She slid into the seat in front of him. In the reflection of the window he could see her pull the purse into her lap and start sifting through the contents. Soon he heard the click-click of nail clippers, and found himself thinking it was the nervous energy of a straggler held in captivity.
How rude. Whatever happened to common manners? People brushed their hair in public, scratched their private areas, picked their noses and trimmed their fingernails. And of course, he actually loved it, because he had learned to use their bad habits to his advantage.
Artie grabbed a tissue from his backpack and accidentally dropped his brochure. As he picked it up with one hand, he took a swipe at the floor with the tissue cupped in his palm. He wadded it up and stuffed it in the book bag without anyone noticing the gestures or the fingernail clippings he had collected.
Then he sat back, pleased. The tour hadn't even begun and it was already quite successful, providing resources for the future. He glanced at his watch again.Yes, it was turning out to be a good day, a very good day.
CHAPTER
6
Elk Grove, Virginia
Maggie's hand stayed tucked inside her jacket, fingertips on the butt of her Smith & Wesson as the door opened. It had to be a mistake or a brilliant setup. The little girl who answered the door couldn't be much older than four, maybe five years old.
"Is your mom here?" Cunningham asked and Maggie didn't hear a trace of his surprise. Instead, his voice was gentle and soothing, like a man who had once been a father to a child this age.
Maggie's eyes searched the room beyond the doorway. A noisy TV was the main attraction, with pillows, dirty plates and discarded toys surrounding it. The place was a mess, but from neglect, not a hostage takeover.
The little girl looked neglected, too. Peanut butter and jelly with crumbs stuck to the corners of her mouth. Her long hair was a tangle that she pushed out of her eyes to get a better look at them. She wore pink pajamas with stains where cartoon characters' faces used to be.
"Are you sellin' something?" Maggie could tell it was a question she was used to asking, well rehearsed and even with a dismissive frown.
"No, sweetie, we're not selling anything," Cunningham told her. "We just need to talk to your mom."
The little girl took a glance over her shoulder, a telling sign that the mother was, indeed, here.
"What's your name?" Cunningham asked while Maggie edged closer inside.
She could see two doors, one door was open, showing a bathroom. The door to the right was closed. From what she remembered on the computer monitor, the second heat source was on the other side.
"My name's Mary Louise, but I don't think I'm 'posed to talk to you."
The little girl was distracted and watching Maggie. She wasn't as smooth with children as Cunningham and somehow kids always sensed it. Just like dogs. Dogs always seemed to be able to pick out the one person who was uncomfortable being around them, then gravitated to that person as if trying to win her over. Dogs, Maggie could handle. Children, she didn't have a clue about.
She heard the whisper of one of the FBI techs in the microphone bud in her right ear, "Nine minutes," and she glanced back at Cunningham. He touched his ear to tell her he had heard, too. They were running out of time. Maggie's gut instinct told her they should snatch up the little girl and just leave.
"Is your mom asleep, Mary Louise?" Cunningham pointed at the closed door.
Mary Louise's eyes followed his hand as Maggie slipped behind her and into the room.
"She hasn't been feeling good," the little girl confessed. "And my tummy hurts."
"Oh, I'm sorry." Cunningham patted her on the head. The distraction worked. Now Mary Louise didn't even glance back at Maggie, who tiptoed across the room, her eyes taking in everything from the People magazines scattered on the coffee table to the M&Ms spilled on the carpet to the plastic crucifix hanging on the wall. She looked for wires. She listened over the TV cartoons for any buzzing or clicking. She even sniffed the air for sulfur.
"Maybe I can help you and your mom," Cunningham told the girl who stared up at him and nodded.
Maggie could see the girl was on the verge of tears, biting her lower lip to keep from crying. It was a gesture she recognized from her own childhood and she hated that adults were evidently still using that stupid ruse that "big girls don't cry."
But it was clear Cunningham had won the girl over. She reached up and took his hand. "I think she's really sick," Mary Louise said under a sniffle with a quick swipe at her nose. Then she started leading Cunningham to the closed door.
That's when Maggie heard another whisper in her ear, "Four minutes left."
CHAPTER
7
Quantico, Virginia
R. J. Tully couldn't believe he was missing out and all because Emma didn't have a ride to school. He didn't want to think she might have orchestrated the entire event just to convince him she needed her own car. He wasn't ready to believe his seventeen-year-old daughter could be that manipulative. And he certainly wasn't ready to give in. He hated the idea of her having her own car. A car was a huge responsibility. He had a job for three years—starting at age fifteen—before he was allowed, or rather, could afford his own car. A car was a level of independence he wasn't willing to grant Emma just yet. It should be something she earned. Although he wasn't sure what she'd need to do to prove herself worthy. "How many doughnuts?" Keith Ganza's monotone brought Tully back to the FBI lab. Getting in late put him in charge of the evidence, so here he was in Ganza's glass-enclosed work space.
"I don't know," Tully said. "Does it make a difference?"
"It does if they've been tampered with." Ganza's skeletal frame with sloped shoulders was bent over the center counter as he dissected a glazed cruller.
Maybe there was something wrong with Tully because, tampered with or not, the cruller still made his mouth water. He'd had only coffee for breakfast, most of it spilled over the interior of his car, and lunch was a couple hours away. He glanced instead at a couple of white-coated scientists in the glass-enclosed labs across the hallway. Tully disliked his claustrophobic office, four floors below the earth back at BSU, but he knew he'd never be able to work here in the labs where your every movement could be observed. Each lab—the techno-term was "biovestibule"—really amounted to a glass cubicle, a sterile workstation surrounded by metal contraptions, test tubes in trays and microscopes attached to computers. The glazed cruller on Ganza's stainless-steel tray seemed out of place.
"Doughnut places don't deliver, do they?" Tully asked, thinking out loud.
Ganza looked up at him, pale blue eyes over half glasses that had slid to the end of a hawkish nose. He reminded Tully of a friendly version of a mad scientist or of a tall scarecrow wearing a Boston Red Sox baseball cap. The cap forced Ganza's thinning gray hair to stick straight out over wide-rim ears, adding to the overall picture. His lined and haggard face registered a perpetual frown, and now he shot Tully a look that said, "You've got to be kidding," but Ganza would never say that. He knew that ridiculous questions sometimes ended up cracking a few cases.
"There might be a place in the District that'll deliver, but out here to Quantico? I'd guess, no."
"We're going over everyone who came and went this morning. So far there's been no unusual activity," Tully said.