Edge of Black (Dr. Samantha Owens #2)

He gave her an exceptionally oblique look that again reminded her just how different they really were.

“If that lets you sleep at night, darlin’, have at it.”





Chapter 12

Washington, D.C.

Detective Darren Fletcher

Fletcher needed sleep. He needed it in the worst way. He wasn’t young anymore, couldn’t pull these forty-hour-on shifts like he could when he was a rookie. At some point, his brain just plain shut down, and there was nothing that could be done for it until he closed his eyes and recharged.

But the JTTF was expecting him, and his city was under siege. Sleep wasn’t an option.

He fueled up at the 7-Eleven on the corner of 24th and New Hampshire Avenue, an extra-large black coffee, and headed to the address he’d been given.

He rolled up on the JTTF at just past one in the morning. Nineteen hours post-attack, and the investigation was in high gear.

The people inside the offices weren’t dragging, that was for sure. They were chipper and rushing about and calling out factoids over their impressively toned shoulders. He hoped that somewhere in here was someone his age. Someone who didn’t get their information from Twitter and could speak in complete sentences without using “like” or “really” every three words.

Now, Fletch. You’re being unkind. If the kids are part of the JTTF it’s because they’re damn good at their jobs, and nothing else should matter.

He was getting old. Old at forty-two. Old and broken down and lacking faith in humanity.

A young woman in bulky glasses, with blond hair clipped high in a ponytail and a trim black-skirted suit paired with fantastically high heels, met him at the front desk. She didn’t smile, but her face lit up when she saw him come in the door.

“You must be Detective Fletcher. I’m Inez Crow. I’ll be your assistant while you’re on the JTTF.” She started him walking toward a steel door. “As you can see, we’ve got a lot going on. There’s too much paper for you to handle by yourself, so I’ll be dealing with as much as I can for you. Anything you need, you call me.” She handed him a slim mobile phone. “All my numbers are already programmed. I hope you’ll take advantage, I’m pretty good at this.”

She’d managed the whole speech without a breath.

Fletcher followed her through the door, which she unlocked with a thumb on a fingerprint scanner, then a series of numbers and letters on the keypad. Decent security, but he would expect nothing less.

“So what’s your story, Inez? How’d you get to be an assistant to a scrub like me? Punishment?”

She gave him a look of sheer incredulity. “Hardly. B.A. in criminal justice from Princeton, graduate school in Bern, Switzerland, in International Affairs, two years at Interpol, went through the FBI Academy last year and I’m just finishing my Ph.D. in forensic psychology at Harvard. I asked to be assigned to you so I could make sure you could get up to speed quickly and make sure you don’t step on your own feet, which you’ve already managed to do and you haven’t been here for five minutes, which isn’t a record, but damn close to it, and that tells me I made the right call. In a few months you’d have to call me Dr. Crow. In the meantime, I’ll settle for Inez, and a bit of respect.”

She stepped off again, back straight, walking briskly, and he took a deep breath and slurped back some coffee and followed. He didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Inez Crow had more qualifications than he did to be on the JTTF, yet she was working for him.

When he caught up to her, he said, “No offense meant, Inez. Just trying to get to know you.”

“I understand, sir. These things happen. This is your desk. And that is mine.”

There was a bit of privacy to the setup—they were in a corner, and not in the main flight path through the room. The desks were in a U, there was a window overlooking the lights of the Capitol, and the coatrack hid them from the main foot traffic area.

“You pick this spot?” he asked.

“I did.”

“Well done.”

“I know. We’ll want some privacy, and it’s quieter here.” She smiled, a thousand watts of bright white teeth, the front two slightly crooked, and he forced himself to check his libido. She was young enough to be his daughter, assuming she was as gifted as she sounded and had been conferred her degrees a bit earlier than was the norm, and that wasn’t right. But man, the girl was a looker. She had that sexy librarian thing going on.

“So what’s first?”

The smile disappeared, replaced by Inez’s usual rapid-fire demeanor.

“Agent Bianco would like to meet with you.”

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