“Sure.” Laurel pressed down on the nerve.
Fred groaned and pushed at her foot, pain wiping the color from his face. “Stop it.”
The officer stuffed all of the contraband back in the bag and then pulled Fred to his feet once Laurel moved her boot. He quickly cuffed Fred. “Thanks for this. I’ve got it from here.” They moved away.
Laurel reached for Eleanor’s ticket. “Let’s see where you’re supposed to be.” A quick glance at the ticket showed that the woman was going to Indiana. “Your flight is over here at gate twenty-one. Let me grab my belongings and I’ll take you there.” She retrieved her over-sized laptop bag and rolling carry-on before returning to slide her arm through Eleanor’s. “The gate is just on the other side of those restaurants.”
“Excuse me?” George barked through the earbuds. “Assistant Director of the FBI here with information for you.”
“Please hold on another minute, sir,” Laurel said, twisting through the throng while keeping Eleanor safe.
Eleanor looked up, leaning on Laurel. “How do you know my gate number? You didn’t even look at the information board.”
“I looked at it earlier,” Laurel said, helping the elderly woman avoid three young boys dragging Disney-themed carry-ons.
Eleanor blinked. “You memorized all of the flight information with one look?”
“I’m still here,” George groused.
Laurel took Eleanor up to the counter, where a handsome man in his thirties typed into the computer. “This is Eleanor, and this is her plane. She’s going to sit right over here, and she needs extra time to board.” Without waiting for a reply, she helped Eleanor to the nearest seat. “Here you go. You should be boarding in just a few minutes.”
Eleanor patted her hand. “You’re a good girl.”
Laurel crouched down. “Do you have anybody meeting you at the airport?”
Eleanor nodded. “Yes. My son is meeting me right outside baggage claim. Don’t you worry.” She pressed both gnarled hands against Laurel’s face. “You’re a special one, aren’t you?”
“Damn it, Snow,” George bellowed through the earbuds.
Laurel winced. “I am happy to help.”
Eleanor tightened her grip. “You have such lovely eyes. How lucky are you.”
Lucky? Laurel had rarely felt lucky to have heterochromia. “You’re very kind.”
“You’re beautiful. Such stunning colors and so distinct. I’ve never seen such a green light in anyone’s eye, and your other eye is a beautiful dark shade of blue.” Eleanor squinted and leaned in closer. “You have a little green flare in the blue eye, don’t you?”
Laurel smiled and removed the woman’s hands from her face, careful of the arthritic bumps on her knuckles. “Yes. I have a heterochromia in the middle of heterochromatic eyes. It’s an adventure.”
Eleanor laughed. “You’re a pip, you are. God speed to you.”
Laurel stood. “Have a nice trip, Eleanor.” She turned to head back to her gate, her mind returning to her trip to Genesis Valley. She’d have to move all of her appointments in DC to the first week in January, so her brain automatically flipped dates. If she juggled a Monday meeting that week, she would have time for a pedicure. Maybe she could skip her Wednesday lunch with the forensic accountants to discuss the recently developed tactical reasoning software. The accountants rarely escaped the computer lab, and when they did, they always talked for too long. “Sorry about that, sir. What did you find out?”
George’s sigh was long suffering. “Multiple body parts, including three skulls, were found this morning by kids four-wheeling on a mountain called . . .” Papers rustled. “Snowblood Peak.”
Laurel switched directions, her heart rate kicking up. “Just this morning? It’s a little early to be narrowing in on a suspect.” She’d spent some time snowmobiling that mountain as a child with her uncles before leaving for college at the age of eleven. “Could be an old graveyard or something like that. Might not be a case.”
“I know, and this is a local case and not federal, I think.”
She paused. “Actually, it depends where the bodies were found. The valley below Snowblood Peak is half owned by the federal government and half by the state. It’s beautiful country.”
“Huh. Well, okay. We could have jurisdiction if you feel like fighting with the state and the locals.” George didn’t sound encouraging.
She never felt like fighting. “Don’t we have an office in Seattle?”
“Yes, but it’s in flux right now. We were in the midst of creating a special unit out of there called the Pacific Northwest Violent Crimes Unit, but there was a political shakeup, a shooting, and a bunch of transfers. The office is restructuring now, and currently in place I have two agents dealing with a drug cartel.” Papers shuffled across the line.
“So I’m on my own with this case, if it turns out to be anything.” Which was normal for her, actually. A flight from LAX to Seattle had been scheduled to depart out of gate thirteen, and a flight from LAX to Everett had been listed as gate seventeen. “Has my flight been changed?”
