The Summer Children (The Collector #3)(66)
“Inappropriate conduct with a witness,” he murmurs, tossing me an unwrapped pink Starburst. “Probably a lawsuit coming. She’s not happy.”
No shit, and so not my business, Christ.
A red-faced agent stomps out, sans badge and gun, and after another few minutes, the assistant pokes his head into the lair to announce me.
“Would you like to feel sorry for Agent Simpkins?” Agent Dern says instead of hello when I walk in.
“If I say I already do?”
“She got served with divorce papers two weeks ago. Her ex-husband-to-be cited irreconcilable differences stemming from her consistently putting her job above their marriage and family.”
“Why are you telling me this, ma’am?”
“Because I know you won’t tell anyone outside your team, and you deserve to know that it wasn’t you, your team, or your case that sent her round the bend,” she says bluntly. “Sit, please.”
I sit. She’s wearing lilac today, in some kind of fabric that drapes and shimmers becomingly, and I think this is who Sterling should grow up to be, someone who can wear the pastels and the feminine things without it taking a millimeter of authority away from her. Sterling just has to wait until she doesn’t look like jailbait.
“I’m told you haven’t seen any of the counselors here.”
“I’ve talked with my priest about everything. I felt like I could be more forthcoming.”
“How goes your research through your old cases?”
I run her through the parameters we’re using, not shying away from explaining the glacial pace. Because a lot of our search is based on instinct and impression, we can’t just turn it over to the technical analysts as is. We have to narrow it down first.
She looks back over her page of notes, written in some ultraefficient shorthand possibly known only to her. “You’re still staying with your teammates?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“If you would feel more comfortable at home—”
“All due respect, ma’am,” I interrupt softly, “it’s not about feeling unsafe at my house. I just feel better with Eddison and Sterling. Less exposed.”
She nods thoughtfully, her dark eyes very aware in ways I’m not entirely comfortable with. “Are you going to sell the house?”
“I don’t know. I’m honestly not planning to think about it until all this is done.”
“That’s understandable. Professional opinion, Agent Ramirez: When do you think this person is going to strike again?”
I take a minute to run back through all the factors and variables that have been hammering at my skull for hours, days maybe. In the end, though, there’s really only one answer.
“Two days, if we’re lucky. Very likely less.”
Once upon a time, there was a little girl who was scared of breaking.
Or breaking more. She was honest enough with herself to acknowledge she’d been broken for a very long time. Some of that she’d fixed; some she was still working on. Some, she knew, could never heal. Even if her body someday gave up the scars, her soul would still carry the wounds.
It hurt, every time, to acknowledge that she’d never truly be whole.
But she did acknowledge it, because some pain was necessary, even healthy.
When she rammed against those broken places—when a nightmare was too vivid, when someone touched her in a way too rich with memory, when someone asked her why she hated being in photos—she reminded herself of all the ways she wasn’t that little girl anymore.
She had a new name, one her daddy and his friends had never touched.
She’d gone to college and graduated with honors.
She had friends, though she’d left most of them behind when she graduated. But she kept some of them, even after she’d moved, and she was making new ones.
She’d moved back to Virginia. She almost hadn’t, but it seemed silly to avoid an entire state just because she’d been so miserable for so many years. It was hardly the state’s fault. And because returning to Virginia was brave, she didn’t call herself cowardly for avoiding her old city. That much allowance she would give herself.
She had a job she loved, and was so proud of it. She was helping people, helping children. Children who were like the little girl she used to be. There were a lot of things she still wasn’t strong enough to do or be, maybe never would be, but this she could do. She could help the children who so desperately needed it, and she didn’t have to push herself past the breaking point.
And whenever she started to doubt, whenever she felt like she was more scar tissue than real person, she remembered her angel, and drew strength from the memory. The teddy bear still sat on her bed, a gift and a kindness. It had seen so many tears from her over the years, but eventually it saw joy as well, and the kind of tears that came of laughing too hard.
And she had the angel herself, in a way. She’d been shocked, at first, to see the angel while she was out running errands for her small apartment. She wasn’t entirely sure why. After all, even angels had to live somewhere. But it was such a big world. It was a sign, she decided, that she was exactly where she needed to be. She was here, helping children, and her angel was still helping children. She was still an angel.
She was healing, and she wasn’t as afraid.