“Uber-agent Shields? No.” She laughed. “No one ever knows where Connor is, Brendan. You know that. He comes in, gets his secret assignment, and leaves before anyone even knows he’s been in the building.”
“Yeah. The ultimate secret-agent man. No one was happier than Connor when the Bureau expanded its operations after 9/11. I think he was the first from the Bureau to apply. He just eats up that covert stuff. My sister, Mia, made the comment the other night at the wedding that maybe he should have joined the CIA.”
“Very funny. Did you try his cell phone?”
“No. Grady was looking for him this morning; I was just wondering if you knew if he was still in town.”
“Sorry. I haven’t seen or heard from him since Friday night. But if by some chance I do, I’ll let him know to call Grady.”
“Good enough. Well, you’re going to have to push the speed limit to get down to Quantico on time as it is, so let’s hope this is one of the days when the elevator actually works.” He poked the down arrow.
“I’ll be fine, as long as the traffic doesn’t back up somewhere along the way.” She watched the elevator lights descend slowly from the upper floors. “Or the elevator doesn’t pass us by.”
The elevator pinged as the doors slid open, then pinged again as they closed. It took less than forty-five seconds to reach the lobby. Annie, who detested elevators, counted off every one.
They passed through the lobby to the parking garage, where Annie had parked three cars in from the stairwell.
“You were here early,” Brendan noted.
“I had to be. I’d left the notes for my lecture in my office. Don’t ask me where my head was.”
She unlocked the trunk of her car and reached in for the file she’d been studying in the hopes of coming up with a profile for the killer who’d been terrorizing a small town in Idaho.
“Any thoughts on this one?” Brendan asked as he tucked the file under his arm.
“He’s young and he’s angry. Probably was in the service, my guess, right out of high school. I’d put my money on an early discharge, not necessarily honorable. He has definite issues with women.” She slammed the trunk lid. “I can send you an e-mail with a copy of my full evaluation when I get home tonight. My notes are all there.”
“Great. Appreciate it.” Brendan kissed her on the cheek. “You take care, Annie. And listen, if it’s what you want, I hope that all works out with…”
“Evan.”
“Sorry. His name slipped my mind, honest to God. That wasn’t intended as an insult.”
She smiled as she got into the car. Brendan and his sister, Mia, were probably the only members of the Shields family for whom that might be true. Andrew and Grady had made no effort to disguise their disapproval of Annie showing up at a Shields wedding with another man.
“Call me if you have any questions after you get my memo,” she told him as she started her car.
“Will do.” He stepped back from the car as she pulled from the parking spot. Annie waved as she headed toward the exit.
The highway ahead was clogged as a result of an unfortunate combination of volume and a three-car accident. Annie debated taking an alternate route, one that would take her through several small towns and would cost her at least forty minutes in time. She weighed the known delay against the uncertainty of the tie-up on the highway, and opted for back roads.
It was turning out to be a wonderful, sunny day. At times like this, she wished she’d chosen the convertible over the sedan she’d recently bought, but she opened the sunroof, rolled down the windows, and slipped Enya into the CD player. The sun on the top of her head soothed, as did the music. She felt herself relaxing for the first time in days.
Well, it had been an unusual week.
First, there’d been the wedding, and all that it entailed. It wasn’t every day your sister got married.
Annie thought back to Mara’s first wedding, to Jules Douglas.
“I never did like that pompous ass,” Annie muttered, recalling how her first reaction to Jules had been right on the money. “Slick little bastard.”
But Mara had fallen for him, and nothing Annie could say had opened her sister’s eyes. In the end, Annie recognized as fact, when someone is hell-bent on making a mistake, sometimes you just have to stand back and let them.
And what a mistake it had been. From early on in their marriage, Jules had betrayed his wife with an endless string of his college students who’d fallen for him in the same way Mara had. By the time Mara had discovered his affair with a fellow faculty member, their daughter was five years old. Mara asked for and was granted a divorce. The day after it was finalized, Jules took Julianne and disappeared for seven long, agonizing years.
Well, he wouldn’t get that chance again. Even with his plea bargain to testify against Reverend Prescott, they were going to keep his sorry ass behind bars until he was so old he wouldn’t even remember his name.
Any of them, she thought dryly, recalling that Jules had taken several aliases while on the run.
She stopped at a red light and watched a young woman casually push a stroller across the street. Life in these small towns… Annie smiled to herself. Everyone takes their time.
And why not? We spend too much time hurrying along, not noticing our surroundings, not-
The light had turned green, and the driver of the pickup behind her apparently wasn’t of a small-town mind. This was a reality she understood. She pulled away from the light and wondered if the accident on the interstate had been cleared away yet. She turned on the radio and scanned for a news station.
Her finger paused on the station where Bono sang about “one love.” Dylan had been a huge U2 fan and had loved that song. Hearing it never failed to bring back the memory of a drive they’d once made to the Outer Banks, when he’d played the CD over and over so many times she finally threatened to toss it out the window as they crossed the Wright Memorial Bridge.
Thoughts of Dylan led inevitably to thoughts of Evan.
Initially, Annie had been surprised at Evan’s reaction to Dylan’s seeming presence at the wedding. After all, it was Dylan’s brother who was getting married, and the first gathering of the clan after Dylan’s death-except for his funeral. It was bound to be emotional. But after looking back on the night, on the way events had unfolded, she had to admit that things might have gone a bit far. Not might, she told herself. Did. Thomas Shields simply could not move past his pain. When she’d realized that Evan had left, she had secretly suspected that the Shieldses’ focus on their fallen brother could possibly have had something to do with it.
But she’d been genuinely surprised at Evan’s suggestion that they take one last look at Dylan’s death. While she refused to delude herself into thinking that they’d solve the case, the fact that Evan understood, that he made the gesture, endeared him to her even more. She hadn’t been exaggerating when she’d told him that finding him, realizing that she could find love again, had stunned her. She’d not even considered looking, assuming that she’d spend the rest of her life alone. She had pretty much made her peace with that. No one, she’d figured, had the right to expect that kind of total love, total devotion, more than once in a lifetime. It had shocked her to learn it could happen-and that it had happened to her.
She was so deep in thought that she missed the call on her cell phone. She picked it up and looked at the screen. Connor. Speak of the devil. She hit the automatic-dial number and he answered on the first ring.
“Hey, sorry. I missed your call by about one ring,” she told him. “Where are you?”
“Now, you know that if I told you, we’d have to kill you.”
She smiled at the overused quip, which, in his case, could be true.
“Did you talk to Grady? I saw Brendan this morning. He said Grady was trying to reach you.”
“We spoke. He just wanted to know if I’d be around this week.”
“Are you?”
“No. I won’t be around for a while.”
“Okay, I won’t even ask.”
“Thank you.”
“So what’s up?”
“I just wanted to congratulate you and Mara on the wedding. You did a great job putting it together. Everything was just terrific, Annie.”
“Thanks, Connor. I never realized how much work a simple wedding could be. But we did manage to pull it off. Everyone seemed to have a good time.”
“Well, that’s another thing that I wanted to talk to you about. I think I need to apologize on behalf of all the Shieldses for having maybe misdirected some of the focus.”
“Meaning?”
“You’re sweet, Annie, but I know you know what I’m talking about. Too much Dylan, too little Aidan. We owe him an apology, too.”
“I doubt he felt slighted.”
“Knowing Aidan, no, I’m sure he didn’t. But looking back over the night, one thing seemed to lead to another…”
“It’s okay, Connor.”
“I just feel a little embarrassed about it.”
“Connor Shields, international man of mystery, sheepish? Puh-leeze.”
He laughed.
“Anyway, it’s done. Don’t give it another thought.”
“Must have made things uncomfortable for the new guy.”
“Evan was fine with it.”
“That why he left early?”
“He’s a homicide detective, Connor. He got a call…”
