60

Amherst, Massachusetts

The Amherst Police Department was new construction, designed with a red brick turret to make it blend in with the church next to it. Despite its exterior warmness, its holding rooms were the same sterile white cubes as any police department Lucan Stone had ever been in, the coffee the same bitter pitch.

He and Clancy sat across the table from Salem Wiley and Isabel Odegaard.

If there’d been a shred of oxygen to the bullshit assassination charges, the women would have been questioned separately. As it was, both men were going through the motions until their SAC told them differently.

“Tell me what you know about Senator Gina Hayes,” Clancy asked, taking the lead.

Bel knew the routine. “She’s running for president. She’s a Democrat. I intend to vote for her. I have no intention of assassinating her.”

Salem stared at her hands, massaging the webbing between her thumb and forefinger. Her hair was glossy from three days on the road, her natural body oils morphing her fuzzy curls into smooth ringlets. Both women smelled ripe, musky.

“Salem?” Stone asked softly.

She glanced up. Every inch of her was sweet and fierce-scared. She reminded Stone of the kitten he’d discovered walking home from school when he was fifteen. The Detroit neighborhood he’d grown up in was broken glass and rusting steel. You’d be more likely to find a used syringe than a four-leaf clover in the playground grass, at least until they tore up the playground to build a parking lot. So when Stone happened across that little spitting ball of fur in the crook of the only tree on the block, he’d known it was something special. He’d coaxed the kitten down, let it scratch and bite him, tucked it in his coat and ran all the way home. His mother had made him take it to the animal shelter. He understood why. He’d still named it on the way.

“I know what Bel knows.” Salem returned her attention to her hands.

Stone wished he could hold those hands until she felt safe enough to look at him. Something about her green eyes—he wanted her to see him. He managed to keep his voice neutral, barely. “What are you two doing in Massachusetts?”

Isabel Odegaard certainly knew she could request a lawyer. Probably she also knew what a waste of time it would be. “Touring. It’s a beautiful state this time of year. Look,” she said, slapping her palms on the table and leaning forward, “what’s the score here? Do you need us to tell you something about our mothers, and you’ll let us go? Because we don’t know anything.”

“Like we said at the cemetery,” Clancy said mildly, “you two are under arrest for a conspiracy to assassinate Senator Gina Hayes. We’ve found evidence on her”—he made a gun out of his finger and fired it at Salem—“home computer that implicates both of you. Hayes’s schedule, her security detail, information on her upcoming Alcatraz speech that no one without clearance should have.”

Salem’s eyes shot up, her mouth a shocked O. “Someone hacked into my computer?”

Stone thought she sounded surprised rather than scared. Made sense. With her computer science and cryptography degrees, she was sure to have secure firewalls. The woman was something of a legend, from what Stone had gathered from his friends in Computer Forensics. The FBI had had a file on her before any of this happened. Same with the NSA. They all wanted Salem Wiley to come work for them.

He just wanted her to survive the week.

“You can hold us, what, forty-eight hours without pressing charges?” Bel asked.

Clancy rubbed his nose. “Massachusetts says seventy-two.”

“Then get on it.” Bel sat back, her cheeks flushed. She crossed her arms. “Because we don’t have anything else to say.”

Stone understood their frustration. Based on their behavior and demeanor, the two women believed that one or both of their mothers was still alive, and they were on some sort of mission to save them. He almost wished he could let them go, but the orders to hold them had come from the top. Either someone had called in a favor, or the SAC had been presented with evidence he could not disregard.

Clancy’s phone buzzed on his belt. Did he go pale for a moment? He reached into his jacket and pulled out his phone, glanced at it, turned the phone’s face to Stone. Stone saw it was the Senior Agent in Charge phoning. Clancy stood and walked outside to take the call.

“I think we’re done here.” Stone pushed his chair back. “Someone will be in shortly to show you to your cell.” He waited a moment in the hopes that Wiley would finally look at him. She didn’t. Odegaard, however, used her eyes like swords to slice him from tip to toe. He almost didn’t tamp the smile down in time. In his five years in the FBI, he’d never run across a pair like this: tough, terrified, and as smart as a slap.

He locked the door on the way out and gave instructions to the officer waiting outside to ready a cell. Clancy was hanging up the phone.

“SAC wants us in Iowa. Senator Hayes’s next public stop.” Clancy jabbed his thumb at the holding room. “He’s worried about these two, has a tip that the slicer is connected to plans to kill what’s gonna be the first female president, and that it’s gonna be on his hands because we didn’t catch the guy in time.”

They walked toward the exit. Stone examined angles. “What do we do in Iowa?”

Clancy grabbed a toothpick from his shirt pocket and stuffed it in his mouth. “I dunno. Tell Hayes to watch out for bad guys? Juggle our nuts?” He switched the toothpick to the other side and stopped abruptly. “Hey, Stone.”

His tone of voice made Stone pause. They’d been partners for two years. They’d slept in the same hotel room, eaten more meals together than apart, and seen things that would give an Army vet nightmares. In those two years, until the Hawthorne Hotel lobby, Stone hadn’t developed strong feelings either way for the man. But now, something in Clancy’s eyes made Stone wonder if they would have been friends had they met outside this business.

“How bad does this stink to you?” Clancy asked.

“Pretty bad,” Stone agreed.

“You saw what was taken off of ’em, right? Two burner phones, Wiley’s iPhone, Odegaard’s licensed piece, pocket junk, a bottle of prescription pills, that tracker dot that I assume you planted back at the Hawthorne, and a goddamned handwritten Emily Dickinson poem. What are we supposed to do with that?”

Stone had seen all those things. He’d also witnessed Clancy’s reaction to the poem. The man had seemed puzzled, and then annoyed, and then tossed the poem back into the holdings pile like dirty toilet paper. Stone wondered what he’d been expecting to find. “We leave it. Whoever the uppers call in to finish this trumped-up case can sort it out.”

“Yeah,” Clancy said, his voice quiet. They resumed their walk to the front door, the hive buzz of the police station swarming around them. “So why do I think those two won’t make it to the end of the week, even if neither of them does a damn thing wrong?”

Stone held the door for Clancy. Neither man attempted to meet the other’s eyes. There was no need. They were both thinking the same thing. And the only reason Stone could walk out these doors was because jail—at least what passed for jail in this town—was currently the safest place for Salem Wiley and Isabel Odegaard.