Katie
The federal facility looked different this time.
A few days ago I’d been walked through these halls with a cuff still on my wrist. The corridors had been very institutional, and everything about it had felt cold and unwelcoming.
The wing they brought me to now was none of those things.
My escort, a woman in a dark suit who hadn’t offered her name and whose ID badge faced inward against her jacket, led me through a security checkpoint I hadn’t seen on my previous visit. It required a keycard, a six-digit code, and a biometric scan that read her palm print through a glass panel. The corridor beyond was carpeted. The lighting was warm and the doors had no windows.
She stopped at the third door on the left and knocked once, a single precise rap, then opened it without waiting for a response.
“Ms. Gregory,” she said, gesturing me inside.
The office was small but purposeful. There was a desk, two chairs, and a single window that looked out onto an interior courtyard I hadn’t known the building contained. The desk held a laptop, a legal pad, and a coffee cup that was still steaming. The walls were bare except for a small, framed document near the door that I couldn’t read from the visitor’s chair.
The woman behind the desk stood when I entered. Late twenties, maybe thirty, with auburn hair cut to her jawline and pale eyes that moved over me in a single efficient sweep. She was dressed in a charcoal blazer over a white blouse, and she wore no jewelry except a watch with a leather band. She looked like someone who listened for a living and had gotten very good at it.
“Katie.” She extended her hand across the desk. Her grip was firm and brief. “Please sit down. Can I get you anything? The coffee here is surprisingly decent.”
“I’m fine.” I sat in the visitor’s chair. The cushion was actual cushion, not the punitive flat pad of the interrogation room. “I was called in for more questioning. And told I wasn’t in trouble.”
“That’s correct.” She sat back down and folded her hands on the desk, her posture relaxed. “I’m Special Agent Mercer. I’ve been assigned to your case as of forty-eight hours ago, replacing the team that spoke with you previously.”
I studied her. Harwood and Davis had operated out of a standard interrogation room with a metal table and a camera screwed into the ceiling. This was a different setup, and the woman sitting across from me was a different category of agent.
“You’re not FBI,” I said.
Her expression didn’t change. Not a flicker, not a tightening, nothing that would register as a tell. She held my gaze with the even patience of someone who had been told this before, possibly many times, and had a well-rehearsed non-response ready.
“My credentials are with the Bureau.”
“Your credentials might be. But this wing doesn’t exist on the building directory I passed on the way in. And agents Harwood and Davis weren’t ‘reassigned.’ They were removed from the case because whoever you work for decided this situation was above their clearance.”
Something moved in her eyes. Not irritation. Recognition, maybe, the look of a professional encountering competence and recalibrating.
“You’re a law student.”
“Eighteen months from a JD.”
“It shows.” She picked up her coffee and took a sip, unhurried, and set it down again. “You’re smart enough to know there are some questions you shouldn’t ask, Katie.”
“Fair enough.” I crossed my legs and settled into the chair. “So what do you want to ask me?”
“I’d like to hear what happened. In your own words, at whatever pace is comfortable. Starting from the hike in the Sandia Mountains and continuing through to the events at the cave three days ago.”
There was no recorder visible on the desk, though that didn’t mean one wasn’t running. She hadn’t pulled out a notebookor clicked a pen. She simply sat there with her hands folded, watching me with those pale, attentive eyes.
“Harwood and Davis thought I was a contract killer,” I said. “Or at minimum an accomplice.”
“I’m aware of their assessment.”
“And you?”
“I’m here to listen. Not to assess.” She paused. “At least not yet.”
I looked at the window. The courtyard beyond it was small, four walls of pale stucco enclosing a square of gravel and a single piñon tree. The tree looked old and unbothered by its incarceration.
I told her.
