“None for me, actually. But I’ll take a water if you have it.”
“We can do that.” Rizzo opens the refrigerator door, grabs a bottle, and tosses it in my direction. I catch it in one hand.
She grins. “Nice reflexes.”
Rizzo gets herself a cup of coffee and leads the way to a small table. We pull up two chairs. She leans toward me conspiratorially even though we’re the only people in the break room.
“Okay, John Sampson,” she says as she pours a packet of sugar into her cup and stirs, “what’s your life story?”
She gets right to the point. I admire that.
I twist the cap off my water bottle. “Born and raised here in DC. Both my parents were drug addicts, in and out of prison. Thankfully, my best bud, Alex Cross, brought me into his family. His grandmother basically raised us together.”
“Alex Cross?” says Rizzo. “TheAlex Cross? The serial-killer expert?”
“The very same. We grew up together. After high school, I joined the army, then went into Metro PD.”
“What did you do in the army? Where were you deployed?”
“Iraq. Afghanistan. A few other hot spots. How about you? How long were you downrange?”
I see her eyebrows shoot up. I nod toward her wrist. “Don’t be so surprised. I saw your ink earlier. Don’t tell me: Explosive Ordnance Disposal?”
“You got it,” she says. “EOD team leader, E-six, with the Fifty-Second Ordnance Group out of Fort Campbell. Deployed to Iraq, the ’stan, some other lousy places.”
“And before that? You don’t strike me as a local.”
Rizzo shakes her head. “My mom’s originally from around here, but I grew up in Nebraska. Bit of a wild child, I guess. Loved firecrackers and cherry bombs, blowing stuff up. Always in trouble. I was working for a fireworks company when I ran into an army recruiter at a county fair who convinced me to join up.”
“And use your skills for good, not evil.”
“Yep,” says Rizzo. “That was the pitch.” She blows on her coffee. “So. Married?”
“Widowed. Few years back. But I’m a dad to a wonderful young daughter, Willow, who sometimes acts twice her age.”
“Tell me about it. I’ve got a nine-year-old daughteranda ten-year-old son,” Rizzo says. “Tina and Juan.”
I take a sip of my water. “So how about you? Married?”
“Divorced. My husband couldn’t handle me—or my hours.”
“Must get complicated as a single parent with your job, raising two kids on your own.”
Rizzo lifts a shoulder. “I’m sure you know how it is. This life makes it hard—but I do my best. Luckily, I can rely on my abuela Marina. She’s in line for sainthood. Great cook and always there to help. God bless all abuelas, wherever they are.”
“I’ll drink to that.” I’d put Nana Mama in the sainthood category too.
Rizzo looks across the table and catches me rubbing my eyes. “Long day,” she says.
“Yeah. For a lot of people.”
She drains her coffee and pushes her cup aside. “We’ve got some rooms upstairs if you want to bunk here. It’s nothing fancy, but I hear the cots aren’t bad.”
I shake my head. “Thanks for the offer. But my daughter’sstaying over at the Cross house and there’s a room there for me too. I promised to stay there with her.”
“You sound like a good dad, John Sampson,” Rizzo says, standing up. “We’ll talk tomorrow, then.”
“Count on it.”
