by Gerri Hill
“Why not me?”
Andrea rubbed her face in the fur. “You don’t seem the type.”
“You’ve known me two days,” Cameron countered.
“Right. And you don’t seem the type.” Andrea held it under her chin. “What’s its name?”
Cameron paused. “Cat.”
“Cat? You can’t name it Cat.”
She opened the cabinet and took out two plates. “Well, I wasn’t sure if I was even going to keep it. I found it at a rest area in Utah,” she said. “Besides, I don’t know if it’s a boy or girl, so I didn’t come up with a name.” She stared as Andrea turned the kitten around and lifted up its tail. “What are you doing?”
“It’s a girl.”
“How can you tell? It’s like they’re missing some parts or something.”
Andrea laughed. “They’re not like dogs. But trust me...it’s a girl.” She put the kitten down on the floor. “We had a momma cat when I was a kid. When she had a litter, part of the fun was finding the sex.”
She handed Andrea a plate with two slices of pizza loaded with everything. “I’m not going to touch that statement.” She held the wine bottle tightly as she turned the corkscrew. “But I’m really glad she’s a girl. I’ve fallen in love with her. I think it would just be wrong if it were a boy.” She pulled, loving the sound of the distinctive pop of the cork. Andrea slid the glasses closer and Cameron filled them both.
“Take the sofa,” she said, choosing her recliner instead. The sofa was really nothing more than a loveseat. Cameron had chosen to have the recliner instead of a full-sized sofa as she knew she’d rarely have visitors, and she wanted the comfort of the recliner.
“This is nice. It’s not as cramped as I’d imagined.”
“Four slide-outs,” she explained before taking a bite. “This is great,” she said with a mouthful. “What are you doing here, anyway? I doubt just to bring me dinner.”
“I thought I owed you an apology.”
“Really? For what? The arrogant, conceited, bully, bitch names you called me?”
“No. You deserved those,” Andrea said with a slight smile. “I meant for the way I treated you this afternoon.”
“Oh. The ignoring me and not talking part?”
“Yes.”
“Well, I obviously said something that—”
“You know what you said.”
Cameron nodded. “Yes.”
“Have you read my file yet?”
“No,” Cameron said. And it wasn’t really a lie. She’d only skimmed her professional file. The personal file, she didn’t open. “Should I?”
“I guess I’ve accepted the fact that you will, regardless if you should or not.” Again, a slight smile. “Even though you said you wouldn’t. You know, curiosity and all.”
“Okay. Then do you want to be the one to tell me instead of me going by only what your file says?”
“Yes.” She held up her last slice of pizza. “The pizza was just an excuse,” she admitted. “And I figured you were as hungry as I was.”
“And the wine?”
“Well, I thought if you have a couple of glasses, you might not be quite as judgmental.”
“So you plan a total confession? We might need two bottles then.”
They were quiet for a minute as they both finished their pizza. Cameron was surprised that the kitten was ignoring her and was instead pressed against Andrea’s leg. Of course, Andrea had picked it up and cuddled it, obviously knowing how to interact with the animal. Cameron, on the other hand, hadn’t a clue.
“Can I ask you something?”
Cameron pulled her eyes away from the kitten, nodding at Andrea. “Sure.”
“Why did you come into the office the way you did yesterday?”
“What do you mean?”
“You walked in without identifying yourself and asked me to dinner.”
Cameron smiled. “You mean why didn’t I say I was FBI or why did I ask you to dinner?”
“Why did you assume I’d have dinner with you?”
Cameron got up, taking both their empty plates to the sink and returning with the wine bottle. “I had every intention of identifying myself and meeting with Jim,” she said. She debated telling Andrea the truth, but was afraid she’d see through a casual lie. “When I saw you, I somehow forgot why I was there. Your hair was all windblown,” she said, pointing at it, “and you had a bit of a wild look in your eyes.” She sat down again. “So, that arrogant, conceited side of me took over.” She smiled. “I gave it my best shot.”
“And you just assumed I’d fall for it?”
“Well, you still owe me a hundred bucks. I guess you did fall for it.”
“You’re crazy as hell if you think that little trick won a bet for you.”
Cameron leaned back in her recliner, enjoying the conversation, but wondering if Andrea was stalling. Andrea must have sensed her question as she, too, leaned back with a heavy sigh.
“I worked...narcotics,” she finally said. “We’d had someone on the inside, took us months for him to establish a relationship with the supplier. There were six of us going in. We were...we were very close. All of us. We were a good team.” She looked up, meeting Cameron’s eyes. “We were ambushed. I’m the only one who survived.” She looked away quickly. “Mark, Mark was my best friend, going all the way back to the academy. And Erin, she was my partner.”
Cameron saw the misting of tears and leaned forward. “And lover?”
Andrea nodded. “Yes. Stupid, I know. Never, ever get involved with your partner. How many times have we heard that?”
“Yes. It’s a good rule. It’s there for a reason. But it’s probably the one rule that gets broken most often.” She waited a few seconds, seeing the faraway look in Andrea’s eyes. She sympathized with her, she really did. She’d been there herself. “How long were you together?”
“About a year.”
“Lived together too?”
“No. No we didn’t. We didn’t want to raise any questions.”
Cameron nodded. That also made it easier for Erin Rogers to date other women at the same time. She wondered if those other women grieved as much as Andrea.
“That didn’t make what we had any less,” she continued, as if Cameron had questioned it. Or perhaps it was Andrea wanting to question it but her guilt wouldn’t let her.
“No, it didn’t,” Cameron said. “Were you injured?” she asked.
“Yes. Not badly.” Her eyes closed and Cameron assumed this was where the real guilt stemmed from. The fact that she was protected by her dying team. “There was an initial blast and two of them—Kevin and Mitch—were thrown on top of me. What the bomb didn’t do, automatic weapons did. I didn’t think they would ever stop. I couldn’t believe I was still alive. Amazing that I only took two hits, really. One to the leg and one to the shoulder where the vest didn’t cover me.” She slowly slid her fingers into her hair, trying to tame it. “They pulled seven slugs from my vest.”
“When did backup come?”
Andrea looked back at her, her eyes again far away. “They came right away, but it was too late. They were all dead, the shooters got away.” She shrugged. “Never to be seen again.”
Cameron waited for Andrea to collect her thoughts, not wanting to push.
“I was left to grieve alone,” she finally said. “My team, they were my closest friends. I couldn’t even be there for Mark’s wife when she needed me. No one outside of my team knew about me and Erin, so...” she said, her voice trailing off.
Cameron wondered if it would ease some of Andrea’s guilt if she knew the truth about Erin. Whether it would or wouldn’t, she decided it wasn’t her place to tell her. All she had were words in a file. Andrea had a life with this woman.
“Anyway, I did something really, really stupid.”
“We all do stupid things when we let our emotions take over. I don’t know if anyone can be rational after that.”
“No one had answers fo
r me. No one knew how the drug dealer was tipped off. No one was tearing apart the department, looking for the leak.” She held her wineglass out. “Can I have some more?”
“Of course.” Cameron filled it nearly to the top, noticing the trembling in Andrea’s hand.
“When you read my file you’ll see that I pulled my weapon on my captain. Not only that, I threatened to shoot him.”
Cameron couldn’t help but laugh, and she was immediately sorry as soon as she did. “It’s not funny, I know. It’s just... I’ve been there,” she said. “Twice.”
“You threatened to shoot a superior?”
Cameron smiled and arched an eyebrow.
“Oh, my God. You shot them?”
“I only shot at one of them, and he had it coming. The other, well, he eventually saw things my way.”
“How much trouble did you get into?”
“My punishment was a mission no one wanted. I got sent to the desert for three months with enough supplies for a week. I think I bathed only four times during those months.”
“Gross.”
“Yes. But back to you,” she said. “Those three months are something I don’t want to think about.” She refilled her own wineglass. “What happened with your captain?”
“Well, obviously, I didn’t really shoot him. And because of what had happened, they didn’t take any formal action against me. In fact, it wasn’t publicized at all.”
“But you got fired?”
“Oh yeah. It didn’t matter. I couldn’t have worked anyway. I wasn’t in the right frame of mind.”
“And you are now?”
“Yes.”
“Therapy?”
“Yes. At first. But it wasn’t really helping. Or at least I didn’t think it was.” She rubbed the kitten’s fur, a smile on her face as they listened to the loud purring. “I started taking hikes, getting out of the city where I could be alone, where there were no distractions. I saw this guy doing Tai Chi. I was fascinated by him. So I started studying it, learned about meditation, about internal focusing.” She paused, chancing a look at Cameron. “It was amazing how I was able to drift away, almost like leaving my body behind as I took a spiritual journey.” Andrea smiled. “You probably think that sounds silly. I know I would, if it hadn’t happened to me.”
“No, not at all. I’m familiar with Tai Chi. In fact, I practiced it some, but went on to Tae Kwon Do and even karate.”
“Do you still practice?”
Cameron shook her head. “No. In the military, I had to use my skills as a weapon. It ceased being an art.”
“You’ve killed with your hands?” she guessed.
Cameron met her eyes without blinking. “That’s classified,” she said quietly, knowing that Andrea took that as an affirmation to her question.
“I’m sorry.”
“No need. Like I said this morning, we all have skeletons, we all have scars to live with.”
“Tell me about yours,” Andrea urged.
Cameron gave a half-hearted laugh. “Which one?”
“Why so many?”
“Just been in a few scrapes in my time.”
“It’s classified?”
“Some, yes.”
“What did you do in the military?”
Yeah, what did you do, Cameron? Sniper? Kidnapper? Liar and cheat? Killer? Spy? Not so flattering when you think of it that way, she supposed. “Special Ops,” she said.
“That’s vague.”
“Yes.”
“Tell me about the scars,” she said again.
“Battle scars,” she said. “Nothing more.”
“You ever lost a partner? A lover?”
Cameron nodded. “Once, yes.” She swallowed hard. “It was my fault.”
“Tell me.”
“Why? Will it help you?”
“No. But it might help you.”
“You think I need help?”
“I’ve known you two days. You seem...intact,” she said. “Or maybe your bravado and arrogance are a cover.”
“It happened a long time ago, Andrea. I doubt I’m still harboring guilt for it. Not after...well, not after everything else I’ve done.” She had always been proud to serve her country, but she’d never been proud of some of the things she’d had to do. Like kill.
“Were you military police or—”
“Look, really, most of my missions are classified.”
“But you’re retired?”
“I wanted out, yes. They weren’t ready to let me go.”
“So FBI?”
“It was a compromise,” she said evasively. It was basically the truth. It was either that or walk away from her career at a relatively young age. She knew after the last assignment, in Darfur, that she had reached the end. She had become nothing more than an assassin. The life of a sniper and eliminating long-range targets was one thing to deal with. But planning and calculating the murders of three government officials from a hostile country—and going through with it—was quite another.
“You don’t like to talk about yourself, do you?”
“Nor do you,” she countered.
Andrea nodded, acknowledging the standoff. After a few moments, she asked, “So, what’s the plan?”
Cameron didn’t think she’d change the subject quite so easily or give up her inquisition without a fight. She was thankful Andrea did. For all the digging she’d done into Andrea’s past, she had no desire to reciprocate and share the details of her own miserable past. “I’ll input the data from the sites into some of the equations I have. I really don’t think there’s enough data to establish any sort of pattern though.”
“Meaning we have to wait for more bodies?”
“Yes. And Collie is no closer to having a murder scene. The blood found in the apartment of the third victim—”
“The one from Tucson?”
“Yes. Angela Myers was her name. Anyway, the blood wasn’t hers. It was from the first body you found, Sandy Reynolds.”
Andrea stood, pacing as well as she could in the small space. “So that means he abducted her and killed her later.”
“And he wants to make sure we know the murders are linked.”
Andrea walked away, then turned, retracing her steps. “Sorry, I think better when I pace.”
“No problem.”
“I’m trying to remember,” she said. “The file I put together, wasn’t there a group of killings where they never found the murder scene? In Alabama, maybe?”
Cameron reached for her laptop. “I think you’re right. They were all students. Dumped in the woods.”
“Yes. Not all of the killings involved college students. But it seemed that in each group of killings, at least one was a student.”
Cameron opened the file and searched, finding the section Andrea was talking about. “Here,” she said, motioning Andrea over. “Pondville, Alabama.”
Andrea leaned over her shoulder, reading. “Yes. Five months after the Birmingham murders. Those women were found murdered in their apartments, leaving the crime scene all nice and tidy.”
“Then five months later, he moved on to Tuscaloosa, abducting four women, killing them—those murder scenes were never found—and dumping their bodies in the woods near Pondville.”
Andrea straightened up. “Why the hell did Collie think this was so far out in left field? It’s a perfect pattern.”
Cameron nodded. “I think you’re right. But I haven’t had a chance to do anything with this data yet. I may pass this on to the geeks who wrote these programs and see what they can do with it. My training is geared toward concrete figures, numbers, locations, that sort of thing,” she explained.
Andrea put her hands on her hips. “Seriously? You travel around in this thing, this moving computer, and only enter data into equations? That’s your job?”
“I take it you’re not saying that with envy. Like, wow, what a cushy job.”
“I’m saying it like, wow, what a boring job.”
Cameron wasn’t in the least offended by the comment. “After everything I’ve done in the name of... democracy, something that borders on boring is a welcome relief.”
“And guys like Collie get to have all the fun?”
“Well, like I said, I’ve had my share of fun.”
Chapter Twelve
Andrea wasn’t all that excited to be back in the saddle, but she figured there was little else to do. Cameron wanted to take the connecting trail across the canyon rim to where the four-wheel drive trails were, hoping to get an idea of how he carried a body up here without anyone spotting him.
“This trail doesn’t look well used,” Cameron said.
“It’s not. Years ago, before dirt bikes and four-wheelers became popular, all these trails were equestrian. Now, if you’re on horseback, you avoid the motorized trails. I assume mountain bikers might use this trail or hikers looking for a shortcut down the mountain.”
“But it’s plenty passable for a four-wheeler, don’t you think?”
“Yes, I think so. There’s not—” She paused, seeing overturned rocks to the right of the trail. She pulled her horse to a stop, then hopped off.
“What do you see?” Cameron asked.
“These rocks are disturbed,” she said. She heard the leather of Cameron’s saddle cracking as she got off her horse too.
“Don’t get too close.”
Andrea tossed an annoyed look at Cameron. “It’s not like I haven’t done this before, Ross.”
“Sorry.”
Andrea squatted down, her eyes scanning the rocks, finally finding what she was looking for. “There,” she said, pointing.
“Tire tracks,” Cameron said as she squatted down beside her. “Wide. More than a dirt bike.”
“Definitely.” Andrea stood, walking a wide berth around the rocks, looking for more. Cameron still studied what they’d found before taking out her camera. Andrea watched as she entered data into the digital notebook she carried.
“Anything else?”
“No. Looks like he was heading south, got off of the trail here,” she said, pointing. “Possibly to avoid those boulders.”
“If he was carrying a body, he wouldn’t have wanted to chance any mishaps,” Cameron said.