by David Archer
Sam looked around, pleased to see the team gathered in front of the evidence board, and then he turned his attention back to Melanie. "Come on. We're going to take a walk."
"Not—not right now." It was hard to sound angry when she tripped over her words.
"Melanie." Sam put his hand back on her shoulder, and he didn't let her shrug it off that time. "You need to take a walk with me right now."
Melanie's hands slowed to a stop over her keys, and then she simultaneously got to her feet and swept everything except the monitors themselves onto the floor. She stormed toward the exit, Sam following closely behind her. Summer could handle any apologies for the hardware damage done; he had a bit more complicated damage to attend to.
Sam followed Melanie into the warm evening air, and she turned on the spot as soon as the door swung shut. She glared at him with glassy eyes, and Sam felt his heart clench. She was trying so hard not to cry, trying so hard to be an angry rebel.
"I walked," she hissed. "What do you want?"
"I want you to listen to me for a moment." Sam began to walk, passing Melanie and moving down the sidewalk at a slow and easy pace. He knew there was a parking lot out behind the building, and it was about as secluded as he could get under the circumstances.
It took a few seconds, but Melanie eventually decided to follow him. She caught up and fell in step behind him, shoving her hands deep into her pockets.
"Melanie, how long would it have taken you to locate the killer if you had all your protocols in place?" His tone was neither judging not pitying, simply curious and self-assured.
Melanie didn't say anything for a moment, her eyes glued to whatever happened to be on her left. "Three minutes, maybe. Can't get much faster than that."
"Three minutes to get a location, and based on the kill zone… a five-to-ten-minute drive to the victim's house. Maybe a little more, maybe a little less." Sam slowed to a stop, waiting until she turned around to continue. "If everyone on this team, yourself included, had done everything as well as it could possibly be done, that woman would still be dead. The killer was in and out in less than five minutes, and there is nothing we could have done to change that."
Melanie bit her lip and looked down and to the right, cracking her knuckles while still keeping her hands hidden.
"Melanie, that is the job. We don't win every time. We do our best, and sometimes that's not enough, but that's not our fault." Sam stepped a little closer, leaving three feet of space between them. "Melanie, do you hear me?"
Melanie inhaled deeply, lips pressed together, eyes blinking rapidly. She kept looking at the darkness to her right, breathing deliberately and futilely trying to keep a lid on her emotions.
Sam sighed softly and closed the gap, his arms carefully finding their way around her body. She had rejected most physical contact since her arrival, so he kept his touch as light as possible, tightening the embrace only after he went unrejected.
"Melanie," he whispered, cradling her head to his chest. "It's okay to cry. I won't tell anyone. I just need you to understand that this is not your fault. You couldn't have prevented this. Specials have limits, too, and that's okay. That's what makes you human."
Melanie broke.
Her shoulders began to shake as her arms found their way around his waist in uncoordinated reciprocation of his hug. She buried her face in the shoulder of his suit and began to cry, fingers curling through the back of his jacket as she held on for dear life.
Sam rubbed her back and stroked her hair, speaking softly. "It's a tough job, and you didn't get trained for it. You didn't ask for it. You don't have a say, and I understand that. I don't expect you to handle this as well as my team." He let one hand rest on her head while the other continued to rub her back. "I know you don't believe me, and that's fine—you have every right to your mistrust—but you are safe with my team. You really, truly are."
Melanie didn't say anything, but she didn't have to. Just the fact that she was still in his arms, still crying openly, still allowing him to touch her was enough.
Sam wasn't disillusioned. He knew he hadn't gotten anywhere near Melanie's heart, but he made progress. For her sake, and for Eric's, he hoped that progress was enough.
* * *
"Huddle up, homies, and meet Stan Rogers."
Sam frowned, swallowing a litany of questions about Melanie's health in favor of following more professional lines of inquiry. "That isn't the ID we got from the company. This is definitely him?"
Melanie held up a finger. "Yes and no. Mr. Rogers got his identity stolen last year. From the picture the company gave us, I can tell you who our creep used to be, but the killer burned through Rogers' identity for two weeks and never looked back." Her fingers flew across the keys as she spoke. "This… is Robert Johnson, three-time loser, arrested for possession of torture videos. He spent some time in a halfway house and then… poof."
Sam frowned. "Do we have any idea at all where he went after that?"
"Nope." Melanie chewed on her lip and flipped between windows. "I did find a blog of his online. Here's a lovely quote, 'next time you won't be able to stop me.'"
Eric, who was hovering on the other side of Melanie, looked over her shoulder with eyes almost as tired and bloodshot as hers. "That's his narcissism again. He was furious about getting caught; now he's using that rage as an excuse to indulge the fantasies he's always had."
Sam folded his arms over his chest, one hand coming up to rest beneath his chin. "Melanie, is there a pattern to the identities he steals?"
"No, he's super disciplined about it." She shook her head, tucking a combination of blue, blonde, and purple behind her ear. "Most of the time, the trouble with tracking someone down is that they're off the grid, but this guy is the total opposite. He's all over the grid, okay? He is manipulating the grid; he has become one with the grid." She shook her head. "He never stays in the same place for long, and he never uses the same identity twice. It's driving me crazy."
Crazy enough to work through the night without stopping? Because Sam was pretty sure that was what had happened, not that his four-hour nap left him much room to judge.
Sam sighed. "Okay, so, how are we going to find out who he is now?"
"I don't think we are." Melanie shook her head, pausing for a moment to look up at Sam. She was gauging his reaction, but Sam didn't give her much to work with. "If he's this flexible with his name—his real name—we're not gonna be able to pin him down this way, but there's another name he uses that I can track: his hacker handle."
Eric tilted his head to the side, confused. "Wouldn't he have hundreds of those, too?"
Sam waited to hear the answer, equally confused.
"Oh, most definitely, but you said he's a narcissist, right?" Melanie looked at Eric for confirmation and continued once she got it. "He won't be able to resist taking credit for what he's doing, which means he'll have to be able to identify himself to other hackers. Once I have his hacker name, the little bastard is mine."
Sam looked at the screen, keeping the majority of his doubt to himself but still asking, "You're sure you can catch him that way?"
Melanie gave him a reluctant sort of nod, bitterness creeping into her voice as she replied, "It's how the government caught me."
"Oh?" Sam leaned against the table and crossed his arms over his chest. "So, you didn't grow up in it like Eric did."
Melanie offered a slight nod and opened her mouth as if to speak, but she cut herself off and pointed to one of the windows on her screen. "Um, so, yeah. If you can get the killers' online name from one of the chat room sickos you arrested this morning… that would be awesome."
"Darren, Denny, and Miller are handling that right now. Eric, can you let them know about the need to know the hacker handle?"
Eric gave an enthusiastic thumbs up and bounded from the room, smiling to himself. Somewhere in the back of Sam's mind, he made a mental note to spend some one-on-one time with Eric; the last thing either of them needed was Eri
c acting out because he felt replaced or ignored or unwanted.
"I, uh, I don't have anything else for you right now." Melanie chuckled, but there was a nervousness behind it that had shadowed most of her actions on the case. "I'm good, but I'm not that good."
"You seem to have this mentality of me expecting you to pull answers from thin air. Eric doesn't have that." Sam inclined his head a bit, seeking Melanie's eyes. "Did you work with a team like that?"
Melanie shrugged her shoulders. "Most teams are like that. I dunno, like, a sixty-forty split." She shrugged again, typing slower but never fully letting the computers rest. "Eric never worked in the field. He still had to give answers in a ridiculously short time span, but it wasn't as… breath-down-your-neck-y as it is in the field."
Sam pursed his lips a bit and nodded his head, considering the scenarios before figuring out how to continue. "Well, if you haven't already figured it out, you don't have to worry about that from this team."
Melanie gave a noncommittal hum and kept her eyes on her screens.
"So, were you arrested for a crime and then admitted to North Forest Hospital, or did North Forest Hospital target you independently?" Sam asked, a curious tone slipping into his voice.
"Crime." Her lips twisted into a scowl, and she spared him a brief glance. "If you can call it that. Westfield Cosmetics tests on animals. I was just trying to help."
Sam smiled lightly. "That may be so, but testing on animals isn't illegal."
"So?" she snapped, eyes flickering over to him before zeroing in on her screen again. "Neither is locking Eric up because he's got a high IQ, but according to you, that's not a good enough reason for it to be happening."
Sam frowned and nodded his head in a sideways manner. "Hmm… you do have a point there." He looked at her, watching her expression carefully to see how she would take his admission of wrongdoing.
"Of course I do." Melanie kept her expression guarded, but Sam could still see some surprise and hesitant trust in her eyes. "Not that it matters. Westfield Cosmetics still tests on animals, and Eric is still property of North Forest Hospital."
"For now," Sam added, deciding he wanted to end the interaction on a more positive note. "We'll see how things progress. For now, let's focus on getting Mr. One With The Grid." He offered her a faint smile and pushed off the table. "I'm going to get myself a coffee. Can I get you something?"
Melanie looked at him like he was a rattlesnake, but after a long moment of silence, she replied with a simple, "Coke would be great."
"Just regular?" Sam asked, already moving toward the exit.
Melanie gave him a nod and, after a moment, a very small smile. "Thanks, sir Sam."
"You're welcome, lady Melanie." Sam gave her another smile of his own and left the room behind, hoping he had built enough rapport for them to get the information that they needed before it was time to send Melanie home.
TWENTY-TWO
The case was solved in record time, the kidnapper found when Melanie tracked his activities to an IP address in the nearby town of Lake City. In a rare happy ending, all three of his victims were found alive, kept in cells in his basement. The team celebrated the win on the plane, but that was the day before. Now, it was time to get busy on what was really important while they had Melanie available.
"So… what is this, exactly?"
Jade kicked her shoes off and pulled her feet up onto the chair, crossing her legs. "Me and the rest of the team are conducting an independent investigation of sorts, and I just need to see if you can clear up some questions we have about Eric's time with North Forest Hospital."
Melanie gave her a suspicious frown, tugging on a strand of hot pink hair as she looked Jade up and down. "What kind of questions?"
Jade opened the folder on the table between them, tucking her own hair behind her ear as she looked it over, trying to keep the setting as casual as possible. "Uhh, let me see… here, this is the biggest one. Eric gave us a list of his ward mates, and we've been looking at the last five years in particular, and there's a weird gap for two years that we can't explain. You were with Eric right before and right after that gap."
Melanie let out a heavy sigh and crossed her arms over her chest, letting her eyes wander over the kitchen area and room—she looked anywhere, really, as long as it wasn't Jade's face. "That's…" Her expression shifted for a moment, face scrunching up with something like pain, and then she made eye contact. "If I don't talk, you'll just ask him, won't you?"
Jade licked her lips and considered the question. "Well, there's some things we already asked him about… so I doubt we'll ask again, but… yes. We don't want to get him too heavily involved, but we're investigating something very important." She spread her hands a bit in a gesture of openness. "We'll do what we have to."
"Yeah?" Melanie snorted and looked away again, but she was quicker to bring her gaze back that time around. "What's so fascinating about North Forest Hospital?"
Jade gave her a sad smile and a completely honest answer. "If I tell you, you'll think it's some kind of trick to get you to like me." She shrugged a bit. "And I wouldn't blame you, but it also wouldn't get us anywhere."
Melanie pursed her lips and tilted her head, tugging on a lime green strand as she hummed thoughtfully. She appeared to struggle with the idea for a while, her gaze flickering from Jade to the floor to the ceiling and back again.
"You know he was… not okay after what happened, right?"
Jade pointed to the papers. "This says he was at North Forest Hospital Sanitarium for four months. That was right before you were returned to his ward… before that, you didn't work any cases for two and a half years."
"I won't talk about that." Melanie spat out the words before the last syllable could leave Jade's lips, the response seeming entirely instinctual. "Not me, not what I did. You can request files if you want that, and Eric doesn't know anything, so don't ask him." She blew her hair out of her eyes, calming down surprisingly quickly.
I've seen that before. Then again, Eric had similar temper flares, so she probably recognized it from the time she spent observing him. No, that's not right.
"I was transferred out, and somebody else took my place on that ward for a while." Melanie didn't look at Jade while she spoke, but there wasn't anything dishonest in her voice or body language.
Just sadness. Tangible grief weighing down her shoulders.
"Eric didn't tell us ab—"
"He doesn't remember." Melanie bit her lip and paused, again showing more emotion than secrecy. "Her name was Gina. If…" She looked around for a moment and then grabbed a salt shaker. "If this is Eric, then this," she put the pepper next to the salt, "was Gina, and these," she tapped the table with her fingers, the four points making a square, "were the other two consultants on the ward."
Jade furrowed her brow and leaned forward a bit, resting her arms on her files and giving Melanie her full attention. "Okay. Got it."
"Gina and Eric talked all the time—and no, I won't tell you how they got around the no-talking rule—and after about three weeks, they fell in love." Melanie shrugged, a weak smile pulling at the corner of her mouth, eyes misting over. "Stupid. Cliché, but one hundred percent true." She blinked a few times and sniffed. "But Gina was depressed… among other things…"
Jade watched as Melanie fought with herself, her hand cautiously sliding across the table. She left it where Melanie could grab or ignore of her own volition, and she continued to listen in silence.
"It, um… she just finished… working a case, and… I don't know. Maybe it was a really bad one. They never told us." Melanie shrugged, but her eyes weren't as quick to dismiss the pain. "She had a mirror. Broke it. Cut her wrists." She shrugged again, but her lip was wobbling. "Eric, uh, he—he just didn't—I don't know if he saw it happen, like, like if she cut herself in front of him or—"
"Melanie," Jade prodded gently, brow creasing. "What happened?"
"Eric lost it." Melanie's voice cracked with admission. "He c
ompletely lost it, and after his meltdown… he forgot all about her. He remembers the rest of those two years." Her shoulders shuddered with a barely repressed sob. "He remembers stuff he did, books he read… if he talked to the other ward mates or bumped into someone in the library… it's all there, but he has no memory of Gina even existing, let alone what she meant to him."
Jade got up and took a few steps toward a nearby desk, grabbing some tissues and returning to the table. "That's why Eric was sent to the sanitarium, and that's why you don't want us to ask him about it. If we try and get him to recall what happened during those two years… it could have serious consequences for his mental state."
Melanie took one of the tissues and dabbed her eyes, still trying to make it seem like the crying was minimal. "It was a bad couple of years. After Gina, there was a domino effect, and it just… some of them… it was just a bad couple of years." She shook her head a few times and then fell silent, letting out a sigh that dragged her shoulders as low as Jade had seen them go.
"Melanie, did you ever talk to anyone about this? Does North Forest Hospital offer any kind of therapy?"
Melanie scoffed, folding her arms over her stomach in a gesture that was more cornered than defensive. "No. If you talk about stuff like this, you just get drugged." She looked at Jade briefly, a silent question in her eyes.
"We're working on getting Eric off some of those medications." Jade smiled tightly, nodding toward his room. "We got him off the Dexedrine, and he's almost off the Prozac."
Melanie's face lit up, and despite her lacking Eric's under-developed emotional state, she still had a childlike hope in her eyes when she asked, "Really?"
Jade nodded, her smile growing softer, more genuine. "Yeah. We have an independent psychiatrist. He's very good." She cleared her throat. "Um, I could talk to Sam. If we can keep you on this team with us, like we did Eric, Dr. Raymonds could see you, too. I'm sure you're on things you don't need to be on."
Melanie looked at Jade for a long moment, and Jade knew that look. She had worn it several times herself—that was what happened when you pretended to be someone you weren't, when you were bound by the expectations of the class you were born into—and it made her chest ache. It was the look of being seen for the first time. It was the kind of cautiously hopeful yet blown-away-with-wonder look that took over your features when someone knew you were a liar and a fake… and instead of turning the other way, they wanted to get to know whoever it was you were fighting so hard to hide.