‘No.’ Carter sits back in his chair, regarding her. He considers a moment, then seems to come to some kind of decision. ‘Miss Lewis, I’m going to arrange for you to have some time off.’
Emma jerks like she’s just been slapped. ‘What?’
Carter leans forward and pulls a paper closer, puts on his glasses. He doesn’t look at her. ‘This case is an enormous strain and you haven’t been able to see family or receive personal support—’
‘You’re not serious.’ She steps nearer the desk. ‘You’re taking meoff the case?’
‘I’m sending you home for a few days,’ he says quietly, beginning to write.
‘I don’t believe this. You brought inSimon Gutmunsson, and you’re sendingmehome?’
He glances up. ‘Emma, I know you’re upset—’
‘Of course I’m upset! A girl is going todie!’
Carter stops writing, holds her gaze. ‘But pushing yourself into another panic attack, or some kind of nervous breakdown, isn’t going to help us find her.’
‘Please don’t do this.’
Carter goes back to writing. ‘The agent on your security detailcan take you back to the hotel. You can pack up and catch the next flight back to Ohio.’
‘Don’t do this,’ Emma pleads again. It’s disorienting to realize she never wanted to be here and now she’s fighting to stay.
‘See your folks,’ Carter says. He signs off the paper, glances up. ‘Get some rest. Come back in a few days if the investigation is still continuing.’
‘After Linda Kittiko’s body turns up at another bus stop?’ Emma wants to scream.
Carter merely holds up the paper for her. His dark, somber stare has weight. ‘I’ll see you in a few days, Miss Lewis.’
Francks escorts her down the escalator and outside to the car, which takes her back to the hotel. Emma watches the traffic signs pass as they drive the watercolor streets of Pittsburgh, gets the same sensation she had when all this started, like she’s in some kind of waking nightmare.
Kristin is not in the hotel room – she’s at breakfast, or maybe visiting with her brother. Emma shoves her clothes and other belongings into her black overnight bag, shoulders her backpack, and returns to the car. Her hand dashes at her eyes. She wishes desperately that Bell was here.
Francks, at the car, has a page: he asks her permission to use the hotel room phone. Emma, still dazed, just waves her hand. When he returns, Francks explains that Carter has arranged Emma’s flight and that they’re headed straight for Pittsburgh Airport.
On the drive, she looks out at the leafless branches of silver birch trees beside the Penn-Lincoln Parkway, the high, rippledcirrocumulus clouds. Her uppermost feeling is anger, then tearing grief for Linda Kittiko. She thinks about Simon telling her she has to learn to wield her power.
At the airport, she goes to check-in, collects her boarding pass. Behind her, Francks collects his own. They have to wait forty-five minutes before the boarding call.
Emma sits quietly for a moment, looking at the people moving around near the Southwest counter on the airport concourse. Then she stands and tells Francks she’s going to the bathroom.
‘You want me to stand by the door?’ Francks asks. He’s a good man, and conscientious.
‘It’s okay,’ Emma replies evenly. ‘I can go to the bathroom by myself.’
She leaves her overnight bag on the chair beside him.
The women’s bathroom is all fawn floor tile and shiny silver stalls. She goes into one of them, opens her backpack on the lid of the toilet. Changes her shirt, pulling on a black T-shirt she borrowed from Bell when she was sick. She dons Kristin’s dark blue cardigan, and the Paradise wig, and a pair of sunglasses. Leaving the stall, she turns side to side in front of the bathroom mirror, checking that the alteration seems different enough.
Then she takes a breath, shoulders the backpack again, and leaves the bathroom. She keeps her head down, walking quickly away from Francks and toward the airport exit.
Outside, the sun is glaring. She walks fifteen yards to the nearest taxi rank and jumps into the first available cab. The driver is an elderly man with a cauliflower ear.
‘G’morning, Miss, have a nice flight?’
‘Absolutely.’ Emma pulls off the wig and stuffs it in her backpack, along with the cardigan.
‘Heh, nice hair.’ The driver grins as he pulls the car away from the curb. ‘Where’re you headed?’
