There was something indefinable about seeing a fellow Athena Force member-a kind of recognition and simple comfort that went beyond just spotting an old friend. Katie saw Kayla step out of the impromptu meeting going on and head her way.
"Katie," Kayla said and smiled. They shook hands in a brisk, businesslike fashion rather than hugged-purely for any cameras that happened to be pointed in their direction. "I can"t thank you enough for this. Let"s go someplace more private to talk."
She led the way with quick strides. They"d always been the same height, but Katie recognized even more similarities. She and Kayla both moved with authority and confidence, thanks to their training both at the Academy and through their careers. Kayla"s skin was shades darker, and she"d let her long dark hair grow. Her brown eyes still looked disarmingly warm. That probably served her very well in interrogations-Katie knew that intimidation, for all its dramatic presentation, was generally less useful than empathy in soliciting information.
In short, Kayla looked great, if strained at the moment. As they walked toward a row of high hedges, backs to the cameras, she caught Kayla exchanging a look with a tall, good-looking detective standing nearby. A look. You didn"t have to be an investigator to read his regard for her, and to see it was something more than just professional courtesy.
"So I guess the press is all over this one," Katie said and winced as she adjusted her bag on her shoulder. Her ribs were making their protests felt. Again. "Why the cloak and dagger?"
"Parabolic microphones. Some of the more enterprising news reporters have them around here. They can"t air the footage, unless they want to lose any cooperation in the future from the department, but they can still use the information they get in other ways." Kayla shook her head. "Lots of "unnamed sources" come from surveillance. I"m not willing to take the chance. Besides, guess who"s here as our special media guest?"
"60 Minutes?"
"I just wish. No, Shannon Connor."
"Shannon!" Katie blurted, shocked. Not that she couldn"t have foreseen it happening, of course. Shannon Connor had been a promising student at the AthenaAcademy-in Kayla"s group, the Graces, in fact-but she"d shown a dark side, and had made history as the first girl ever expelled from the Academy. Not that she wasn"t bright, but she was ambitious and bitter. Since getting thrown out of the school, she"d gone on to a relatively successful career in broadcast journalism...but she was always looking for dirt on the Academy and its graduates. "She"d better be looking to help, not just digging for trouble."
"You know Shannon. She"s looking for any angle that will make us look..." Kayla shrugged.
"I can"t believe she"d stoop that low. Not with kids at stake."
"She"s a reporter. Of course she"d stoop that low." Which might have been ungenerous, but Katie wasn"t much inclined to grant Shannon Connor any benefit of the doubt, either.
The hedges had a gate, which Kayla swung open and motioned her through. The other side was cool and green and open-a community garden, pretty and peaceful, xeriscaped with desert plants. Secluded.
A young lady slumped, hands folded, on a concrete park bench under the skeletal branches of a large tree. She looked up as Kayla and Katie approached, and got to her feet quickly.
Kayla"s daughter, Jazz, looked taller than Katie remembered, but that was the way with kids.... They grew while you weren"t watching. Jazz looked much more mature, though. She"d always been self-possessed, but the time at the AthenaAcademy had given her even more of that. Except for a hint of nervousness in the quick way she glanced at her mother, she looked as cool as ice.
She was dressed in blue jeans and a pink top, long-sleeved and hooded. Warm enough for a walk, but not for sitting on a cold bench. She was shivering.
"Officer," Katie called and got an instant response from one of the uniformed cops near the gate. "Can you lend me your jacket?"
He slid it off and handed it over; Katie draped the police-issue jacket around Jazz"s thin shoulders. "There," she said. "Better?"
"Yeah," Jazz agreed softly. "Thanks. Hi, Katie."
"Hi, honey. So, bad day, huh?"
"Pretty bad." Jazz swallowed hard and glanced again at her mother, who was watching her with so much love and concern it made Katie"s heart turn over. "They almost got me, but Teal and Lena , they made sure I got away. I didn"t want to leave them, Katie. I didn"t!"
"I know you didn"t. Here. Sit with me." She took a seat on the cold concrete bench and patted the empty spot next to her. "Maybe your mom can get you something to drink? Some water?"
It was a pretext, but a necessary one; she couldn"t just tell Kayla to leave, and Kayla needed an excuse to go. When Jazz nodded gratefully, the two women exchanged a quick glance, and Kayla reached down to hug her daughter before walking off in search of refreshments.
Katie waited until she was sure Kayla was out of earshot.
"You don"t have to be brave with me," she said, and Jazz crumbled, sobbing against her. Katie put her arms around her, wincing as Jazz hugged back, but she bit her lip and stood the pain. She stroked the girl"s soft, silky hair with slow movements. "You"ve been brave all day, haven"t you?"
"I had to." Jazz gulped. Her voice was more like a little girl"s now, shaking and high-pitched. "Everybody was counting on me. I had to remember, and tell people, and-"
"And you did that, you did. But you were scared, too, and that"s okay. It"s okay, you understand?"
Jazz pulled back, eyes swollen and streaming tears. She gave Katie a pleading look. "Mom never is."
"Your mom is scared a lot, but she tries not to let it show." Katie gave the girl a smile, a small one, appropriate to the mood. "Like me. But you need to break down sometimes to be stronger later. You understand that? I"ll bet your mom cries later."
"She-" Jazz gulped air and looked more thoughtful. "Sometimes, I guess. She closes the door. I hear her crying, but only when things were really bad at work or something."
"Well, today, they"re really bad at work and she"s afraid for you, too. So give her a break. Let her take care of you, okay?"
Jazz nodded. Her body language was slowly uncoiling from the wire-tight posture it had been, and Katie breathed a cautious sigh of relief. The last thing the kid needed was to bottle all this up. It was traumatic, and Jazz was-like all Athena students-advanced for her age. A recipe for emotional disaster.
"You feel like telling me the story now? One last time?"
Jazz bent her head and sat up again, hands braced on either side on the cold concrete bench. Her voice was soft, and still a little unsteady, but Katie heard every word. "We decided to go to the movies. It was-we had the day off."
"Why didn"t you ask for transportation? Call a cab?"
Jazz didn"t look up. "We wanted to walk. It was a nice day."
Girls her age didn"t want to walk, they wanted to get where they were going fast, and have fun even faster.
"Jazz, if you lie to me, you"re putting Teal and Lena in danger. You know that, don"t you?"
Jazz"s head jerked up in outright astonishment. Katie raised an eyebrow and waited as Jazz found words. "I didn"t lie!"
"I"m afraid you did. And you lied to your mother, and to the police, and now you think you can"t change your story. But you can, Jazz. n.o.body thinks you"re at fault here."
"But-"
Katie let a little hardness creep into her voice. "You weren"t going to the movies. You didn"t take the school transportation service because you didn"t want anybody to know where you were going, and you didn"t take a cab because you didn"t want any record. Right?"
Jazz looked as bewildered as if Katie had just pulled a rabbit out of her ear. "How-?" She swallowed the question and flushed pale pink under her matte-tan skin. "I didn"t lie. We would have gone to the movies. We were planning to do it late afternoon."
"So where were you going in the morning?"
"It"s supposed to be a secret. Teal made me promise."
"Teal made you promise."
Jazz nodded slowly. "There was someone from the school in trouble. She needed help. Teal and Lena promised to meet her. I wasn"t really supposed to go along, but I followed them and caught up after I overheard. Besides, I wanted to go to the movies."
Precocious didn"t half cover it, Katie thought. She wondered if she"d been so difficult at Jazz"s age, thought back and decided that it was entirely possible. "Where were you going? And who were you meeting?"
"We were going to the mall. It"s only a couple of blocks away. I don"t know who we were meeting, it was a secret. Teal and Lena didn"t want to talk about it."
This didn"t sound nearly as innocent as Jazz probably thought it did. "Could it have been boys? Somebody they met in town, maybe?"
"I-No. No, they told me it was somebody from the school."
"There are men working at the school."
Jazz shook her head. "They said she."
It couldn"t be an accident that Teal and Lena had been off-campus and picked off so neatly; somebody had set it up. Somebody had set a place and a time for them to be, and they"d walked right into it. Jazz had been an unexpected ride-along. No wonder they"d allowed her to escape.
"Okay, walk me through what happened. You were walking-"
Kayla returned midway through the recitation of the facts, but that was all right. The secret had been revealed, and Katie could see from the kid"s body language that she had nothing more to conceal. She"d told everything she knew.
Nevertheless, just for clarity, Katie walked Jazz through the rest of the story, start to finish, stopping her for details that seemed unimportant but might be vital later on. She made illegible scribbles in her own fluid abbreviations and listened for any false notes.
Nothing.
When silence fell, Katie checked her watch. It was sliding toward evening, and the chill was getting sharper in the air. The desert didn"t hold in the heat poured over it during the day, and it was going to get bone-shaking cold tonight. "Right," she said. "I think that"s it, Jazz. You"ve been wonderful. I"ll check in on you when I can, okay?"
"Wait." Jazz caught her hand. "You"re going to find them, right? You promise?"
Katie Rush never promised. It was unprofessional; it was hurtful and it added complications the job didn"t need. She"d learned that hard, and she never broke the rule.
She did now. "Yes," she said. "I promise. They"re coming back safe."
She walked off a little distance with Kayla, who was anxious and trying hard not to look it. "Anything?" Kayla asked.
Katie didn"t answer directly. "I need to go up to the school. Can someone give me a ride?"
"Of course. I"ll take you-"
"No, you need to take your daughter home. I"ll keep you fully briefed on what I find out-if anything. Be with Jazz right now." She remembered the tall detective they"d pa.s.sed, who"d looked at Kayla with such outright concern and longing. "And...anybody else you might need to see."
Kayla flushed, just like her daughter. "It"s my case, I can"t just drop it!"
"It"s not your case," Katie said and turned to face her. Cold air blew over them, reminding them that night was falling, that darkness was coming. "Your daughter was an a.s.sault victim. Two of her friends are missing. n.o.body in their right mind is going to keep you in charge of this case, you know that. Phoenix PD is going to follow their own course. But me, I"m independent. I can follow leads they can"t, especially leads that come up inside of the Academy. Let me do this for you."
Katie stared her down. It took a long time, but then Kayla always had been strong-willed, tough-minded and determined.
But she knew when to quit.
"All right," she said. "But you keep me in the loop. Daily. Hourly, if there"s breaking news."
"Of course. Now go home."
"Not before I get you a car."
It took more than that, of course, but it wasn"t more than fifteen minutes before Katie had her ride-a plain white Ford, police issue, complete with radio, siren, dashboard light and the lingering smell of old coffee.
Katie backed her new wheels out of the police barricades and through a tunnel of people that the uniformed officers kept open for her. As she applied the brakes, prior to turning around, her headlights swept across the faces of the reporters, the cops, the bystanders-fewer now than before, of course, but still a respectably sized crowd.
One stood out. She jammed the brakes harder, bringing the car to a full halt, and then slowly allowed the car to roll forward until she stopped next to the man on whom she"d focused.
He leaned down to rest his forearms on the frame of the open window and c.o.c.ked his curly dark head. His eyes were as bright and curious as a raven"s.
"Agent Rush," he said pleasantly. She didn"t smile.
"Are you following me?" Because he was, unquestionably, the man from the airport. The man from the cab.
"No."
"You just ended up here by accident."
He had the good grace to look uncomfortable. "Not-exactly, look, can I get in the car and talk to you? I-"
"No," she said flatly. "I appreciate that you"re persistent, but you need to stop now. Following a federal agent is a risky business, do you understand me? So please. Look for a date at your hotel bar."
He straightened up, obviously surprised and maybe a little bit angry; there was something in his eyes that flashed like lightning. But she hit the accelerator and left him behind, just a dim and distant figure that disappeared into the falling night.
Weird, she thought. He must have had the cab follow her from the airport, and then he"d spent the entire afternoon just...waiting. That was more extreme than she liked, no matter how attractive he was.
She impatiently shook off the memory of his eyes, his smile, and followed the road to Glendale, and the AthenaAcademy.
Chapter 4.
S tefan Blackman stared after the glaring red taillights of Agent Rush"s car, temporarily stunned into stillness. He"d expected skepticism, but not outright dismissal-especially that kind of dismissal. Frankly, he wasn"t used to rejection. It stung. And it made him angry, too, because he had something to say, didn"t he? Something useful.
Something not at all about how lovely she was.
"Great." He sighed and shook his head. Stuck in Phoenix, no transportation, no way to get the attention of anybody who would listen. He"d already tried to find a sympathetic officer to get to the good-looking brunette detective with the kid, but no go.... They"d taken his name and probably his photo, but they wouldn"t let him near her. Or anyone. And he wasn"t sure it was a good time to cause a scene-it would only make him look crazier.
What, then? Back to the airport? Back home? It was starting to have a powerful allure, getting the h.e.l.l out of here and back to the warm, familiar coc.o.o.n of his life. He didn"t like how all this was making him feel, not at all.
Yes, that was what he was going to do. Clearly, the police didn"t need him; they had a ma.s.sive presence here, and with the FBI descending, as well, surely they had more than enough leads without the admittedly not-very-specific visions of a psychic. Cops usually liked to resort to that sort of thing last, not first. And h.e.l.l, there were phones, right? He could always call.
Maybe he could catch the red-eye back home....
The vision hit him with sudden, wrenching force, sending him sagging against the wooden police barricade and grabbing for support. He sensed all that distantly because this vision was even more visceral and immediate than the previous.
Still in the van. Driving. The girl was feeling the vibration through her body, facedown on the floor of the van. Muscles aching, hands and feet numbed from the tight bonds. Fear slowly receding, simply because she couldn"t continue to be afraid forever...
The girl next to her, the blonde with punk-purple streaks, had mastered her own terror and was doing something with her fingers. She was slowly, clumsily signing letters....
Stefan felt the girl try to sign back.