There were several people ahead of them, but none as serious as his possible concussion. Shocking for Queens. When a pert young nurse in braided pigtails called for him to come back for an initial evaluation, Joshua noticed more than one pair of eyes glaring at him out of dark faces. Look at whitey, going up to the front of the line. At least having Coop with him mitigated the race card a slight bit.
Following the nurse back to triage, Joshua called back to Coop, who was three steps behind him, “If I die from something I catch here, I’m taking you down with me.”
The nurse turned with a flip of her braids. “Oh, we take hygiene very seriously here at New York Hospital, Queens.”
“I bet you do,” he replied. “Probably douche after sex, too, don’t you?”
“Excuse me?” Every ounce of politeness the nurse had radiated vanished in those two words.
“Joshua,” Agent Cooper growled from behind him. Hey, he had warned her not to take him to the hospital. She should learn to pay attention.
“Sorry.” He smirked at the nurse, her badge proclaiming her to be Nurse Jensen. “It’s the concussion. Can’t help it.”
Coop moved forward, speaking to Nurse Jensen. “It’s the fact that he’s an asshole. And he’s right, he can’t help that.”
The nurse gave Agent Cooper a smile and a nod, fixed Joshua with a glare and then turned to prepare the blood pressure cuff. She gestured with a free hand to a chair in which he could sit.
Oh, this was going to be fun.
* * *
Sariah watched as the nurse fumbled with the cuff, struggling to get the Velcro open, then dropping it twice before she managed to get it around Joshua’s arm. As she maneuvered around to try once more, she bumped into Joshua’s side, grazing the place on his side that Sariah had bandaged up earlier that night.
Joshua hissed in pain. “You have done this before, right?” He fixed her with a steady gaze. “How old are you? Have you even had your first period?”
The gasp told Sariah that the former agent had struck a nerve. The roughness with which she grabbed his arm to reapply the cuff told her he’d struck true. The combination of the alcohol burning off and his being in a hospital had turned Joshua into a rabid dog.
“And those pigtails. Really?” He snorted in disdain. “Are you trying to fit into some old lecher’s porn fantasy? Might as well be wearing a school girl uniform and sucking on a lollipop.” The nurse’s breath came faster and her bottom lip started to tremble.
“Joshua,” Sariah warned. “Whatever you’ve got going on in that sick brain of yours, keep it there. This girl’s done nothing.”
“Nothing? Oh, that’s not true, now, is it, Nurse Jensen?” He winked at the nurse. “She’s screwing her boss. Aren’t you, precious?”
The poor girl managed to hold on for another few seconds, then burst into tears and fled the room. The sound of her sobbing could be heard down the hall.
Joshua stretched, groaning as he pulled on the area of his side that had been bruised. “There. That should work to get someone competent in here.”
Sariah stood up from the chair where she’d been watching this scene play out and approached the table where Joshua sat, perched. The bright fluorescent lights overhead buzzed and blinked in time with the beeping of one of the instruments in a nearby room. They spoke of the breakdown of all things human, both the body itself and everything else created by this magnificent, warped race of self-eaters. Clapping her hands together in a slow rhythm, she caught Joshua’s eye and held it, making her distaste clear.
“That was masterful.”
“I told you not to bring me here.”
Sariah nodded. “I see. So you decided to take out your impotent rage on a young candy striper? Makes total sense. Can’t save ‘em in the alleyway, might as well terrorize ‘em at their place of work.”
“She was incompetent.”
“She was trying to be nice,” Sariah corrected him. “And before you get started on me, let me just tell you that I’m not menstruating, nor am I sleeping with my boss.”
Joshua chuckled, a short burst of bark-like noises. “You think that’s going to save you? There’s so much more fodder for my cannons.”
“Do it, then. Don’t keep me in suspense.” There was no way Sariah was going to back down from this. The former agent was going to be working with them. Time to lay all the cards out and see who had what trump cards.
The former agent cracked his neck. “I feel bad for you.”
“Don’t.”
“Fine.” He fixed her with a bloodshot eye. “You had an abusive drunk of a father for whom you cared. But he died. On your watch. Probably while you were doing something passive-aggressive to get back at him.”
Sariah took a step back. She’d seen analysts at the BAU pull some rabbits out of hats, but nothing compared to this. The blood began rushing and throbbing in her inner ear, pounding out a rhythm that said, run, run.
But he wasn’t done yet. “You’ve spent the rest of your life proving your father right. You can’t get along with anyone. You’ve done your damnedest to sabotage your own career. And you are completely ineffectual at your job.”
Tears sprang to her eyes. It was like he had taken every single one of her fears and spread them out on the table beside him. He didn’t just have a trump card here and there. He had them all.
And it didn’t matter in the slightest.
“You’re right,” Sariah answered. She was proud that her voice remained steady. Almost. “Which is why you have to come with me. This plan to get away from me is not working out so well for you. You’ve just reconfirmed to me that I can’t do it without you.”
As she walked off to the nearest bathroom to clean her face, Sariah smiled to herself. He may have her pegged, but she hadn’t failed. She wasn’t incompetent.
Joshua was coming with her, and together they were going to catch a killer.
* * *
Joshua had woken up at four thirty. It never failed. Somewhere around four in the morning, he would start awake from dark dreams, and that would be it for sleep for the night. Didn’t matter how hard he tried to drift back down into the embrace of the little death. It always evaded him.
So he had pushed himself up from the couch and listened to the snoring of Agent Cooper for a while. Too bad he hadn’t had anything to record it. She’d be mortified if she knew how loud she was. Although, so far, she’d defied his expectations about how she was going to respond to everything he’d thrown at her.
His assessments of her were all spot-on. He knew it. And yet, when he called her on it, she just seemed to get stronger.
He also acknowledged that it was going to take a lot to break through the layer of ice that woman had built up around her. It would also take a different person. Joshua wasn’t interested in all that.
Keep those walls up, baby. You’re going to need them.
He’d then spent the next forty-five minutes going through her stuff. He’d found his own file, which had been a fascinating read. And then, of course, the file on Humpty Dumpty. That had taken a few more of the mini-bottles of liquor to get through, in spite of his best efforts to the contrary. Working on this case was not going to be easy.
Starting out, Joshua had done his best to stay quiet, but when the steady buzz saw noise coming from the petite agent hadn’t changed, his searching had gotten more and more aggressive. By the time it was 5:15, all the lights and the television were on, and she still hadn’t stirred.
It was time for them to get out of here, and Joshua had long since gotten all the information he’d be able to get on his own. So… time to wake up Sleeping Beauty.
She lay there on the bed, her limbs all akimbo. At some point during the night, she’d kicked the covers off of her legs, and Joshua could see the alcohol bracelet there, attached to her ankle. Stupid girl. That hadn’t worked out too well, had it?
Then again, he was here. Maybe she wasn’t so stupid after all.
It didn’t t
ake long before he found that waking her up was going to be much more difficult than it should have been. After poking and prodding her with no discernible effect, Joshua got an idea.
Turnabout was fair play, after all.
He grabbed the ice bucket on the bathroom counter, swung the bar of the sliding bolt against the doorframe to keep the door to the hotel room open, and trotted out to the nearest ice machine. A push of the button and the bucket was full.
After making his way back to the room, he filled up the bucket with water, walked over to the bed and held the ice water over Agent Cooper’s sleeping form. A couple more moments to enjoy the sweet sounds of her slumber and then he emptied the contents of the bucket all over her head.
The sounds of her yells were sweet, sweet music to his ears.
CHAPTER 5
Washington, DC was the coolest place Had’d ever seen in his life.
Of course, he hadn’t seen any other cities outside of Michigan, not that he could remember, anyway. Detroit had been one of the great disappointments of his young life.
In spite of having no sleep the night before, he was excited when Judy, sitting next to him in the plane, had started chatting with him. It had made the flight go by so fast. Plus, Had not only had a place to stay in Phoenix whenever he might be out that way, but he now knew how to pickle prickly pears. Bonus. People were fascinating.
Even considering how hard it was to keep his eyes open at this point, the first thing Had did upon touching down in DC was to start seeing every sight he could. He wasn’t supposed to meet up with Coop until 10 and his flight had gotten in at 7:35. The taxi ride out to Quantico was going to take about forty-five minutes. That gave him just over an hour.
More than enough time.
He grabbed the first taxi he could find out in front of the Ronald Reagan National Airport. The driver was a Pakistani driver named Bilal who managed to be even friendlier than Judy from the plane, even though his English rated just above the third-grade level. Plus, the guy knew his way around DC, and had an uncanny ability to avoid the worst of the early morning traffic.
“Did you know that the Washington Monument is made up of two different kinds of stone?” Had asked the man. He’d studied up on the capitol city before he’d gotten here and had all kinds of facts at his fingertips. "If you look close, you can see two colors."
“I was not knowing this fact,” responded the driver. He appeared to be surprised. “And I am driving in this place for many years.”
They’d hit the Mall, the Lincoln Memorial, the Museum of Natural History and now they were headed over to the White House. At some point, Had wanted to stop and walk and really take time with each of these landmarks, but for right now, he was just happy to be catching glimpses of them all.
“And here she be, my friend,” Bilal yelled over his shoulder. Or at least that’s what Had thought he was saying. Everything that came out of the driver’s mouth was loud and somewhat unintelligible.
“Great!” Had said, looking out the window. “Um. Do you think you could maybe slow down for a second?”
“You are seeing me and how I are looking, no?” Bilal waved his hands up and down his form, circling his face a few times. “It is not for me to be slowing down outside this place of all places.”
“Yeah, good call,” Had answered back. He could try to pretend that it wouldn’t be an issue, but whom would he be kidding? Even if Bilal got the meaning of the whole thing, the guy wasn’t stupid. His particular look wasn’t really “in” right now when it came to keeping security tight around the nation’s most important monuments.
Besides, much as he wanted to spend some time around the White House, right now it was more important to get out to Quantico. He would much rather be early than even a few moments late. It was his first day on the job, and his mama had always talked about how important that initial impression was.
Comb your hair, be on time, smile lots and try not to talk too much.
Well, he tried to get three out of the four. He glanced at himself in the rearview mirror at his hair that was sticking up at all angles. Okay, two. He had a great smile.
And now he was headed to Quantico, Virginia. He was going to see the world-famous FBI Academy. Hell, he was going to work inside it, alongside some of its graduates. His skin was buzzing like he’d gone on a diet of nothing but coffee and Red Bull, but there was nothing artificial about this high. He’d earned it, baby.
He went over the details of the case in his head. After going through the files four more times last night, even the most obscure pieces of the puzzle were embedded in his head deeper than any hidden file on a server.
The most fascinating, though tragic, parts of the case were those involving Agent Joshua Wright. The guy seemed to be some kind of BAU legend. Not a top tier student—at least not at first. But when the future Agent Wright had been introduced to the realm of behavioral analysis, he’d shot to the front of the class in no time flat.
His fall had been just as steep a progression as his rise to prominence, just in the opposite direction. Agent Wright had managed to burn every bridge that his brilliance had ever built. It was like he had adopted some kind of scorched-earth policy. No one seemed to speak ill of him, but that was mostly due to the fact that they all knew the story. No one wanted to be the one to flog the dead horse.
Had didn’t have any brothers or sisters, and it was only his mama now. His dad had died when he was about seven. He’d been a mortician, which was probably where Had’d gotten his inappropriate and rather morbid sense of humor. Oh, and his ease around dead bodies. Couldn’t over-emphasize that one. It might be at least part of what had gotten him this job.
Shaking his head to get back on track, Had thought about his mama. If she were to pass away… He shook his head again. If he was going to play this game, he might as well play for keeps. If she were to be killed by a homicidal maniac and thrown in a wood chipper, what would Had do?
The answer was immediate and clear. Fall apart seven ways from Sunday.
And Agent Wright had lost his wife and three daughters. Had’s mind boggled. There was no way that anyone could handle that and still come out normal.
Which, according to Coop, was exactly what had happened to Agent Wright.
Almost as if his thoughts had conjured it, a text came through on his phone. It was from Coop.
I’ve got him. See you at 10.
Before she’d left, Coop had talked with Had about how she was going to convince the former agent to help. She’d been talking so loud it had almost burst his eardrum. It had felt to him like she was nervous, even though she’d never say it. Overcompensation, maybe? But whatever she’d done had apparently worked, and now their trusty crew of two had grown by fifty percent.
Had was thrilled. If it wasn’t enough that he’d get to work on a case that was urban legend, he was getting to meet a guy who had been a part of that whole thing from the start. That was pretty cool. More than pretty cool. Had would be doing his happy dance right now if he weren’t trapped in the backseat of a taxicab.
Screw that noise. He decided to do it in his head. No one could see him do that, now could they? He groped around in his head for a minute… there. That was it. That was the one. “Pocketful of Sunshine” by Natasha Bedingfield. He’d never admit it out loud, but it had been one of his favorites since he had heard it for the first time while watching Easy A. Emma Stone was so hot.
But then a stray and rather pointed thought intruded and popped the bubble of both his happy dance and his burgeoning mini-fantasy involving the redheaded star. Agent Cooper was one of the smartest people Had had ever met. And according to the way she’d been talking about him, Agent Wright was even smarter than that. Where in the hell could Had fit himself into that equation?
“So, my friend, what you go to Quantico?” Bilal’s voice intruded on his no-longer-quite-so-happy thoughts.
“Oh, um…” Had wasn’t positive what he could disclose, so he decided to play it a li
ttle bit safe. “I’m just working on something with the BAU… ah, the FBI.”
“BAU I know. I know this. Criminal Minds, no?” Bilal grinned at him in the rearview mirror. “You work for this?”
“Yeah. Yes. Well, sort of.” From the time he was young, Had had a problem keeping things simple. If even the smallest detail of the story was off, he had to fix it. Drove his mama nuts. But it had made his lies some of the most compelling in Ann Arbor. Some of the older kids had started hanging out with him just to use his skills.
“Sort of? How means ‘sort of?'”
“I’m just on loan. I’m from up in Michigan. Ann Arbor.”
Bilal nodded. “Ah. Small city, no? You must be having the smart pants.”
“What?”
“You. Smart, no?” Bilal pointed at his own head.
“No. I mean yes. Well…” Had sputtered. This was hitting him right where he was living. “I think no one else wanted the job. I mean, I’ve always been smart enough for Ann Arbor, but now…”
“Now you are playing with large men?” More sage nodding.
“If that means what I think it means, then yes. I’m a small fish swimming in a ginormous, ocean-sized pond.”
“Ah, yes, but you am thinking like small city.”
Had gave a sour bark of a laugh at that. “That’s exactly my problem.”
“No, no, my friend.” For the first time that Had had seen, the driver was shaking his head from side to side. “No problem. Good thing. You see what big city are not seeing.”
“You mean that I’ll notice things differently than them?”
Back to the nodding. “Yes. Yes, my friend.”
“Yeah, but that’s…” Had paused to think that through for a moment before continuing. “Actually, that’s kind of brilliant.”
“Yes! You are understanding this now.” Bilal pointed to his head again. “For I, too, am coming from a small city. I am seeing things different.”
Had settled back in his seat, trying to absorb this new way of thinking. He had no idea how it would end up playing out, but it was possible that this Pakistani cab driver had given him the secret to succeeding with two of the smartest agents the BAU may have ever produced. There was something that Had was bringing to the table that no one else could.
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