at the sight of her team’s arrival, and which of them would be exceedingly pissed off to see them.
“Hey, Don.” As she climbed out of the driver’s seat, Casey waved at the seasoned agent who had to be nearing fifty-seven and mandatory retirement. He was hard-core, married to the Bureau, and yet he was more open-minded about Casey’s team than some of the younger squad members. Go figure.
“Casey Woods. Why am I not surprised to see you here?” Owens acknowledged her with a slight smile, his trim gray mustache curving with his lips. “I’m lucky I sped to Logan, and that my shuttle flight from Boston arrived early. Otherwise, you would have already set up the FBI’s Command Post and canvassed half the neighborhood.”
“Damn straight,” Ryan muttered under his breath.
Casey rolled her eyes. Ryan was cranky. He hadn’t gotten any of the sleep he’d anticipated after closing the last case. Functioning on zero rest was Casey’s specialty. She could operate on empty and make it seem full. She was able to push past her fatigue and get the job done. And Marc was a Navy SEAL to the core. He could run on sheer adrenaline. So Ryan was the cheese who stood alone. He was a royal pain in the ass when he went without sleep. At times like this, barring essential needs to communicate, Casey and Marc avoided him like the plague.
“This place is going to be a circus,” Ryan continued to mumble. “The CARD team. The Feds. The county police. The locals. Can’t we send them all back to their desks?” A grunt. “You know, leave us alone… I’ll hack into the little girl’s computer. Casey, you can run down the list of suspects, interrogate the right ones. Marc can beat the crap out of the scumbag who did this. Then you’ll size up his reactions until we figure out where he hid the poor kid. And Krissy Willis will be safe in her own bed before the miserable prick who took her can do his worst. After that, we can all go home and crash.”
Before Casey could reply, Ryan spied the tall, slender woman who was squatting down just outside the Willises’ garage. Her brow was furrowed in intense concentration, and her delicate fingers were gliding over the streamers that dangled from the handlebars of what was clearly a little girl’s bicycle.
“Oh, great,” Ryan complained more loudly. “Look who’s here. It’s Claire-voyant-the cops’ favorite psychic, doing her thing. Now, we’ll be grilling suspects, and she’ll be clutching Krissy Willis’s dirty socks trying to get up in her head. I can hardly wait.”
Casey stifled a smile. Claire Hedgleigh-Claire-voyant, as Ryan insisted on calling her-was a noted, self- described intuitive who consulted with several police departments, using her special skills to help solve cases. Casey and her team had crossed paths with her on a couple of cases. And Casey was more than impressed. She’d done extensive background research on Claire, both educationally and professionally.
Academically, Claire held a master’s degree in Human Development and another in Transformative Theory and Practices. In addition, she had teaching accreditation from schools in the U.S., England and Australia in everything from psychic development to metaphysical sciences. And professionally, she had an A+ reputation and a three-year track record with the police. She was so good, in fact, that Casey was determined to lure her over to Forensic Instincts. She’d be a great addition to the team-once Casey broke the news to Ryan and pried the chip off his scientific shoulder. Instinct told her it wouldn’t be as hard a sell as Ryan pretended. He and Claire interacted in a way that only masqueraded as combat. But both Marc and Casey recognized it as a smoke screen for something more.
At this point, Claire was rising to her feet. Tall and willowy, with pale blond hair and light gray eyes, Claire had a gentle, ethereal quality about her that suited her calling. Now, she released the bicycle handlebars, brushed a strand of hair off her cheek and spotted them. An exasperated expression crossed her face when she saw Ryan. Clearly, she was not in the mood for a verbal sparring match. And Ryan was practically vibrating to start one.
Casey’s grin widened. An electrically charged tete-a-tete was definitely on the horizon. And Casey and Marc had already placed their bets on a timeline-and an outcome-for that.
For now, some barbed banter would be fine with her. The moments of levity would feel good. More than good. It would be like Novocain before a root canal. Because the latter was what they were about to walk into. Child abductions were among the toughest crimes to swallow.
“Play nice, Ryan,” she said drily as they approached the garage. “Claire knows what she’s doing. So don’t give her too much crap.”
“Who? Me?” he replied with mock innocence.
“Yeah. You look like a lion who’s been prodded with a sharp stick. Relax. You can go back and hole up in your lair as soon as we get the lay of the land here.” Casey reached Claire and stopped. “Hi, Claire. You’re working this case?”
A friendly nod. “And, obviously, so are you. Anything I can do to help out, let me know.”
Ryan made a derisive sound. “I think we’ll rely on science. Messages from inanimate objects just don’t cut it, at least not for me. But thanks anyway, Claire-voyant.”
“Ah, Ryan. More obnoxious than usual, I see. What happened? Did you forget your Batman lunch box?”
“Ignore him,” Casey advised. “He hasn’t slept in a few days.”
“Well, that explains it.” Claire looked more amused than bothered-which pissed Ryan off even more. “Thanks for the news flash. I’ll consider myself forewarned.”
With that, she headed into the house. “Time to commune with inanimate objects,” she called over her shoulder. “You’d be surprised how much talking they do-in a world that’s realer than cyberspace.”
Ryan definitely had an answer for that one, but he pressed his lips together and refrained from spouting it, as he, Casey and Marc reached the CARD team.
“So, the Willises hired you already.” Special Agent Guy Adams looked even more unhappy than Ryan about the prospect of working together. Adams was a trained hostage negotiator, in his mid-thirties, sharp, and as competitive as Ryan and Marc. And he had little regard for approaches other than those he’d learned through the Bureau-least of all Forensic Instincts and their out-of-the-box methods.
“Is that a problem?” Marc asked in a cool, probing tone.
“Not as long as you don’t overstep.”
“We’re here to work with you, Guy. You and C-20.” Casey nipped the tension in the bud. “We all want the same thing-to bring Krissy Willis home, safe and with as little trauma as possible. So let’s not turn this into a pissing match.”
“Our special agents are already inside,” Guy informed her, purposely sidestepping her attempt at detente. “The New York Field Office sent Harrington and Barkley. They’re with the parents now, working on the Child Victim Background Questionnaire. The rest of the New York team is at Krissy’s school, along with a couple of agents from the White Plains RA. Harrington and Barkley are about to debrief us. Harrington is lead case agent on this one.”
“Good choices,” Casey replied.
“Glad you approve.”
“I do.” Casey ignored his sarcasm. She was mulling over the agents she was about to deal with in the Willis home. Peg Harrington and Ken Barkley were both seasoned agents who’d been working CAC cases for over a decade. They were intelligent, and they were self-assured-which meant they didn’t trip over fragile egos. That made working with them tenable. And having Peg at the helm would be great. She was cool under pressure and effective as hell.
“Did your clients supply you with all the facts?” Guy was asking Casey.
She wiggled her hand in an ambivalent gesture. “I checked in with Hope Willis from my car. I got the basics. Anyone happen to catch the license plate on the Acadia the kidnapper was driving?”
“Just a letter or two. Nothing solid to go on. The cops put out an APB. So far, nothing’s turned up. They also notified the Westchester hotline, issued an Amber Alert and entered the case into the NCIC. Officers are at both scenes-here and at the child’s school, along with the county police and CSI.”
It dawned on Casey that Guy was being unusually chatty and informative, given his preliminary hostility. She glanced past him, and spotted McHale and Dugan head into the house. So that was Guy’s plan. To keep her talking while the rest of the CARD team agents joined their C-20 counterparts and got a jump start on the case.
She had to admire their tenacious attempt to outmaneuver her, even if it had been feeble. She also had to admit she’d have done the same thing in their place. The fact was, C-20 had every right to run the show. They were law enforcement; she and her team weren’t.
Nonetheless, she was getting into the house and meeting the Willises. The FBI couldn’t deny her that-they were her clients. The truth was, she didn’t just want to meet them, she wanted to study them. She needed to know what Hope Willis was holding back. And she needed to get a firsthand look at how Hope and Edward Willis were
