If She Ran

But it was not the bell that Kate heard. Instead, she heard the ringing of her phone. And it was the assigned ringer she used for all calls that came from the bureau.

She pushed her mouthpiece out of her mouth and held her gloved hands out to her trainer. “Sorry,” she said. “I have to take that.”

Her trainer knew about her part-time job as a special agent. He thought it was hard-ass (his word, not hers) that she refused to entirely retire from such a job. So when he untied her gloves for her, he did so as quickly as possible.

Kate slid between the ropes and ran to her gym bag, which was sitting by the wall. She always kept it out and not in the locker room just in case she got such a call. She grabbed the phone and her heart surged with excitement and despair all at once when she saw Deputy Director Duran’s name on the display.

“This is Agent Wise,” she said.

“Wise, it’s Duran. You got a second?”

“I do,” she said, glancing back at the ring with longing. Margo’s trainer was working with her on how to avoid fake-outs. “What can I do for you?”

“I was hoping you could come in on a case. It’s effective immediately, and I’d need you and DeMarco to fly out tonight.”

“I don’t know,” she said. And that was the truth. It was very sudden and she had spoken to Melissa, her daughter, several times in the last few weeks about not being so readily available for the last-minute jobs. She had been spending much more time with Melissa and Michelle, her granddaughter, over the last month or so and they finally had a good thing going—something like a routine. Something like a family.

“I appreciate you thinking of me,” Kate said. “But I don’t know if I can come in for this one. It’s very last minute. And flying out…that makes it seem like it’s pretty far away. I don’t know that I’m prepared for a long trip. Where is it, anyway?”

“New York. Kate…I’m pretty sure it has ties to the Nobilini case.”

The name sent a chill through her. Her head started ringing, and it wasn’t from the blow Margo had delivered moments ago. Flashes of a case from nearly eight years ago cascaded through her head—leering, taunting.

“Kate?”

“I’m here,” she said. She then looked back to the ring. Margo was stretching and lightly jogging in place, ready for their next bout.

It was a shame she wouldn’t get it. Because as soon as Kate heard the name, she knew she’d take the case. She had to.

The Nobilini case had gotten away from her eight years ago—one of the true defeats she’d ever had in her career.

This was her chance to close it—to bolt shut the one case that had truly bested her.

“When’s the flight?” she asked Duran.

“Dulles to JFK, leaves in four hours.”

She thought of Melissa and Michelle, her heart sinking. Melissa wouldn’t understand, but Kate could not turn this opportunity down.

“I’ll be on it,” she said.

CHAPTER TWO

Kate managed to pack and make it out of Richmond in less than an hour and a half. When she met her partner, Kristen DeMarco, outside of one of the many Starbucks in Dulles International Airport, they had only ten minutes remaining before takeoff; most of the plane’s passengers had already boarded.

As DeMarco started power-walking toward Kate with her coffee in hand, she smiled and shook her head. “If you’d just go ahead and move to DC, you wouldn’t be rushing and borderline late all the time.”

“No can do,” Kate said as they joined together and starting hurrying for the gate. “It’s enough that this so-called part-time job is keeping me away from my family more than I’d like. If it was a requirement that I live in DC, I wouldn’t be doing it at all.”

“How are Melissa and little Michelle?” DeMarco asked.

“They’re doing well. I spoke with Melissa on my way here. She said she understood and wished me luck. And for the first time, I think she actually meant it.”

“Good. I told you she’d come around. I assume it would be cool as hell to have a bad-ass for a mother.”

“I’m far from a bad-ass,” Kate said as they reached the gate. Still, she thought of what she had been doing when she received the call and thought it might be okay to accept that moniker…at least a little.

“Last I heard,” Kate said, “you were working a triple murder case out in Maine.”

“Yeah, I was. We wrapped it about a week ago—about six agents in all on that thing. When I got the call from Duran about this case, he told me he planned to send you out and asked if I wanted to partner with you. I, of course, jumped at the chance. I told him I’d like to be partnered with you whenever possible in the future.”

“Thanks,” Kate said. She left it at that, though. It actually meant a lot to her but she didn’t want to get sappy on DeMarco.

They boarded the plane together and took their seats, right beside one another. When they were settled, DeMarco reached into her carry-on and pulled out a thick folder crammed with papers and documents.

“This is everything on the Nobilini file,” she said. “Based on your history with it, I assume you know it inside and out?”

“Probably,” Kate said.

“It’s a pretty quick flight,” DeMarco pointed out. “I’d much rather hear it from you instead of notes and files.”

Kate would have felt the same way. What surprised her was how eager she was to share the details of the case with DeMarco. The case had been like a nagging itch at the back of her mind over the years but she had always managed to push it away, not wanting to focus on the one true failure of her career.

So as the plane started to position itself toward the runway, Kate started to go back over the specifics of the case. As she did, stopping for the annoyance of the pre-flight announcements, she realized that it all felt new now. Maybe it was all the time that had passed since she had last truly dwelt on it, or the almost-retirement (or both), but the case now felt alive and active.

She told DeMarco the details of the case in a high-end suburb just out of New York City. Just one body, but the case had been pushed by someone in Congress, as the victim was closely linked. No prints, no clues. The body, one Frank Nobilini, was found in an alley in the Midtown district. The best guess was that he had been headed for work, walking the single block from the parking garage to his office. Just a single gunshot wound to the back of the head. Execution style.

“How could it be execution style if someone clearly abducted him and dragged him into the alleyway?” DeMarco asked.

“That’s another unanswered question to the case. It was assumed that Nobilini was roughed up a bit, forced to his knees, and then shot in the back of the head. Blood and bits of skull were all over the side of the wall of the building beside the body. His BMW keys were still in his hand.”

DeMarco nodded and allowed Kate to continue.

“The victim was from a small town, a well-to-do little suburb called Ashton,” Kate said. “It’s the sort of town that draws in visitors for its pretentious antique stores, overpriced dining, and immaculate real estate.”

“And that’s the thing I don’t get about it,” DeMarco said. “A place like that, people tend to gossip, right? You’d think someone would have known something or heard rumors about who the killer was. But there’s nothing in these files.” She said this last bit as she thumped her fingers against the folder.

“That always unnerved me,” Kate said. “Ashton is an upscale place. But outside of that, it’s also a very tight community. Everyone knows each other. For the most part, everyone was polite to one another. Neighbors helping neighbors, big turn-outs for school bake sales, the whole nine yards. The place is squeaky clean.”

“No motives for the killer?” DeMarco asked.

“None that I ever knew about. Ashton has a population of just over three thousand. And sure, while it does attract its fair amount of people from New York City and other outlying areas, it has an incredibly small crime rate. So even though the murder didn’t actually occur in Ashton, it’s why the Nobilini murder was such a big deal eight years ago.”

“And there were never any other murders like this one?”

“Nope. Not until today, apparently. My theory is that the killer noted the FBI presence and got spooked. In a town that size, it would be easy to notice the presence of the FBI.” Kate paused here and took the file folder from DeMarco. “How much did Duran tell you?”

“Not much. He said we were in a rush and asked that I read over the case files.”