The Summer Children (The Collector #3)(37)

“Doing okay?” he asks quietly.

“I get it,” I sigh. “I don’t like it, but I get it, even if I think the handbook is a bad idea. I just . . .”

He drapes an arm around my shoulders and pulls me into a sideways hug, then keeps it there as we walk. It draws a few looks from people as we pass. He ignores them. “A lot has landed on your doorstep, literally, and there’s no one way to feel about it. This woman has invaded your home. I know you, Mercedes. I know what that means to you.”

I was assigned to Vic and Eddison straight out of the academy, but Vic has known me a lot longer. Sometimes, inexplicably, I forget that. And then, like now, I remember.

“How do I sleep there, knowing another child might be walking up the steps?” I whisper. “How do I stay anywhere else, knowing another child might have to sit there in blood and fear, and wait?”

“I don’t have an answer for you.”

“I’d call bullshit if you did.”

He smiles and squeezes my shoulder, using the motion to give me a small shove into the open elevator. “You’re going to get through this, Mercedes, and we’re going to be right beside you to make sure of that.”

“What happens . . .”

Giving me a curious look, he waits for the doors to close, for that sinking feeling that says the car is in motion, then hits the emergency stop. “What happens when?”

I pace the small space from wall to wall, gathering the worries into words I hope make sense. “What happens when she checks on the kids?”

“What do you mean?”

“We’re operating under the theory that she’s going after these parents because they’re hurting the kids. She brings the kids to me to keep them safe.”

“Right . . .”

“So what happens when she checks on Sarah, Ashley, and Sammy and finds out that they’re having trouble finding a home that will take all three of them? Ronnie’s doing fairly well at his grandmother’s, but Emilia’s only family seems to be either in prison or living out of the country. What kind of home is she going to get put in? My first few foster homes . . . not all of them were terrible, but some of them were. What happens to Emilia if she’s put in a bad home? And at what point does this killer decide that she isn’t bringing me kids to protect just for me to put them back into a flawed system?”

“You think she could come after you.”

“I think we have to acknowledge it as a possibility. We’re not going to understand her framework or compulsions until we find her, not really. So what happens when she gets more pissed at the system than at the parents?”

“She hasn’t given any indication of that,” he says after a moment. “If it was the system as a whole she was worried about, wouldn’t we see foster parents in the mix?”

“We might yet. There’s only been three. Realistically, she’s just getting started.”

“But she didn’t start with them. What do you think the difference is?”

He’s not asking Agent Ramirez; he’s asking Mercedes.

“Fosters are strangers; you never know what you’re going to get. Your parents are the two people in the whole world who aren’t supposed to hurt you. The wounds are deeper, in a way.”

He thinks his way through that, his weathered face mobile with the emotions that latch onto shreds of ideas or theories. Eventually he leans against the side wall and opens his arms, and I accept the hug gratefully, conscious of the still-tender scar over his heart. “I don’t know how to rescue you from this,” he admits softly.

I shake my head. “We do our jobs. We trust Holmes and Simpkins to do theirs. I’m not sure there is a rescue.”

We stand like that until someone from the next floor yells to let the fucking elevator move already, and he leans over to flick the car back into motion. Because he’s Vic, and he’s sometimes a little petty, he overrides the stop to skip the next floor.

It makes me smile, even if it probably shouldn’t.



14

Vic insists on all of us joining the family for dinner, and I both get it and am grateful for it, and with all three of his daughters home for the evening for once, the house is full of noise and laughter. No one mentions the case, or how no one can decide if I should go home or not. Holly and Brittany, the older two girls, are full of stories from college, their classes and campus life and competitions. Both are on athletics scholarships, Holly for cross-country and Brittany for swimming. Janey is still in high school, but she regales us with tales from rehearsals for her summer shows, and Vic is so proud of all three of them he can hardly see straight.

As agents, we’re trained to recognize the elephant in the room, to approach it somehow, but tonight it is merrily ignored.

I’m back at Eddison’s for the nights, though Sterling mentioned kidnapping me next week in some sort of bizarre joint-custody arrangement. While I get changed into T-shirt and boxers—and it’s even my “Female Body Inspector” running shirt, just to make him laugh—Eddison fiddles with his laptop and the cables until he’s got Skype up on his massive television, Inara and Priya sprawled across the screen.

“Victoria-Bliss is at work,” Inara offers instead of hello.

“Looks like you two are, as well,” I reply, accepting the bottle of beer Eddison hands me and sinking down onto the couch.