The journey home seemed endless and Anna, choosing to drive, spent most of it pondering Becker’s questions. The ones she had declined to answer. She thought about the cadaver dog, Sinbad. Clever, loyal, accepting and no bloody small talk. Everything she wanted in a companion.
The sun was a dangerously brilliant orb in her line of sight as she headed directly west in the car with Khosa busy texting her brother beside her. The DC had been subdued since witnessing Shaw’s violent reaction, but all it had done was reinforce her determination to keep as far away from the man as possible. Both Khosa and Holder had been on a high for the last few days. Spanish police had picked up Morton and they’d both gone to the airport for the handover a couple of days ago.
They’d brought her back a mug with ‘World’s Best Boss’ written on it.
Hawley would be waiting for Anna at the end of her journey that evening. She comforted herself with the thought as she drove, a wry smile on her face, occasionally lowering the window and letting the breeze wash away the sticky smell of coffee and Khosa’s mints steeped in her nose.
But it failed to blow away the thoughts of Shaw that stubbornly kept reasserting themselves.
He’d promised to show her something else and had shown no inclination, now that he had Anna involved, to let her go. His preoccupation with her had everything to do with his belief that he’d found in her an instrument of justice for the crimes perpetrated against him, and his own. It was not a very comfortable feeling. But the Black Squid and the men who persisted in peddling it were a real phenomenon.
She thought about Shaw festering in his prison cell for all those years, ruminating on those he had been unable to impart his ‘justice’ upon. He had waited, a patient hunter, for the right prey to enter his domain before reaching out and dragging her into his psychological lair. But should she consider herself the prey here? She suspected Shaw considered her an ally and their relationship a symbiotic one. Despite the heat, Anna suddenly shivered, her heart thumping. That was an equally uncomfortable thought.
Shaw’s conversations were as seductive as they were terrifying. She had turned to him twice in order to try and understand the way killers thought and acted. She’d caught Willis first and then Starkey, and Shaw’s dispassionate appraisal provided vital insight in both cases.
Shipwright, her old mentor, would have created merry hell had he known. And Anna knew the game she was playing was a dangerous one. But Shaw had somehow managed to align his agenda with hers and she could not, in all consciousness, step away from the lion’s cage.
To do so meant letting bodies lie in shallow graves undiscovered, allowing relatives to hope where there was none, and turning away from the chance to hunt monsters.
* * *