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Authors: Michael Prescott
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enforcement.
Now she knew who.
7
Tess was between classes, enjoying the warm May evening and the first glimmer of stars over the pin oaks. Late springtime in Virginia. She liked it, though the scene might have been more peaceful without the distant, incessant sound of gunfire from the firing ranges.
Still, she was content to be here—almost contented enough to wish she didn’t have to go back inside for the evening session of the seminar. She was scheduled to lead a roomful of agents in a discussion of the protocol surrounding a chemical weapons threat. Her work on the Mobius case had rendered her an unofficial expert on that scenario.
Law-enforcement seminars were commonplace at the marine corps base in Quantico, where the FBI Academy trained new recruits and retrained experienced agents as well as law officers from other agencies and even from foreign countries. To the public, however, Quantico was probably best known as the home of the FBI’s Behavioral Analysis Unit, the profiling squad that had received so much attention in movies and TV shows—though as a matter of mundane fact, the unit was no longer headquartered on the base but a short distance down the road.
At the moment she didn’t want to think about profiling, training, or WMD scenarios. She wanted only to watch the false nettle and blunt brown sedge as it rippled in the cool breeze off the Potomac. Denver was far away, and she didn’t mind. As much as she loved the mountains, she was glad to find some respite from the daily bureaucratic battles and the pile of paper crowding her in-box. It would be nice to just sit here in the stillness and silence and watch the night descend.
Her cell phone rang.
Probably it was someone from Denver, calling about some new crisis. As special agent in charge, she was responsible for all major managerial decisions. She plucked the phone from her jacket and pressed the keypad. “McCallum.”
“Hey, what’s up?”
She was pleased to hear Josh Green on the other end of the line. Josh was the assistant special agent in charge of the Denver office, her immediate subordinate. He was also—quite contrary to FBI policy—her lover, and had been for the last two years.
“Not much,” she said, relaxing in his presence, even if he was two thousand miles away. “How are things in Denver?”
“Lonely.”
“Glad to hear it. It means you miss me.”
“I do miss you. I also miss my bolo tie, the black one. I think I left it at your place.”
“I hope I mean more to you than a necktie.”
“Don’t be too sure. I really like that tie.”
“You’d better be glad there’s a continent between us.”
“I’m not, though,” he said. “Not glad, I mean.”
She smiled. When she had first started seeing Josh, she hadn’t thought the relationship would go anywhere. For a long time she had been convinced she could never fall in love again. And certainly not with another agent of the Bureau. Not after Paul Voorhees. Not after she’d found him murdered in the bed they shared, a victim of the serial killer Mobius.
She’d told herself she couldn’t risk that kind of loss again. Her fear was irrational, of course. The mortality rate for FBI agents wasn’t high. And Josh, like herself, was a supervisory agent who rarely did fieldwork. He wasn’t going to get killed in the line of duty. He wasn’t going to get killed at all.
Still, she had worked hard to talk herself out of loving Josh. The echoes of her relationship with Paul made her uncomfortable, and she didn’t like keeping secrets about her personal life. She had told herself that whatever she and Josh had together wouldn’t last. It was only a fling, fun and games, nothing serious, a way to get back into the dating scene without the hassle of blind dates or singles bars. Convenient, that’s what it was.
She had maintained this fiction for the better part of a year before gradually allowing herself to know that she and Josh were a couple. A real
Now she knew who.
7
Tess was between classes, enjoying the warm May evening and the first glimmer of stars over the pin oaks. Late springtime in Virginia. She liked it, though the scene might have been more peaceful without the distant, incessant sound of gunfire from the firing ranges.
Still, she was content to be here—almost contented enough to wish she didn’t have to go back inside for the evening session of the seminar. She was scheduled to lead a roomful of agents in a discussion of the protocol surrounding a chemical weapons threat. Her work on the Mobius case had rendered her an unofficial expert on that scenario.
Law-enforcement seminars were commonplace at the marine corps base in Quantico, where the FBI Academy trained new recruits and retrained experienced agents as well as law officers from other agencies and even from foreign countries. To the public, however, Quantico was probably best known as the home of the FBI’s Behavioral Analysis Unit, the profiling squad that had received so much attention in movies and TV shows—though as a matter of mundane fact, the unit was no longer headquartered on the base but a short distance down the road.
At the moment she didn’t want to think about profiling, training, or WMD scenarios. She wanted only to watch the false nettle and blunt brown sedge as it rippled in the cool breeze off the Potomac. Denver was far away, and she didn’t mind. As much as she loved the mountains, she was glad to find some respite from the daily bureaucratic battles and the pile of paper crowding her in-box. It would be nice to just sit here in the stillness and silence and watch the night descend.
Her cell phone rang.
Probably it was someone from Denver, calling about some new crisis. As special agent in charge, she was responsible for all major managerial decisions. She plucked the phone from her jacket and pressed the keypad. “McCallum.”
“Hey, what’s up?”
She was pleased to hear Josh Green on the other end of the line. Josh was the assistant special agent in charge of the Denver office, her immediate subordinate. He was also—quite contrary to FBI policy—her lover, and had been for the last two years.
“Not much,” she said, relaxing in his presence, even if he was two thousand miles away. “How are things in Denver?”
“Lonely.”
“Glad to hear it. It means you miss me.”
“I do miss you. I also miss my bolo tie, the black one. I think I left it at your place.”
“I hope I mean more to you than a necktie.”
“Don’t be too sure. I really like that tie.”
“You’d better be glad there’s a continent between us.”
“I’m not, though,” he said. “Not glad, I mean.”
She smiled. When she had first started seeing Josh, she hadn’t thought the relationship would go anywhere. For a long time she had been convinced she could never fall in love again. And certainly not with another agent of the Bureau. Not after Paul Voorhees. Not after she’d found him murdered in the bed they shared, a victim of the serial killer Mobius.
She’d told herself she couldn’t risk that kind of loss again. Her fear was irrational, of course. The mortality rate for FBI agents wasn’t high. And Josh, like herself, was a supervisory agent who rarely did fieldwork. He wasn’t going to get killed in the line of duty. He wasn’t going to get killed at all.
Still, she had worked hard to talk herself out of loving Josh. The echoes of her relationship with Paul made her uncomfortable, and she didn’t like keeping secrets about her personal life. She had told herself that whatever she and Josh had together wouldn’t last. It was only a fling, fun and games, nothing serious, a way to get back into the dating scene without the hassle of blind dates or singles bars. Convenient, that’s what it was.
She had maintained this fiction for the better part of a year before gradually allowing herself to know that she and Josh were a couple. A real
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