He smiled at that. “Go ahead. Go back to the food court. We’ll watch out for you until he comes.”
She nodded, looked worried and then smiled. “Geneva really is a good person. I don’t know why she would have done it, but if someone arranged for those doors to be open, I think it was her.”
He thanked her, and she turned and started walking. He gave her some space, but followed. Diego, he knew, was following him.
A little while later Jill met up with her husband in front of a fast-food Chinese place. Brett thought they were a nice-looking young couple. The kids looked to be about five, seven and nine.
He headed toward the exit, and once he was outside, Diego fell into step beside him. He filled his partner in on what he had learned.
“Divide and conquer,” Diego said. “We’ll have to get Geneva away from her husband so we can question her. I’ll get with legal in the morning. I’m sure they can figure out a way to shut the place down if we don’t get some cooperation.”
Brett glanced at him. “The media has had a field day with the place. Half of their customers want their loved ones dug up to make sure they’re still in their coffins. The place should call us and beg us to do something. At least we’ve got another lead.”
His phone was ringing. Matt. Matt had been keeping an eye on Sea Life. Brett answered and listened, then said grimly, “We’re on our way.”
As soon as he hung up, Diego asked, “What the hell’s going on?”
“Someone threatened Lara,” Brett said. “We’re heading back to Sea Life.”
*
Lara was surprised to realize that she felt angry rather than frightened. She was supposed to be terrified, she knew. It was clearly a threat. She would be killed because she and Cocoa had found the body parts the killer had thought were gone forever. Well, too bad. She had no intention of letting this sick-minded individual get under her skin.
She told Grady as much when he came in to see how the search had gone. She’d asked Meg and Matt, who’d hurried back as soon as Meg called him, not to tell anyone about the dismembered doll, but they had told her that was impossible. They had to let their fellow agents and the police know, the scene had to be documented and the doll tested for fingerprints and other trace evidence.
Lara insisted that she didn’t want her coworkers to know, and she was even more vehement about not telling the press.
They agreed, but because they couldn’t disturb the evidence, there was no way to keep it from Grady when he came by. And once he saw it, of course he was worried sick. His first question after ascertaining that she was physically unhurt was to ask if she wanted to take a leave of absence or even—and he stressed that it was the last thing he wanted—resign.
She assured him that she had no intention of leaving, that she loved her job and everything Sea Life did.
Her heart seemed to leap when Brett returned, along with Diego, but she hid her feelings and made a point of staying across the room from him. She wasn’t into pretending, but she didn’t think this was the time to go flying across the room and into his arms. It was also important to her for him to realize that while she might not be Meg—trained in the law and with the skills to enforce it—she also wasn’t a hothouse flower. She was smart and strong, and she could hold her own, even in this company. She intended to be so. Not stupid—but strong. Eventually, after the agents had studied the scenario and pictures had been taken—dozens of them—Diego bagged up the doll and the paper waves, then left to take them to the crime lab.
“Are you sure you’re all right, Lara?” Matt asked her.
“Actually, I’m starving,” she said. “How about dinner? We can take the bridge and go to Bayside. There are a ton of great restaurants at the mall.”
They were all silent for a long moment, staring at her.
“I think we all thought you might just want to get home,” Meg finally said.
“Hell, no. I’m surrounded by FBI agents. I’d like to sit down at a nice restaurant and have dinner,” Lara said.
“If that’s what you want,” Brett said.
“It’s exactly what I want. Whoever threatened me is a coward who slinks around. They knew that no one would be in my office. A blind man would have known that the Coast Guard was here and we were going out with them. I think this means your conspiracy theory is right. Someone was bribed—or threatened—to put that display in my office. And if we find out who that was—just like if you find out who let someone into the mortuary—we’ll be that much closer to finding whoever’s behind this.”
Matt said, “In fact, we believe we know who we’re looking for there.”
“Two people, one man and one woman,” Brett said. “We’ve had a report that Geneva Diaz met with someone and then began behaving very strangely. We’ll be talking to her tomorrow.”