A Secret In Conard County. Rachel Lee

“I appreciate all you and your department are doing for me.”

      “No, you don’t,” he said, but his eyes twinkled a bit. “You hate it.”

      When had she become an open book? But she knew. She hadn’t been concealing her thoughts and feelings too well since the incident. It seemed to require more energy than she wanted to invest. “Okay, I wish it wasn’t necessary.”

      “That’ll do.” He smiled at her over his own coffee. “How much can you tell me about what happened? I got a little from what the sheriff said, but I don’t imagine they told him a whole lot either. I don’t have to tell you it would help to know what we’re up against.”

      “A raving madman,” she answered. Moving carefully, she leaned back against the stiff but padded cushion, felt scars twinge.

      “Professional assessment?” he asked.

      “No,” she admitted. “Purely personal. You get any training at Quantico?”

      “Some,” he acknowledged.

      “Then you’ve had a look into the minds of people who do this kind of thing. We’d like to think they’re insane. They’re usually not.”

      “No, they aren’t.” He waited, regarding her steadily. She sorted through her head, trying to decide what he really needed to know, and how much she could safely share. The Bureau liked to play close to the vest, revealing nothing until a case went to trial or a grand jury. But then, cops couldn’t freely discuss any open investigation. He was right, though. They needed to know something about this guy.

      She sighed. “Without getting into details...”

      “I know. Just what you think you can.”

      “Okay. Serial bomber. Not a man who just likes to see things go boom. He likes to kill women. Individual women.”

      Lance drew an audible breath. “Okay,” he said after a moment.

      She hesitated, then plunged in. “This is not for distribution. We can’t find a link between his victims except for gender and approximate age. All his bombs are different. So for a while we weren’t sure we didn’t have some copycatting going on. Then I found...a piece of evidence that linked all the bombs. We knew we were after one guy.”

      “So you’ve got this guy who has it in for women.”

      “Apparently. Little did we guess I’d be his next target.”

      Lance swore quietly. “But why? Any ideas? I mean...” He paused. “I guess if you can’t profile his victims, you can’t know why he picked you.”

      “Yes, we can. Because his victims were all much younger than me. Early twenties. I’m outside the box. Then I got a phone call. I can’t say much about it, but at that point we were pretty sure he’d somehow learned I was on the task force working the case, and that I’d found an important piece of evidence.”

      He gave a low whistle, a frown settling over his face. He didn’t even give Mavis a halfhearted smile when she slammed the food down between them. “That should never have gotten out,” he said when they were alone again.

      “No.” She looked down at her plate, appetite nearly gone, reminding herself that eating was as important as breathing. She forced herself to pick up a fork. “Long story short. Before we’d even begun to really work the angle, I was at home alone that night, uneasy as all get-out, thinking about just going back to the office, when I heard something outside. Just a little sound, but I was jumpy. I went out, walked around to the side of my house and there he was. I lowered my gun because I saw a cop.”

      “Oh, hell,” he murmured.

      “He turned when I called out and shot me. I fell. The house blew up. And here we are.”

      She stared at her plate, at the fork in her hand, and tried to shove the shadows of memory away. For a long time Lance didn’t make a sound. Absorbing what she had told him, she guessed. Purely out of willpower, she cut off a piece of omelet and put it in her mouth. It might have been sawdust.

      “I’m surprised you didn’t shoot me,” he said finally.

      “Well, my hand was on my sidearm,” she reminded him.

      “True.”

      She cut some more egg. “I didn’t get a look at his face. It was dark, and frankly I don’t remember anything except the muzzle flash as he fired at me. The irony is that I survived the bomb because I was lying flat on my face in the grass beside a tree and bleeding out when it went off. Bet he didn’t expect that.”

      He finally cut into his own pancakes. “I’m surprised they didn’t put it out that you were dead.”

      At that she lifted her head. “How did he know who I was, where I lived and how to reach me? Until we figure that out, no cover story would work, because someone on the inside might have loose lips.”

      “You’re right, that’s what Gage said your ASAC is worried about.”

      She went back to eating and to compartmentalizing what had happened to her. These were memories she kept safely locked away, memories that bubbled up usually only in her nightmares. She was having plenty of them these days.

      “A safe house wouldn’t work either, if you’ve got a leak,” he remarked.

      “That’s why they didn’t argue very hard when I said I wanted to hit the road,” she agreed. She began to eat a little faster, trying to put a distasteful chore behind her. At some level she realized she was eating a great omelet, but most of her didn’t want to eat at all. Just get it done. Like everything else. One foot in front of the other until she could take the guy on again. Or until someone else caught him. At this point she didn’t much care who took him down.

      “You know,” she said slowly, “before this happened there was an ugly part of me that wanted to be the one who nailed this guy. Me personally. Now I don’t care who gets him as long as he’s caught.”

      “You’re competitive, right?”

      She looked up. “Yes.”

      “And it must be harder for a woman in the Bureau than a man. Oh, I know all about equal opportunity, but then there’s reality.”

      “Maybe,” she said cautiously.

      “Of course you wanted to be the one to bring him down. That’s not ugly unless it hinders your performance. Just human nature.”

      She already liked this guy, but she realized she could start to really like him. “Who made you so wise?”

      He laughed, the sound instantly lightening the mood. It rolled out of him easily. “Street smarts,” he finally said.

      Her curiosity about him was growing fast. “So what’s your story?” she asked.

      “My wounding, you mean? I didn’t duck fast enough.”

      In spite of everything, she felt her lips starting to curl into a smile. “That simple?”

      “Especially when you’re facing an AR-15 on full auto, yes.”

      Shock rippled through her. “Full auto? It’s a wonder you weren’t cut in half.”

      “You can thank body armor and the economy for that.”

      That surprised a small laugh out of her. “The economy?”

      “Guy was unemployed. He couldn’t afford armor-piercing bullets. Still, he got me four times, arms and legs.”

      She nodded and scooped up more egg. “You’ve recovered well.”

      “It was years ago. I’ve had longer than you. Take it easy on yourself, Erin. We’re here, we’re not half-bad even by the Bureau’s standards and we’ll look after you. Just work on healing. When the time comes, we’ll need you in the best shape possible.”