Swordfish

by Andrea Bramhall

  “I’ll be fine. I just have a little headache.”

  “The symptoms can get worse over the next twenty-four to forty-eight hours. You really shouldn’t be on your own during that time. I would be much more comfortable if you let me take you in and get the doctor to check you over.”

  “I’ll be fine.” She could hear Bailey’s exasperated sigh in the background and smiled.

  “Look, do you have someone who can stay with you? At least then if your symptoms do get worse overnight they can get you to the emergency room or call us out.” He looked at her pointedly. “Again.”

  Cassie started to tell him she didn’t.

  “Yes, she does.”

  The paramedic glanced over his shoulder. “And you are?”

  “A friend. But I can stay with her tonight.”

  “Bailey, you don’t need to do that.”

  “Do you have someone else in mind?”

  Cassie shook her head. “You know I don’t.”

  “Well, if you don’t have someone with you, I really must insist on taking you to the emergency room.”

  Bailey leaned close to her ear and whispered, “Don’t make me tell him about the panic attack too.” Cassie glared at her, but she smiled sweetly and raised an eyebrow. Cassie sighed. Bailey nodded and turned back to the paramedic. “What do I need to look out for?”

  He briefed her quickly on things to be wary of, and how often she would need to check on her, and Cassie began to rethink the idea of going to the hospital until Bailey smiled and assured him that she would make sure that Cassie was fine. One of the detectives called Bailey over and spoke to her quietly. She frowned, but nodded as she walked away from him.

  She squatted next to Cassie. “Maybe you should have gone to the hospital after all. It’s going to be tomorrow before a locksmith will be able to come out and fix that door.”

  “Damn.”

  “Yeah. Which leaves us with the option of staying here with no locks.”

  Cassie felt a shudder run through her. She wasn’t convinced she was that much safer with the locks in place, because it certainly hadn’t stopped Stephen Knight from paying her a silent, uninvited visit on more than one occasion, and they hadn’t kept out tonight’s intruder either, but they gave her the illusion, at least.

  “Yeah, I’m not keen on that idea either. Which leads me to option two.” Bailey paused.

  “Which is?”

  “My apartment.”

  “Bailey, I can’t put you out like that.”

  “How is that putting me out? I’m staying with you anyway, and at least at my place I’m pretty sure Jazz isn’t going to cut her paws on any broken glass. I have a futon, and I have locks that work.”

  Cassie had to admit she was curious to see where Bailey lived. She wanted to know more about the woman who was quickly learning what felt like all her secrets. She wanted to see the place Bailey called home. She dismissed it as her naturally curious nature—something that was an absolute must for any scientist—but she was quickly becoming aware that there was more to her curiosity about Bailey. She was attracted to her, and that almost scared her more than the intruder in her apartment had earlier.

  “I’ll even update you with the investigation.”

  Cassie looked over at Jazz. “Well, I wouldn’t want Jazz to hurt herself for me.”

  Bailey held out her hand to help Cassie up. She looked at it for a moment and then ignored the butterflies in her stomach when their hands first connected. Now is not the time to be developing some sort of teenage crush, just because Bailey was chivalrous, and strong, and being nice to me. It does not mean anything. Nothing at all.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Bailey’s hand trembled as she slotted the key into the door, which she attributed to lack of food, having run over to Cassie’s apartment before she’d had a chance to eat her dinner. Low blood sugar runs in the family. She shook her head. Who am I kidding? She had no idea about the blood sugar, but she knew that her hands were trembling because she was nervous. Since the movers had dropped off the last box six years ago, the only visitor she’d had in her apartment was Jazz. She glanced down at the dog waiting patiently at her heel. She hitched the strap of Cassie’s bag higher up her shoulder and pushed the door open.

  “It’s not much,” she said, “but it’s home.” She ushered Cassie in ahead of her.

  “It’s nice.” Cassie looked around, smiling. Bailey watched her eyes fall on every item in the sparsely furnished place, her attention lingering on her corkboard and the various pictures and information cards that almost covered it. Cassie pointed. “Your missing piece?”

  “Yeah. My mom.” Bailey led her to the sofa and watched her sit down. “Can I get you a drink?”

  “A glass of water would be great, thanks.”

  “Coming right up.” Bailey returned a few moments later, glass of water in one hand and a fistful of takeout menus in the other. “Are you hungry?” Cassie shook her head. “You sure? ’Cause I haven’t eaten yet, and I need to get some food pretty quick.”

  “I’m fine, thanks. But don’t let me stop you.”

  “You’re not one of those women who are gonna want to try mine when it gets here, are you?”

  Cassie laughed. “And if I am?”

  Bailey let out a playfully aggrieved sigh. “Then you better tell me what you don’t like on a pizza. Can’t have you grumbling about having to pick anchovies or mushrooms off my pizza.”

  “Yuck. As long as you don’t have either of those disgusting things on it, we’re good. But seriously, I really don’t feel like eating right now.”

  “Your headache?”

  “Yeah. I feel like my heart is beating in my head and might make my brain ooze out of my ears.”

  Bailey looked down at the takeout menus. “I’ve lost my appetite.”

  Cassie laughed. “No, you didn’t. Go ahead and order. I’ll be fine.”

  “You sure?”

  “Positive, and thank you.”

  “For what? You haven’t even stolen my pizza yet.”

  “For your help, for making me come here, for staying with me.” She shrugged. “Thank you.”

  Bailey ordered quickly and got herself a beer out of the fridge. She got back to the sofa to find Jazz curled up by Cassie’s side. She laughed and dropped herself heavily into the recliner.

  “How old were you?” Cassie asked.

  “What?”

  “When you last saw your mom.”

  “Oh. Ten.”

  “And you’ve never found her?”

  Bailey shook her head and sipped her beer. She’d never spoken to anyone about her mother. She’d never wanted to. It was too personal, and it hurt too much. Now she found herself wanting Cassie to know. To know that she understood the pain Cassie was feeling. But also because she understood how vulnerable and exposed Cassie must have felt, given how much Bailey knew about her, and how hard it would be to have a panic attack in front of a virtual stranger. One of the girls in her group home had suffered from them, and she’d always had a hard time afterward. It wasn’t a surprise that she was looking for information about Bailey to put their relationship on even footing. She’d often seen that with victims while she was a cop. What did surprise her, however, was her own willingness to accommodate the need. “I came close once.” She picked at the edge of the label on her bottle, slowly easing the gummed paper away from the brown glass. “I found out she was in prison, but I didn’t find out until she’d been paroled.” The label tore and the damp paper stuck to her fingers. “When I tracked down the halfway house she was supposed to be staying at, she was already gone.” She rolled the paper into a ball and balanced it on the arm of the recliner before trying again, only to repeat the process. “That was eight years ago.”

  “What was she in prison for?”

  “Prostitution.”

  “Bailey, I’m so sorry.”

  Bailey shrugged. “It wasn’t a surprise. I knew she was a hooker before I ended up in
the system. That’s life for a junkie.”

  “Couldn’t you have gone and stayed with your dad?”

  “Probably not. Even if she knew who he was, customers don’t often admit to having kids with their hookers.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “No need to be. It’s been a long time since I’ve even wondered about him, never mind stressed about it.”

  “I meant about your mom.”

  “Oh.” Bailey sipped again. “Thanks.”

  “No sign of her since?”

  Bailey peeled off the last of the label and screwed it into a ball. “I’ve found a few possible leads, but when I go there I’m usually told she left years ago. I don’t have anything definite for the last five years.”

  “How old would she be now?”

  “Sixty-four.” Bailey smiled sadly as Cassie’s eyebrows rose. “Yeah, she was only fifteen when I was born and she’d already lived through hell, if you ask me.”

  “Wow. She must have been very brave to have kept you.”

  “I like to think so.”

  “Do you think you’ll find her?”

  Bailey pursed her lips. “The sixty-four thousand dollar question, and I honestly don’t have an answer for it. Some days I think I will. I believe that I’ll find where she’s living and I’ll go and say ‘hi, Mom’ and she’ll tell me she tried to find me but it just never worked out for her.” She finished her beer and pushed the wadded up label into the neck. “Other days I think she’s dead, and I’ll never know if she ever even looked for me. That I’ll never find her grave—never get the chance to say good-bye. To thank her for everything she did for me.” Bailey wasn’t sure where all the words were coming from, but she couldn’t stop them. “She’s my mom. So, you see, I really do know what it’s like to know there’s something missing. Something that you really need answers to.”

  “I hope you find her.”

  Bailey tilted her empty bottle in salute. “I know the statistics, Cassie. A sixty-four-year-old junkie is a rare find.”

  “But you still have hope.”

  Bailey laughed. “That was—is—my mom’s name. Hope. So yeah, in my heart I always have Hope.” The doorbell rang and Bailey went to retrieve the pizza, grabbing herself another beer as she passed the fridge.

  She dropped the open pizza box on a low table between them and found she couldn’t look at Cassie as she reached for a slice. She didn’t want to see pity in Cassie’s eyes. It was the reason she never spoke of her mother or her upbringing. She knew it changed the way people looked at her, the way they saw her. She leaned forward, her elbows resting heavily on her knees, her hair slipping forward to cover her face, and her shoulders slumped. It had seemed like the right thing to do only moments ago, but now she couldn’t understand why she had told Cassie about her mother.

  “I think you’re amazing.”

  Bailey quickly lifted her head to stare at Cassie. Too quickly. A shooting pain ripped through her neck and she rubbed at it to make it relax. “Say what?”

  “Police officer, FBI agent, private investigator, cancer survivor, and still looking for your mother after thirty-nine years. I think you’re amazing.”

  “You missed some stuff off that list.” Like lonely, recluse, antisocial, and unlovable.

  “I’m sure I did,” Cassie said, “You’re also a good friend, good with animals, and a really wonderful human being.”

  Bailey could feel her cheeks burning, but tried to laugh off the compliment. “You’re just saying that ’cause you want my pizza.” She waved her hand over the box. “Help yourself. There’s plenty.”

  Cassie cocked her head to the side, clearly analyzing every action and word that Bailey said—and just as clearly realizing what was behind Bailey’s reaction. She reached for a slice of pizza and smiled, seemingly willing to let Bailey off the hook. “You said you’d update me on the case. Is there news on Daniela?”

  “That’s right, I did,” Bailey said around a mouthful of cheese, pepperoni, and Italian sausage. “Well, I tracked her from her London address to the Florida Keys.”

  “What was she doing there?”

  “It seems she was looking into a career change. She passed various scuba diving qualifications, including an instructor qualification. I found her registered with the IRS as working for the dive school as an instructor just a few weeks ago. Once I had the state, a DMV check brought me her home address in seconds. Finsbury-Sterling isn’t a very common name.”

  “Is she still there? Why did she change fields? Why Florida? Do you have an address?”

  Bailey held up her hands. “One question at a time. Why the change and why there, I have no idea. I do have an address, and I’m going to fly down and check it out tomorrow. After that, I’ll be able to tell you if she’s still there. Okay?”

  “I’ll come with you.”

  Bailey shook her head. “That’s not the way I work.”

  “Please. If she’s there I need to see her. What’s the point of you going there, finding her, and then flying back to report it to me, for me to then fly down there. We might as well go together.”

  “Two problems with that little theory. No, make that three.”

  Cassie grabbed a slice of pizza. “And what are your problems?”

  “One, you have to work—”

  “I can get cover. My apartment was broken into and I received a head injury. No problem in getting a few days off, at least.”

  Bailey had to concede that was definitely workable. “Okay, problem two. Jazz. I was going to ask if you could watch her while I fly down there. If you’re with me then there’s no one to watch Jazz.”

  “We could drive instead of fly. Jazz could come with us, and we’ll take turns driving while the other gets some sleep. It shouldn’t take that long.”

  “Do you have any idea how many miles it is from here?” Bailey was incredulous.

  “Rough guess, about fifteen hundred. If we drove in shifts and didn’t stop overnight we could do it in twenty-four hours.”

  “You’re serious?”

  “Deadly.”

  Bailey dropped her head in her hands. “Oh my God. You’re crazy.”

  “What was your third objection?”

  “I work alone.”

  “Why? Surely it’s safer to work with a partner. Isn’t that what you did when you were a cop and an FBI agent?”

  “Yes, but I’m not a cop or a federal agent anymore.”

  “I know. Even more reason to work with a partner.”

  “Cassie, I don’t want a partner.”

  “It’s just a temporary thing.” She ruffled the fur on Jazz’s head. “Are you looking forward to a road trip?” Jazz let out a short bark, a doggie smile breaking out on her face. “See, Jazz wants to go too.”

  She stared at Cassie. Her eyes burned bright with excitement, her cheeks looked flushed, and her chest rose quickly with excitement. She reminded herself that it had been years since this woman had laid eyes on her child, and that she was doing everything she could to find her again. Who was she to deny her any chance of that happening? She felt her own excitement rising at the thought of reuniting mother and child. Seeing Cassie hold Daniela in her arms, the two of them crying, telling each other how much they missed each other.

  Bailey flopped back in her seat and closed her eyes. “Fine. But we’ll need to set off early. I don’t want to hit rush hour traffic near any major cities, so I want to be out of here by five. And see if you can get the rest of the week off. I’m not up to driving for twenty-four hours straight or more. We’ll find somewhere to stop on the way.”

  “You’re the boss.”

  “Yeah.” Bailey snorted. “Like I’m gonna believe that line of crap.”

  “What?” Cassie grinned, both of them well aware that she had gotten her own way.

  “Don’t play the innocent with me, Professor. I know when I’ve been played.”

  Cassie reached for Bailey’s hand and squeezed her fingers. “Thank you.”
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  She was beginning to get a handle on Cassie’s contact issue. Or at least, she thought she was. If Cassie initiated it, or saw it coming, she was okay. It was when she got caught by surprise that she reacted badly. “Don’t thank me. I’m picking all the music.”

  “I can live with that.”

  “Great.” Now all I’ve got to do is figure out what the hell two virtual strangers can talk about for a couple days stuck together in a car. Alone. Each way. Bailey swallowed hard and swigged down the last of her beer.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Finn schooled her face into a serious expression as she looked away from her computer screen. She could barely believe the progress she was making. Lugh was almost ready. The first set of test results on live specimens were due any second. Under the microscope, it was performing perfectly, and all indicators in the lab animals were positive too. She was excited. She only hoped she was doing a good job at keeping that from showing on her face. She knew Billy still hadn’t been able to track who the surveillance equipment belonged to, and they didn’t want the wrong people knowing about her discovery. She was more than happy with that. The last time she had shared news of a breakthrough with anyone, it had ended up as Balor. It wasn’t a mistake she wanted to repeat.

  She had made a significant improvement in Lyell’s Gamble too. So much so that she was almost ready to let Knight and Whittaker know that she was ready to implement their plan and approach Mehalik about selling Balor to him. Just as her father had planned. Only this time they were expecting to catch all the bad guys. She could only hope the plan went as well as everyone continually assured her it would.

  Well, everyone included exactly two people. Stephen Knight and Andrew Whittaker. Oz, Billy, and Junior seemed adamant that neither of them were to be trusted and were intent on putting their own plan into action as soon as she was ready. Well, she was damn near ready, and she was proud of herself, whatever plan they moved ahead with.

  The research on Balor was out there and there was nothing she could do to drag that back now, but creating Lugh meant that it didn’t matter. For the first time in months, she thought of her research without feeling as though a steel band were wrapped around her chest, slowly getting tighter and tighter.