by L. T. Vargus
“Thanks for this,” she said, then nodded at the shot glass. “And the other.”
“My pleasure.”
When Violet got back to her table, Morgan and Lauren were huddled together, chattering excitedly. Violet slid into her chair and saw the wedding bouquet laid out on the table.
“So who got it?” she asked.
Lauren pointed at Morgan, who beamed as if she’d won some kind of award.
“Congrats.”
“Where’d you run off to?” Morgan asked.
Violet let the bottle thump onto the table.
“We were out,” she said and stood to refill their glasses.
“To Morgan and her magical bouquet,” Violet said, lifting her champagne flute by the stem. “May your future husband be both well-endowed and blessed with little back hair.”
Lauren and Morgan snorted into their glasses as they all drank.
“Oh!” Lauren said, putting her hand to her nose to keep champagne from squirting out. “Your phone buzzed when you were gone.”
Violet’s hand groped behind her, reaching for the bag slung over the back of her chair. Her fingers slithered amongst lip balm and old shopping lists and a tin of mints before finding the phone. Pulling it out, she woke the screen and found she’d missed a call from her partner.
The DJ had returned after a brief break, and Violet had to hold a finger in her ear to hear the voicemail over speakers that were now blaring “SexyBack.” An old one. It turned out that Loshak hadn’t left much of a message.
“I suppose you’re still out there for the wedding, but call me when you get this.”
Violet scooted her chair back at the same moment the other bridesmaids got up.
“Yes!” Morgan said. “You’re coming to dance with us?”
“What? No,” Violet said, almost recoiling in horror. “I have to make a call.”
Morgan pretended to pout.
“You better get your butt out there when you’re done,” she said.
“Uh, sure. Absolutely,” Violet said, thinking that she’d need about a dozen more shots before that happened.
Taking her phone in hand, she stepped into the relative quiet of a hallway beyond the ballroom, though she could still hear the thumping bass through the walls.
Loshak answered before the first ring ended.
“When’s your flight back to Virginia?” he asked, forgoing any sort of greeting.
“Tomorrow night. Why?”
“Save yourself the flying time and switch it to Atlanta.”
“What’s in Atlanta?”
“We’ve got an active shooter situation.”
“Where? What happened?”
“Freeway sniper. Shot fourteen people during rush hour on Interstate 20. Five confirmed dead so far.”
“Jesus.”
Darger heard a voice announcing something via intercom over the line.
“Listen, my flight’s boarding, so I gotta go. Gimme a call when you get an arrival time, and I can pick you up at the airport.”
“Will do,” she said.
The background noise she could hear from Loshak’s end clicked out, and her phone’s screen blinked out the message, CALL ENDED.
She pushed through the steel doors that led back into the ballroom, the music swelling as the gap between door and threshold widened. Her heart thumped along with the pulsing beat, and by the time she reached her seat, she’d already made her decision.
A normal human being would probably at least wait until the end of the reception to leave, but it had been a long time since anyone had accused Violet Darger of being normal.
Chapter 2
If she hurried, she could make it.
Maybe.
There was one more flight leaving Denver that could get her a connection to Atlanta tonight. With the amount of time it took to get through airport security these days, it was a gamble. Since it was one of the last departing flights of the night, Darger hoped luck would be on her side. But if she was going, she had to go now.
She had her phone in one hand, scrolling through the list of upcoming departures. With the other hand, she raced from one end of her hotel room to the other, tossing everything in sight into the gaping jaws of her suitcase.
It wasn’t until she was snatching her toothbrush from the bathroom that she realized she was still wearing the pale green bridesmaid dress.
Shit.
She glanced at her watch. No time now. She could change at the airport after she got through security.
Except for the shoes. No way was she wearing those damn things another second. She stuffed the offending things into her suitcase along with her remaining toiletries, stepped into her boots, and glanced around the room one last time. Tucking her trench coat over her arm, she realized it was probably long enough to mostly conceal the frilly dress. Thank god for small favors.
The wheels of her suitcase squeaked and bumped over the floor as she hurried down the hallway to the elevator. The inside of the metal box smelled strangely chemical, like a dentist’s office. It chimed when she reached the ground floor, and the doors slid open.
Darger went to the front desk in the lobby. She turned in the key cards for her room and checked out. Passing the glass doors at the main entrance, she could see the car she’d called was already waiting. She had one more task left to do. The one she’d been avoiding since making the choice to leave for Atlanta immediately instead of waiting until tomorrow.
She was half-tempted to just go. Slip out into the cab and call to break the news from the airport. But if she did that, she’d end up feeling even crappier.
After the brightness of the lobby and the hallway, stepping into the ballroom was like entering a cave. Darger stood and squinted around the darkened space. A disco ball spun over the center of the dance floor, casting a constellation of glittering reflections over the walls and ceiling. It was a bit disorienting, but after a few moments, she located her mother.
She stood near one of the tables toward the back, talking to another guest. She’d be disappointed, of course. There was a “family brunch” scheduled for tomorrow morning, and Violet knew her mother expected her to be there.
Oh well, she thought. Duty calls.
She left her suitcase and coat by the door and started toward the back of the ballroom. On her way, she passed by the bar. The strapping young bartender was busy with another guest but glanced her way. He smiled when he saw her. Violet gave him a nod and then slipped a twenty from her wallet and into the tip jar.
Drawing up next to her mother, Violet reached out and placed a hand on her arm.
“Hi, honey,” her mom said.
She slid her arm around Violet’s waist and pulled her close.
“I’m so glad you’re here. I miss you.”
An ice pick of guilt stabbed at Violet’s heart.
“Me too,” she said, hugging back.
They stood for a moment, watching the dots of light from the disco ball whirl around them. Violet tried to decide how to segue into breaking the news, but the words wouldn’t come.
Finally she turned to her mother and blurted out, “I have to fly back early.”
Her mother’s head tipped to one side.
“You aren’t going to miss the family brunch, are you?”
Violet picked at the chipped polish on her nails. They’d all had manicures done that morning, and Violet’s nail polish was already destroyed.
“That’s the thing. I have to go tonight. Right now, actually.”
Liar, liar, pants on fire, she thought to herself. You don’t have to go anywhere, Violet Darger. You’re bailing by choice.
“Tonight?”
Violet nodded.
“I came over to say goodbye.”
“Oh,” her mother said, frowning.
She gazed into Violet’s eyes.
“This job, Violet… Are you sure they don’t ask too much? It seems so demanding. After everything that happened with that last one…”
They’d had this discussion at least a dozen times since her mother found out exactly what went down in Athens, Ohio. She hadn’t been wild about Violet joining the FBI in the first place, even when she was working in OVA counseling victims of violent crimes. When Violet decided to try for a special agent position, her mother had asked (with a straight face) if there were any special agents that didn’t carry guns, and if so, maybe Violet could be one of those.
Violet’s go-to line — the one where she insisted the job wasn’t non-stop danger like they showed in movies and on TV — kind of fell flat after she’d been kidnapped and nearly drowned last year.
“That’s the job, mom. It’s what I signed up for.”
As creases formed between her mother’s eyebrows, Violet added, “But what happened in Ohio isn’t going to happen again. That was a fluke. You don’t have to worry.”
Her mother watched her for a time and then kissed her cheek.
“But worrying about you is my job, don’t you know that?”
They hugged, and then Violet’s mother stepped away.
“How are you going to get to the airport? I should drive you—”
“No, mom. I already called a cab. Besides, you can’t leave yet. The party isn’t over.”
Her mother reached for her hand and gave it a squeeze.
“Will you call me to let me know you got home safe?”
“Sure,” Violet said, omitting the fact that she was flying into an active shooter situation and not back to Virginia. Sometimes Violet felt it was better to give her mother the grisly details only after she could assure her she’d gotten out safely.
They exchanged a final embrace, with Violet promising she’d get in touch if she ended up stranded at the airport. After Violet ducked out of the ballroom for the last time, she shrugged into the trench coat. With the belt tied at the waist, an onlooker would barely see the frothy hem of the green chiffon peeking out from underneath. Not bad.
The telltale screech of the steel ballroom door opening sounded behind her, and then a hand fell on her shoulder. She turned, expecting her mother. It was the bartender.
“You never came back for another shot,” Mr. Manbun said.
She smiled. “Yeah, I think one was plenty.”
He was grinning back at her until his gaze went from her coat to the suitcase by her side.
“You’re leaving?” he asked, and Violet almost chuckled at the cartoon expression of disappointment on his face.
“Afraid so.”
“But the reception’s not even over,” he said, gesturing back at the double doors and the throbbing music within. “I was working on a whole routine to give you my number. It was going to be very smooth.”
That got a laugh out of her.
“I’m sure it was. But duty calls. And you know how that goes, being a man that takes his job seriously.”
He nodded at their little inside joke. “Serious business, eh? With that trench coat on, you look kinda like a superhero in disguise. Do you have to run off to catch a bad guy?”
“Actually, yes.” She said it with a straight face, because it was true.
“Shit, I was only joking. Really?”
“Really.”
“That’s crazy.” He shook his head in disbelief. “I’m Mark, by the way.”
He put his hand out, and Violet took it.
“Violet.”
His grip was firm but somehow gentle. This Mark was either a genuine sweetheart or a very practiced heartbreaker. Either way, he was still too young for her.
And yet, she had an urge to rip the hair tie from his head. To push him up against the wall and kiss him with his hair all tumbling free. That was the tequila talking, of course. That, and the adrenaline still coursing through her veins from Loshak’s call. The remembrance of where she was going and why was enough to tear her from her indecent thoughts. She had a plane to catch.
“It was nice to meet you, Mark. But I really have to go now.”
“Can I give you my number, sans smooth moves?” he asked, patting his pockets and then pulling out a piece of paper with a phone number scrawled on it.
She thought about shooting him down based on the age difference but decided against it. He’d been sweet. She could let him down easier than that.
“I’m from out of state.”
He held it out to her.
“In case you’re ever back in town.”
Her phone buzzed. Probably her driver getting antsy. She took the piece of paper, glancing at it before she tucked it into her bag.
“Thank you,” she said. “Now you better get back to your post. If I know some of those people as well as I think I do, they’re helping themselves to the top shelf stuff. You don’t want them to end up too shitfaced to pay you at the end of the night.”
“I hope you catch him. The bad guy, I mean,” he said as she started to wheel away with her suitcase.
He was still watching when she passed through the glass doors at the front of the lobby and got into the car waiting at the curb. Violet raised one hand in a final farewell as the car started toward the airport.
Chapter 3
It wasn’t until she’d checked her bag at the ticket counter and passed through security that Violet realized the opportunity to change out of the froofy dress was gone. She was stuck looking like a garnish of celery foam on the plate of some pretentious chef for the next seven hours, at least. Longer if she didn’t make her connecting flight in Minneapolis.
She kept her trench coat buttoned up in the airport terminal, only loosening the belt after a flight attendant offered her a blanket and pillow. She accepted both, settling in for the first half of her red-eye to Georgia.
A magazine in the seat pouch caught her eye, tucked in with the emergency exit instructions and air sickness bags. All Violet could see was an ad for Quaker Oats on the back. She reached out and slid the magazine free, flipping backward through the pages with a thumb and only pausing long enough to get a vague idea of what each story was about. She wasn’t really in the mood to read, but turning pages gave her something to do with the extra energy still crackling through her nerves.
She passed by a fashion spread featuring pregnant celebrities on the red carpet and an interview with the star of the most recent blockbuster superhero movie. Violet couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen a movie in the theater. She hurried past a stinky perfume sample that made her nose wrinkle and itch.
When she caught a glimpse of her own face smirking back at her from the glossy paper, she almost let out a groan. She managed to keep it to a disgruntled sigh and glanced at the man in the seat next to her. He was fiddling with his phone and hadn’t noticed, thankfully. How embarrassing would that have been? To get caught appearing to read a story about yourself?
She slapped the pages shut and stuffed the magazine behind a SkyMall catalog. Now that it was concealed from view, Violet relaxed a little. She’d managed to avoid seeing the article up close until recently. It had come out three weeks ago and was mostly going to pass under the radar, she thought. Except with her mother. Her mother had bought a whole stack so she could give them away to friends. She even tried to get Violet to autograph some of them.
What she couldn’t avoid was the copy her mother had clipped, framed, and affixed to the refrigerator in her home.
Violet found herself frozen in front of the fridge the other afternoon, staring into the dot-matrix print of her own eyes, wondering to herself: Is that what I look like? How people see me?
A bolded pull quote caught her attention.
“There isn’t much time to think about the profile when someone’s got a gun to your head. All I was really thinking was that [Clegg] killed the girls quickly after abducting them, so I didn’t have a lot of time. If I was going to act, I had to act now.”
And act she did, hitting Clegg with everything her FBI training had taught her, ultimately fighting him to the death.
Violet cringed as she read it. It wasn’t quite a
s bad as hearing a recording of her own voice or seeing video footage of herself. But there was still an uncanniness to seeing her words and thoughts typed up and printed in black and white. It was like seeing a version of her that wasn’t quite her. Or was it?
This was how people saw one another, wasn’t it? Boiled down to quotes and snapshots. Filed into boxes. Sectioned off into the appropriate partition.
The journalist kept bringing her questions back to being a female in a male-dominated field. Darger didn’t know how to answer. She didn’t think about it like that. To her, it was a job. It was her purpose. Her gender had nothing to do with it. If other people thought it did, that was their problem.
But still, she’d kept asking.
“It’s obvious that James Clegg hated women, and that was part of what motivated his crimes. Do you think being a woman yourself is part of what helped you catch him? The unique way you could perhaps identify with the victims? A level of empathy that your male colleagues might have a harder time with?”
Maybe that was true, Darger thought. Maybe it had been a factor in catching Clegg. But even if it were, Darger didn’t know what to do with that information. Or how to comment on it.
“I don’t think it was any one thing that caught Clegg. Or any serial killer, for that matter. It’s a delicate balance of science and instinct, patience and persistence. And probably a whole lot of being in the right place at the right time,” she answered finally.
Ugh, so trite. And naturally the reporter had cut out everything she’d said about Loshak and Detective Luck and the other people that had been instrumental in finding Clegg. That wasn’t what they wanted. The media wasn’t interested in painting a picture of cross-departmental cooperation and teamwork. They wanted a star. A hero. A lone avenger, fighting for justice. Another archetype to be indexed and labeled.
Just before take-off, Darger rifled through her bag in search of gum to battle the imminent ear-popping she was about to endure. Not finding any, she settled on the tin of mints. Her quest also turned up the phone number of Mark the Bartender. She ran her finger over the writing, wondering why she should feel so flattered that he’d given it to her. Was it because he was young? Or because he was attractive? Or was it the mere fact that she’d been wanted?
