Keeping the car in the corner of her vision without making it obvious she was looking, Izzie stood at the curb by the crosswalk and waited for the light to change. She felt as though the driver in the parked car might be watching her, but she couldn’t be sure.
When the light changed, Izzie felt a momentary chill of fear. Stepping out into the road to cross to the other side would put her directly in the path of the parked car, if the driver were to suddenly put it into gear and gun the accelerator. Was she putting herself at risk? What if this were how Zotovic or his subordinates planned to eliminate any threat she posed to their operation, while making it appear to be an everyday traffic accident?
The numbers on the crosswalk light started counting down from ten. If Izzie wanted to get across, she needed to go now.
Hiking the strap of her go-bag higher on her shoulder, Izzie steeled her nerves and stepped off the curb onto the tarmac.
From the corner of her eye she could see the parked car, but from this angle she couldn’t get a clear look at the driver without turning her head, so she kept her eyes straight ahead and continued walking.
The numbers had counted down to six by the time she reached the middle of the street. If the driver intended to hit her, he’d now have to drive into oncoming traffic to do so. Which didn’t make Izzie all that much safer, but would make any accident she suffered look less like an accident and more like the driver was going out of his way to hit her intentionally.
A few seconds remained on the count as Izzie approached the eastern side of Hauser, and so intent was she on paying attention to the car down the street behind her that she almost didn’t notice the truck barreling down the street from north to south, heading directly for her.
She heard the growl of the diesel engine just in time, and dove for the curb just as the truck roared right through the crosswalk.
If she hadn’t jumped over those last few feet, the truck would have run right into her. And at the speed it was surging down the street there wouldn’t have been much left of her but a bloody streak down the tarmac.
Still clutching the strap of her go-bag, teetering on the edge of the curb, Izzie wheeled around and looked in the direction of the parked car. The driver in the sunglasses and hoodie was looking directly at her, there was no question of that. Then he put the car in drive and sped off down Hauser to the north.
There hadn’t been time to get the tags on the truck, which she’d noticed didn’t have any logo or markings on its plain white exterior, but she got her phone out just in time to snap a photo of the license plate of the car as it sped away from her. Maybe it was just a coincidence that it had driven off just as she had narrowly avoided being run over by a truck? After all, the light had just changed. Or maybe the parked car was acting as a spotter, letting the driver of another vehicle, one more capable of inflicting serious injury, know when it was time to strike?
It seemed more plausible to think it was just a coincidence, Izzie knew. But given how many unlikely connections they’d uncovered in their investigations this past week, she wasn’t willing to rule out anything at this point.
The offices of the Resident Agency were closed, so after Izzie signed in with the security guard at the front entrance of the building, she used the keypad beside the office door to enter the access code she’d been assigned, and the door buzzed open.
“Jiggity jig,” she muttered to herself as she made her way into the silent offices. This was familiar territory. When she had been in Recondito five years before working on the Reaper task-force, there had been many late nights and weekends when she had found herself working alone in the RA offices, whether doing research or combing through forensic evidence or simply catching up on the mountains of paperwork that such an intensive investigation required. Spending so much time during the daylight hours canvassing for witnesses or searching for material evidence, the off hours were often the only opportunity she had to catch up.
She was overdue in filing a report on her current investigations, of course. But that was less a question of a lack of opportunity, and more a desire not to have her security clearance revoked and her sanity questioned. Daphne had offered to provide what assistance she could in her own reporting, helping to provide justification for Izzie’s continued presence in the city, and the need to continue liaising with the Recondito Police Department. But Izzie would have to give something to her superiors in Quantico to account for her time here.
The laptop that she had borrowed from the office’s equipment supplies was still on the desk that Izzie had been assigned, and after turning on the lights and dropping her go-bag on an empty chair, she sat down and turned it on.
After logging into her work email account, she quickly scanned through a few threads from her colleagues at the Behavioral Analysis Unit about other ongoing investigations, replied to a couple of requests for clarification on a few reports she had filed before leaving for Recondito, and then began to compose a brief summary of
