MATHERS WAS WAITING at the airport in Minneapolis. Windermere didn’t say a word to him.
A major break in the case, she thought, walking to Mathers’s motor pool Tahoe and climbing in the backseat. Maybe the major break in the case. And nobody can keep their eyes on big sister long enough to see the goddamn thing through.
She’d been steamed all the way home from Reno. Could barely get the words out to explain the thing to Stevens. “Something spooked Irina Milosovici,” she told him. “According to the staff, she was playing on the computer with a friend of hers, and the next thing anyone knows, she just bolted. Told her friend she was going to search for her sister.”
Stevens stared at her. “For Catalina? Jesus. Where is she now?”
“That’s the fucking thing, partner. Nobody knows. The whole city’s looking for her, Minneapolis PD, sheriffs, everybody. The hell if anybody can find her, though.”
“She said she was searching for her sister,” Stevens said. “What prompted that? Do we know what she was doing on the computer?”
“Mathers says the friend told him Irina got a message from Catalina,” Windermere said. “On her Facebook account, of all things. Like a picture or something, but the friend didn’t know from where.”
“So Catalina got her hands on a computer somehow. Can we trace the picture? Find out the IP address and follow it back?”
“Not so far,” Windermere told him. “Irina logged out of her Facebook account before she bolted from the safe house. Mathers is calling Facebook now, but it’s the middle of the night, and anyway, they’re probably going to hold out for a warrant, which is going to take time.”
“Especially since Irina didn’t technically do anything wrong by leaving the safe house, right?” Stevens said. “It’s not Irina’s Facebook account we need. It’s Catalina’s.”
“Exactly. And by the time Mathers gets Facebook that warrant, who knows where Catalina will be.”
“Jesus,” Stevens said. “Jesus Christ.”
“Yeah.” Windermere ran her hands through her hair. “Fuck my life.”
> > >
SHE’D CANCELED THE TICKETS to Newark. Booked new flights to Minneapolis. Flown the whole way home stewing about Mathers, about Irina Milosovici, about the incompetence of everybody in goddamn law enforcement besides herself and, sometimes, Stevens.
Now Stevens slipped into Mathers’s Tahoe beside her. “No sign of Nikolai Kirilenko yet, but LePlavy has eyes on his place in Jersey City,” he told her, pocketing his phone. “They’ll let us know when this guy shows up.”
“If,” Windermere said. “If he shows up, Stevens.”
“You guys don’t have to do this.” This was Mathers from the front seat, the first words he’d said since he’d seen them. “That little girl’s still missing. We’ll find Irina. You guys crack the case.”
“Bullshit,” Windermere said, and all the poison and venom spilled out. “Bullshit you will, Derek. I told you to keep an eye on that girl, and where the hell is she?”
Mathers set his jaw. Didn’t say anything.
“Every time I leave this city, someone fucks up my case,” Windermere told him. “Clearly, the only people with their heads on straight are me and Stevens. So we’re going to clean up your mess here, and then we’re going to resume our case, and we’re going to fucking pray, for everyone’s sake, that that little girl and her friends don’t get killed in the meantime. Are we clear?”
Mathers said nothing. Didn’t make eye contact in the rearview mirror. Windermere sat back, watched the city lights through tinted windows. Goddamn it, she thought. We don’t have time for this shit.