“I tried her all evening but it seems she turned off the phones. I assume she’s terribly upset, not that I blame her. I finally got fed up and headed out there. She was at the funeral home arranging for her son’s burial, but a friend of the family was at the house and gave me the computer. I left your card with a note that you’d call her. I’m heading back downtown now. I’ll have the computer guys take a crack at it.”
“Good. Then go home, and get some rest. There’s a lot to be done tomorrow, and I need you at your best.”
“I’m always at my best. But a couple hours of sleep wouldn’t kill me. I’ve been up for forty-eight straight.”
“Go. Sleep. See you tomorrow.”
There were too many moving parts to this case. He made a mental list of things that he needed to follow up: reading the congressman’s journal, finding out why Glenn Temple had the inhaler instead of the security detail, why Leighton left his briefcase at home, who sent the text to his phone, getting the secondary DNA test back and talking to the detective from the Indiana cases. Not to mention keeping in touch with Sam and Xander to see what they discovered, and treading carefully around the JTTF, because he still wasn’t one-hundred percent certain they had his best interests at heart.
Even though they had a whole division of people working on the case, Fletcher felt he needed to be on top of every aspect. He supposed that’s what made him happy, the juggling, the rushing around. He just wasn’t used to doing this without a partner—Lonnie Hart was the best sounding board and deputy a man could have. He wasn’t quite comfortable with his new team at the JTTF. He knew that was only natural, and they were all feeling the pressure.
At least there was Sam. He trusted her implicitly, even when she made him see red. Her help on the case had already been invaluable. He would have loved to have her here, by his side, to bounce things off of, but his purposes for sending her to Colorado were twofold: let her feel she was helping, and get her safe in case of another attack. Truth be told, the latter had been foremost in his mind when he’d concocted the plan to send her to Denver.
He knew he was going to have to deal with his unrequited feelings for her sooner rather than later, or he’d mess up their friendship, and he’d rather have her in his life than not, even if that meant letting her belong to another man. He’d find a way to move on after this case was wrapped up.
His cell rang, and for a moment his heart sped up, thinking it might be her, that she’d been feeling him thinking of her and reached out, but he quickly saw it was Bianco.
He hit the speaker.
“You’re up late.”
“No rest for the wicked.”
“Inez has Marc Conlon’s computer.”
“Excellent. Listen, I’ve got good news. We’ve caught a break. Our attacker miscalculated. He dropped a backpack and clothes in an out-of-the-way subway Dumpster that is normally emptied at eight every morning. But because of the panic, no one went in to empty it until this evening, and they were under instructions to look for anything out of place when they did. There was an address recovered, there’s a team headed there now.”
Finally. A break.
“Give it to me, I’ll meet them there.”
“You stay on our victims. We need all the information we can get on them.”
“Come on, Andi. That’s not fair. I want to be in on the bust. If this is our guy, I want to be the one talking to him.”
He heard her talking in the background, then she came back.
“You will be. But you can’t go in without the proper gear. So get your fanny back here on the double, then you can head to the scene.” She hung up, and Fletcher barely refrained from screaming at her. He wasn’t the only person on this team, knew everyone had their roles. But damn it, he wanted to be there when they snatched this guy up.
He gunned it. He was only ten minutes away; if he hurried he’d be able to grab his gear and make the bust.
*
Fletcher arrived at the scene just as the team made entry on their new suspect’s apartment. They were in the Adams Morgan neighborhood, up the street from an Ethiopian restaurant Fletcher had eaten at once, at three in the morning, after a night out on the town. Run by natives, it served the traditional bread of their land, and that had been Fletcher’s undoing—the thin loaf reminded him of dead skin pulled off a sunburned arm and he’d been forced to the gutter to lose the night’s excess. Just knowing it was nearby made him queasy in remembrance.
There was nothing like a good SWAT entry to make your blood rise. It was especially exciting at night, when anything could come out of the darkness. Monsters and weapons and shrieking women—one never knew what would be behind that door.
He stepped from the car and watched as men bristling with weapons rushed up three flights of stairs, took the door and disappeared inside. After a few moments, he heard the shouts of the team: “Clear.” “Clear.”