The Summer Children (The Collector Series Book 3)

by Dot Hutchison

  “Mason, these are the agents Nancy and I were telling you about,” Tate informs the little boy. “That’s Mercedes Ramirez”—I give Mason a nod and a little wave—“and this is . . .”

  “Cass Kearney,” she says, echoing my gestures.

  “This is Mason Jeffers.”

  Eyeing the curtain tracking in the ceiling, I sit down on the floor against the same wall as Tate, making sure not even a hair is over the line. It puts me about ten feet away, with Tate in between us. “You’ve had a pretty bad morning, huh?”

  He nods solemnly.

  “This might be a pretty difficult question to answer, but are you doing okay right now?”

  He seems to think about that, then shrugs.

  “Okay, let’s try something easier: As long as we stay over here, are you okay with us being in here with you?”

  He frowns a little, then shrugs again.

  “Okay. If that changes, Mason, if you want or need us to leave, just let Tate know, okay? And we’ll go. This is your space, and we don’t want to make you uncomfortable.”

  He doesn’t look like he knows what to make of that, which isn’t as surprising as I’d like it to be. He’s never really been allowed to have any idea of what “his space” should be.

  “Do you mind if I ask you some questions? They’ll be yes or no, and if you don’t know the answer or don’t remember, that’s perfectly okay.”

  There are times in this job when I say okay so many times it no longer feels like a real word in my mouth. But Mason nods, after an uncertain look at Tate, so I settle more comfortably against the wall, crossing my legs tailor-fashion and keeping my hands on my knees, palms up and fingers loose, to be as nonthreatening as possible.

  “Did the person who brought you to the hospital talk to you?”

  He nods slowly.

  “Was it a lady?”

  Another nod.

  “Was she wearing a mask over her face?”

  His nod is more confident this time.

  “This one is important, Mason: Did she hurt you?”

  He shakes his head.

  “Did she mention any other kids or families?”

  He shakes his head again.

  “When you were in the car, did she bring you straight to the hospital?”

  He nods.

  That’s . . . odd.

  “Was she as short as Agent Cass?”

  She’s only five-foot-one, so it’s a fair question, however much the discreet kick to my thigh tells me she’s unhappy about it. Mason looks her up and down, his eyes sliding over to Nancy before he finally shakes his head.

  “How about Miss Nancy, then: Was she as tall as Miss Nancy?”

  He pulls one hand away from the tablet to wobble it in midair.

  “How about a thumbs-up for taller, or a thumbs-down for shorter. Can you do that for me, Mason?”

  He studies Miss Nancy again, who gives him a soft smile and stays precisely where she is. Slowly, uncertainly, he gives a thumbs-up.

  “This is going to be a little bit harder: thumbs-up if she’s closer to Miss Nancy’s height, thumbs-down if she’s closer to my height.”

  He looks between us for several moments, then puts his hand back to the iPad and shrugs, his shoulders staying up near his ears. Why the hell did I ask that sitting down?

  “That’s okay, Mason. It’s okay if you’re not sure. I know there was a lot going on all at once.”

  He doesn’t smile, but his shoulders drop a bit and his lips twitch in something that’s probably as close to a smile as he gets.

  I want to keep that almost smile. I ask him more open questions, ones that turn it into a silly guessing game, like what’s his favorite color, or who’s his favorite superhero, and gradually, as my guesses get more and more off the wall, he starts leaning forward in the beanbag, eager to nod or shake his head to each one, and Tate gives me a broad smile. When Mason starts yawning, we say our goodbyes, leaving him with Tate, and follow Nancy out the door.

  “Does he have family who can safely take him in?” asks Cass.

  Nancy nods and walks with us to the elevators. “His uncles are making arrangements to get here; they’re hoping to arrive tonight or tomorrow if they can get things squared away with their bosses. His father’s brother and his husband, I believe.”

  “If he’s comfortable with the iPad, can you ask Tate to show him different kinds of cars? If we can narrow down the make and model of the car, that would be a big help.”

  “I’ll pass that along.”

  I press the call button for the elevator. “One of your filing clerks, Gloria,” I say casually, aware of Cass stiffening beside me. “Is she always that grumpy?”

  But far from suspecting anything, Nancy gives a soft, sad laugh. “Oh, dear. Gloria. She’s . . . well, she’s having a time of it, I’m afraid.”

  “She’s ill.”

  “Yes. Breast cancer, but it’s spread into her lungs and down into her abdomen. She insists on working, though, any day she feels strong enough. I think having something to do helps her a bit emotionally. And, well . . . this may be something that makes the CPS gossip rounds more than the national news, but did you hear anything about the CPS office in Gwinnett County? Down in Georgia?”

  Cass and I both shake our heads.

  “She grew up just outside of Atlanta, and her sister and brother-in-law both work in that office. She’s a nurse, and he’s a social worker. There was a big scandal there recently, and an investigation uncovered that several of the employees were purposefully concealing some abuse cases, or declining to investigate fully, and they were all cases involving employee kids or the kids of friends.”

  “Her sister and brother-in-law?”

  Nancy nods reluctantly. “So they’re off to prison, but the court wouldn’t let Gloria take her nieces and nephews because of the cancer. They said she’s not healthy enough to take care of five kids. And, truthfully, she’s not, but the kids got split up between different family members, and then with her husband’s sudden death, she’s just really had a bad few months. If she offended you—”

  “Oh, no, nothing like that. She was snippy, but clearly she has reason to be. I was just wondering if we’d caught her on a bad day, or if she was just generally a grump. Every office has one, you know.”

  “Lord, yes. Tell you what, though, give her a name and she can find the file in under ten minutes without even having to look it up. She knows the name of every kid who comes through our office, and last year she got the entire records room reorganized so it actually makes sense now, and got all the digital files tagged and cross-indexed.”

  “How’s her prognosis?”

  “Not very good, I’m afraid. She found it late.”

  “We’ll pray for her,” I say, and Nancy beams. “Just . . . maybe don’t tell her that.”

  “God bless you both. Off to see Ronnie next?”

  “He’s with his grandmother, right?”

  “Yes, she’s up in Reston. Let me get her number for you.”

  We wait to call until we’re out of the hospital. Cass’s phone has been buzzing intermittently for the last hour, and every voice mail and almost every text is from Simpkins. Those that aren’t are from her teammates. Warning her, I assume. I can’t make out the words of the second voice mail, but the tone is pissed.

  “Try not to get written up for my sake,” I tell her, tapping in the number for Ronnie’s grandmother.

  “What if I get written up for the kids’ sakes?” she asks. “It did them good to see you.”

  “Voice mail. Do I leave a message?”

  “Sure. You haven’t been told otherwise yet.”

  It drove our instructors nuts at the academy. As much as I’m willing to split hairs to achieve something, Cass takes it to the subatomic levels.

  I clear my throat just before the beep. “This message is for Mrs. Flory Taylor. Ma’am, this is Agent Mercedes Ramirez, with the FBI, and I was hoping to check in on Ronnie, see how he’s doing
with everything that’s happened. I’d be grateful if you could please call me back when it’s convenient for you.” I leave my number, then Cass’s name and number for good measure, and hang up. “All right. Anything else we need to do in Manassas before we face the music?”

  “Holmes and Mignone won’t be on duty yet, will they?”

  “Not for several hours yet.”

  “Then I can’t think of anything else. Lunch?”

  “I’ll bet twenty Simpkins complains to Vic that his team is a bad influence on her agents.”

  “I’ll take that bet. No way she bitches at the unit chief like that, not out-and-out.”

  18

  You won twenty bucks yesterday, you’re buying the coffee today, Eddison informs me via text while I’m brushing my teeth at his kitchen sink.

  The fact that he felt the need to send that text from the bathroom is . . . disturbing? He could have just yelled it.

  It’s also a harbinger of how entirely shitty the rest of the day is going to be, because Simpkins spends a good two hours raking us over the coals for “interfering in her investigation.” Vic eventually has to step in, and that’s when it gets nasty. Vic rarely yells—he doesn’t like giving anyone the satisfaction—but it’s been a long time since I’ve seen him that close to it. Whatever Simpkins’s ambitions, though, Vic quite simply outranks her, both in actual position and in tenure; he’s been an agent with the Bureau for thirty-eight years.

  He started in the Bureau two months before Eddison was born.

  Weirdly enough, it’s Eddison who’s the more bothered by that particular fact.

  Once we’re out of Dodge, I get to spend the rest of the morning digging into the hard drive freshly delivered from Archives. It’s dropped off by one of the baby agents, and before she even gets to my desk, I know where she works; the baby agents assigned to the archives are all immune to the Eddison catnip because they’re all so terrified of Agent Alceste at first. By the time they realize they don’t have to be afraid of Alceste as long as they leave her alone, they’ve outgrown the catnip vulnerability, for the most part.

  I hate this, digging through old cases to see which child might have grown up to be a murderer. Not just the kids we rescued but their friends and family, the friends and family of the ones we couldn’t save, even—in some cases—the children of the ones causing them harm. In a few terrible cases, the kids causing the harm. Reading through the files to assess perceived connections, plugging them into our system to find where they are now . . . it’s horrific.

  Kids who face monsters can grow up to become monsters, I know that, and some grow up to chase monsters. I just don’t want to think that a child I held and comforted could grow up to do this.

  It’s slow, tedious, heartbreaking work, and far too vivid a reminder that a rescue is a moment, not a state of being. Whatever we saved them from, we were powerless to influence what came next. I know that better than most.

  This, I think, is exactly why we’re trained to let go of cases once they’re done. How could we do this job if we’re constantly aware that even our successes can lead to terrible things?

  By the end of the day, everyone is either short-tempered or walking on eggshells in the bullpen. Sterling and I are sitting atop Eddison’s freakishly organized desk, our feet on his thighs to keep him seated, passing around menus to decide on dinner, when Vic walks up. We all watch him warily.

  Because there’s this thing that Vic sometimes does, where he will absolutely have your back in public, but in private he will break down in excruciating detail exactly what you did wrong and why you need to never do it again. It’s not cruel or hateful, it’s not even mean, it’s just . . .

  He gets so disappointed when he has to do it. Disappointing Vic makes you feel lower than dirt.

  “Stop that,” he chides. “You’re not in trouble.”

  “Are you sure?” Sterling asks doubtfully.

  “Simpkins was out of line. Yes, you probably shouldn’t have wiggled around the lines as much as you did, but we got a call from the lead social worker telling us how much it helped the kids to see Mercedes, so clearly you did what was needed. Now. None of you are coming in tomorrow.”

  “We’re not?”

  “No. We’ve been over this. When you’re on desk rotation, there’s this thing called overtime that the Bureau doesn’t want to pay you. You’re done for the week. Go home. Better yet, go to the train station and pick up the girls, because I have to sit down with the section chief and explain the ruckus today.”

  Gathering up the handful of menus, Eddison stacks them neatly and tucks them into the top drawer, gently moving Sterling’s legs out of the way to do so. “All right, we’ll take them out.”

  “We were just going to do pizza at the house,” Vic tells him.

  Eddison just shrugs. “I’m not letting them see that apartment until you’re there to show it to them, and you know Jenny will automatically lead them to it.”

  Vic gives him a long look, but surrenders without another word. “I’ll let you know when I’m leaving the office, then.”

  Launching herself off the desk, Sterling nearly skips over to her bag, pulling a slim something in a garbage bag out from behind her filing cabinet. “I was hoping we’d get to pick them up.”

  “Are you going to show us what that is?” Eddison asks, eyeing the bag.

  “Not yet.”

  We take Vic’s car to the station, leaving Eddison’s keys with him, as Vic’s is the only one capable of legally seating at least six people. When we get there, Sterling excuses herself to the restroom while Eddison and I figure out where we need to be. It’s a bit of a zoo, with the commuters hitting the road home. Amtrak is the way Inara and Victoria-Bliss prefer to come down. Inara, who never really seems afraid of anything, absolutely hates flying, and has done it all of once. Not once round-trip. Once. She actually cancelled the return flight and caught the train, she hated it so much. Priya has never seemed to care one way or the other, but she’s not going to fly down separately from them for a couple hundred dollars more.

  “Has Ronnie’s grandmother called back yet?” Eddison asks when we get vaguely where we need to go.

  “Yes. She told Cass that Simpkins had told her not to answer or return my calls, and she was very confused. I didn’t envy Cass having to explain that.”

  “You were allowed to speak to Cass?”

  “When Anderson went to lunch, I borrowed his computer for the interoffice chat, so if Simpkins gets twitchy, it looks like Anderson did it.”

  “She’ll eat him alive.”

  “I’m okay with that.”

  “It’s not just you, right? All the women in the office hate him?”

  “Hate who?” Sterling asks suddenly, popping up behind the violently flinching Eddison.

  “Bells,” he mutters. “I swear to God, bells.”

  “Anderson,” I tell Sterling.

  “Oh. Yes, most of us hate him.”

  “And the others?” he asks, one hand still over his heart.

  “Don’t have to interact with him. Ooh, that’s them!” She hands the garbage bag to Eddison, tears open the knot, and pulls out a folded posterboard sign with huge, glittering green letters that say, BITCHES BE HERE.

  “Christ,” sighs Eddison, staring at the ceiling for inspiration or patience.

  We can tell the exact instant the girls coming down the steps see it, because Victoria-Bliss doubles over cackling, losing her balance, and both Inara and Priya have to grab the back of her shirt to keep her from cracking her head on the stairs. “I LOVE IT,” she yells across the terminal, either not noticing or not caring about the glares sent her way from other passengers and families.

  As soon as they’re close enough, it’s a tackle of hugs, and even Victoria-Bliss punches Eddison on the arm. It’s basically her version of a hug if you’re male.

  “Where’s Vic?” asks Priya, looping her arm around Eddison’s waist and pinching him when he tries to take one of her
bags.

  “Office politics.”

  She rolls her eyes, and pinches Eddison again when he makes another try for the bags. “Is he regretting the promotion yet?”

  “Not as much as he would be regretting retiring if he hadn’t taken it.” Giving up on Priya’s duffel, Eddison manages to get both Inara’s and Victoria-Bliss’s overnight bags.

  At which point Inara reaches out for Priya’s duffel, which the other girl willingly surrenders.

  Eddison wilts. There’s really no other word for it. He looks like a puppy who doesn’t know what it did to get yelled at.

  “Stop pouting,” Priya tells him calmly. “I made a promise to Keely about some of the pictures in there.”

  “Have I ever gone through something of yours without explicit permission?”

  “You have not, but this was about making a fifteen-year-old more comfortable with letting me take the pictures, so I promised her that Inara and Victoria-Bliss are the only ones other than me who’ll touch the bag, much less the pictures.”

  He considers that for a moment, then adjusts his grip on the other two bags. “Fine.”

  It’s a cheerful ride to the restaurant, a Mongolian grill at which Priya insists we eat at least once per visit. They tell us about shows they’ve seen and some of the weirder patrons at the restaurant where Inara and Victoria-Bliss have worked for years. Priya shows us a picture of the giant colorful sticker chart on the back of the door where they mark off different ethnic foods they’re trying this summer, and for some reason none of them can explain, the stickers are all of professional wrestlers.

  Once Vic sends us word he’s on his way home, we finish up and herd everyone back into the car, still laughing and talking over each other. It’s later than I realized, the sky edging into night. Inara is the first to spot the house. “Oh, he finished repairing the garage,” she notes.

  I catch Sterling’s grin in the rearview mirror, but she doesn’t turn around to share it with the girls.

  Eddison pulls the car into Vic’s usual spot on the driveway and we spill out, grabbing bags at random to carry in, with the exception of Priya’s duffel, which she grabs herself. Vic meets us outside, twirling three key rings on one finger. All three girls pile against him for a hug, and he’s laughing as much as any of them.