“That’s . . . actually already in progress, ma’am.”
Vic gives me a startled look that quickly shifts to a proud smile. I am thirty-two years old but damned if I don’t get all warm and fuzzy every time he shows he’s proud of me.
“Agent Alceste is getting the files together on a drive so I can see everyone’s notes, not just mine. I should receive them soon.”
“You braved Alceste?” he asks, the smile turning impish.
“I’ve always wondered why no one refers to her as the Dragonmother of the Archives,” Agent Dern agrees.
Because dragons sometimes interact enough for a game of riddles and she is the least motherly human I’ve ever met, but I’m not about to say that out loud. Instead, I look at the beginnings of my other assignment, all the notes and suggestions from agents and leadership on what should be included in a survival guide. Training manual. The binders on the corner of the desk are a mess. Tabs and Post-its stick out in haphazard places, and there are pages that are just shoved in, either because there wasn’t any more room in the rings or because people were just being lazy. Even odds, really. It’s a hell of a lot of work, and I don’t know that it’ll do even half of what the bosses are hoping. No matter how prepared you are intellectually, working in CAC is an anvil chorus; the hammers always hit hard.
“Eddison is going to chafe at being chained to his desk for even longer,” I observe eventually.
“Probably,” agrees Vic. “But even if we gave him the option of fieldwork, he isn’t going to leave you behind.”
“Sterling is a blue-eyed ball of mischief. If there aren’t enough consults and she gets bored . . .”
“Personally, I’m hoping she’ll provoke Agent Eddison into finally trying to bell her,” Agent Dern replies placidly. “It should be quite entertaining to watch.”
“You know,” I say before I can think better of it, “for someone called the Dragonmother, there’s been remarkably little flaming.”
She smiles deeply, soft lines creasing around her eyes and mouth. “I joined the Bureau at a time when females were largely considered second-class agents,” she explains. “Then, of course, I was put into Internal Affairs, which meant I was supposed to be the nagging, critical, never-lets-you-have-any-fun wife. I was the enemy. It was necessary to become a bit of a dragon, simply to ensure that no one looked at me and assumed they could get away with something. It became something of a habit, even after the reputation meant I didn’t have to roar as much. Good agents, Ramirez, never have to fear Internal Affairs. We’re here to maintain accountability and a degree of transparency, yes, but we’re also here to support our agents. You’re not here because you’ve done something wrong. I don’t need to bite or roar or flame or any such thing.”
It makes sense, now, that she and Vic are old friends. I don’t think they came through the academy together—she’s probably got a decade on him, at least—but they likely came through some of the same people. It’s the way they believe in people, the way they work toward not just what the Bureau is, but what it should be, and insist on holding others to a higher standard, not to see us fail but to see us improve and achieve.
“Do you accept the assignments, Agent Ramirez?” she asks gently.
Aware of Vic’s eyes on me, I nod. “Yes, ma’am. Thank you.”
“Excellent. I’ll have someone deliver the binders to your desk along with an official memo about what’s desired. Vic, you’ll take her on to Simpkins?”
“Of course.” He stands and offers me a hand up, and it’s a little silly to make someone else trek all the way over when I can just carry the binders myself, but he slaps my hand away. “Along with a memo, Mercedes. It’s not in there yet.”
A memo can be emailed.
“Stop that,” he chides, and it takes a second to figure out if I said that bit out loud or if ten years have taught him to read my face entirely too well. From Agent Dern’s cocked eyebrow, I’m going to guess the latter.
I murmur a goodbye to Agent Dern, get a highly amused farewell in turn, and follow Vic out the door.
“Doing okay?” he asks quietly.
“I get it,” I sigh. “I don’t like it, but I get it, even if I think the handbook is a bad idea. I just . . .”
He drapes an arm around my shoulders and pulls me into a sideways hug, then keeps it there as we walk. It draws a few looks from people as we pass. He ignores them. “A lot has landed on your doorstep, literally, and there’s no one way to feel about it. This woman has invaded your home. I know you, Mercedes. I know what that means to you.”
I was assigned to Vic and Eddison straight out of the academy, but Vic has known me a lot longer. Sometimes, inexplicably, I forget that. And then, like now, I remember.
“How do I sleep there, knowing another child might be walking up the steps?” I whisper. “How do I stay anywhere else, knowing another child might have to sit there in blood and fear, and wait?”
“I don’t have an answer for you.”
“I’d call bullshit if you did.”
He smiles and squeezes my shoulder, using the motion to give me a small shove into the open elevator. “You’re going to get through this, Mercedes, and we’re going to be right beside you to make sure of that.”
“What happens . . .”
Giving me a curious look, he waits for the doors to close, for that sinking feeling that says the car is in motion, then hits the emergency stop. “What happens when?”
I pace the small space from wall to wall, gathering the worries into words I hope make sense. “What happens when she checks on the kids?”
“What do you mean?”
“We’re operating under the theory that she’s going after these parents because they’re hurting the kids. She brings the kids to me to keep them safe.”
“Right . . .”
“So what happens when she checks on Sarah, Ashley, and Sammy and finds out that they’re having trouble finding a home that will take all three of them? Ronnie’s doing fairly well at his grandmother’s, but Emilia’s only family seems to be either in prison or living out of the country. What kind of home is she going to get put in? My first few foster homes . . . not all of them were terrible, but some of them were. What happens to Emilia if she’s put in a bad home? And at what point does this killer decide that she isn’t bringing me kids to protect just for me to put them back into a flawed system?”
“You think she could come after you.”
“I think we have to acknowledge it as a possibility. We’re not going to understand her framework or compulsions until we find her, not really. So what happens when she gets more pissed at the system than at the parents?”
“She hasn’t given any indication of that,” he says after a moment. “If it was the system as a whole she was worried about, wouldn’t we see foster parents in the mix?”
“We might yet. There’s only been three. Realistically, she’s just getting started.”
“But she didn’t start with them. What do you think the difference is?”
He’s not asking Agent Ramirez; he’s asking Mercedes.
“Fosters are strangers; you never know what you’re going to get. Your parents are the two people in the whole world who aren’t supposed to hurt you. The wounds are deeper, in a way.”
He thinks his way through that, his weathered face mobile with the emotions that latch onto shreds of ideas or theories. Eventually he leans against the side wall and opens his arms, and I accept the hug gratefully, conscious of the still-tender scar over his heart. “I don’t know how to rescue you from this,” he admits softly.
I shake my head. “We do our jobs. We trust Holmes and Simpkins to do theirs. I’m not sure there is a rescue.”
We stand like that until someone from the next floor yells to let the fucking elevator move already, and he leans over to flick the car back into motion. Because he’s Vic, and he’s sometimes a little petty, he overrides the stop to skip the next floor.
It makes me smile, even if it probably shouldn’t.