Melina grabbed almond milk from the fridge and poured a small amount into an oversize UT mug. The handle was a little too big for her hands, but the twenty-ounce capacity saved her return trips. She dug a frozen bagel out of the freezer and put it in the toaster oven. Ten minutes at 350 degrees promised what would taste like an almost freshly baked bagel.
A scratching sound at her back door had her turning to see a cat peering under the edge of her blinds. She retrieved a can of tuna fish from the cupboard and tried not to get the contents on her hands as she placed it onto a clean plate.
She unlocked the patio door secured with three locks her father had installed. She tiptoed barefoot toward the patio table, where the small calico cat patiently waited for her daily meal.
“It’s the good stuff, Wild Kitty,” Melina said. “I promise no more generic brands of tuna.” She had learned that lesson when the cat had taken one sniff and pushed the plate off the table. Snob.
The cat now took a nibble, as if testing. Satisfied, she began to eat, growling as she bit into large chunks of tuna.
How did the saying go? “Dogs have masters and cats have staff.” She carefully ran her hand down the cat’s back once or twice, knowing any more displays of affection would not be appreciated.
“Eat up, kid. See you tomorrow.”
The cat did not even look up. Melina retrieved yesterday’s dish and went back inside and set the plate in the dishwasher. She filled her mug to the brim with coffee and headed toward the shower. She switched on the tap and, as it heated, sat on the side of her bed and read emails on her phone.
Agent Jackson had sent her a text last night, demanding an early-morning meeting. Shit. This was day seven since her encounter, and she had no idea what Jackson had planned for her next.
She pressed the hot mug to the side of her head.
Melina rose, dug a clean white shirt and black pants from her closet. The good thing about desk duty was that she had time to go to the dry cleaner and linger in the grocery store. It was nice to have a stocked kitchen and a dresser full of clean clothes. The extra workouts had been a bonus, too.
If her schedule got any more consistent, she was going to go insane.
She shrugged off the T-shirt and stepped into the shower. Carefully, she dunked her head under the spray while avoiding the sensitive spots.
Stupid stunt. Juvenile. Dangerous. Agent Jackson’s words rattled in her head, until finally she tuned out the sound of his voice.
She had screwed up.
Time to move on.
He would get over it.
Out of the shower, she gently dried off her thick hair, wrapped herself in a towel, and wound a second towel around her head. It smelled of lavender, and she liked it better than the lemon scent.
“Oh, God.” She caught herself before she shifted to a critique of cinnamon bagels versus poppy seed. “I’m already turning soft.”
Time to get dressed and face the music. Agent Jackson was still aloof. When he passed her office, he sometimes stopped and shook his head, but he did not bother to engage.
As she buttered her poppy seed bagel, her thoughts shifted to her attacker.
Who the hell was this guy? His little horror-show-on-wheels had not been thrown together on a whim. It had been the fulfillment of years of fantasy and countless hours of work. The slight smell of bleach she had detected still made the hair on the back of her neck stand up.
She walked to the back window and noted that Wild Kitty had vanished. She had places to go, mice to kill. The $1.29 of tuna was gone.
As she turned from the window, her thoughts went to the girls who worked the streets around the Mission. During Melina’s very predictable lunch hours this week, she had visited Sarah. There had been no sign of the two missing girls nor of the white van modified to inflict pain.
“Where the hell are you?” she muttered to herself.
She filled a travel mug with the remainder of her coffee, grabbed her backpack, and headed out the front door. As she twisted her key in the dead bolt, a man called out to her. It was her neighbor Travis. Or Trey. Some name that ended in s. Or y.
“Hello, there!” he shouted.
Melina tightened her hand on her backpack’s strap and turned to face the man who lived on the other end of her unit. In his late fifties, he had told Melina his life history. A resident in the complex for ten years. Former schoolteacher. Was married but divorced for the last six years.
“Melina!”
“Yes.” Melina could hear her mother’s voice, dipped in its southern charm, warning her to be nice. “What can I do for you?”
“Have you seen my cat, Simba?”
“Simba?”
“She’s calico and has a white patch on her chest.”
Ah, so Wild Kitty was not as orphaned as she pretended. Her fat cheeks should have been the dead giveaway. “I saw her this morning.”
“And she seemed fine?”
“Yes, sir.”
“She didn’t come in last night. When the weather gets warm, it’s hard to keep her inside.”
“She looked like she could take care of herself.”
Travis or Trey held up a ringed pink collar with a heart-shaped name tag jingling from the front. “She slipped her collar again.”
“Maybe she doesn’t like pink.”
“What?”
“Never mind.”
“She’s a little too independent for her own good,” he said. “I’m afraid a wild animal is going to hurt her. If you see her, bring her home to me. I’ve a bag of dried kibbles for her.”
“I’ll let her know.”
When Melina reached her car, she noticed a trio of cigarette butts. They were behind her car and she imagined someone leaning against her bumper, staring toward her unit. There was a faint hint of pink lipstick on each filtered edge. The guy next door dated a lot of women. Maybe one had been out here waiting for him to return from his bartending shift.
She leaned against her trunk, staring toward the line of town houses. It took time to smoke three cigarettes. Fifteen or twenty minutes if rushing, longer if killing time. “So, who’s being watched?”
Frowning, she slid behind the wheel of her car. The engine fired, and she backed out of the spot and headed toward the office. At least the white-van driver had not been wearing pink lipstick.
Fifteen minutes later, Melina arrived at the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation’s offices on R. S. Gass Boulevard. The road into the complex wound over a lush, rolling landscape past modern buildings that contained TBI’s Nashville offices. The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation was the state’s primary criminal investigative agency. Agents investigated crimes related to drugs, corruption, organized crime, terrorism, and fraud. Down the road was another building that housed the state medical examiner’s office.
Juxtaposing the modern buildings was a third building. The Freemasons had built the colonial revival stone structure circa 1915 to house their widows, orphans, and elderly. Later incarnations included a tuberculosis home and a foster home for boys.
She parked, showed her badge at the front desk, and made her way to her office. She dumped her backpack in her chair and glanced at her clean desk. She missed the chaos of reports and files piled up and around her desk, as well as the dust on shelves filled with well-worn technical manuals and the odd certificate of merit. This organization stuff had to stop.
A sharp knock on her door had her looking up. Her boss, Carter Jackson, filled the doorframe. A full, dark mustache matched thick hair threaded with silver at the temples. He was wearing his customary charcoal-gray suit, light-blue shirt, and red tie, but he never looked fully comfortable in it. She imagined when he got home at night, the tie was the first to go.
He was nearly forty and divorced and had made a name for himself a decade ago when he had broken up a nasty human trafficking and drug ring. For his efforts, he had been awarded a promotion, which came with a desk job. He never made a comment about leaving the streets, but she knew he missed the work.
“Shepard, you were born with a lucky horseshoe up your ass.” Jackson’s gruff comment was a welcome change from the stony silence.
“Only one?”
“That knife you stuck into your attacker delivered a nice DNA sample. I had the DNA testing fast tracked.”
She had detailed all her recollections of the van’s interior. Jackson might have been pissed at her reckless actions, but he had been listening. “Really?”
“I was on the phone late last night with the head of an FBI profiling unit. He’s coming out here to investigate the case himself.”
The FBI didn’t investigate cases unless there was good cause. “FBI interaction sounds great, sir.”
“Agent Ramsey will be here in about an hour.”
“That soon?”
“He just called me from the Nashville airport.”
“Of course.” She was not fond of FBI intervention, but on the bright side, she was not going to be confined to the bowels of TBI for the remainder of her career.
As if he’d read her thoughts, he said, “Like I said, lucky horseshoe. You should buy a lottery ticket.”
For the last seven days, all he could think about was Ms. Perky Breasts. He pictured her stripped naked and begging him for mercy as her blood flowed freely onto the floor of his van.
He slowly unwrapped the bandage from around his thigh and inspected the ten neat stitches. He had sewn up the wound himself, knowing the cops were looking not only for his van but also for a man with a leg injury.