“For you D-Derek, anything.” Derek watched as his two coworkers embraced, then pulled apart, bowing.
Derek raised an eyebrow and just stared at them. “You morons done?”
He started walking down the hallway again.
“Oh, come on, Derek.” Jon caught up to him first. “We like Molly as much as anybody. Hell, everybody likes her, she’s so sweet and kind. But she gets so awkward around you, it’s pretty entertaining.”
“Obviously, she’s not your type,” Liam continued. “That’s cool.”
“What do you mean she’s not my type?” Derek knew he shouldn’t let himself get drawn into this conversation, but couldn’t help it.
Of course Liam was right, Molly wasn’t his type. Molly was sweet, kind, tender, gentle.
Everything Derek knew he should stay away from. Everything he knew he would destroy if he allowed himself near.
“I just mean you’re not interested or attracted or whatever. It’s obvious by the way I’ve never even seen you touch her before today.” Liam shrugged. “You don’t take advantage of her feelings, which is admirable.”
Yeah, Derek tried not to touch Molly, because every time he did it went further than he wanted. Like a few minutes ago. He’d touched her waist, and all he could think about was sitting her up on that table and kissing her until neither of them even remembered what the word evidence meant.
“Yeah, I wish someone would get that tongue-tied around me,” Jon said. “At least you got her to process the important evidence.”
“Molly works hard, you guys. She’s probably going to be here all night, doing what we asked plus all her other stuff. None of us will be working all night. So stow the comments.”
That shut them up. Good. Derek needed to drag his focus away from Molly Humphries and back onto this case since they were walking into the director’s office.
“Quite a mess today, gentlemen,” Steve Drackett, division director, said as he opened his office door and met them in the hallway. “Walk with me on the way to the teleconference room.”
“Yeah, it was a mess,” Derek told him.
“What happened?” Steve’s tone wasn’t angry or condescending.
Derek explained what happened this afternoon, about the suspect killing himself and the house being burned to the ground. Since no harm had come to any bystanders, it was a little easier to report.
“So today was both good and bad,” Steve said.
“Mostly bad,” Jon muttered.
They made it to the conference room door. Derek opened it and they all moved inside. Steve had been giving daily briefings to a group of DC state officials—a committee of congressmen, senators, members of the Department of Defense and Department of Justice—each day since the Chicago bombing. Since Omega Sector’s Critical Response Division was a multiagency task force made up of the best people each agency had to offer, faster, better and more detailed results were generally expected. And they were expected from people very high up in the governmental food chain.
So not having those expected results, hell, not having any results at all when they reported every day was getting a little old for everyone.
“We’ve got just over seven minutes until the call,” the technician working the room told them. In seven minutes they would be staring down five different government officials on different screens.
“The only good thing to report about today is that it was at least an actual live lead,” Derek told Steve. “We’ve personally followed up dozens since the Chicago attack which have led to nothing. This at least led to something.”
Steve nodded. “Yeah, an important something. Critical enough that your suspect would kill himself rather than be taken into custody. That’s pretty extreme. Do we know who the guy was?”
“Lab is running prints. We’ll know in the morning. Local PD should be bringing the body, too.”
“Yes, I got a report that the body was on its way, should be here within the hour,” Steve told them.
“Hopefully this guy’s ID should provide some sort of clue,” Liam said, settling himself in a corner that would be out of the way of the cameras. Smart man. “But not as much as having him alive for questioning. Sorry, boss, if I’d had any inclination that he would off himself, I would’ve tackled him. I thought he might shoot at us, but not himself.”
Steve shrugged. “You did the best you could with the info you had. Don’t beat yourself up.”
One thing Derek liked about having Drackett as his boss was that Steve hadn’t been out of the field so long that he’d forgotten that sometimes things just went to hell for no particular reason. Steve was probably only ten years older than Derek’s thirty-three years.
“Was anything recovered from the house before the fire completely burned it down?” Steve asked.
“We got out a few potential pieces of evidence. One looked particularly promising. Some sort of communication device. Looks like it could hold pictures or other data, if it can be retrieved,” Derek told him, as Steve took notes. “Molly is rush-processing that for us herself tonight.”
Jon and Liam made eye contact with each other at that, but Derek ignored them.
“Molly’s got to get more people hired in the lab so she’s not at Omega twenty hours a day.” Steve scribbled something else on his notepad. Derek hoped it was a reminder to talk to Molly so she could get some of the lab workload off her shoulders. She looked tired.
Pretty, as always, but tired.
“What I find most interesting,” Derek said, reining in his thoughts, “is that whatever was there, they burnt the building to the ground to get rid of it, definitely using an accelerant. The fire was almost as drastic as the guy killing himself.”
“Which means you were really close to something,” Steve finished for him. “All right, let’s present this to the committee.”
“One minute until the call, sir,” the technician told him.
Steve nodded and looked at Derek. “You ready?”
“Oh, yeah,” he answered, rolling his eyes. “Getting chewed out by government officials who really have no idea how to do police work is the favorite part of my day.”
“First caller is connecting now,” the technician announced. Derek and Steve sat down behind the computer that would show all the people on the call, and also make Derek and Steve visible to them.
And great, it was Congressman Donald Hougland. Always the first person on the video call and the last person off. And always the most vocal about Omega Sector’s lack of results with the bombing.
“Gentlemen,” Congressman Hougland said. “Hope we have good news today. Or at least not no news at all, as usual.”
Derek
