He’s mad enough already. Wait till he sees what the media’s going to do with this.
He handed the phone back to Riley and said, “It’s really over, Riley. Walder’s making this personal, and we can’t buck his orders. We’ve got to fly back to Quantico. Right now. Come on, let’s get a ride back to Dermott. I’ll call the pilot on the way.”
Riley nodded silently. As they both walked toward the car they’d arrived in, Bill remembered what he’d said to Riley just a moment ago …
“In all likelihood, Timothy Pollitt really is the killer.”
For some reason, he really wished he hadn’t said that.
Deep down, his own instincts were starting to nag him, telling him …
This really isn’t over.
CHAPTER THIRTY FOUR
As the FBI plane flew back toward Quantico, Jenn wished she could talk to either Riley or Agent Jeffreys. The flight seemed interminable, and the monotonous drone of the engine wasn’t helping her spirits. She doubted that it was making her two partners feel any better either.
It made Jenn uncomfortable that Riley was sitting behind her, alone in the back of the plane, obviously brooding over the terrible blunder of the failed stakeout.
Agent Jeffreys was across the aisle from Jenn, staring out the window. He’d had little to say since they’d boarded the plane.
Are they angry with me? Jenn wondered.
She told herself that was a self-centered sort of worry, but she still couldn’t help but wonder.
After all, her own clash with Bull Cullen hadn’t helped the case go smoothly.
She seriously wished she’d found some more dignified means of dealing with him—something other than punching him in the nose.
Maybe she could have simply brushed him off and filed a complaint at an appropriate time.
Then she thought …
Stop doing this to yourself.
Cullen himself had been the real problem. And she was certain that he’d been a problem long before she met him.
Although Jenn hadn’t been an agent for very long, she already knew about some of the pitfalls of being a female agent. One of those was accepting inappropriate responsibility for the actions of others—especially men.
It really was Cullen’s fault, she told herself. It’s not mine.
Surely Jenn wasn’t the only woman who had felt his unwelcome hands wandering across her body. She knew perfectly well that it would have gotten worse if she’d just let it go—the same as it had surely gotten worse for other women in the past, and would for more women in the future.
Jenn decided to file a complaint the next chance she got. It was time someone called the man on his behavior.
Not that her decision made her feel any better.
Other worries kept crowding into her mind. She remembered what she’d said to Riley over the phone just before this case had started …
“Maybe I should just turn in my badge.”
It had only been two days ago, on Saturday, but it seemed much longer. At the time, Jenn had just gotten a vaguely threatening phone call from Aunt Cora. Jenn had convinced herself she could ignore the lurking figure from her past.
And yet …
It was as though Aunt Cora was still pulling and tugging at her.
Jenn realized that pull was because of this very case, and how unfinished it seemed, and how hard Jenn knew it must be on Riley.
Because the truth was …
Aunt Cora could help.
It was a chilling thought—but true.
The woman’s criminal tendrils were everywhere, and she had access to information that even the FBI couldn’t dream of.
If there still was a killer out there, Aunt Cora could help find him.
Jenn took her cell phone out of the pocket and stared at it.
She’s just a text message away, she thought.
Maybe she could get Aunt Cora’s help without either Riley or Agent Jeffreys ever being the wiser.
Maybe there would be no consequences—this time.
But Jenn felt a shudder of realization …
This is exactly what Aunt Cora wants. For me to need her help—and to accept her help.
Once Jenn let that happen, she would again be in debt to Aunt Cora.
Jenn put the phone back in her pocket.
Maybe she could sleep a little during the rest of the flight.
But she doubted it.
*
Riley sat staring out the cabin window thinking about how much she hated certain aspects of flying. The landscape far below always seemed to creep by at a snail’s pace, as if the plane were barely going anywhere.
Not that she really looked forward to landing. She didn’t feel ready to face whatever she might be returning to.
Not at BAU and not even at home.
She smiled a little at the thought …
By the time I’m ready to face the world, the plane will run out of fuel.
The flight seemed especially torturous today, given what had just happened …
… or rather what hadn’t happened.
The same question had been rattling through Riley’s brain ever since they’d flown out of Dermott.
What went wrong?
Riley had suffered setbacks and even failures before, but in the past she’d at least been able to make sense of them.
This time, she couldn’t seem to get a rational grip on things.
Even after the freight train had gone by without incident, she’d kept right on thinking …
I was right.
And she wasn’t the only one who was right.
So was Mason Eggers. At the very least, she had the overwhelming feeling that Eggers understood the case.
And she still couldn’t help telling herself.
We were right.
We were in the wrong place at the wrong time, but even so …
… we were right.
It was a weird paradox, and she couldn’t get her mind around it.
She also kept thinking …
Poor Eggers.
She remembered how broken and defeated he’d looked the last time she’d seen him, when he was getting into Dillard’s SUV for the drive back to Chicago.
The man’s confidence had been shaky to enough to begin with, and Riley kept thinking about something he’d said.
“Maybe I’d do the world more good if I just gave up this kind of work and took up fishing.”
Now he surely felt that he had no other choice.
But was life in retirement, fishing his remaining years away, even possible for a lonely old railroad cop like Mason Eggers?
Riley doubted it.
She felt certain of one thing—the failure of the stakeout was going to be even harder on Eggers than it was on her. She doubted that he’d ever recover from it.
As for herself, she was surely due for a reprimand at the very least. A suspension seemed more likely. She’d already thanked Bill for taking that call from Carl Walder, buffering her against that toady-in-charge’s newly kindled rage.
According to Bill, Walder wanted nothing to do with Riley or her team for another couple of days, which at least gave them a temporary reprieve.
The plane lurched a little, and Riley noticed a change in the cabin pressure. The pilot announced their descent toward the Quantico airstrip.
Soon Riley would be home, dealing with a whole different set of problems.
The most daunting would surely be Jilly, who must still be mad at her.
Mad and hurt, Riley thought.
And no doubt about it, Jilly had good reason to feel both mad and hurt.
Riley wondered if maybe, when she drove home from Quantico, she should stop somewhere and buy Jilly a belated birthday present.
But no, whatever gift she might find in such a rush simply wouldn’t do. It would seem lame and perfunctory, and it would probably make Jilly only feel worse than she already did.
Riley needed to talk to Jilly face to face, do or say whatever it would take to make amends.
And it wasn’t going to be easy.
Through her window Riley could see the buildings of the Quantico facility getting larger by the second.
The case she and her colleagues had left behind seemed a long distance off indeed—far away, but anything but solved.
Deep down in her gut, she felt absolutely sure of one thing:
Timothy Pollitt was not the killer.
Whoever the real killer was, he was surely planning his next murder.
And there wasn’t a damn thing Riley could do about it.
CHAPTER THIRTY FIVE