedy take up position across from her and Bell and Kristin, near the back wall. She doesn’t recognize anyone else.
