She enters the open parking garage elevator, punches the button, stands mute and stone-faced while I jog across the lot, my footsteps echoing. I run through the elevator doors just as they’re sliding shut.
I grasp her shoulders, turning her to face me as the car begins to ascend. “We’re in this together, all right? Don’t shut me out. Whatever happens, I’ve got your back.”
Tabby stares at me like she’s never seen me before in her life. The bell dings. The elevator doors slide open. With a sharp twitch of her body, she shakes me off.
With frost on her breath, she says, “When I told you before that S?ren would end it if he found out I was involved in the investigation, I didn’t mean what Miranda thought I meant. I wasn’t talking about what he’d do to the studio.”
“What are you saying? I don’t understand.”
Her eyes are dark and endless, full of secrets only she knows. “I mean that all these years, we’ve both just been biding our time.”
I’m so frustrated with this cryptic line of conversation, I want to shake her. “Tabby, what the fuck are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about fate, Connor. About physics. About how certain events have so much weight they create their own gravity, and you can waste your entire life in orbit around their memory, caught in their magnetic pull. And there’s only one thing that can break that miserable, endless revolution.”
I’m lost. I admit it. She’s completely lost me. I stand with my hands spread open in a helpless gesture, waiting for an explanation.
It never comes.
Instead, she surprises me by reaching out and caressing my cheek. Softly, with grave tenderness, she says, “You’re a good man, Connor Hughes.”
Something about her tone of voice makes all the hair on the back of my neck stand on end. “Why does that sound like a good-bye?”
She smiles. It’s the saddest thing I’ve ever seen. Then she turns around and walks away without another word.
Into my mind a thought rises, unbidden.
I have a really bad feeling about this.
The COM center is buzzing with activity when we walk in, but as soon as we’re spotted, it falls dead silent.
Miranda stands by the windows, her head bowed, her arms crossed over her chest, her complexion as pale and severe as the tailored suit she’s wearing. The FBI agents are broken into several close-knit groups, standing together around their computers like satellites hovering around a mother ship. Special Agent Chan is standing beside O’Doul’s desk, looking shell-shocked, his black hair standing at odd angles, his striped tie askew.
Off by himself near the whiteboard stands Rodriguez. He’s staring straight at Tabby with an expression that can only be described as pure, unadulterated rage.
My nerves, which normally simmer somewhere around DEFCON 3, slam up to DEFCON 1. My ears prick. My muscles tense. Every sense screams into high alert.
Ryan makes a beeline for us from where he’d been standing at a respectful distance from Miranda near the windows. As soon as he’s close, I ask in a low voice, “Where’s O’Doul?”
Ryan glances at Tabby. His expression is neutral. “Went to Florida to head up the tactical op in coordination with SWAT, didn’t he?”
Translation: O’Doul is scattered in a thousand bloody chunks over some neighborhood in Miami.
I look at Tabby, hunting for her eyes, but she keeps them averted. I feel her react to the realization that O’Doul is dead, and then force herself not to react. After a heartbeat of frozen silence, she gives off a dangerous, crackling energy, as cold as black ice and just as deadly.
Ryan feels it too. He looks at me with his brows quirked just so, in warning.
“You,” hisses Rodriguez into the awkward quiet, “fucking cunt!”
Then somehow I’m across the room, standing over Rodriguez, who is writhing on the floor, clutching the bloodied pulp of his nose which I’ve just smashed with my fist.
The room erupts. Three guys are on me, then four, then five. It rapidly devolves to a free-for-all, a half dozen FBI suits vs. the dynamic duo of me and Ryan, shoving and shouting insults and really just letting off some steam. When it’s over, we’re no worse for the wear, but the suits are looking pretty goddamn rattled. No bones are broken. Other than Rodriguez, no blood has been spilled.
Across the room, past all of us as if we don’t exist, Tabby and Miranda stare at each other. Tabby has this weird look, this thousand-yard stare that I’ve seen once or twice before on the best military snipers.
“Special Agent Chan. You’re in charge here now, I assume?”
Tabby keeps her gaze on Miranda as she calmly speaks. Chan nods, rakes a hand through his disheveled hair, nods again. When he realizes Tabby’s not looking at him, he says, “Yes.”
“With your permission, I’d like to inspect the data you pulled from the phone call.”
His look sharpens. “Why?”