But if I could onlyhearfrom him. Call, text, e-mail.Anything.
It’s what I’m thinking as I wind my way back home, my skin dewy with sweat now, my feet growing tired. I forgot my sunglasses, so now I squint against the brightening morning sun, and when I’m only a few buildings away from my own, the light grows almost blinding as it glints off the hood of a car that’s parked out front. I raise my hand to shade my eyes, annoyed. That’s a no parking zone; there are signs everywhere.
But as I approach, I notice someone standing beside it, as though she’s guarding it from any cop who might try it with a ticket. She frowns down at her watch, clearly impatient, and maybe that wouldn’t be so unusual except that when she looks up, she catches sight of me and I get the eerie certainty that I’m the person she’s been impatient for. She straightens, her eyes on me like I’m a flight risk.
And maybe I am. I’m not ashamed to say I really and truly think about turning and walking in the exact opposite direction. Is interest in my small part in this story high enough that a reporter could’ve actually tracked down where I live?
But once again, something makes me stay.
I walk toward her, steeling myself for confrontation.
“This is a no parking zone,” I say bluntly. Reid would be proud of that, I think.
The woman raises a dark eyebrow. “You’re Margaret Mackworth?”
I raise an eyebrow back. “You’re . . . ?”
The right side of her mouth hitches. “Your roommate told me you’d be coming back. I’m Special Agent Shohreh Tirmizi. I work for the FBI.”
She doesn’t pause to allow me to process that information. She simply pulls a leather fold from her pocket and shows me an honest-to-God badge. A badge! Now that I’ve seen that, I decide she has many other law enforcement-type qualities, at least such qualities that exist in my imagination. She has a suit on like Olivia Benson fromSVU! Also she is tall.
“Yes,” I say. “I’m Meg. Is he—”
But she doesn’t wait for me to ask my question. “My partner and I have been working with Reid Sutherland for the last eight and a half months.”
I blink at her. “I thought it was six.”
“Don’t believe everything you read in the papers.”
Somehow, from her tone, I get the sense she’s not just talking about the timeline information.
“Is he okay?” I say before she can cut me off again.
“He’s fine. He’s had a lot of statements to give after the arrest. And given some of the accusations circulating about him in the press—” She breaks off and gives me a meaningful look, as if she knows all about the way I clicked through the gossipy stories containing those accusations: Reid and his revenge mission; Reid orchestrating some kind of numbers-game setup of Alistair Coster.
“Well,” she finishes, “we’re trying to limit anyone’s access to him for a few days.”
I furrow my brow. “But I’m not—” I don’t know how to finish that sentence. I’m not anyone? I’m not trying to access him, to ask him whether some parts of those stories are true?
I clear my throat after I trail into silence, and she simply looks at me again, taking my measure. Or maybe she’s using some sophisticated interrogation tactic on me. Honestly, if it’s the latter, it’s pretty effective, because for a second I consider telling her about the time I shoplifted a Werther’s Original from the bulk candy section at the grocery store. When I was eight.
“I don’t have any information for you,” I say, finally, submitting to her considerable powers. “He never told me—”
“I know that,” she says, and the way she says it tells me she knows Reid, trusts him. “I came because he asked me to.”
For the first time since Friday, my heart leaps with hope.
From the inside of her Olivia Benson jacket, Agent Tirmizi draws out an envelope, stuffed thick with paper. Even from here I can see Reid’s handwriting across the front:
A letter.Of course.
Even though I want to reach out and snatch it, to run up to my apartment and shut the door while I pore and pore over it, I wait until she holds it out to me, and I take it from her hands gently.
“Thank you,” I tell her.
She has that assessing look again. “You should thank me for more than this letter.”
I blink at her, confused. She really seems as though she’s waiting for something specific.
