“I'll be back,” she whispered, then gathered her crutches and hobbled toward the door, muttering to herself. “Guess maybe I'll have to stop saying I don't do kids, after all.”
The idea came with a wave of emotions she simply didn't have the strength to deal with today. Luckily, she would have a lot of tomorrows to work on them.
As she went into the hall, the door to the observation room opened and Sabin, Fowler, and Yurek spilled out, looking frustrated. Kovac followed with a look-at-these-clowns smirk. At the same time, a short, handsome Italian- looking man in a thirty-five-hundred-dollar charcoal suit steamed down the hall toward them with Lucas Brandt and a scowl.
“Have you been speaking with the girl without her counsel present?” he demanded.
Kate gave him the deep-freeze stare.
“You can't proceed with this until her competency has been determined,” Brandt said to Sabin.
“Don't tell me my job.” Sabin's shoulders hunched as if he might bring his fists up. “What are you doing here, Costello?”
“I'm here to represent Angie Finlow at the request of Peter Bondurant.”
Anthony Costello, sleazeball to the rich and famous. Kate almost laughed. Just when she thought nothing could amaze her . . . Peter Bondurant paying for Angie's legal counsel. Retribution for shooting her sister in the back? Good PR for a man who would stand to face charges of his own? Or maybe he simply wanted to make up for the mess his daughter's life had become by helping Angie out of the mess her life had always been. Karma.
“Anything she told you is privileged,” Costello barked at her.
“I'm just here to see a friend,” Kate said, hobbling away to let the men duke it out.
A new act for the media circus.
“Hey, Red!”
She turned and stopped as Kovac came toward her. He looked as if he'd fallen asleep at the beach. His face was the bright red of a bad sunburn. His eyebrows were a pair of pale hyphens, singed short. The requisite cop mustache was gone, leaving him looking naked and younger.
“How do you like them apples?” he croaked, fighting off a coughing fit. The aftereffects of smoke inhalation.
“Curiouser and curiouser.”
“Quinn back yet?”
“Tomorrow.”
He had gone back to Quantico for the wrap-up and to put in for his first holiday in five years— Thanksgiving.
“So you're coming tonight?”
Kate made a face. “I don't think so, Sam. I'm not feeling very social.”
“Kate,” he said on a disapproving growl. “It's Turkey Wake! I'm the damn bishop, for Christ's sake! We've got a lot to celebrate.”
True, but a rousing, ribald roast of a rubber chicken with a mob of drunken cops and courthouse personnel didn't seem the way to go for her. After all that had happened, after the media she'd had to face in the last few days, interaction was the last thing she wanted.
“I'll catch it on the news,” she said.
He heaved a sigh, giving up, sobering for the real reason he had broken away from the pack. “It's been a hell of a case. You held your own, Red.” A hint of his usual wry grin canted his mouth. “You're okay for a civilian.”
Kate grinned at him. “Up yours, Kojak.” Then she hobbled closer, leaned forward, and kissed his cheek. “Thanks for saving my life.”
“Anytime.”
A WARM FRONT had moved into Minnesota the day before, bringing sun and temperatures in the high fifties. The snow was nearly gone, re-exposing dead yellow lawns and leafless bushes and dirt. Ever conscious of the length of winter once it settled in with serious intent, the citizens of Minneapolis had emerged from early hibernation on bicycles and Rollerblades. Small packs of power-walking old ladies trooped down Kate's block on the way to the lake, slowing to gawk at the blackened exterior of her home.
Most of the damage had been contained to the basement and first floor. The house would be salvaged, repaired, restored, and she would try not to think too much about what had happened there every time she had to go to the basement. She would try not to stand at the washing machine and think of Rob Marshall lying dead and burned to a charred black lump on her floor.
There were tougher jobs ahead than selecting new kitchen cabinets.
Kate picked her way through the charred mess that had been the first floor. A buddy of Kovac's who had done a lot of arson investigation had gone through the structure for her, telling her where she could and couldn't go, what she should and shouldn't do. She wore the yellow hardhat he'd given her to protect herself from falling chunks of plaster. On one foot she wore a thick-soled hiking boot. Over the bandages on the other foot was a thick wool sock and a heavy-duty plastic garbage bag.
She sorted through the debris with long-handled tongs, for things worth keeping. The job depressed her beyond tears. Even with the timely arrival of the fire department, the explosion of paint and solvents in the basement had damaged much of the first floor. And what the fire hadn't ruined, the fire hoses had.
The loss of ordinary possessions didn't bother her. She could buy another television. A sofa was a sofa. Her wardrobe was smoke-damaged, but insurance would buy her another. It was the loss of things richly steeped in memories that hurt. She'd grown up in this house. The thing that now looked like a pair of burned tree stumps had been her father's desk. She could remember crawling into the knee well during games of hide-and-seek with her sister. The rocking chair in the living room had belonged to her great-aunt. Photograph albums holding a lifetime's worth of memories had burned, melted, or been soaked, then frozen and thawed again.
She picked up what was left of an album with pictures of Emily and started to page through, tears coming as she realized the photographs were mostly ruined. It was like losing her child all over again.
She closed the book and held it to her chest, looking around through the blur at the devastation. Maybe this wasn't the day to do this job. Quinn had tried to talk her out of it on the phone. She had insisted she was strong enough, that she needed to do something positive.
But she wasn't strong enough. Not in the way that she needed to be. She felt too raw, too tired, emotions too close to the surface. She felt as if she'd lost more than what the fire had taken. Her faith in her judgment had been shaken. The order of her world had been upended. She felt very strongly that she should have been able to prevent what had happened.
The curse of the victim. Second-guessing herself. Hating her lack of control of the world around her. The test was whether a person could rise above it, push past it, grow beyond the experience.
She carried the photo album outside and set it in a box on the back steps. The backyard was awash in yellow-orange light as the sun began its early exit from the day. The grainy light fell like mist on her winter-dead garden in the far corner of the yard, and a statue she had forgotten to put away for the season—a fairy sitting on a pedestal, reading a book. With nothing but dead stems around it, it looked far too exposed and vulnerable. She had the strangest urge to pick it up and hold it like a child. Protect it.
Another wave of emotion pushed tears up in her eyes as she thought again of Angie looking so small and so young and so lost sitting in the too-big hospital gown, her gaze on the tiny guardian angel statue in her hand.
A car door slammed out front and she peered around the corner of the house to see Quinn walking away from a cab. Instantly her heart lifted at the sight of him, at the way he looked, the way he moved, the frown on his face as he looked up at the house without realizing she was watching him. And just as instantly her nerves tightened a notch.
They hadn't seen much of each other in the days since the fire. The wrap-up of the case had taken much of Quinn's time. He'd been in demand by the media as they had insisted on rehashing, analyzing and re-analyzing every aspect of it. And then the official summons back to Quantico, where he had several cases coming to a head at once. Even their phone conversations had been brief, and both of them had skated around the big issues of their relationship. The case had brought him to Minneapolis. The case had brought them together. The case was over. Now what?
“I'm out back!” Kate called.
Quinn fixed his gaze on her as he came up the walk beside the house. She looked ridiculous and beautiful in a
