Page 169 of Lau Ahi
You could feel how the air had shifted in the room when I was brought into the FBI offices that had been my second home away from home. As soon as I arrived I’d been whisked directly to Ori. I almost didn’t get in the car with the agent he sent until he got on a video call and demanded Ibring my ass on. Well, he knew I wasn’t going to stand for him talking to me like that so I got my ass in the car to curse his existence in person.
We both ended up getting what we wanted.
Now every agent was waiting around stuffed in one of the conference rooms to hear what the next steps were.
DNA had come back and the sketch drawn off of it looked dangerously similar to Christopher Clancy. Somehow strings had been pulled and a warrant issued for his arrest. I could only imagine that Natalie’s father had something to do with it.
I directed the question with a lowered voice toward both Alec and Ori since I didn’t know what they needed me here for.
“You’re going to help us catch whoever this is.”
Ori hadn’t bothered to answer probably still pouting about how I’d told him off when I got here but I didn’t care. Alec didn’t have an issue with speaking to me so I directed my next question to him. “So, like talking with him—”
“Absolutely the fuck not.”
His voice was heavy. Resolute. Final.
He had me fucked up.
“Who do you think you’re speaking to like that?” My voice was still low not wanting to alert anyone to the discourse on our side of the table but that didn’t mean I wasn’t going to gather him up about his disrespect.
“You think I’m going to let—”
I choked on the words I wanted to say in order to keep the veneer of decorum. “Let? I wasn’t sure that I’d agreed for you to be my master when I agreed to work on this case with you. You all came to me.”
“And you don’t know what you’re getting yourself into. These people don’t have shit to lose. We bring them in or hunt them down and you think they’re going to care that you’re a woman? This piece of shit killed a girl and tried to eat part of her. Her life was ended violently. You think either of us want you to be the next dead body that we have to identify at the morgue?” His voice almost rose to a level high enough to be considered a normal range.
“O—”
“Nah, ‘cause you’re going to sit here and say I’m being too hard on her ass when I’m not. There’s a vast difference between studying this shit in the aftermath and having to watch it unfold. The smell of blood and the coldness of a body when you’re too fucking late to do shit to save them. Forgive me for not wanting that to be your fate.”
“I’m more than capable of handling myself. I never said anything about putting myself in danger. And frankly, if you can’t protect me in a room with a serial killer what bloody good are you?”
“She has a point, Nakoa.”
Our heads all snapped up realizing that we’d apparently begun to speak much louder than we’d realized. Our eyes fell onDirector Cochran and I was completely embarrassed. I thought to offer apologies but she spoke before I could.
“As it stands you and Alec are going to interview the kid since you’ve already established contact with him.”
“They couldn’t get anything the first time. What makes you think that they’ll be more successful now?” Anderson spoke up and even I felt like he was whining, which was completely unprofessional.
“I normally don’t like having my decisions questioned but since you felt the need to do it—“
“I didn’t mean—“
“Of course you did. Now, as I was saying the reason they’re going to be sent in is because they had contact. They might rile him. Play bad cop and then have someone else come in and smooth things over. You see how that works, Anderson?” She stood in front of the room waiting on Anderson to open his mouth again. Something I was sure he was regretting.
“Yes, Director, I do.” His face was tight and I no longer felt as embarrassed since someone else was the target of the room’s attention.
“Now that I’m done being interrupted, Dr. Avery, I need you to observe the interview. Study his body language if you don’t mind. I know you’ll see nervousness or stress but I have a feeling you will be able to parse out the difference between nerves and guilt.”
I nodded bolstered by her confidence and hoping I would prove worthy of it.
“Everyone else we need to go back through his social media accounts and see if there is anything else we’ve missed. We have less than sixteen minutes before he gets here. Everyone, get your shit together so that we can wrap this case up. If he’s guilty, he deserves everything coming to him.”
I did as I was told and stayed behind the glass partition, observing. I knew that I was going to have to break the rules soon because Ori wasn’t going to get anywhere with the man in front of him. This man was all too eager to test Ori, to prove that he was the most macho in the room and the mere presence of the two men who were very obvious at the top of the man food chain meant that he would continue to play around with them and not provide any information.
“I need to go in there.”
