Over breakfast, Cassidy had shared her conversation with Brad Sawyer and her upcoming interview with the FBI.
“Yeah, but Pete wasn’t exactly the most organized person. Do you know how many of his notebooks I’ve gone through?” She sipped her coffee, remembering the box of notebooks in her office and her attempts to decipher Pete’s scrawl.
“How about in any of his files? Want me to search for you?”
Cassidy remembered the thumb drive they’d saved containing Pete’s folders—hundreds of them—before donating his laptop. But the thumb drive also stored his pictures, and Cassidy had so far not been brave enough to go through them. “Yeah, maybe that’s a good idea. But we don’t even know what we’re looking for.”
“I could search for keywords, like ‘clinic’ or ‘runaway.’ I might get lucky.”
“Okay,” Cassidy said. “I’ll have to find it first. I think it’s in the box with the rest of his work things at home.”
“Too bad you didn’t bring it,” he said, looking disappointed.
“There wasn’t time. We barely made our flight as it is.”
“Will the FBI investigate?”
Cassidy paused to gaze out of the sliding glass window to the gray morning haze and the narrow side street below. “It sort of depends. If there’s proof that Lars and Pete were killed by the same person, then yes, because it crosses state lines. And if it’s true that whoever killed them is connected to the human trafficking case, then it’ll likely get bundled together with those efforts.”
“That doesn’t sound very promising.”
“I know,” Cassidy said as a heavy feeling settled into her stomach.
“After this interview…” he paused, and Cassidy turned to look at him, reading the worry in his gaze. “You’ll be free to go home, right?”
Cassidy checked the time and realized she needed to get ready. “I hope so,” she replied, carrying her empty cup to the sink.
Quinn scrubbed his unshaven jaw. “Okay,” he said. “Just…text me when you’re done. I have this fear of you going in there and never coming out.”
An hour later she was sliding into Bruce’s black SUV. “Are you going to blindfold me?” she teased.
Bruce rolled his eyes. “It’s not like that.”
They drove away from the beach, passing a bookstore, a natural foods grocery, and a coffee shop with a line of decaffeinated customers snaking around the block. Bruce skirted Golden Gate Park, then headed north.
“This is an active investigation, Cassidy, so we will ask you to take an oath.”
“I thought you said this wasn’t going to be formal,” she replied as the web of nerves in her chest tightened.
“It’s much less formal than a grand jury, yeah, but I want you to understand how serious this is.”
Cassidy exhaled slowly. “I understand.” They stopped at a light where a woman dressed in a mismatched jogging suit and slippers pushed a shopping cart full of dirty clothes and cardboard across the street. With a shudder, she remembered her frightening visit to the Mission District, courtesy of Saxon only a week ago.
“You’ll meet our case agent, Special Agent Katrina Harris. She’ll be conducting the interview. Special Agent Rudy Santiago might be there, too.”
“You’ll be there, too, right?” Cassidy asked.
He flashed her a grin. “You’re my job right now, remember?”
“What will you do…after?”
“I’ve requested to work the murder angle.”
They pulled up to a single-story gray concrete building with the state and U.S. flags hanging limp from poles near the entrance. They exited the car, and Cassidy wiped her sticky palms on her chinos. Bruce eyed her as if to say “ready?” Cassidy nodded, and followed him inside.
Bruce steered her into the office located immediately inside the door. A man sat at a large desk in front of a set of monitors, each showing a section of the exterior. Cassidy realized that he had watched her and Bruce enter. After a short greeting with the guard, Bruce slid the sign-in book closer and handed her a pen.
Moments later, they entered a dark hallway flanked by closed doors.
“When they combined school districts a few years back, this one was no longer necessary,” Bruce explained. “We sometimes get lucky like that. We can’t run all of our operations from the federal building downtown. For obvious reasons.”
Cassidy wasn’t sure what that meant but was getting too nervous to give it much thought.
They passed a row of large windows, all shaded by blinds. Bruce knocked on the door, then popped his head inside.
Through the crack in the door, Cassidy got a quick glance inside the stark, white room. A tall man in a suit stood at the far end of the table, a large three-ring binder open in front of him and a paper cup of coffee nearby on the table. In the center of the table a tray held a box of muffins, a carafe of coffee, and a sleeve of white paper cups. She saw the shadow of the agent’s gun inside his open suit coat. With a start, she realized that Bruce was likely armed, too.
“Does Special Agent Harris want us in room C?” Bruce asked.
Cassidy got the impression that she wasn’t supposed to see inside the room. She tried to avert her eyes, but the mural of pictures pasted in a giant web at the head of the room drew her in like a magnet. She leaned forward to get a better view.
“Glad to have you back, man,” the agent said to Bruce. “We just had our morning briefing.” He nodded at Cassidy, his brown eyes keen. “Is that Dr. Kincaid?”
At the sound of her name, Cassidy snapped her attention away from what she had seen at the head of the table—Pete’s notebook. Had the agent caught her peeking?
“Dr. Kincaid,” a female voice said. Cassidy spun to see a slender woman striding toward her in a navy-blue suit, her pumps tapping firmly on the floor. Her blonde hair was pulled into a tight bun and her blue eyes pierced the air like lasers. Following her was a man
