He hesitated as he stood beside the car, as though he would have liked to take off his jacket, but he kept it on. He was probably carrying a gun.
They walked along a path to the restaurant, the smell of gasoline from the marina triggering memories of her childhood. Smolleck stopped when they came around to the bay. The water rippled, reflecting the white cloud puffs in the blue sky. The view was the same as from the park where she and her mom had sat the evening before, but she forgot how beautiful it must be to someone not from around here.
They continued to the seating area beneath a white-and-green awning. The lunch crowd hadn’t arrived yet, and only a handful of people, mostly in T-shirts and shorts, were seated. The tables and chairs were plastic, menus held up by large red ketchup containers and salt and pepper shakers.
They seated themselves at a table closest to the dock where the breeze was the strongest. It whipped around beneath her ponytail, cooling her neck. Smolleck unbuttoned the top button on his shirt and loosened his tie. His white shirt was damp beneath his suit jacket. A waitress wearing a baseball cap, green T-shirt, and khaki shorts came by. They ordered conch fritters and coconut shrimp.
“We used to eat here when I was a kid,” Aubrey said after the waitress left. “My mother worked late and hated cooking, but I think we would have come here anyway.”
She looked out toward the bay, remembering those evenings, especially before her parents became strangers to each other: the reflection from the sunset in the clouds to the east, the coolness in the air after the sun went down, how her father and mother would occasionally exchange a look only they understood.
“Sounds like you had a happy childhood,” Smolleck said.
“Happy enough,” she said, wishing she knew him better to say more.
“It’s funny how when we’re in the midst of something, it becomes our whole world, and we can’t imagine anything different.” He had a faraway expression on his face, like when they’d sat on the patio the night before. “Almost as though we’re in a glass bubble and nothing exists outside of it.”
So he knew about bubbles. “Have you ever felt that way?” she asked.
“A few times.” He rubbed the indentation in his eyebrow. “I was in with a bad crowd when I was in high school. We cut classes, did a lot of drugs, and didn’t give a shit about the rest of the world.”
“Something happened?”
He picked up the bottle of ketchup and scraped the crud off its neck with his thumbnail. “My mother died from breast cancer in my senior year. It happened very quickly. So quickly, I hadn’t accepted she was dying, and then it was too late.”
“That must have been very hard on you.”
“And of course I felt guilty, as though my lifestyle had caused her cancer. So I stopped doing drugs, cut my hair, and joined the marines. Spent some time in Afghanistan.”
“What was that like?”
He shrugged. “I had thought in the military I’d be taking control of my life, but I ended up in a different kind of bubble. No thinking. No questioning. Just following orders.”
Not so different from what she’d been doing up until recently.
“Is that why you joined the FBI? So you could question things?”
He gave her that half smile. “Something like that.”
A small, noisy motorboat backed into the dock space, roiling the water.
“So is the FBI working out for you?”
He stared out at the rippling water. “I would say I’ve grown more self-aware. I know people are subject to getting caught up in their environments. The FBI is no exception.” He turned back to her. “What about you? Do you ever feel like you’re trapped inside some airless space?”
She thought about Jackson. How she almost couldn’t breathe when he and Wolvie first left. It was nothing compared to what she was experiencing now. “Losing Ethan feels like being trapped in a nightmare.”
He nodded. “Of course it does.”
The waitress put two waters down on the table, then went to take an order from the people who’d gotten out of the boat.
She reached for her glass of water. In the midst of all the anxiety relating to Ethan and her mom, it was a relief to have someone to talk to.
She had misread Smolleck. His tough FBI-agent act was a cover.
“We checked into your boyfriend,” he said.
His unexpected change in direction startled her, causing her to spill the water. Apparently Smolleck was uncomfortable with the soft talk and had needed to return to his professional persona.
“He’s not a suspect,” Smolleck said, his voice gentler, as though he were sorry he’d shaken her.
“I didn’t think he was.”
He scratched a knuckle. What was he procrastinating about?
“Why are we here?” she asked. “You obviously have something on your mind.”
“I spoke with Judge Woodward this morning.”
Her cheeks grew warm. She hadn’t seen that coming. If her mother had talked to Jonathan about the note, he may have told Smolleck about it.
“Is something the matter?” he asked.
She needed to feel out how much Smolleck knew. “Jonathan’s possible nomination could be connected to Ethan’s disappearance.”
“It could,” Smolleck said. “But is there something else going on?”
She put her hands under the table so he wouldn’t notice the giveaway tremor. “What do you mean?”
“Judge Woodward was unusually concerned about your mother.”
“She’s his fiancée. Of course he’s worried about her.”
“But Judge Woodward seemed convinced the kidnapping was related to her. Why wouldn’t he also consider that the kidnappers’ target could be the Simmers, or your father, or even your brother and his wife? Or, for that matter, since there’s no ransom demand, that some child predator has taken Ethan?”