Leslie Parrish - Pitch Black

“Can you come down to the prison to retrieve this?” he asked. “Since it is addressed to you, the prison wants to release it to you directly.”

“I don’t know…”

“I will understand if you can’t. Jimmy was a rather unlikable person. Just because he fixated on you as an ally doesn’t mean you have any obligation to him now that he’s gone.”

Rather than making her feel better, the attorney’s words made her feel worse. As if she owed Jimmy something. Hell, maybe she did. She just didn’t know. “I’ll try. Maybe later today?”

“Very well,” he said. “You should call and let the prison know you’re coming, since it’s a Sunday and there aren’t a lot of administrative people here.”

“All right. Thank you, Mr. Carter,” she said, hanging up.

The officer, who had been watching her closely, asked, “Everything okay, miss?”

She rubbed her temple. “I’m not sure.”

Not at all sure. One thing she did know: She wanted Alec’s opinion. She quickly dialed his number, but got only his voice mail. She left him a detailed message about what had happened, asking him to call back.

“Damn it,” she muttered as soon as she’d hung up, heading to the waiting room to think things over. Sam wanted to read Jimmy’s letters. More so with every passing minute. The wording had been too precise to be completely coincidental. Whoever Jimmy’s contacts were on the inside of that prison, they seemed to actually be aware of what was happening out here.

Maybe because one of them had contact with the Professor? Was it possible?

It could be.

Alec and the others could be another couple of hours. She was doing nothing but worrying in a hospital waiting room. Rather than wasting time with the trip when they returned, she should go and be back here with the documents before their arrival.

But she couldn’t. She certainly wasn’t stupid enough to leave by herself, and didn’t have a car to do so, anyway.

“Hey, ma’am, just wanted to let you know I’m heading out of here,” a voice said. “Officer Gilbert will stay in position at your friend’s door until the FBI agents return.”

Seeing the detective, to whom she had been briefly introduced earlier, Sam had a sudden thought. “Are you still on duty, or are you going home?”

“Gonna be working all day. Never-ending paperwork.”

She hesitated, not wanting to put him out. Then, knowing it could be important, she bit the bullet and asked, “Is there any chance you could give me a ride somewhere?”

To everyone’s surprise, just as they reached the college, Wyatt called Jackie Stokes and told them he was on his way. No explanation about where he’d been, no questions about the case, just a few terse words. He was in town and would come straight to the campus to meet them. And he wanted the team all together when he did so.

He obviously had been very close. They had barely opened the boxes of file folders, where the elderly professor in charge said the archived registration forms and book sale receipts should be, when Wyatt showed up.

He had also obviously not been kidding about everyone being together, because he was not alone. As their boss walked into the empty lecture hall they were using, Brandon Cole walked beside him. Their somber expressions said this was bad. Very bad.

Brandon’s hair was disheveled, and he wore faded jeans and an MIT sweatshirt, as though he’d yanked on the first thing he could find. His eyes were suspiciously bright, his shoulders slumped.

Wyatt was in even worse shape. The man’s white dress shirt was wrinkled, untucked, and smeared with dirt. His usually crisp pants actually had a tear, and his shoes were caked with mud.

Worst of all was his demeanor. His boss seemed to have aged a decade since last night. Dark circles ringed his eyes, and his stubbled face was gouged with both anger and grief.

This isn’t just bad.

Rising to ask what had happened, Alec heard his cell phone ring. He glanced at it, saw Sam’s name, but, knowing she was safe at the hospital, didn’t answer. He quickly punched the power button, cutting the noise midring. Because the tension on Wyatt Blackstone’s face said he had something to say and that he wanted to say it only once.

“Oh, no,” he whispered under his breath, suddenly having an awful suspicion.

Wyatt confirmed that suspicion with four baldly spoken words.

“Lily Fletcher is dead.”

Jackie let out a shocked cry; Mulrooney lowered himself onto the seat he’d just vacated. Taggert snapped an obscenity, stalked to a corner of the room, and slammed his palm against the wall.

Alec just stood there. This was painful for him, even after knowing Lily for only a week. For the rest of the team, who had worked with her day in and day out for months? With what he’d gone through in Atlanta, he knew they were in for an awful time.

Wyatt gave everyone a minute to regain focus; then he explained. Since Alec had known about the mission with the other CAT, he didn’t need as much backstory as the others. But when it came to what, exactly, had happened last night, he was all ears.

“Why the fuck wasn’t she protected?” Taggert asked after Wyatt told them about the sting.

“She was supposed to be. The agent in charge assured me she would stay in the surveillance van. Unfortunately, they were all tricked.”

“By?” Alec asked.

“The unsub hired a vagrant to scope out the house while he watched from a few streets away. When he realized it was a trap, he tried to flee the scene. Apparently his accomplice was too smart for him, anticipated a setup of his own, and stole the car keys so he couldn’t be left behind.”

“So the real target panicked,” Brandon said, his voice barely more than a whisper. Having shared an office with Lily, he had probably been the closest to her. “He had no other means of escape.”

And then he spotted the FBI van nearby.

“Apparently Lily and the surveillance specialist assumed everything was under control, the suspect in custody,” Wyatt said. “The other agent stepped out of the van and was shot down immediately.”

“And Lily?” Jackie asked, her voice tremulous and her eyes full of tears. The first time he’d ever seen any sign of weakness in the strong woman. Considering the sheer awfulness of it, he couldn’t blame her.

Wyatt didn’t answer directly. “The agent in charge called me at one o’clock this morning, just as I got back to D.C.” His eyes gleamed with suppressed rage. “Why he waited three hours to call me, I don’t know. I caught a chopper ride down to Williamsburg. They had put out an APB on the van.”

“ And Lily? ” Jackie repeated, sounding agonized at having to wait for the rest of it.

Wyatt’s head dropped forward. His voice low, he told them the rest. “The van was spotted on Route 17, between Newport News and Yorktown a couple of hours after the ambush, driving erratically, weaving in and out of traffic. Police pursued, but the vehicle crashed off the Route 17 bridge into the York River, right at the mouth of the bay.”

Good God. Alec had driven that bridge when stationed in Richmond. It was pretty damn high.

“They were pulling the van up when I hit town,” Wyatt explained.

“Was she… Had she drowned?” Jackie asked.

“They still hadn’t found either body by the time I left. The back door was open; both of them must have washed out. They’re still looking in the river, but they might have been swept into the Chesapeake.” His shoulders slumped and he shook his head, as if processing this whole thing for himself for the first time. “I thought I should fly up here and let you all know what happened before you heard it from someone else.”