Survival Clause, стр. 18
‘We’ being him and his handler, and the rest of the TBI.
“I guess she didn’t like being fooled,” I said.
“Seems that way.” He waited for me to unlock the car and then he opened the back door and put Carrie’s seat on the base for the ride home. “Nothing ever happened aside from her wanting to arrest me. Nothing you need to worry about.”
“She’s gorgeous,” I said. “And I’m standing here with no makeup on and my hair undone. And at least ten pounds of excess baby-weight I haven’t managed to lose in the past four months…”
While Leslie Yung was a perfect size four in her clingy pants. I haven’t been a size four since middle school, and I don’t expect I’ll ever be one again.
“You’ll get there, darlin’.” He put an arm around my waist, while the other hand crept up into my hair. His fingers started undoing the messy bun. “And if you don’t, it was well worth it.”
I suppose Carrie was worth an extra ten pounds of weight, if he wanted to look at it that way. “I love you,” I said.
He grinned. “I love you too, darlin’. Now go on home and let me deal with Yung.”
“She’s here for the murder investigation?”
He nodded.
“Is she going to try to take it away from you?”
“I imagine she’s gonna try,” Rafe said. “I better get in there, darlin’.”
I nodded. “Let me know what happens.”
He said he would. And then he leaned down and gave me the kind of kiss that’s more suited for the bedroom than the sidewalk outside the police station. It ended with me hanging from his arm, as limp as a noodle, and it resulted in catcalls and whooping from a couple of cops who were walking by, and wolf whistles from up the street.
Rafe chuckled and set me upright. “You OK to drive?”
“I’ll sit a minute and catch my breath before I attempt to navigate,” I promised him. “Go on inside and make sure Grimaldi doesn’t murder Agent Yung. I’ll see you later.”
“I’ll be in touch.” He jogged back up the stairs and let himself into the police station while I folded myself behind the wheel of the Volvo and, as promised, sat there until my legs stopped shaking before I turned the key in the ignition and headed home.
Six
I was halfway there when the phone rang. The display showed Charlotte’s name, so I picked up with a cheery, “Good morning.”
“That was quite the kiss your husband laid on you,” my old friend informed me, with a ripe chuckle.
“How did you—? Oh, my God.” I fought an instinctive inclination to turn the car around. “Someone filmed that?”
“And uploaded it to Facebook,” Charlotte confirmed. “It just came on two minutes ago. I have an alert set.”
So she’d told me. I was starting to think I might have to set my own alert.
“I followed Rafe to work this morning,” I told her, “to see if I could spot whoever’s doing this. And I thought I had.”
I told her about the tan compact that had gotten away from me. “It didn’t even occur to me that someone might still be there. I was so sure whoever it was had escaped me…”
“So you went back?” Charlotte prompted when I fell silent.
I nodded. “Yes. To tell him I’d lost whoever it was, but to keep an eye out for the car. And when I walked into the lobby, I found him and Grimaldi in a face-off with Agent Leslie Yung from the FBI.”
“What’s an FBI agent doing here in Maury County?”
I hadn’t gotten around to asking, but I could guess. “Probably because of the murder. Rafe said he might have to contact the FBI and see if they have a task force put together for this guy. He’s killed a lot of women in a lot of states, so it makes sense that they would.”
I just hadn’t realized he’d done it yet. Rafe, I mean. Called the FBI. Judging from his expression inside the lobby earlier, he hadn’t expected to see Agent Yung. He certainly hadn’t prepared Grimaldi for her. The scene I’d witnessed bore every evidence of being adversarial, the way it would be if Yung had shown up and tried to take over.
“Tell me about it when you get here,” Charlotte instructed.
“Here?” Did we have an appointment I’d forgotten?
“You want to see the video, don’t you?”
I did. But I could look it up myself. Or she could send it to me.
I deduced, cleverly, that she wanted to show it to me in person, though. So—
“Sure, I’ll come over. Are you at your mom’s house?”
She said she was, and I dropped the phone in the console and navigated my way past the mansion, into Sweetwater proper, and down Green Street.
Charlotte was in the front parlor when I pulled up, and opened the door before I’d even latched the picket-fence gate behind me. “It must be quite the video,” I told her as I trudged up the walk to the front porch.
She smirked. “Wait until you see the comments. X-rated, some of them.”
“Jesus. I mean… sheesh. Don’t people have better things to do?”
“Apparently not,” Charlotte said, and closed the door behind me. “Put the baby down. Here.”
She handed me her phone, already cued up, and bent over Carrie. My daughter gurgled and cooed as she was lifted out of the carrier and snuggled in Charlotte’s arms. Her youngest, Richard Junior, or JR, was going on three now, so maybe she missed holding babies.
I turned my attention to the video.
It was taken from the same angle as the others, from the area down the street where I’d been parked and waiting this morning. And it started with Rafe and me coming out of the police station. He kept his hand on the small of my back on the way down the steps, and then we stopped next to the car. I watched as he pulled open the back door and put Carrie inside before turning to me. We exchanged