Blood of Eden (11 page)
Authors: Tami Dane
“Hey, I told you, I had nothing to do with that.” Gabe glanced over his shoulders, checking to see if anyone (who?!) was listening. “I don't know what happened here, why they decided you didn't belong in the BAU, but I was called in for an interview weeks after you were hired. When I was waiting to be interviewed that day, I overheard a phone conversation between Murphy and someone else. They were talking about you, about your transfer to another unit.”
“What?” I shook my head. It was late. It had been a long day. My brain's circuits were clogged. I wasn't following him. “If they had already decided I was transferring to the PBAU, why would they let me think, for one minute, that I wasn't going to have a job this summer?”
“I don't know.”
I squinted my eyes at him. “And why did you play along if you knew the truth?”
He shrugged. “Why not? I figured it was harmless fun. You weren't getting fired, just transferred. I assumed they wouldn't let you sweat it out too long. And I was right.”
“This makes no sense.”
“Neither does our case,” he said, smacking the case file in my hands, “but that's not stopping you from working it, is it?”
“What do you mean by that?”
He glanced around again. I was beginning to think he was a bit paranoid. “I took a look at the DNA results. They're very interesting.”
“Yeah? How so? The chief said there was a problem with them.” Feeling like we were wasting a lot of time, I skimmed the first page of Fischer's notes.
“Well, for one, there are too many chromosomes for the unsub to be a human being. Like, nineteen too many.”
“That must be why Chief Peyton said there was a problem with the results.” So far, I wasn't finding anything earthshaking in Fischer's notes. What exactly was he expecting us to do with all this meaningless detail? I guessed this was why he was the media liaison and not a profiler.
“Okay. But if there was a problem with the results, why hasn't she requested another analysis?” Gabe asked.
Without looking up, I dismissed Gabe's speculation with a shrug. “She has, I'm sure.”
“No, she hasn't.”
“How do you know that?” I flipped another page. Fischer wrote down a lot of stuff, but most of it was useless.
“I have my sources.”
“So ... what are you suggesting? She's lying to all of us? Why?”
“I don't know. Maybe she doesn't trust us yet.” He looked over his shoulder and gave me a nudge. Scowling, I gave him a dose of mean eyes. He answered with a tip of his head.
JT was shuffling toward his cubicle. Clearly, Gabe didn't want JT to know what we were talking about.
What was he thinking? That Chief Peyton had hired each of us for some very specific reason, only to hold back information, thereby making it harder for us to solve our first case? What would that accomplish?
And still, I couldn't completely dismiss what he was saying. It wasn't like Gabe to jump to silly conclusions. I'd known himâunfortunatelyâfor years, certainly a lot longer than I'd known Chief Peyton. He was many thingsâdevious, shifty, and downright manipulative. But he'd never been paranoid or prone to jumping to ridiculous conclusions.
Gabe snatched Fischer's notes out of my hands. “How did I miss that? The victim's best friend works at a pharmaceutical lab? She could have access to infectious agents? Where did you read that?”
“Um, the third page.” I pointed.
Gabe checked his watch. “It's only a little after six.” He looked at the clock in the conference room. “I feel useless. Do you want to go see if she's home?”
“You want me to go with you?” I asked him.
“Sure, why not?”
“Should we? We're not agents; we're interns. We have to take JT... .”
Gabe gave me a pointed look and heaved an exaggerated sigh. “Fine. He can come too, if you insist.”
“He has a concussionâ”
“I know what you're thinking.” He jabbed me in the ribs and waggled his eyebrows.
I clamped my lips closed, knowing anything I said couldâand wouldâbe used against me. I excused myself from my own cubicle and went to JT's to tell him what we were thinking. He was hunched over his computer as I approached, his fingers flying over the keyboard. I noticed his screen went black the moment I was close enough to see it.
I pretended not to notice the screen. “I thought you were going to rest for a while.”
“I couldn't sleep.”
“I found something in Fischer's notes and thought we should check it out.”
“Yeah? What?” He drummed his fingers on the desk.
“I mentioned this earlier, I guess a friend of Hannah Grant's works in a pharmaceutical lab. Name's Yolanda Vargas. She might have access to infectious agents. Could be the break we need.”
“Huh. Could be. But I'm onto something here. Why don't you two go check it out?”
“Can we do that? I mean, we're not agents. We don't have any authority.”
“Yeah. Hmm.”
“Plus, you shouldn't be left here alone,” I reminded him. “You have a concussion.”
“I'm fine. The CT scan came back normal.”
I gave him a warning glare. “JT.”
“There'll be people in and out of here all night. I won't be alone.” JT gnawed on his lower lip. “I hate to leave this... .” He glanced at the countdown clock, which was now displaying all zeros.
Clearly, we were all very aware that our time had run out.
“Let me see if I can get Peyton or Fischer on the phone. Give me a minute.” JT lifted his phone off the cradle and dialed.
“Okay. I'll go get ready.” I headed back to my cubicle.
Gabe was waiting for me there. “What's up?”
“I don't know. He's keeping something from me. Says it's important. Doesn't want to leave right now. He blacked out his computer screen just as I got close enough to see it.”
“I'm telling you, something's going on here.”
“Maybe. Maybe not.” I plopped in my chair and Google Mapped the friend's address. “JT said he's going to call the chief or Fischer. In the meantime, we can be productive. The friend lives way over on the other side of Baltimore.”
“Traffic should be easing up by now.”
I printed the map and hit the power button, shutting down my computer. “You drive.”
“Okay.” Gabe stuffed his hands into his pants pockets. “Left my keys on my desk. Be back in a few.” He passed JT as he hurried to his cubicle.
JT's expression was serious as he approached me, 100 percent business. I was relieved. Maybe the scare with Gabe had put a chill on things between us, but that was okay. We needed to stay focused now, anyway.
Just to put his mind at ease, I said, “If you're concerned he'll tell anyoneâ”
“Nope. Not worried.”
“Okay. Good.” I stood, looped my laptop case's strap over my shoulder. “So what's the verdict? Can we go check out this lead? Or do we need to wait? It's getting late.”
“I just got off the phone with the chief. Fischer's going to meet you and Wagner at the friend's house in an hour.”
“Oh. Sure. Okay.”
JT beamed. “We're good, Skye. Nothing to worry about. I can't tell you what I've found yet, because it might be nothing. But I don't want to drop it now.”
“Yeah. Sure.” God, I sounded so stupid. “I hope it's something, JT. We've run out of time.”
“Exactly.” He glanced at Gabe, who was strolling our way. “Good luck. I'll be here when you get back.”
“Thanks.”
As I left the building, I wondered if Gabe's speculations were making me overly suspicious, or if there really was something up. Either way, I decided I couldn't waste any energy trying to figure it out. All I could do was follow the leads I had and bring back what I'd found to the team. They'd take it from there.
Gabe's car was a brand-new Jaguar. I wasn't big on cars, don't care much about specific models, but I knew an expensive sports car when I saw one. This one was sleek and sexy black. The inside, on the other hand, wasn't sleek or sexy. It was a mess. The entire backseat was piled with books, boxes of stuff, and baskets of clothes. If I didn't know better, I'd swear Gabe was hauling around his entire life's possessions back there. As he cleared off the front passenger seat for me, he mumbled an apology and some kind of explanation about taking some stuff to Goodwill.
As Gabe drove us back down I-95, toward Baltimore, I almost admitted I was glad he'd joined the team. At the moment, I was feeling a little more like an outsider than a member of the PBAU. At least with him here, I wasn't alone. I wasn't the only outcast, the unpopular kid, wanting to be a member of some secret club.
What had made me think things would be different out in the real world? Once an outcast, always an outcast.
“You're quiet,” Gabe said. “I've never seen you this quiet before.”
Staring out the window at the landscape flying by at roughly eighty miles per hour, I hugged my computer case to my chest. “Just goes to show, you don't know me at all. I'm not always the gabby twit you think I am.”
“I never said you were a âtwit.'”
“No, but you've thought it,” I replied.
“Never.” Gabe accidently bumped my knee as he set his hand on the car's gearshift.
A little somethingâan odd sensationâbuzzed through my body. I shifted in my seat, moving my knees closer to the door and out of his reach.
“The truth is, I've always known you're smarter than me,” Gabe remarked.
I didn't say a word. What was there to say? “Thanks” would be so ... lame. “You're lying” would be closer to the truth, but I didn't feel like getting into a debate right now. Gabe's IQ had mine beat by almost ten points. We both knew that.
For years, we'd been locked in this strange love-hate competitive thing. It probably qualified as a relationship on the most basic level. But it was a difficult thing to label, let alone deal with. Since that terrible time so long ago, we'd been fairly successful at not killing each other by avoiding each other whenever possible. Clearly, that wasn't going to happen this summer. I had no idea at this point what kind of effect the next three months was going to have on our future.
“Do you think there's any chance we're going to identify the killer before someone else dies?” Gabe asked.
“I'm beginning to have my doubts. If you think about it, time already has run out for his next victim. She's out there somewhere, infected. She just isn't showing any symptoms yet. We don't need to know who the killer is. We need to know who the victim is. And we need to know what she's been infected with.”
“You sound defeated.” Gabe stretched his arm over part of the back of my seat and twisted to look over his shoulder before changing lanes. He didn't move his arm afterward.
“I'm trying not to feel defeated, but it isn't easy.” I shoved his arm away. “I don't have a clue what I'm doingâbut damn it, I can't just give up.” Tired of my pity party already, I tried to turn my mind onto more productive tasks, like solving our case. “We're going about this all wrong. We should be looking for the next victim, not the killer. That's the only way we're going to make a difference. It's the only way we can save her life.”
“But how can we find her if we don't know where to look?”
“I don't know. The only connection we've found so far between the three victims is the proximity of their homes to a park or school. Two of the three are located within a half-mile radius, but that hardly helps us. If only we knew how many residents living with homes backing those parks are in their thirties and brunette.”
“I have an idea.” Gabe shot across three lanes of traffic to get to the exit ramp. I grabbed the dashboard, squeezed my eyelids shut, and said a little prayer. “We could pretend to be taking a survey or something and go door-to-door, asking to speak to the lady of the house.”
“Not bad. But what about Fischer?”
“Let him handle the lady at the lab. We'd just be there taking notes. And, based on Fischer's notes on Laura Miller, you and I both know Fischer is a master note taker. Fischer could teach the best court stenographer a thing or two about taking notes. We don't need to be there.”
At the end of the exit ramp, Gabe turned left. Almost all four wheels were on the pavement when we took the corner.
“Good point. Where are we headed?”
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