matter,” Ella said. She was a stickler for doing everything by the book—except when it came to a possible lead on this particular case.
“We’re not waiting for that SOB to come after you,” Scott agreed. “And we’re not leaving this to the case agents, no matter how good they are.”
Maggie nodded, tears welling up in her eyes at their loyalty. “It’s time to go on the offensive.”
* * *
WHERE WAS SHE?
Grant Larkin tried not to stare through the near-empty pub at the entrance to O’Reilley’s, but he couldn’t stop himself, the same way he couldn’t stop himself from taking a peek at his watch. The team had been at the pub for a solid two hours, letting the adrenaline from the arrest fade.
Now daylight was rapidly approaching. Even though it was Saturday, and they got a break, a couple of them were heading out the door, along with the last of the cops who’d been in the pub when they’d arrived.
Maggie wasn’t coming.
“What happened to Delacorte?” Clive Dekker asked, looking at Grant as if he would know.
Grant shrugged, but he’d been resisting the urge to call her for the past hour and find out. He’d been shocked when she’d agreed to join them, after six months of skipping out on anything social. Even more shocked by the way she’d looked at him while agreeing. As if she was as interested in him as he was in her.
He’d been drawn to her from the moment they’d met, nine months ago. For most of that time, he’d tried to keep his attraction hidden. They were teammates, a definite Bureau no-no. Lately, though, he hadn’t been able to suppress it, and he knew she’d noticed. But she’d never looked at him quite the way she had tonight, as if maybe she wanted more from him. If only...
“Well, I’m calling it, before my wife sends out a search party,” Clive said, then squinted, leaning closer to him in the noisy pub. “Is that your phone ringing?”
Grant grinned at him. “I think you’re still hearing the aftereffects of that flash bang, old man,” he joked. The team leader was thirty-nine, only four years older than Grant. But Clive was the oldest guy on the Washington Field Office SWAT team.
“Ha ha,” Clive replied. “It’s your hearing that’s going.” He slapped Grant on the shoulder as he maneuvered out of the booth. “That was definitely your phone.”
Grant frowned and took out his FBI-issued BlackBerry. Clive was right. One missed call. Hoping it was Maggie saying she was on her way, he held in a yawn and dialed his voice mail.
The message was from the supervisor of his Violent Crimes Major Offenders, VCMO, squad. SWAT was his calling, but VCMO was his regular position at the FBI, the job that filled most of his days.
“We’ve got a situation,” the supervisory special agent said in his typical no-nonsense way. “I need you back at the field office, ASAP.”
That was the extent of the message. Grant swore as he slapped some money on the table to cover his drink, then told his remaining teammates, “Gotta go. I’ll catch you guys on Monday.”
“Hot date?” one of them asked.
“I wish,” Grant said. And boy, did he. If only Maggie had shown tonight. “But that was my SSA. Duty calls.”
It was a short drive back to the office, which was oddly busy for 5:00 a.m. on a Saturday morning. Not that this was a nine-to-five sort of job, but from the amount of agents gathered in one of the interagency conference rooms, something big had broken. Or they wanted it to.
It wasn’t his VCMO squad in the conference room, so Grant strode past with only a curious glance inside. His own SSA was waiting in the drab gray bullpen, a scowl on his face as he marked up a stack of paperwork.
“Thanks for coming in,” James said, not glancing up as he wrote frantic notes on whatever case file he was reviewing.
Judging from the way his rapidly receding gray hair was sticking out, and the heavier-than-usual shadows under his eyes, the SSA had never left yesterday. But that was pretty standard for James.
“What’s happening?” Grant asked, wishing he’d stopped for a coffee instead of settling for the bitter junk they brewed in the office. He’d been up nearly twenty-four hours straight now, and he was heading for a crash that even caffeine could only hold off for so long.
“Hang on.” James finished whatever he was writing, then pushed it aside and looked up at Grant, a deep frown on his face.
Discomfort wormed through Grant. In his gut, he knew that whatever was happening, he really wasn’t going to like it. “What is it?”
James sighed and rubbed a hand over his craggy face. With three divorces under his belt, he was now just married to the job. He was a tough supervisor, and he rarely looked stressed. But right now he looked very, very stressed. “Take a seat. Let’s chat.”
Grant tugged a chair over and sat down. “Spit it out.”
James smiled, probably because Grant was one of the few agents in his VCMO squad who would push him. But the smile faded fast. “You know the situation with the Fishhook Rapist case, right?”
Grant cursed. Everyone who worked violent crime knew the background on that case. A sadistic rapist who grabbed one woman a year off the street, drugged, raped and branded her, then let her go, too disoriented to provide a description of her attacker. There was never any useful forensic evidence.
The guy was way too smart. He surfaced only on September 1, when a new victim would show up at a police station or hospital somewhere in the country, branded with his signature. Then he disappeared again, until the following year, when he’d hit some other state and leave a new victim.
And he’d started with Maggie Delacorte.
That part wasn’t general knowledge—they didn’t advertise the names of the victims, and they tried to keep the press from getting too much information. They inevitably did, but somehow, the FBI had managed to keep Maggie’s last name out of the media for a decade, along with the fact that she’d moved on to become a standout SWAT agent.
Inside the Bureau, however, a few rumors had gotten out over the years, and when he’d moved to WFO and landed on her SWAT team, he’d heard the whispers.
She worked harder than just about anyone he knew, and he was positive she didn’t want one terrible incident in her past to color the way her colleagues looked at her, so he’d never said anything. To him, it didn’t change a thing. Not about what he thought of her work, and definitely not about how he felt about her as a woman.
“Grant!” his boss snapped, and he realized he hadn’t been paying attention.
“Sorry.” He ran a hand over his shaved head, dreading whatever he was about to hear. They had a month to go before the guy was supposed to surface, so any news about him now could in theory be a lead to catch him. But judging by his boss’s face, Grant didn’t think that was it.
“I said, is this going to be a problem for you?”
“What?”
