If She Knew

Kate, you know you shouldn’t be doing this, he seemed to say.

She grinned thinly. She missed her husband fiercely sometimes, a fitting contrast to the fact that she sometimes felt she had managed to move on from his death rather quickly.

She shook the cobwebs of those memories away as she parked her car in front of the address Deb had given her. It was a rather nice house, split into two different apartments with porches separating the properties. When she got out of the car she could tell right away that someone was home because she could hear someone speaking very loudly inside.

When she climbed the porch stairs, she felt as if she had taken a step back in time, about one year ago. She felt like an agent again, despite the lack of the firearm on her hip. Still, being that she was in all actuality a retired agent, she had no idea what she would say after she knocked on the door.

But she didn’t let that stop her. She knocked on the door with the same authority she would have one year ago. As she heard the loud talking inside, she figured she’d stick with the truth. Lying in a situation that she was already not supposed to be a part of would only make things worse if she was caught.

The man who answered the door took Kate a little off guard. He was about six feet three inches and was absolutely jacked. His shoulders alone showed that he worked out. He could have easily passed for a professional wrestler. The only thing that betrayed that façade was the anger in his eyes.

“Yeah?” he asked. “Who are you?”

She then made a move that she had missed very much. She showed him her badge. She hoped the sight of it would carry some weight to counter her introduction. “My name is Kate Wise. I’m a retired FBI agent. I was hoping you could speak with me for a few moments.”

“About what?” he asked, his words quick and snappy.

“Are you Brian Neilbolt?” she asked.

“I am.”

“So your ex-girlfriend was Julie Hicks, correct? Formerly Julie Meade?”

“Ah shit, this again? Look, the fucking cops already hauled me in and interrogated me. Now the feds, too?”

“Rest assured, I’m not here to interrogate you. I just wanted to ask some questions.”

“Sounds like an interrogation to me,” he said. “Besides, you said you’re retired. Pretty sure that means I don’t have to do anything you ask.”

She pretended to be hurt by this, looking away from him. In reality, though, she was looking over his massive shoulders and the space behind him. She saw a suitcase and two backpacks leaning against the wall. She also saw a sheet of paper sitting on top of the suitcase. The large logo identified it as a printout of an Orbitz receipt. Apparently, Brian Neilbolt was leaving town for a while.

Not the best scenario for when your ex-girlfriend had been murdered and you had been taken in and then immediately released by the police.

“Where are you headed?” Kate asked.

“None of your business.”

“Who were you talking to so loudly on the phone before I knocked?”

“Again, none of your business. Now, if you’ll excuse me…”

He went to close the door, but Kate persisted. She stepped forward and wedged her shoe between the door and the frame.

“Mr. Neilbolt, I’m only asking for about five minutes of your time.”

A wave of fury passed through his eyes but then seemed to subside. He hung his head and for a moment, she thought he looked sad. It was similar to the look she had seen on the faces of the Meades.

“You said you’re a retired agent, right?” Neilbolt asked.

“That’s right,” she confirmed.

“Retired,” he said. “Then get the fuck off of my porch.”

She stood resolute, making it clear that she had no intention of going anywhere.

“I said get the fuck off of my porch!”

He nodded and then reached out to push her. She felt the force of his hands when they struck her shoulder and acted as quickly as she could. Right away, she was amazed at how quickly her reflexes and muscle memory kicked in.

As she went stumbling backward, she wrapped both of her arms around Neilbolt’s right arm. At the same time, she dropped to a knee to stop her backward momentum. She then did her best to hip toss him but his bulk was too much to handle. When he realized what she was trying to do, he threw a hard elbow into her ribs.

The breath went barreling out of Kate’s chest but because he had thrown the elbow, his leverage was thrown off. This time when she attempted the hip toss, it worked. And because she put everything she had into it, it worked a little too well.

Neilbolt went sailing off the porch. When he landed, he hit the bottom two stairs. He cried out in pain and tried to get back to his feet right away. He looked up at her in shock, trying to figure out what had happened. Fueled by rage and surprise, he hobbled up the stairs toward her, clearly dazed.

She faked him out with a right knee to the face as he neared the top step. When he went to dodge it, she caught the side of his head and again went to her knees. She forced his head hard into the porch while his arms and legs scrambled for purchase on the stairs. She then freed the handcuffs from the interior of her jacket and applied them with a quickness and ease that only thirty years of experience can provide.

She stepped away from Brian Neilbolt and looked down at him. He was not fighting against the cuffs; he looked rather dazed, in fact.

Kate reached for her phone with the intention of calling the cops and realized that her hand was trembling. She was pumped up, flooded with adrenaline. She realized that there was a smile on her face.

God, I’ve missed this.

Although the blow to her ribs did hurt like hell—a lot more than it would have hurt five or six years ago for sure. And had the joints in her knees always ached this way after a skirmish?

She allowed herself a moment to revel in what she had done and then managed to finally make a call to the cops. Meanwhile, Brian Neilbolt remained groggy at her feet, perhaps wondering how a woman at least twenty years older than him had managed to so thoroughly hand his ass to him.

CHAPTER FIVE

Honestly, Kate had expected a little bit of blowback about what she had done, but nothing to the degree of what she experienced when she reached the Third Precinct Station. She knew something was coming when she saw the glances from the police who passed by in the midst of their office errands. Some of the looks were of awe while others stank of a sort of leering ridicule.

Kate let it slide right off of her back. She was still too riled up from the confrontation on Neilbolt’s porch to care.

After she’d waited several minutes in the lobby, a nervous-looking officer approached her. “You’re Ms. Wise, right?” he asked.

“I am.”

A flash of recognition showed in his eyes. It was a look she had once gotten all the time when officers or agents who had only ever heard about her record met her for the first time. She missed that look.

“Chief Budd would like to speak to you.”

She was frankly quite surprised. She was hoping to speak to someone more along the lines of Deputy Commissioner Greene. While he might have been a hard ass on the phone, she knew he could be persuaded more effectively in face-to-face meetings. Chief Randall Budd, though, was a no-nonsense kind of man. She’d only ever met him on one occasion a few years ago. She barely remembered the occurrence but did remember Budd leaving an impression of someone strong-willed and strictly professional.

Still, Kate did not want to seem intimidated or at all worried. So she got up and followed the officer out of the waiting area and back through the bullpen. They passed by several desks where she got more uncertain glances before the officer led her down a hallway. In the center of the hall they came to Randall Budd’s office. The door was open, as if he had been waiting for her for quite some time.

The officer had nothing to say; once he had delivered her to Budd’s doorway, he turned on his heel and left. Kate looked into the office and saw Chief Budd waving her in.

“Come on in,” he said. “I won’t lie. I’m not happy with you, but I don’t bite. Close the door behind you, would you?”