“Could you give the case file to Interpol?”
“Yes, and if it comes to it, we will. But will they give it any attention?”
“Thank you.”
“For what?”
“For not downplaying,” I say with a shrug. “If I hadn’t hidden my head in the sand after Chavi died, maybe I would have known to report the flowers in San Diego. We wouldn’t be doing all this, and you wouldn’t have to sneak around your section chief. Maybe Aimée would still be alive, and the girl after her.”
“Hey, now, no.” He straightens out of his crouch, one knee cracking painfully, but aside from a wince he doesn’t seem to care. He’s a little shorter than I am, but he holds himself taller, a presence even when he isn’t putting effort into it. “You can’t think that way.”
“It’s the truth, isn’t it?”
“We have absolutely no way to know that. Priya, look at me.”
His eyes are dark, iris almost impossible to discern from pupil, but he has the most ridiculously long lashes I’ve ever seen on a man.
“You cannot think that way,” he repeats firmly. “None of this is your fault. We have no way to know what would have happened if things had been different in San Diego. What we’ve got is right now. You are doing everything you can.”
“Okay.”
He looks frustrated, and I wonder if I’m going to be getting a call from Eddison or Vic. Agent Finnegan, while very kind, doesn’t know me well enough to successfully argue a point. “Let’s see what the camera caught.”
The footage shows a woman this time, a heavy sweater open over the black, red, and yellow polo shirt worn by the employees at the gas station a few blocks down. I don’t recognize the woman herself, but that’s no surprise; I only go into the store when the cold makes me have to pee too badly to get all the way home from chess. When that happens, I’ll buy a drink or a candy bar so I’m not the asshole who uses the bathroom without being a customer, but it’s not so often that I know anyone who works there.
“I’ll go down and see if they can identify her,” Finney says as he heads out. “And, Priya . . . the sum of what you can do is what you’re already doing. Don’t suffer weight that isn’t yours to carry.”
Columbine comes in a variety of colors, and looks like two different flowers stacked together with a white broad-petaled heart, throats dark to match the thinner, longer petals underneath. The ones that arrive on Friday, delivered by a very confused postal worker who found them in his passenger seat, are blue and purple.
Emily Adams sang about blue columbines, just a few days before she died.
Which is probably why, for the first time, the ribbon on the bouquet isn’t curled plastic. It’s white satin, printed with black music notes. Not just the flowers of her death, but something of her life, as well.
Ramirez is in Delaware, doing a follow-up consultation to a case they closed in February, but apparently she didn’t tell the sort-of girlfriend this, because there is an enormous bouquet of sunflowers on her desk. The deliveryman had to hold them while Eddison shoved aside enough paper to make room for it. Ramirez loves sunflowers. He knows this.
But he also knows that he’s got flowers of an entirely different sort on his mind, so he can’t find the delivery anything less than disturbing.
He’s a decent partner, though, so he takes a picture and sends it to her so she can make the appropriate noises of appreciation to the gal from Counterterrorism.
Then Vic walks into the bullpen, half a chicken salad sandwich in his hand and a pinched look on his face. “Get your coat,” he snaps out. “We’re going to Sharpsburg.”
“Sharps—Keely?”
“Got attacked. Inara’s with Keely and her parents at the hospital.”
“Inara’s in Maryland?” But he’s already got his coat and Vic’s, as well as their guns and badges, and they can sort those out once Vic’s swallowed down the rest of his lunch. He grabs the small bags under their desks just in case. They shouldn’t need to spend the night, not so close to home, but it doesn’t cost him more than a second so he might as well.
“Keely’s on spring break; she asked Inara to visit for a couple of days.”
It’s probably for the best that Inara works at such a ridiculously upscale restaurant, given how much time she’s having to take off in all of this.
Vic finishes the sandwich in the elevator and takes his gun and badge, getting them hooked on his belt. “We’ll get an update on the way.”
Except for the update—which really only tells them which hospital Keely was taken to, and that the attacker is in custody—it’s a silent two hours to Sharpsburg. It’s hard not to imagine the worst.
Keely has been dealing . . . as well as she could possibly be expected to. She was kidnapped on her twelfth birthday, brutally raped and beaten, only to wake up in the Garden. She was only there a few days, staunchly protected by Inara and the other girls, but to hear Inara and even Bliss tell it, those few days stank of more fear than any other time. Then the explosion, and the rescue, and the publicity . . . Keely has already dealt with more than any child her age should have to.
The local police told the hospital they were coming; they’ve barely held up their badges before they’re being directed to a private room near the ER.
They find Keely’s father pacing anxiously up and down the hallway, scrubbing at his face. Inara stands beside the doorway, watching him, her arms crossed over her belly. Eddison’s not sure if it’s to ward off vulnerability or cold; the air-conditioning is blowing a little too cold for her tank top to be comfortable. He can see the edges of one tattooed wing over the curve of her shoulder.
“Her mother is in with her, and one of the female officers,” Inara tells them instead of hello.
“Our update was terse,” Vic replies. “What happened?”
“We were in the mall, and decided to stop for lunch. Her parents were in another part of the food court. Keely picked a table for us, I went up to get the food. Heard a fuss and turned around, a woman was going after her with a knife. Called her a whore, said rape was a punishment from God.”
“And then?”
“It caught everyone by surprise. They were just sort of frozen. So I pushed through and decked the bitch. May have broken her nose. She dropped the knife, and by then one of the security guards had approached, so he cuffed her and I got to Keely.”
“How bad?”
After shrugging out of his coat and handing it to Vic, Eddison pulls off his thick black sweater. It had seemed more comfortable over his shirt and tie than a blazer that morning, when they were supposed to be at their desks all day. Now he’s glad for it, because Inara actually smiles at him when he holds it out to her.
“Thanks. I gave my hoodie to Keely, to help her hide a bit. People were staring.” The sweater is big on her, the neck wide enough to show her collarbones, but she shoves her hands in her pockets rather than crossing them again. “The cuts are shallow, mostly on her arms because Keely was holding her arms up to defend herself. There’s one on her cheek, but they called in a plastic surgeon to come take a look at it.”
“Is this the same mall where she was kidnapped?”
“Yes. It’s not her first time back there. Her therapist encourages her to go.”
“So her attacker knew who Keely was.”
“Hard not to,” Inara says dryly. “Not like our faces haven’t been plastered all over the news or anything. And Keely lives here.”
Keely’s father acknowledges them when he paces close enough, but spins on his heel to keep pacing the other way.
“They’ve been trying really hard not to be clingy,” Inara tells the agents. “There, but not hovering. It was their idea to let the two of us eat alone.”
“Are we about to have a conversation about where guilt belongs?” Vic asks in a mild voice.