Briggs pulled into a secured lot. He parked and cut the engine. “The guards will come out to let Dean and me in.” He glanced first at Sterling, then at me. “You two stay in the car. The fewer people who see another teenager here, the better.”
Briggs wasn’t happy I was here, but he hadn’t tried to leave me behind. They needed Dean, and Dean needed something—someone—to tether him to the here and now.
The back door to the prison opened. Two guards stood there. They were the exact same height. One was beefy and bald, the other younger and built like a runner.
Briggs climbed out of the car and opened Dean’s door. Dean set my hand lightly back into my lap. “I won’t be long.”
A muscle in his jaw twitched. His eyes were emotionless and hard. He was born smiling. The words from Redding’s interview echoed in my head as Dean slammed the door.
Dean and Briggs approached the guards. The balding man shook Briggs’s hand. The younger guard took a step toward Dean, looking him up and down. A moment later, Dean was against a wall being frisked.
I looked away.
“Some people will always look at Dean and see his father,” Agent Sterling said from the front seat. “Daniel Redding isn’t exactly a favorite among the guards here. He has a certain fondness for mind games and a penchant for picking up information about the guards’ families. Briggs had to tell them that Dean was Redding’s son. It would have been impossible to get this visit approved otherwise, even with permission from on high.”
“Your father approved this visit?” I asked, sliding over in the seat so that I had a better angle to see her.
“It was his idea.” Sterling pursed her lips. She wasn’t happy about this.
“Your father wants this case closed.” I worked my way through the logic of the situation. “The Locke case made the papers. The last thing the FBI needs right now is more bad press. The director needs this case to go away quickly and quietly, and he’s not above using Dean to do it. But if it were up to you—”
“If it were up to me,” she cut in, “Dean would never have to come within a hundred yards of his father again.” She glanced out the window. Briggs, Dean, and the older guard had disappeared into the building. The younger guard—the one who’d frisked Dean—was walking toward our car. “Then again,” Sterling said, unlocking her car door, “if it were up to me, once we’d arrested Redding, Dean would have gotten his chance at a normal childhood.”
She opened the door and stepped out. “Can I help you?” she asked the guard. He looked down at Agent Sterling, a slight curl to his lips.
“You can’t stay in the car,” he told her. “This is a secure area.”
“I’m aware. And cleared to be here,” Sterling said coolly, arching one eyebrow. She had the manner of someone who’d spent her life in a series of old boys’ clubs. One prison guard on a power trip didn’t impress her.
I could practically see the guard debating whether getting into a pissing match with a female FBI agent—particularly this female FBI agent—was worth it.
“Warden’s on a security kick,” he told her, shoving the blame off on his superior. “You’ll have to move the car.”
“Fine.” Sterling went to climb back into the car, and the guard’s eyes landed on me. He held up a hand and motioned for me to open my door. I looked to Agent Sterling. She gave a brief nod. I opened the door and stepped out.
The guard barely spared a glance for me before turning his attention back to Agent Sterling. “She friends with that Redding kid?” he asked. His voice left no question on his feelings about Dean—and Dean’s father.
I was pretty sure Michael would have read it as disgust.
“If you’ll excuse me,” Sterling said firmly, “I’ll move the car.”
The guard eyed me, his earlier resolve not to get into it with Agent Sterling facing off with his dislike of Dean—and now me. He turned and said something into a handheld radio. After a few moments, he turned back around, a polite smile on his face, his eyes narrowed to cold and uncompromising slits. “I put a call into the warden. I’m afraid the two of you are going to have to come with me.”
“Don’t say a word,” Agent Sterling told me under her breath. “I’ll take care of this.”
The guard walked us down a hallway. Agent Sterling whipped out her phone.
“I can put you in the visitor’s room,” the guard offered. “Or you can wait in the offices out front.”
Whoever Sterling was calling didn’t answer. She turned her attention to the guard. “Mr….” She trailed off, waiting for him to provide his last name.
“Webber,” he said.
“Mr. Webber, there is a reason you and your colleague were asked to meet Agent Briggs at the back door. There is a reason that Agent Briggs is not meeting with Daniel Redding in the visitor’s room. This case is sensitive and need-to-know. And no one needs to know that the FBI has been here to see Redding.”
Prison guards held a position of power inside these walls, and this one relished his. Webber didn’t like being reminded that Sterling was FBI. He didn’t like her. He didn’t like being talked down to.