wrong?”
“I, well . . . no.” He looked down at the ground, then gazed at the houses on the street.
“Robby?”
“How would you like to grab some lunch. Or dinner. I’ve got some more questions. Profiling questions.”
Vail sat there staring at him, wondering if he was, in fact, asking her out. This wasn’t the best timing, after what had happened with Deacon—
“You agreed to tutor me, remember?”
But maybe it was exactly what she needed. Take her mind off all the negatives, bring some happiness into her life. Everyone needs balance; it was a lesson she’d learned many years ago. She spoke before allowing herself to think the situation to death. “Lunch or dinner, huh?”
“Or coffee. Whatever.”
“You know, a sharp profiler might conclude she’s being asked out on a date.”
His gaze drifted off to the surrounding houses again. “But a plain old small-town detective might just think it’s two colleagues getting together to talk about a case. Theories and methods.”
“Theories and methods. . . .” A smile crept across her lips. “Okay. I like theories and methods. Reminds me of my favorite course at the Academy. Dinner tonight, six o’clock?”
“Great.”
“Something casual. Meet me at the office, we’ll go from there.”
“Sure, great.”
“Oh, and Art Rooney, another profiler, may want to join us. That okay?”
Robby’s face drooped a bit, though he seemed to try to keep it propped up. He shrugged an indifferent shoulder. “Yeah.”
Vail smiled, squinted against the sun that had poked through the clouds. “You know what, forget Rooney; he’s probably got other plans. Can’t discuss theories and methods with more than just a couple of people anyway, right?”
Robby winked. “Exactly. Pick you up at six.”
ROBBY POURED A GLASS of chardonnay for each of them and set the bottle back on the table. “So you never told me how a nice detective like you got stuck in a gross profession like profiling.”
“It was one of the safest jobs in the Bureau. I had a scare about seven years ago when I was caught in the cross fire during a botched bank robbery.” Her mind flashed back to Alvin in the bank a few days ago. Different scenario, but the setting was all too familiar. “It was just the way things went down. We were following a tip, moving on these guys fast, and I got there first. While I was waiting for backup, the perps came out of the bank. Another couple agents arrived on scene and didn’t know what hit them. The scumbags took out one agent and put the other down with a shot to the chest. I was pinned down but eventually got out of it.”
Robby’s eyes were narrow with interest. “How?”
She took a gulp of wine. “I thought we were going to discuss theories and methods.”
Robby’s eyebrows rose. “We are. Karen Vail’s theories on getting out of a tough spot with only her brains and bare hands—”
“Try a Glock and a spare magazine. And they had MAC-10s. Sprayed the shit out of my car. Windows were blowing out all over the place. We were hunkered down returning fire.” She shook her head. “It was war, right there on the street in the middle of suburbia. . . .”
Robby edged forward on his seat. “And? What happened?”
She took another drink of chardonnay, then looked up and found Robby’s eyes. “What?”
“How’d you get out of it?”
“I got down low, under the car, and shot the perp in the ankle. He went down, the other agent survived, all the scumbags died, and everything turned out okay.” She let the words linger in the air for a moment, staring at her nearly empty wine glass.
“So, the safest job in the Bureau,” Robby prompted.
“After that lovely episode, I realized it wasn’t something I should be doing while trying to raise a child. Jonathan was seven at the time. The thought of him growing up without a mother made me think long and hard about what I was doing with my life.” She laughed a hollow chuckle. “I make it sound as if it was a rational, one- night decision. It wasn’t. It took me weeks to decide what I was going to do. I even thought of leaving the Bureau.”
“Instead you ended up in the profiling unit?”
“While OPR investigated, my ASAC felt it was best to give me a break from my usual surroundings. He loaned me out to nearby police departments to help them solve a few dormant cases. The trails were so cold you could get frostbite just by handling the case folders.”
Robby leaned back in his chair. “Ouch. You think he did that on purpose, to kill your career?”
“Nah, he was a good guy. Besides, if that was what he had in mind, I screwed up his plans big time. I solved almost every one of the cases. Word traveled fast. Got a rep around the Bureau.”
“I can see why.”
“My ASAC sent a memo to the Division Two unit chief at BSU, and next thing I knew I was the profiling unit’s Eastern District liaison. A month later, I was competing with Chase Hancock for the one vacant spot in the unit. Rest is history.”
Robby’s head was tilted and his gaze was fixed on Vail’s face.
She finished off her glass of wine and waited for a response. “You okay?” she finally asked.
“Fine,” he said, breaking his daze and sitting up straight.
“Theories and methods,” she said with a smile.
“Right. And here’s my theory: you’re a special person, Karen Vail, and I’d like to get to know you better.”
“Told you this smelled of a date.”
“Guess a small-town detective can’t put one over on a sharp FBI agent.”
The waiter delivered their food: Oriental chicken salad for Vail, well-done chili burger for Robby. Vail watched him dump globs of ketchup onto his fries. She flashed on the image of herself as a child. The thought seemed to emphasize the age difference between the two of them. She lifted her fork and felt Robby’s gaze on her face. He had put his foot forward and was patiently waiting for her to take the next step. She let her wrist go limp, lowering her fork back to the plate, and said, “You’re what, twenty-nine, thirty?”
“Thirty.”
“I’m . . . a little older. Why don’t you pick on someone your own age?”
Robby’s hamburger sat in front of him, untouched. He leaned toward her; she was now his total focus. “Karen, I’ve seen things, lived things most kids never should have to live through. I could’ve ended up on the street like the thugs we haul in—but that’s not what I’m about.” He paused to read her face, but she did not react. He popped a ketchup-dripping french fry in his mouth. She took another sip of wine. He finally swallowed, then shrugged. “I may not be thirty-two, like you,” he said with a wry smile, “but I’ve been around the block. A couple hundred times.”
She nodded slowly, then held up her glass. He filled it and topped off his own.
Her eyes moved from the wine to his face. “So then the
Robby smiled. “A methodical approach. Like any good investigation.”
“Move too fast and you can screw things up, make mistakes.”
Robby lifted his glass. “To theories and methods.”
Vail raised her glass and touched it against Robby’s. “And methodical approaches.”
