Ransom X

by I.B. Holder

Chapter 4 Youth

  Legacy buttered a piece of thin burnt toast and crunched distractedly while a bright fresh-faced Chess crashed over his shoulder reaching for his coffee cup. She wore her school uniform, skirt and jumper over a clean pressed white shirt. She brushed the crumbs off of Legacy’s suit talking and spitting more on top of the momentarily clean pinstriped landscape.

  “Dad, turn down the toaster.” She snatched Legacy’s cup of ominously black coffee and took a gulp before plunging down another piece of toast for her father.

  “Why is it that when you make coffee this shade it’s fine and when I make toast like this it messes up your whole morning? How come the toaster setting keeps changing?” He was off on a visual tangent. “Is that skirt at least two inches below the knee?”

  Chess pushed his cup back into his hand, “In reverse order of your questions, yes, exactly two, I don’t know. Check it next time and because toast is my life.” Legacy knew that she always turned the toaster setting to black when she programmed the coffee machine on a timer the night before.

  “I don’t like change.” Legacy played the game, it made Chess smile, and after three years, he actually liked burnt toast.

  “I’ll be home at-”

  “Six.”

  “I’ll check in on you at –”

  “Three.”

  “The gun is in the –

  “Hall closet.”

  “Always shoot for-”

  “The knees.”

  Legacy didn’t like that answer, he preferred a tight center-mass cluster, six shots then reload. Chess had researched the matter and in an act that could be counted as teen rebellion declared that a knee shot hurt most, incapacitated best, and almost never led to a mortal wound. They had reached a compromise early on in their intruder defense preparations; Chess got one shot at the knee, and if she missed she had to go for the head. Chess had become an unconscious marksman as a result.

  Legacy let one eyebrow arch in a show of pained acceptance, then began packing any hint of emotions back inside for the remainder of the day. He grabbed his umbrella in one hand, briefcase in the other and was out the door.

  Legacy could leave a room and it would feel like he was still there, because there never was an actual sound that went with his exit.

  Chess harrumphed as the door closed behind him. She hiked up the hem of her skirt using Velcro patches to secure the hem where it suited her. She turned down the toaster before pressing down the plunger on a toaster pastry. She stomped around the kitchen gathering up her books and shoving them into her backpack. She did things her way too.

  The shadows were cast long with soft edges from the overcast skies. Legacy checked his watch; he always caught the 7:32 train from the Terrace station. That wasn’t completely true, on rainy days he used the awnings of the city center mall to backtrack and catch the 7:31 train from Baudley Station. That required preplanning, so he left three minutes early on those days.

  He cleared security at exactly 7:42, if he was early he’d exchange a few sentences with the guard, ask him about his family. Legacy had noticed years before that the guard’s security badge was thicker from the side than any other employee, and when the guard turned it over it revealed a family picture tucked inside the plastic cover. Anybody that kept their family that close to the heart deserved a reminder of them once or twice a day.

  Legacy had a lot on his mind that day. It was clear that Chess was getting to that stage in life where he could not protect her openly. All of his work would have to be seamlessly constructed behind her back so that it was not thought of as intruding on her personal space.

  He thought about many things on the walk down the hallway to his office, but not a single mental mention of the young agent, until he was reminded of her presence the moment he opened his door. She was there, in his chair, waiting, intruding on his personal space.

  She moved quickly to the tape player and turned on the music. He didn't immediately recognize her.

  “Are you?” He kept a noncommittal tone.

  “You told me to come back. And you asked me to tell you if this key fit this lock.” She pointed to both the lock and key out on the desk.

  Legacy was unreadable, “Listen my answer is no.”

  Wagner lit up, “And what is my question?”

  “You’re here from Washington, I can’t imagine you want to be here, unless my reputation has been completely forgotten so let’s get this over with and you can go home.” Legacy kept his words as clinical as possible, “I am unwilling to assist in any investigation that Jeremy or Tom or Paul think that I am needed for.”

  Wagner had a look of shock on her face and Legacy knew why. He had named the three top field officers at the bureau by their first names. Why did he get to call them by their first names? It was a clear double standard.

  “Tell them that I looked haggard, unorganized and I’m unable to concentrate on tasks handed me. Mention that I still keep my wife’s murder case in the back of the fridge and that should seal the deal.” An uneasy look on Wagner’s face made Legacy believe that she’d had a similar thought. “I know what is in my file and I love to live below their expectations.”

  Wagner stiffened with resolve and gave a reply that surprised Legacy.

  “How about if I tell you with absolute certainty whether this key fits this lock, and then you decide whether you want to work with me.”

  “What do you know about the case?”

  “More than you do at this point.” She let her words linger a while on the sharp edge of the upturned corner of one side of her mouth, “I know the answer.”

  Legacy took the key from her hand, using the exchange to lock eyes with the young agent “Did you try the key?”

  There was something deeply unnerving about the way he stared at her. It was like he’d entered a room of hers, a private place, uninvited. The most disturbing part was that he treated it like it was his home, even with her most private thoughts. Wagner felt her skin quiver, she wanted out of that office more than she wanted out of Bailey’s. It took all of her determination to meet his eyes and say. “No.”

  There were thirty-six tells that Legacy could have looked to if he’d had any doubt that Wagner was telling the truth. Involuntary responses like the tightening of the skin of the forehead, even-numbered blinking pattern, pupil dilation to name a few, but there was no need. He did, however, harvest a wealth of information on how Wagner presented truth while guarding a greater secret.

  “Then how do you know if it fits? I took it off the wall of a locksmith 200 miles away from a crime that happened twelve years ago. You’re playing the odds, 50/50 to the layman, but altered dramatically if you know the details of the case. He had no connection to the crime, the victim, he didn’t even need an alibi because nobody ever questioned him.”

  “Why would they?” Wagner chimed in. “But he did it. And that key is going to open this lock.” Legacy stared at her hand as she tilted the envelope holding the key and - CLACK. It tumbled onto the desk. She had been unready for the weight of the lock and it slid in her grip.

  “You haven’t already tried the key.” He continued. It was not a question.

  Wagner blew a stray piece of hair out of her eyes, “You asked me not to, and we’re partners.”

  Legacy let that one slip by, and he asked her for the key that he’d left behind in the folder. He spoke his observations out loud as he held the cold steel in his hand. “Nobody has touched this, no oils, and it’s cold as the room.”

  Wagner kept her face neutral. “I could have done it late last night wearing gloves.”

  Legacy didn’t want to explain why she was wrong, the barrel of the key was made of a soft metal, and any resistance from the lock would have left scratches on the louvers. He replied dryly, “I hadn’t thought of that.”

  He pulled a key out of his briefcase and put it into the lock. After a moment of fishing around the rusted interior sleeve of the lock, it gav
e a sharp click, and the lock opened.

  The shock sent a visible shiver through Wagner’s body. Legacy watched as Wagner’s confidence turned to anger. Her feelings seemed so close to the surface that it felt like he might almost touch them.

  Legacy walked around the desk and took all of the evidence from the case and with a long arm swept it into the bin that sat beside his desk. “Time for the next case.”

  Wagner took advantage of the moment. “I have something for you that will sweep everything off your desk.”

  Legacy felt a twinge of authority enter the room. “Put whatever you’ve brought in the filing cabinet, agent, I’ll get to it.”

  Wagner launched into an explanation how this new case needed his undivided attention, that he needed to familiarize himself with the facts over the evening and that she’d come up with a plan to mobilize their assets by the next morning. It took her fifteen minutes to lay out a detailed organizational brief.

  Legacy, in the meantime, moved about his desk shifting the other two cases across the division markers on the desk and away from the trashcan. He then pulled out another file and put it on the extreme left-hand side of the desk. There were five cases again in front of him vying for his attention. He sat and began leafing through the documents in the center one. The noise in the background faded and he looked up.

  Wagner was watching him with impatience. Legacy knew she would be there, but as he tipped his head up he managed a look of surprise. “Are you still here?”

  Wagner looked like she wanted to overturn the desk and jump up and down on his chest with the heels she had discarded because they made her sound like a secretary. Legacy could see that she was looking for a way out of this assignment without conceding defeat. She wouldn’t let this strange attention-deficit poster person ignore her. Legacy had once been told by someone very close to him that every conversation with him was a puzzle that had to be solved. Even silence drove people crazy around Legacy. Wagner filled the silence. “I saw you palm the key you had cut last night, the key for the lock, and realized that the key you left must have been the blank that you made to show the agents who were searching the locksmith shops. You knew that key fit, so you took it home expecting me to use the blank then tell you that the key didn’t fit. It would have proven that I couldn’t keep up with you and gotten me out of your hair.”

  She leaned over his desk forcing him to either stand or look up to a younger woman. Legacy sat with a supremely confident look on his face.

  “I figured it was based on a guess, since you certainly didn’t know enough about what happened to come to a conclusion.” Legacy’s expression was flat and unchanging; he noticed that Wagner couldn’t even look at him. She blasted into a speech, she had a lot to prove and it seemed like she was trying to do it all in one breath.

  Wagner went point by point, she traced Legacy’s notes backward in time, and the profile he had created of the criminal as a meticulous, precise male. Also, there were the photos of intricate knots. This was a guy who would be working in a field where detail was paramount, one where he could work alone, a clockmaker or art restoration. Her feet walked a line back and forth on the carpet in front of Legacy’s desk. She continued, not looking at Legacy for fear that she’d lose control and slap his expressionless face until it turned a blushing shade of red.

  Her voice was under control by the time that she explained how the old sea shanty lock led him to fix on the idea of a locksmith. He’d then sent agents on errands in a radius of the crime, all looking for a trophy case, with a key inside. It would be somewhere in sight of the proprietor at all times. It would remind him of the perfection that he had experienced.

  He instructed the field agent to make a half-hearted bid on the object. If the owner were eager to take it down and show it to the agent, he would do what he could to make an impression of the key secretly and bring it back to HQ.

  Wagner finished up by recounting what Legacy already knew, it had taken Legacy two years to find the right locksmith. After countless hours wasted in expedition, he hadn’t backed off his theories because he had gotten into the head of the killer. He didn’t have a shred of evidence, and he didn’t need any to catch him. She finished with a phrase that stuck in his mind, a crafted complement that nonetheless struck home. “Your work on the case had a peculiar, forward-thinking brilliance – the kind that only gets proved right by result.”

  Wagner immediately stopped short after the compliment. She hadn’t looked up since she’d launched into her narrative, something that Legacy took as fear that he wasn’t paying attention to a word she’d said. But her fears couldn’t be further from the truth. He stared at her, studied her, fascinated with something just below the surface. It was an interest level he reserved for only – well, to be honest he couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt that involved with words that were not his own – still not a partner he thought.

  “You read all the files in one night?” His most respectful tone still sounded like mockery.

  Wagner nodded. “Now that we know he did it, it should be easy to connect him to the crime.” Legacy could tell that she was up to something.

  “Too easy, I would even anticipate that you’re ready with that information. I would go so far as to expect you to slap it down on my desk in dramatic fashion.” Legacy drummed his fingers on the loose stacks of paper on his desk. A few pages slid off the side.

  Wagner produced a file, and she carefully laid it on the desk. “I’d rather not disrupt your system.”

  The locksmith was named Burt Edger. He had attended high school with Ms. Miller, and he got a job working in the same department as her in college at the reprographics center. Coincidence again when he opened a locksmith shop in the neighborhood where she and her husband moved outside of town. He was contracted to put new locks on their front door two years before the killings. “He was a very patient man,” interrupted Legacy.

  “He saw the act as inevitable; impatience didn't enter the picture.” It was a grace note that Legacy obviously agreed with. Her assessment pleased him visibly.

  “Exactly,” Legacy found himself moved to agree, “you also read my case notes.” Wagner nodded. “A laudable invasion of privacy.”

  “I thought so,” Wagner stretched back in the chair, fingers linking behind her head in victory. “I did my part, now I need you to accompany me to Washington for a briefing. We’re going to be partners.”

  Legacy’s face tightened. He didn’t like the word partner. The word partner led to involvement. It wasn’t personal, but a change came over his demeanor.

  “I can’t leave. I don’t travel.”

  “You have seen duty on all parts of the globe.” People never saw him; they never saw him coming and that was part of the job.

  “I don’t go anywhere, anymore. Whatever you think I’m going to do for you is not going to happen. Get out of my chair.” His tone was suddenly dry and reprimanding.

  Wagner never liked being told to move “It’s your duty, I don’t have to convince you – I can have someone who outranks you on the phone in five minutes.”

  “And I guarantee, I’ll be less impressed with them than I was with you. You should have been honest with your expectations from the start. It would have saved you time.” He’d already started digging through drawers searching for a file. He had begun taking notes on the folder cover when a hand slammed down on his.

  “How honest do I need to be?”

  “I can’t train you in my methods, I can’t reverse your instincts in one day, you’re FBI through and through. I know about the reports and deadlines that came with taking a live case. I can’t work with that.”

  “Give me a chance.”

  “Tell me why I am so damn important, tell me why standard methods are ineffective and the people on the case are so incompetent that you need me. Tell me that and I’ll show you why we can’t work together.”

  Demeaning the FBI struck Wagner like a blow to
the cheek, her eyes welled up in fury.

  Legacy compounded her frustration by putting pen to page, motioning for her to start talking. “I’ll translate what you say, from FBI speak to what you’re really saying as you go along. If that doesn’t prove how far away we are, nothing will.” He readied a pen in the crux of his angled fingers. The curves at the joints strongly indicated that they had been dislocated and or broken several times. Still, his grip was a rock and the pen hovered motionless in the air. If there was pain, it was controlled.

  Wagner started, “We don’t need you.”

  He wrote down, “We need you.”

  “There are other people we can go to.”

  Legacy scribbled, “There’s nobody else we can go to.”

  “It’s like you said yourself, it’s not life or death.”

  Legacy paused then “Somebody’s about to die.”

  She tore the paper out of his hand and scanned it for a moment. A wave of tension rippled through her body, and it seemed to persist swirling in the pale green waters of her eyes. Legacy couldn’t put his finger on what drove her desperation. Everything he’d written down was true; he could see it in the way his words had gone through her body. She would lash out at him soon and leave. It was exactly what he wanted, but something else lay below the surface of her anger. He had no idea what it was, and for a moment it fascinated him. Legacy didn’t hear what she had to say, and the sound of the door slamming brought him back to an empty room.

  The paper was on the floor. She’d ripped it into remarkably uniform strips. And looking at a fragment of his notes, it finally hit him. He understood what was going on. Now he just needed to decide what to do about it. He looked over the desk at a phone that he hadn’t picked up in five years.

  Wagner dropped her keys three times on the way to her rental car. It was a nervous tick. She dropped trivial things, like business cards and college boyfriends. She’d never dropped anything important. She’d never dropped her weapon when training in an Alkali swampland during training. Even when the first layer of skin cells turned slippery due to the drop in Ph levels. She had never dropped a coffee cup on the way to her mouth. It was her keys. Perhaps the sound of them clattering against the pavement comforted her. She couldn't wait to discharge her weapon at something.

  She wondered if she could tune in on any felonies in progress. No, killing somebody in the commission of a crime wasn’t the answer. It was an answer, but it wasn’t the solution.

  She picked the keys up off the pavement. Her fingers began deftly flipping the keychain over and over like a pinwheel. The keychain slalomed up her fingers only to slide down the backside of her hand. It was like the old coin trick except as the ring moved up, her other fingers rotated the keys.

  It did keep her mind off of her frustration, and it kept her hand off her gun. Two very positive results. Frustrated was not the right word, pissed off. Of course that was two words but she was willing to be verbose in this instance to set the right internal descriptive tone for her feelings. Pissed off and something else, she couldn’t put her finger on it.

  She was going to have to report to her superior that she was ineffective in activating Legacy on the case. It would look even worse after the tantrum she’d thrown in his office in front of the director. There was no going back to this case; it was a disgrace. The only thing that could save her would be if one of the leads that she’d dug up before she’d left turned the case around. She started mentally reviewing every contact she’d made in the last week.

  Fingers occupied, mind occupied and she still couldn’t help her body from shaking in anger. She was so pissed off and something else, what was it? CLANG the keys dropped.

  Her phone vibrated as she knelt to pick up the keys. Wagner thought that she’d inadvertently pushed one of the buttons as she leaned over, but a second vibration had her reaching under her coat to her belt where it was strapped. Bailey’s voice was on the other end.

  “Legacy called me, he needs you back.”

  “I’ve been humiliated enough for one day, I’m pissed off and – and-” she searched through her vocabulary for the most acid-laced word that would describe how she felt. She really wanted to get a little bit back from Legacy and the way he’d trivialized what she stood for, which made it all the more surprising when the word she spit out hit the air. “And ineffective.” That was it, ineffective! She had never been ineffective in her entire life. It was a description that had never been placed beside her name, and now she was using it in judgment of herself. Bailey was also clearly not prepared for the quick change in her tone and his voice took on the syrupy false timber of step-fatherly support.

  “You’d best hear what he has to say.” She ended the connection and stood in the garage. Pools of light zebra-striped along her path back to the entrance. It seemed such a long way back.

  Legacy sat in the conference chair in the central briefing room. The file that she’d left sat closed in front of him. Wagner entered from the door behind him, as she did her best to sneak into the room. Legacy’s head rose immediately. A smile spread across his face. His opening move had been met, and he was pleased with the young agent’s ability to adapt. She didn’t let him enjoy the moment.

  “So what did you learn in five minutes?”

  “Nothing, I haven’t read it. You realize that we cannot work on this together, I’ll give you my insights and then you can take them back to your superiors. That’s all I have to offer. We won’t work together again after today.

  Wagner thought for a moment, then walked slowly to a nearby chair, kicked it out from under the table. She let the rattle of the metal legs ring in the room for a moment before quieting them by sitting down.

  “On the inside, my heart is breaking Agent Legacy. Really. Am I going to sit here while you read it?”

  “No,” Legacy was suddenly serious, focused. He made no wasted movement, and his eyes were as piercing as a blade. The temperature the room seemed to drop. Wagner pulled her arms close to her body and crossed them. “I am going to tell you what is in the report without reading and watch you. I should know everything I need to without asking you a single question.”

  Legacy began. The case was certainly an abduction, or rather a series of abductions. Murders get attention and nothing matching any of the facts of the case. At this Wagner interrupted, “but you don’t know any of the facts of the case. You said so yourself.”

  “I don’t need to.” Legacy didn’t bat an eye and continued. He told her that the first victims had been released unharmed, but that it seemed to be escalating and recently one of them had been killed.

  “If you’re just guessing, I can talk to a psychic down the hall –”

  Legacy spoke over her, every word emphatic. “And now someone has been taken – and this time they’re somehow connected to the FBI.” It was a connection that Legacy surprised himself with.

  “How could you know that?”

  “Believe it or not, you told me at the end of our last discussion.” When Legacy worked himself into this state there was no time for distractions; he pursued the facts like an addict. His voice was insistent. “An agent?”

  Wagner, always a fast learner, began to reply in short bursts. “A cadet.”

  “Female?”

  “All of them.”

  “A sexual predator,” He watched Wagner’s pupils as he interrogated the case through her eyes, essentially interrogating himself on the possibilities. Each time, she gave him a response that indicated yes or no something spurred him onto another thought. “No something worse, a group of trained rapists.”

  “Close.”

  “The perpetrator pursues originality, recognition – the repetition indicates confidence, an agile operation, something different, no ransom?”

  “None.”

  “Something’s wrong though, why is this case so desperate, if they’re looking at my methods – I mean usually they take years –”

  �
�They can’t this time. We need to get the next one, that’s why we need your full cooperation.”

  “You’re acting like this is a matter of national security –”

  “They have the director’s daughter; she is the cadet that needs your help. The details are at a level for which you’re not cleared. I am not supposed to be confirming any of this – I don’t know why – they could arrest me –”

  “Calm down, that’s my specialty. I needed to know, I was going to know anyway. We should take that briefing now.”

  “We? Briefing, I thought you were through after this conversation.”

  “I have known the director for twenty years, I knew his daughter, and I have a daughter.” He let his words sink in; the weight was surprising. Wagner wasn’t expecting emotion, and when it came out, it made gravity kick in stronger. His control over the room irritated her. If she’d only stopped to think about the irritation she could have learned an important lesson, but at age twenty-five, she preferred simply being irritated.

  “Let’s go.”

  Legacy didn’t move, “They’re coming to us.”

  Legacy and Wagner waited in very different ways, for the briefing to come to them. Wagner had her keys out, flipping them around her fingers like a circus performer keeping her hands occupied. Legacy sat very still, analyzing her preparations for the arrival of the FBI’s top brass. He smirked enjoying the passive pleasure of watching another neurotic person. Her eyes flicked up occasionally as if to say “go ahead, call me strange you statuesque whack job.” Legacy was only guessing, but something told him he was on the right track.

  “I really like to be stared at.” She broke the silence.

  He shifted his attention to the corner of his eye and left it there for quite a while. Legacy didn’t really think about her as they sat in the room. His goal was not to make an impression; it was to find the proper level of help that wouldn’t commit anything to anyone. He could tell from his interview with Wagner that the situation involved a criminal who lived in a world of thoughts, not actions. FBI is based around finding people who act without thinking. He’d said that once in a high level meeting. He didn’t get invited to many high level meetings after that. It was a win win situation. Now he’d have to be careful to step on just enough toes where they’d still listen, but they wouldn’t want him to be their dance partner. He planned his next move in silence.

  After about twenty minutes the world came back into focus CLANK. Wagner’s keys hit the ground and as she knelt Legacy actually noticed the face of the woman opposite him. He was moved to speak. “You should fix your make-up before they get here.”

  Wagner had smudged her lipstick. She took out her compact and after a swift succession of masterful brushstrokes, she puckered her lips, a wet, perfect, sarcastic kiss touched the air.

  Wagner wasn’t going to let him get the better of her.

  “You should fix your tie.” It was a perfect knot.

  “I’m into grunge.”

  CLANK. The doors opened.

  Uniforms walked in, straight, official, purposeful brisk steps. Following them was Director Wilkes who walked right up to Wagner, at the head of the table. He was about to ask for her to move when Legacy broke the silence.

  “I saved you a seat beside me, Larry.” The room watched as Wilkes bypassed Wagner and walked over to Legacy.

  “Martin, we need you.”

  “I don’t respond well to being needed.”

  “You respond to being challenged- “

  “That’s why you sent her.”

  A loud intake of breath signaled that Wagner very much wanted to say something at this point. She bit her lip as Legacy pointed a long finger in her direction.

  Legacy saw a light go on inside of Wagner as she made the realization that she was the lure. Not a lot of dignity in being used, especially for someone so concerned with her image. She had come into his office thinking that she was in the game when really it was all going on around her. She shot glances at the door, and Legacy knew that’s where she most wanted to be headed. They had many things in common.

  Wilkes launched into his briefing, and Legacy openly split his attention. He looked at Wagner as she shifted in her chair, miles away. He could tell that she hadn’t expected this, and beyond that she hadn’t known why she’d been sent until now. Her disappointment was transparent. The tension on her face was like the top layer of a perfectly still lake, symmetric and balanced but waiting only for the smallest impulse to plunge below.

  Now, Legacy wasn’t sure that Wagner’s face was pretty although he did notice the way men in her vicinity stole glances at her and one of the women from the CIA delegation did the same. Wagner didn’t look at any of them; the imbalance suggested some kind of charisma.

  He thought for a moment, letting Wilkes drone on in the background. He interrupted Wilkes.

  “Agent Wagner has already begun briefing me.” Legacy turned toward Wagner, which consequently put his back to the Deputy Director.

  Everyone around the table knew Wilkes. The air momentarily left the room. The agents stared at Wilkes, waiting. His composure was barely equal to the task, but he calmly replied, “She is not up to date on the recent developments-”

  “I don’t want to know recent developments,” He let his opening statement sink in.

  Legacy turned in an arc. He scanned the faces, seasoned agents all with specialties. Legacy went down the line and silently identified their role on the case, coroner, forensics, communications, three regional investigators, five national, CIA – it wasn’t a parlor trick, it was his specialty, instant asset evaluation. He paused for a moment confused. Why would all of these officers be in this briefing room? He had known that this was big, but the assembly of personnel told him that every resource was being tapped, and the stunning part was, that it was being brought directly to his door. This assembly had been pulled from the case to meet with him, Legacy had been expecting a mixture of specialists, and what he got was a room full of leaders, these weren’t people who were used to taking orders from anybody. The ripple that he’d started with his interruption went through each and every face at the table, and all of them had a reply. This was a team of the best the FBI had to offer, convened for the purpose of saving the Director’s daughter.

  It was an operation of the scale that comes around only a few times in a career, something with no estimable price tag. His gaze circled the room and landed on Wagner, she was the youngest by far. Legacy continued.

  “The perpetrator of this abduction pursues originality, recognition – the repetition indicates confidence, an agile operation no ransom.”

  A murmur went through the room. An older agent couldn’t contain himself and leapt into the conversation. “You’re saying you haven’t read the file?” Legacy nodded. “Why would he abduct and return without ransom?”

  Legacy scowled at the interruption of his thought process. He stopped. He didn’t even look at the agent, instead turned to Wilkes and bit off each word.

  “Keep your men silent.” It was a mode of Legacy’s behavior that hadn’t been seen for years. It was the side of him that kept him from being promoted and put him at the bottom of the list for the yearly company picnic. People in the bureau often spoke of his temper and related behavior. It was mislabeled as anger, arrogance, or intolerance. The truth of the matter is that his behavior was a well-honed result of all-consuming concentration. He had been trained for a single purpose, and couldn’t even conceive of breaking the concentration he required to pursue that purpose; therefore, any outside comment was dismissed as noise. Legacy had never worked with partners - it was a well-known fact.

  Legacy in that moment returned to duty. His demeanor in years past was coming back to him as he strode about the room. Wilkes actually cracked a brief smile – he put out a hand to silence the offending and offended agent.

  It was Wagner’s voice that brought Legacy back to the table “There have been no ra
nsom demands.”

  “Yet somebody must pay,” Legacy retreated into his thoughts, “something’s wrong with the timing, why is this case so desperate?” He decided to test a pressure point, he said, “the methods I use can take time –”

  “They can’t this time.” Wilkes replied, “We need to catch them now; we need you to have these bastards collared in a matter of days.”

  He nodded toward the senior agent. “I assume that a body has been found?”

  Wagner jumped in “They haven’t escalated-”

  Legacy turned to her. “They did, the day that you were sent seeking my involvement, they found a dead body. Isn’t that right, chief?”

  Wagner’s words were a fast rolling percussion “We have been looking for the girl that went off camera last week, but it’s still a search and rescue, we have no reason to believe that she’s dead –”

  “They found the body yesterday morning, agent.” Legacy said with stone cold certainty, he pointed to Wilkes.

  Wilkes gave a military dip of his chin, signifying yes in the most respectful way he could.

  The meeting ended after an hour, there were a series of expectations laid at Legacy’s door, none of which he fully committed to. He was “on board,” but as the members of the briefing left the table he knew that many would report private reservations to Wilkes about whether he was “fully on board.”

  That was their problem.

  It was five o’clock. He still had an hour before he needed to be home.