by Sam Sisavath
“That’s what I do. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m reeking of office politics at the moment.”
“So that’s what that smell is,” she said, and feigned fanning the air with her hand.
“Trust me, it was worse on the way over here,” he said before heading off, one hand pulling at his tie as he went.
Thank you, Pete, thank you for everything, Quinn thought, looking after him.
Ben, her, and Pete against the world. She could think of worse ways to go into battle.
Quinn turned back to the TV and picked up where she left off with the chow mein. She was still eating when the sight of a pretty young blonde reporter standing inside a familiar-looking room caught her attention. She leaned forward to read the caption at the bottom of the screen: FBI MANHUNT UNDER WAY FOR ONE OF THEIR OWN, while LIVE FROM FBI BUILDING flashed in the top corner. There was an empty podium on a wide stage in the background.
Even without the helpful words onscreen, Quinn knew the location: The reporter was standing inside the FBI’s Houston Division’s conference room. She would recognize it anywhere—the ugly wallpaper, the way-too-many American flags at the back of the stage, and the row of uncomfortable chairs near the front. The reporter was still on mute, and Quinn couldn’t hear a word she was saying. She glanced around for the remote, but she must have dropped it somewhere before dozing off and couldn’t find it.
Behind her, from the back of the apartment, the shower turned on.
“Pete!” she called.
“What?” he called back from behind the bathroom door.
“Where’s the TV remote?”
“The what?”
“The TV remote!”
“I can’t hear you!”
She sighed. “Never mind.”
“What?”
She ignored him and climbed off the couch and got on her hands and knees—There, under the couch. She grabbed it and was about to press the mute button when she stopped.
Froze, really.
The camera was in the process of panning around the room, and it was picking up the faces of the men and women gathered inside the large space. The ones who worked in the building stood out from the members of the press scrambling to get into position. Not just because of their wardrobe, but the way they sat waiting for the news conference to begin. And there, in the middle of the suited figures—
Ben.
He was sitting in the second row, squeezed between two other Special Agents in Charge. Ben didn’t look very happy to be there, but then Ben was one of those people built for fieldwork and not sitting in a room meeting with the press.
…sitting in a room meeting with the press.
Now.
Live.
She looked up at the blinking text in the top left corner of the screen again, just to be sure she hadn’t misread it the first time: LIVE FROM FBI BUILDING.
What the hell is going on?
She pressed the mute button just as the camera refocused on the blonde, now standing in an aisle with Ben’s side profile visible over her left shoulder:
“…tense mood tonight as the FBI prepares to launch what will be one of the biggest manhunts in Bureau history. And this time it’s for one of their own. We’re still expecting the FBI director himself to speak in about thirty minutes…”
What the hell is going on?
Quinn snapped a quick look over her shoulder at the back hallway. The sound of the shower running inside the bathroom was almost as loud as her suddenly racing heartbeat.
“What did Ben say? He didn’t want to come see me in person?” she had asked Pete.
“He couldn’t,” Pete had answered. “Ben had to leave town an hour ago. I drove him to the airport myself before I came home. He won’t be back until tomorrow at the latest.”
She turned back to the TV and stared at Ben’s barely-visible face between the other two SACs. She read the LIVE FROM FBI BUILDING text above their heads again, the text seemingly mocking her.
“I drove him to the airport myself…”
He’d lied to her.
Pete Ringo had lied to her.
Why in the hell had Pete lied to her about Ben?
Quinn put the TV back on mute and tossed the remote on the couch. She turned around, her right hand seeking out the Glock just to make sure it was still there. It was, and she drew it and felt the weight.
A full magazine. No one had unloaded it while she was asleep.
“No one?” You mean Pete, don’t you?
She put the gun away and listened to the sound of the shower running from the back hallway. It was still going full blast, loud enough that she didn’t even have to strain to hear it through the closed door.
It didn’t make any sense. Even in a week where very little made sense, this was even more nonsensical than everything that had happened to her since she spotted Porter in Gary Ross’s nightclub.
Why did you lie, Pete?
She wasn’t angry. Not really. She was just…confused. More than anything, she couldn’t grasp why Pete had lied about Ben’s whereabouts.
And there was no mistaking it. He had flat out lied to her.
“I drove him to the airport myself…”
Could Ben have abandoned his planned trip and returned to HQ after Pete dropped him off? Maybe he had been recalled by the brass and had to come back for the press conference.
But no, that explanation didn’t fly. Something like this would have been planned hours ahead of time. The FBI rarely met with the media on a whim. Everything would be scheduled, talking points written down and memorized, and video and photo evidence cued up.
Unless Ben had lied to Pete, then returned to work once Pete dropped him off?
No, that made even less sense.
Quinn sat down and gazed at the blank white wall across the room and tried to clear her head.
What the hell was going on?
What the hell was going on?
Steam was flooding out from underneath the bathroom door when she stood up and walked over to the hallway and stopped. She heard the water being turned off, and Quinn waited a minute—then two—before he finally stepped out of the bathroom with a large cotton towel wrapped around his waist while brushing at his hair with a smaller cloth.
Pete startled at the sight of her, but got over it quickly. He flashed her that easy smile of his, then nodded at the open door with the steam pouring out behind him. “It’s all yours.”
“Pete, where’s Ben?” she asked.
“Ben?”
“Where is Ben? Right now?”
“I told you, he’s on his way to DC. Why?”
“Are you sure about that?”
“Am I ‘sure?’” He lifted a curious eyebrow. “Quinn, I took him to the airport myself before I came back here. Yes, he’s on his way to DC as we speak.” He hadn’t stopped drying his hair as he talked. “Now, what’s going on?”
“Follow me,” she said, and turned around.
“Follow you where?”
“Just follow me.”
He sighed heavily—maybe too theatrically—but followed her out of the hallway and into the living room.
The TV had gone back to the anchors, who were chatting it up with the weatherman. Some idiotic back and forth about promising good weather.
“More rain?” Pete said from behind her.
She ignored him and picked up the remote. Pete had a DVR receiver that automatically recorded everything that was onscreen until you changed the channel or turned the TV off, and Quinn pressed the rewind button and the newscast reversed itself. She let it run until the blonde reporter was back onscreen and inside the conference room.
Pete had walked over to stand beside her, the heat from his hot shower radiating from his body. Five minutes earlier she might have marveled at his chiseled chest and athletic frame, but at the moment she was just acutely aware of his presence and the knowledge that he had lied to her.
She pressed the remote and let the footage play, but kept t
he sound on mute.
“That looks familiar,” Pete said.
“It’s the conference room at the office,” she said.
“That’s right.” He watched the camera panning around the room. “So what am I looking at?”
“There,” she said, hitting the pause button.
The screen was frozen on Ben Foster, in the middle of adjusting his tie.
“Hunh,” Pete said.
She looked over at him. “‘That’s all you have to say?”
He didn’t take his eyes off the TV. “Not sure what else to say.”
“That’s a live broadcast from just a few minutes ago, Pete.”
“Yeah, I figured that part out from the ‘live’ thing at the top of the screen,” he said, before turning around to face her.
She stared back at him—at the hair matted to his forehead, the healthy glow radiating from his still-wet body. He looked back at her and there was something there that she hadn’t seen before, something that almost looked…mischievous?
“Don’t do anything rash, Quinn,” he said, just before she took a quick step away from him, feeling the very urgent need to put as much distance between them as possible.
The remote fell from her numbed fingers, but there was still enough blood coursing through her digits for her to reach down, grab, then draw the Glock from its holster.
Pete either hadn’t expected her to go for the gun or he wasn’t too worried about it, because he didn’t move at all when the sidearm came free. Instead, he stood still and watched her with an expression that was either curiosity or amusement. Not that either answer would have satisfied her; if anything, both possibilities troubled her because why wasn’t he more worried?
“You lied to me,” she said, flexing and unflexing her fingers around the grip of the pistol. “What else did you lie to me about, Pete?”
Chapter 9
“I didn’t think they would call him to the press conference,” Pete said. “I wasn’t lying about the other thing—they really are shutting him out.” He glanced over at the TV, at Ben’s frozen image onscreen. “My guess is, he went there on his own. You know Ben, he’s hands-on, never takes no for an answer.”
She didn’t take her eyes off him as she switched up her grip on the gun. “Does Ben even know I’m here?”
“Afraid not.”
“This is all you.”
“All me,” he said, and raised his hands to both sides as if to say, Tada! “Well, mostly all me. It’s a pretty big operation. I’m just one small cog. But in this case, my in with you made me lead man.”
She raised the Glock and pointed it at him. They were barely separated by five feet, but if all she had to go with was his nonchalant reaction to having a gun aimed at his face, she would think it was more like five hundred yards and she had no chance of hitting him. Except he was wrong. Five feet was a dead easy shot. Anyone could make it, and there had only been two other people with higher scores in marksmanship than her during her time at the academy.
“Why?” she said.
“Why else? Porter.”
“What does he have to do with any of this? With me?”
“Don’t be so naïve, Quinn. Porter’s the reason you’re in this mess. He’s the reason you’re wanted for five murders.”
She stared at him, caught somewhere between wanting to wipe that nonplussed look off his face and begging him to tell her why? Why why why why?
There was something very “off” about Pete Ringo at the moment. It wasn’t just in the cavalier way he stood in front of her, wrapped in the towel, but the aura of unconcern as if this happened to him every day. She had been expecting to see something—a trace of fear, maybe even regret—but there was just cockiness, like the Pete Ringo she had known throughout the academy and these last few months working side by side with him had been replaced by a stranger.
“I don’t envy the position you’re in,” Pete said, and she thought she might have detected some sympathy, but right now she couldn’t be sure of anything that came out of the man’s mouth. “It’s complicated. You don’t know it yet, but you were plucked out of Kansas and dropped in Oz the moment you saw Porter at the nightclub. At this very moment, you’re probably not even sure if you can trust him,” he added, nodding at Ben Foster’s frozen image on the TV screen. “Unfortunately I can’t help you there; you’re going to have to figure it all out yourself, kiddo.”
“Don’t call me that.”
“Isn’t that what Ben calls you?”
“You don’t get to call me that.”
Pete shrugged. “I’m just trying to stay friendly, Quinn. Just because we disagree doesn’t mean we can’t still be friends, right?”
“You call this a disagreement? You lied to me. What else did you lie to me about, Pete?”
He started to answer, but seemed to stop himself in time and smiled at her instead.
She didn’t like that reaction, or any of his reactions since she pulled her gun, for that matter. There was a smugness about the way he was looking at her—it was an expression she’d never associated with Pete Ringo before—but there it was, clear as day. Had it always been there and she’d just allowed her feelings for him to look past it?
“So what was the plan?” she asked. “You got Clyde’s phone. What else did you want from me?”
“I think you know the answer to that.”
“Porter.”
Pete nodded. “Ding ding. Give the lady a prize.”
“How many times do I have to keep telling you? I don’t know where he is. I don’t know if he’s even still in the country, much less the city.”
“Oh, he’s still in town,” Pete said, with such conviction that she couldn’t help but believe him—or believed that he believed it. “And you’re the key to finding him.”
She narrowed her eyes at Pete and tightened her grip even further on the Glock. At the moment, she didn’t think anything short of pliers could pry the gun from her fingers. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“I believe you when you say you don’t know where he is, but that doesn’t mean you can’t still help us find him. You just don’t know it.”
Why was she so surprised it came back to Porter? Everything always seemed to come back to John-fucking-Porter.
“So what’s at the end of this rainbow for you, Pete?” she asked. “A promotion? Maybe your own unit?”
He looked at her silently for a moment, as if trying to process what she had just said, before breaking out into another big grin. “Oh, I get it. You still think this is about the Bureau capturing Porter.” He chuckled. “The little you know about what’s going on… It’s breathtaking, Quinn. I feel sorry for you.”
She flinched physically at his words, mostly because he was right. He was so goddamn right. She had been running around these last few days trying to get a handle on what was happening to and around her, but she’d come up with nothing. And here, now, was someone rubbing it in her face. Worse, he seemed to know more than she ever did. But how was that possible?
“If it’s not the Bureau, then who?” she asked.
Pete waved a finger in front of her face. “Tsk tsk. Nice try.”
“So you don’t know.”
“Oh, I see. This is where you appeal to my ego?” He smiled. “This isn’t a James Bond movie, Quinn. It’s not going to be that easy. I’m not here to lift the veil for you. I have my orders; answering your questions isn’t one of them.”
She took a quick step toward him and retrained the gun on his face. “You’re not getting it, Pete: You don’t have a choice.”
“Don’t I?”
“No.”
If he was scared—even a little bit—it didn’t show on his face or the still-relaxed way he was standing.
My God, why isn’t he afraid?
“You’re not going to shoot me, Quinn,” Pete said.
“Are you sure about that?”
“Absolutely.” Then, with growing smugness, “But why tempt fate?
How about this: Why don’t you lower the gun and I’ll take you in, and that way you’ll find out everything we know. Deal? No more running around out there by yourself, dodging law enforcement. It can be all over for you.”
“Is that your idea of a good deal?”
“I wouldn’t say a good deal, but it’s a deal.”
“Go to hell.”
“Now, come on. Let’s keep this friendly.”
“Go to fucking hell, Pete.”
She hadn’t seen it before, but while he was tsk tsking her he had dropped his other hand casually down to his waist and it was holding the towel by one corner the entire time. As soon as his name left her mouth, he finally made his move and the towel unwound from his waist with a quick tug and she caught the cotton fabric coming loose out of the corner of one eye.
Sonofabitch!
He had moved so fast—shockingly fast—that she almost didn’t see it and react in time. Almost. But she did, thanks to the extra space she’d put between them, and Quinn managed to stumble back even as the towel made a snapping noise in the air as it pulled taut—and ended its reach about an inch from striking her dead center in the face.
Quinn fired reflexively even as she was staggering backward, and Pete twisted at the last second and she thought, Did he just try to dodge a bullet from less than five feet away?
But he failed (Of course he failed) and fell backward, landed on his armchair, and upended it to the floor until she was staring at the bottom of the furniture.
It took her a moment to gather herself, to realize what had just happened—what she had done. She’d shot Pete Ringo. She’d put a bullet into his chest from five feet away. He hadn’t given her a choice. The towel…
“He was trying to hit me with his towel so I had to shoot him, Your Honor.”
She would have laughed if the whole thing didn’t leave a hole in the pit of her stomach.
She’d killed Pete Ringo. She’d shot him inside his own apartment.
She had killed Pete Ringo.
“You stupid bastard,” she said to no one in particular.
“Now that’s not very nice,” a voice said from the other side of the flipped chair, just before the furniture somehow launched into the air at her.