by Rachel Caine
She turned. There was a police cruiser parked at the curb farther down, lights flashing, with two uniformed officers standing next to it. Katie waved.
“I think I already have a ride,” she said.
She walked away, resisting the urge to look back. After a few seconds she heard the click of the cab door shutting, and breathed a sigh of relief as the yellow sedan rolled by. She kept her focus on the police cruiser, and the two officers beside it, as she walked.
Okay, one glance at the taxi. He wouldn’t still be looking….
He was. She looked away, furious with herself, as he waved.
“Agent Rush, welcome to the lovely city of Phoenix. Detective Ryan sent you chauffeurs. Hope you don’t mind riding in our special visitor’s seats.”
The male officer was already opening up the back door of the cruiser. She ducked inside and found it depressingly familiar; she’d ridden in a lot of police cars around the country, and it always seemed to be the same damn car, over and over. Different colored wipe-down vinyl upholstery, and the heavy grillwork separating her from the front seat. There were no handles on the inside of the doors, of course. The whole thing smelled of the body odor and vomit of the last transport, overlaid with the astringent wipe-down they’d given it to make it presentable for her.
“Nice,” she said. “So I’m getting the royal treatment.”
“You know us locals, anything for our cousins from the FBI. Watch your head.”
Their names, according to the name tags, were officers Samson and Gilhoulie—one black, one white, one thin, one plump, one female, one male. The differences didn’t matter much, as far as Katie could tell; they seemed used to each other, in the way of partners or old married couples. Aware of each other at all times, but comfortable.
Samson was the driver of the two, apparently. He got behind the wheel and steered the cruiser into traffic, lights still flashing. Katie looked out the freshly cleaned window—it still smelled of the cleaning product they’d used to give it a streak-free shine—to get her bearings in the city again. In a sense, they really had rolled out the red carpet. Most cop shops would have assumed she could take care of her own transportation.
Phoenix never looked lush, but the weak winter sunlight gave it a wan quality that mirrored Katie’s mood. She remembered the city very well, but it wasn’t a homecoming, not given the circumstances.
“So,” Officer Gilhoulie said and twisted around to look at her. She was a height-challenged redhead with fair Irish skin and blue eyes that seemed pleasant, but had that inner distance all cops everywhere shared. “How long have you known Detective Ryan, ma’am?”
The ma’am was reflexive. All beat cops were courteous to a fault, until they weren’t. Part of their charm.
“Detective Ryan and I went to school together,” Katie said. That usually derailed the conversation because there was nothing more boring than old school-days reminiscences; nobody wanted to hear high school stories except people from your high school. Sure enough, Gilhoulie turned back to face forward.
But, to Katie’s surprise, she continued asking questions.
“You originally from Phoenix, then?”
“Pennsylvania. Philly, actually. I’m just assigned out of the Kansas City field office right now.”
“They move you around in the FBI, huh?”
“Every two years,” Katie said. “Until you get to a certain service level. I’ve probably got one rotation to go before they let me choose a permanent duty station. Doesn’t matter, though. I work all over the country.”
Chitchat, nothing Katie had to focus her attention on beyond the bare minimum. Gilhoulie’s partner, Samson, drove without saying much; he was constantly scanning the streets and sidewalks. Gilhoulie seemed to think it was her duty to entertain the guest, for some reason. “So,” the officer asked, “do you have some kind of specialty, or…?”
“Missing persons,” Katie said. “I specialize in missing persons cases.”
“No wonder Ryan called you,” Gilhoulie said. “So, what kind of school was it? Some kind of prep school, right? I heard it’s exclusive.”
Time to change the subject. “You get a lot of these kinds of abductions in Phoenix these days?”
“No, ma’am,” Samson said immediately. “Mostly the usual, you know, custody disputes. Sometimes we get a kid or woman snatched by predators, though. It happens here same as anywhere else.”
“Did you work the scene of today’s abduction?”
“Just perimeter stuff,” he said, shrugging. “Sorry. Can’t tell you much, except that Detective Ryan’s been a rock. If it was my kid nearly got snatched, I can tell you, I don’t think I’d hold up so well.”
Gilhoulie nodded soberly in agreement. “I always knew she was, you know, pretty good, but she’s been all over this thing today. Her kid’s been terrific, too.”
“Real trooper,” Samson added. He hit the blinker and turned the car onto a side street. “Right up ahead, Agent Rush. You’ll find Detective Ryan in the middle of it.”
He kept driving, passed through a police barricade and parked inside the perimeter, safely away from the crowd of bystanders and press. “Forensics is still processing,” Samson added, although he didn’t really need to; Katie knew from experience how long that could take, for a really complicated crime scene. “Probably got a couple more hours to go before they wrap it up.”
“Got it. Thanks to you both,” she said as Gilhoulie opened up the back door for her.
“Not a problem. Do us a favor. Find the girls, huh?”
“I’ll do my best.” Once upon a time, she’d have said, I will, but she knew that wasn’t always the case. “I appreciate the ride, guys.”
The air was cool outside, especially after the closed-in fug of the police cruiser; Katie took a deep breath, shouldered her bag and headed for the nearest on-duty cop she could spot. Her FBI badge got her instant directions to Kayla Ryan, who was half a block away in a huddle with other police.
There was something indefinable about seeing a fellow Athena Force member—a kind of recognition and simple comfort that went beyond just spotting an old friend. Katie saw Kayla step out of the impromptu meeting going on and head her way.
“Katie,” Kayla said and smiled. They shook hands in a brisk, businesslike fashion rather than hugged—purely for any cameras that happened to be pointed in their direction. “I can’t thank you enough for this. Let’s go someplace more private to talk.”
She led the way with quick strides. They’d always been the same height, but Katie recognized even more similarities. She and Kayla both moved with authority and confidence, thanks to their training both at the Academy and through their careers. Kayla’s skin was shades darker, and she’d let her long dark hair grow. Her brown eyes still looked disarmingly warm. That probably served her very well in interrogations—Katie knew that intimidation, for all its dramatic presentation, was generally less useful than empathy in soliciting information.
In short, Kayla looked great, if strained at the moment. As they walked toward a row of high hedges, backs to the cameras, she caught Kayla exchanging a look with a tall, good-looking detective standing nearby. A look. You didn’t have to be an investigator to read his regard for her, and to see it was something more than just professional courtesy.
“So I guess the press is all over this one,” Katie said and winced as she adjusted her bag on her shoulder. Her ribs were making their protests felt. Again. “Why the cloak and dagger?”
“Parabolic microphones. Some of the more enterprising news reporters have them around here. They can’t air the footage, unless they want to lose any cooperation in the future from the department, but they can still use the information they get in other ways.” Kayla shook her head. “Lots of ‘unnamed sources’ come from surveillance. I’m not willing to take the chance. Besides, guess who’s here as our special media guest?”
“60 Minutes?”
“I just wish. No, Shannon Connor.”
“Shannon!” Katie blurted, shocked. Not that she couldn’t have foreseen it happening, of course. Shannon Connor had been a promising student at the Athena Academy —in Kayla’s group, the Graces, in fact—but she’d shown a dark side, and had made history as the first girl ever expelled from the Academy. Not that she wasn’t bright, but she was ambitious and bitter. Since getting thrown out of the school, she’d gone on to a relatively successful career in broadcast journalism…but she was always looking for dirt on the Academy and its graduates. “She’d better be looking to help, not just digging for trouble.”
“You know Shannon. She’s looking for any angle that will make us look…” Kayla shrugged.
“I can’t believe she’d stoop that low. Not with kids at stake.”
“She’s a reporter. Of course she’d stoop that low.” Which might have been ungenerous, but Katie wasn’t much inclined to grant Shannon Connor any benefit of the doubt, either.
The hedges had a gate, which Kayla swung open and motioned her through. The other side was cool and green and open—a community garden, pretty and peaceful, xeriscaped with desert plants. Secluded.
A young lady slumped, hands folded, on a concrete park bench under the skeletal branches of a large tree. She looked up as Kayla and Katie approached, and got to her feet quickly.
Kayla’s daughter, Jazz, looked taller than Katie remembered, but that was the way with kids…. They grew while you weren’t watching. Jazz looked much more mature, though. She’d always been self-possessed, but the time at the Athena Academy had given her even more of that. Except for a hint of nervousness in the quick way she glanced at her mother, she looked as cool as ice.
She was dressed in blue jeans and a pink top, long-sleeved and hooded. Warm enough for a walk, but not for sitting on a cold bench. She was shivering.
“Officer,” Katie called and got an instant response from one of the uniformed cops near the gate. “Can you lend me your jacket?”
He slid it off and handed it over; Katie draped the police-issue jacket around Jazz’s thin shoulders. “There,” she said. “Better?”
“Yeah,” Jazz agreed softly. “Thanks. Hi, Katie.”
“Hi, honey. So, bad day, huh?”
“Pretty bad.” Jazz swallowed hard and glanced again at her mother, who was watching her with so much love and concern it made Katie’s heart turn over. “They almost got me, but Teal and Lena , they made sure I got away. I didn’t want to leave them, Katie. I didn’t!”
“I know you didn’t. Here. Sit with me.” She took a seat on the cold concrete bench and patted the empty spot next to her. “Maybe your mom can get you something to drink? Some water?”
It was a pretext, but a necessary one; she couldn’t just tell Kayla to leave, and Kayla needed an excuse to go. When Jazz nodded gratefully, the two women exchanged a quick glance, and Kayla reached down to hug her daughter before walking off in search of refreshments.
Katie waited until she was sure Kayla was out of earshot.
“You don’t have to be brave with me,” she said, and Jazz crumbled, sobbing against her. Katie put her arms around her, wincing as Jazz hugged back, but she bit her lip and stood the pain. She stroked the girl’s soft, silky hair with slow movements. “You’ve been brave all day, haven’t you?”
“I had to.” Jazz gulped. Her voice was more like a little girl’s now, shaking and high-pitched. “Everybody was counting on me. I had to remember, and tell people, and—”
“And you did that, you did. But you were scared, too, and that’s okay. It’s okay, you understand?”
Jazz pulled back, eyes swollen and streaming tears. She gave Katie a pleading look. “Mom never is.”
“Your mom is scared a lot, but she tries not to let it show.” Katie gave the girl a smile, a small one, appropriate to the mood. “Like me. But you need to break down sometimes to be stronger later. You understand that? I’ll bet your mom cries later.”
“She—” Jazz gulped air and looked more thoughtful. “Sometimes, I guess. She closes the door. I hear her crying, but only when things were really bad at work or something.”
“Well, today, they’re really bad at work and she’s afraid for you, too. So give her a break. Let her take care of you, okay?”
Jazz nodded. Her body language was slowly uncoiling from the wire-tight posture it had been, and Katie breathed a cautious sigh of relief. The last thing the kid needed was to bottle all this up. It was traumatic, and Jazz was—like all Athena students—advanced for her age. A recipe for emotional disaster.
“You feel like telling me the story now? One last time?”
Jazz bent her head and sat up again, hands braced on either side on the cold concrete bench. Her voice was soft, and still a little unsteady, but Katie heard every word. “We decided to go to the movies. It was—we had the day off.”
“Why didn’t you ask for transportation? Call a cab?”
Jazz didn’t look up. “We wanted to walk. It was a nice day.”
Girls her age didn’t want to walk, they wanted to get where they were going fast, and have fun even faster.
“Jazz, if you lie to me, you’re putting Teal and Lena in danger. You know that, don’t you?”
Jazz’s head jerked up in outright astonishment. Katie raised an eyebrow and waited as Jazz found words. “I didn’t lie!”
“I’m afraid you did. And you lied to your mother, and to the police, and now you think you can’t change your story. But you can, Jazz. Nobody thinks you’re at fault here.”
“But—”
Katie let a little hardness creep into her voice. “You weren’t going to the movies. You didn’t take the school transportation service because you didn’t want anybody to know where you were going, and you didn’t take a cab because you didn’t want any record. Right?”
Jazz looked as bewildered as if Katie had just pulled a rabbit out of her ear. “How—?” She swallowed the question and flushed pale pink under her matte-tan skin. “I didn’t lie. We would have gone to the movies. We were planning to do it late afternoon.”
“So where were you going in the morning?”
“It’s supposed to be a secret. Teal made me promise.”
“Teal made you promise.”
Jazz nodded slowly. “There was someone from the school in trouble. She needed help. Teal and Lena promised to meet her. I wasn’t really supposed to go along, but I followed them and caught up after I overheard. Besides, I wanted to go to the movies.”
Precocious didn’t half cover it, Katie thought. She wondered if she’d been so difficult at Jazz’s age, thought back and decided that it was entirely possible. “Where were you going? And who were you meeting?”
“We were going to the mall. It’s only a couple of blocks away. I don’t know who we were meeting, it was a secret. Teal and Lena didn’t want to talk about it.”
This didn’t sound nearly as innocent as Jazz probably thought it did. “Could it have been boys? Somebody they met in town, maybe?”
“I—No. No, they told me it was somebody from the school.”
“There are men working at the school.”
Jazz shook her head. “They said she.”
It couldn’t be an accident that Teal and Lena had been off-campus and picked off so neatly; somebody had set it up. Somebody had set a place and a time for them to be, and they’d walked right into it. Jazz had been an unexpected ride-along. No wonder they’d allowed her to escape.
“Okay, walk me through what happened. You were walking—”
Kayla returned midway through the recitation of the facts, but that was all right. The secret had been revealed, and Katie could see from the kid’s body language that she had nothing more to conceal. She’d told everything she knew.
Nevertheless, just for clarity, Katie walked Jazz through the rest of the story, start to finish, stopping her for details that seemed unimportant but might be vital later on. She made illegible scribbles in her own fluid abbreviations and listened for any false
notes.
Nothing.
When silence fell, Katie checked her watch. It was sliding toward evening, and the chill was getting sharper in the air. The desert didn’t hold in the heat poured over it during the day, and it was going to get bone-shaking cold tonight. “Right,” she said. “I think that’s it, Jazz. You’ve been wonderful. I’ll check in on you when I can, okay?”
“Wait.” Jazz caught her hand. “You’re going to find them, right? You promise?”
Katie Rush never promised. It was unprofessional; it was hurtful and it added complications the job didn’t need. She’d learned that hard, and she never broke the rule.
She did now. “Yes,” she said. “I promise. They’re coming back safe.”
She walked off a little distance with Kayla, who was anxious and trying hard not to look it. “Anything?” Kayla asked.
Katie didn’t answer directly. “I need to go up to the school. Can someone give me a ride?”
“Of course. I’ll take you—”
“No, you need to take your daughter home. I’ll keep you fully briefed on what I find out—if anything. Be with Jazz right now.” She remembered the tall detective they’d passed, who’d looked at Kayla with such outright concern and longing. “And…anybody else you might need to see.”
Kayla flushed, just like her daughter. “It’s my case, I can’t just drop it!”
“It’s not your case,” Katie said and turned to face her. Cold air blew over them, reminding them that night was falling, that darkness was coming. “Your daughter was an assault victim. Two of her friends are missing. Nobody in their right mind is going to keep you in charge of this case, you know that. Phoenix PD is going to follow their own course. But me, I’m independent. I can follow leads they can’t, especially leads that come up inside of the Academy. Let me do this for you.”
Katie stared her down. It took a long time, but then Kayla always had been strong-willed, tough-minded and determined.
But she knew when to quit.
“All right,” she said. “But you keep me in the loop. Daily. Hourly, if there’s breaking news.”
