LINX. The Law Enforcement Information Exchange, a multi-jurisdictional database for security personnel of all stripes. If anyone matching the Burglar’s MO surfaced, the Atlanta PD would hear about it.
Garrity shook his head. “That case still has its claws in Price too. She’s primary contact on it.” He hesitated. “You know things didn’t end well for them, right? After the accident?”
“Trey told me he cut ties with almost everyone on the force.”
“Yeah. He did. And Price took that harder than most. So now, after all these years, she’s best approached as a hostile witness.” He looked toward the edge of the woods, where the rutty parking lot met the trail head, jabbed his chin in that direction. “Speaking of the devil.”
Chapter Ten
I spotted Trey first, emerging from the treeline. A woman walked beside him. She was tall, almost as tall as Trey, lean-hipped and lithe. Her skin was ashy underneath the layer of dust except where sweat sheened it obsidian, and she had bits of dead leaves in her hair, neat cornrow braids tight against her scalp. Despite the heat, she and Trey were dressed in long-sleeved black tees, with heavy boots and…
I did a double take. “Is Trey wearing camo pants?”
Garrity laughed. “That’s ATACS, my friend. Advanced Tactical Concealment System. Tonal microstructures. Mimetic patterns. Very useful for mixed-terrain ops.”
It looked like ordinary camo to me, splotches of dark green mixed with slate gray, but I was stunned to see it on Trey. His wardrobe consisted of black Italian suits and white shirts and workout clothes in the same colors. Price spotted us in the car, turned her head to Trey. Her lips moved, and he nodded. She looked our way again, assessing. Then Trey stopped suddenly and said something that made Keesha Price turn on her heel. She put her hands on her hips while Trey spoke, her face a mask.
I smacked my forehead with an open palm. “Now he decides to accuse her of taking his files? Now?”
Trey continued talking. She stared at him like he was sprouting horns. She said something abruptly, and Trey’s eyes narrowed. He spread his feet hip-width and folded his arms across his chest.
“Uh oh,” I said. “I know that look.”
“You and me both.” Garrity shook his head. “Even a bulldozer couldn’t budge him now.”
She was arguing in full force, one hand gesturing violently, chopping motions like she was decapitating someone, most likely Trey. And then he said a single word. I was no lip reader, but I knew that word, knew how much it meant when he dropped it.
Please.
I saw her exhale sharply. Shake her head at him, but not in denial this time. She looked over her shoulder to where Garrity and I sat, then strode our way, pushing up her sleeves. Trey followed, silent and subdued. Garrity rolled down the window, and she leaned inside.
“Are you a part of this half-assed ambush, Dan Garrity?”
“Nope. I just brought the sandwiches.” He jerked his chin in my direction. “This is Tai.”
I sat up straighter. “Good to meet you, Sergeant Price.”
She examined me with those sniper eyes. “It’s Keesha. Seaver here says you will be joining our little lunch hour. If it’s okay with me.”
“Is it?”
She straightened. “Come to the table and find out.”
Trey and I followed her down the trail away from the rest of the trainees, two fewer than the day before. I was pleased to see that the guy who’d paintballed me was not among them. Trey carried the cooler; I took the box of sandwiches. Keesha took her time, not looking back. Once we got to the lakes, the sky opened above us, pastel blue with skeins of white clouds. Handmade signs proclaimed that only trash found in the park could be repurposed as community art. No outside garbage allowed.
Keesha led us across the boardwalk over muddy, flat pond water, hanging a left at Doll’s Head Trail. The entrance was marked by—what else?—a grinning baby doll’s face displayed in a broken TV set. It was a particularly creepy specimen, one bright blue eye open, fishing lures dangling from its rodent-chewed ears. I wondered why so much of the park’s trash was disembodied doll parts. Plastic heads mounted on billiard pins, legs strung up on wires, torsos crowning stacks of bricks like strange altars.
“Did you know this training was in the woods when you signed up?” I said.
Trey switched the cooler to his left hand. “I did.”
“And you came anyway?”
“Yes.”
We continued to the picnic area, the only sounds the rustle of leaves, the hum of insects, police boots on wooden boards. Keesha led us to a rickety table in the shade. At the roots of the tree, four plastic doll arms sprouted from the ground, hoisting a toy dump truck high. The placard proclaimed: Giving Daddy a Hand.
Whatever. I sat, unwrapped one of the sandwiches, and dug in.
Trey got his food and sat next to me. I snuck a glance at Keesha. I’d met her mother once, the head of special collections at the Atlanta Public Library. Her daughter had her sharp eyes and her straightforward, no-nonsense demeanor. Definitely her intellect too. Snipers were the Beta Club of SWAT. Trey told me that he and Keesha had both carried a tiny book of equations in a compartment on their rifles—minute of angle calculations, temperature and wind resistance algorithms.
She sent a scathing look Trey’s way. “Fucking Nicholas Talbot. Seriously, Seaver, why are you still carrying a hard-on for this guy?”
“I’m not.” Trey pulled a bottled water from the cooler. “I haven’t looked at the case in years.”
“Then why now?”
“I told you why.”
“No. You told me the circumstances. You have not explained why you feel it necessary to drag me into this.” She pointed a potato chip at him. “Now that I’m up for promotion. Now that I got a microscope on my life.”
He shook his head more firmly. “I am not asking you—”
“The hell you’re not. You know all this gets dragged
