Hill, Gerri - Angel Fire

“Nice tie, Reynolds,” Cameron said with a smirk, holding out her hand to Eric. He slapped a ten-dollar bill there. “Thank you very much,” Cameron said.

Reynolds stared at Eric disapprovingly as he walked into the room. He was followed closely by Rowan, his laptop tucked under one arm.

“Very Special Agent Ross, so good to see you again,” Reynolds said. He turned toward her. “Andrea, you’re looking well.”

She smiled at him. “Thank you.” She pointed at Tori and Sam. “This is Tori Hunter, she’s from the Dallas office. And Sam Kennedy, Dallas PD,” Andrea introduced. “This is Special Agent Reynolds.”

Reynolds nodded as he shook their hands. “Hell of an ordeal you had.”

“And apparently it’s not over,” Tori said.

Cameron stood, walking over to shake Reynolds’s hand as well. “What’s with the tie? I thought you’d loosened up a little,” she said.

“Well, it’s a business meeting,” he said. “And we have guests.”

“It’s pizza,” Cameron clarified. “And Tori and Sam are no longer guests.” She turned to Rowan. “How the hell are you?”

Rowan gave her a quick smile. “Good. I understand I’m going to get to play with your computers again.”

“So Murdock tells me,” Cameron said. She pointed at him. “We’ll go over some ground rules first.”

“You know, Jason and I are pretty good buds now,” Rowan said.

“Is that right? Have you been stalking him?”

Rowan blushed. “Well, maybe a little.”

Andrea laughed, remembering the near infatuation Rowan had with Jason, Cameron’s computer guru.

Another knock on the door signaled the arrival of the pizza and it was a whirlwind of activity as they all passed around boxes, piling their plates high. All but Sam, Andrea noticed. She took only one piece. Andrea sat down on one of the beds next to Eric. Cameron leaned against the dresser as Reynolds took the chair she’d been in earlier.

“We haven’t eaten since lunch,” Eric said around a bite.

“At least you had lunch,” Cameron said. “Oh, God,” she murmured as she bit into her piece. “That’s so good.”

Reynolds wiped his mouth with a napkin before speaking. “I understand you and Angel served together,” he said. “How well do you know him?”

“We were on the same team for a few years,” Cameron said. “He was very good. You could trust him to do his job and not screw it up.” She shrugged. “But personally, I wouldn’t say I knew him well. He kept to himself, didn’t talk a lot. He just did his job.”

“I imagine he’s older than you are.”

Cameron nodded. “Late forties now, I guess.” She glanced over at Sam. “Wouldn’t you agree?”

“Yes.”

Reynolds turned his attention to Sam. “I’m told you met with him in his cell. What was discussed?”

Sam shifted uncomfortably under Reynolds’s stare, Andrea noticed. She also noted that Sam had eaten very little of the one piece of pizza she had claimed. She didn’t know Sam at all, but she sensed a war going on inside of her. Their debriefing of her had been superficial at best. When Murdock had called to say Angel had been apprehended, they’d pretty much stopped with the questions. Angel was in custody and their job was done. That, of course, turned out to be short-lived.

“We really didn’t discuss much of anything,” Sam said to Reynolds.

“He merely requested your presence…for what then?”

“He said he wanted to make sure I’d gotten off the mountain safely,” Sam said quietly. “That’s about it.”

“Look, what does that have to do with anything?” Tori asked. “So he wanted to see her? Maybe he was feeling guilty for having abducted her in the first place.”

“Not his style,” Cameron said. “There is no guilt.”

“Did he ask you any questions? Did he ask for a favor?” Reynolds continued. “Did he mention his plans?”

At that, Sam gave a humorless laugh. “Yeah, he told me he planned to escape. Told me how he was going to do it, too. I just thought I’d keep that to myself, though. No sense in giving anyone a heads-up, right?”

Andrea and Cameron exchanged glances, then Cameron walked between Reynolds and Sam to get another piece of pizza from the table.

“Don’t patronize her, Reynolds,” Cameron mumbled as she stuffed half the piece in her mouth.

“I’m just—”

“Being a dick.” Cameron sat down next to Tori on the bed. “The latest from Murdock is that this is still a joint effort with the locals and the U.S. Marshals Service. They’ve got Angel’s picture posted all over the damn place. We all know the problem with that. They’re getting calls from everywhere. They’ll be chasing shadows all over the state,” she said. “The sheriff’s department has limited resources. I don’t think they’ll get close to finding Angel. The Marshals Service is the best at locating fugitives, or so they keep telling us,” she said with a quick grin. “But they don’t have Rowan.”

Rowan looked up as his name was spoken. His laptop was balanced on one thigh and a plate with pizza on the other.

“What do you want me to do?”

Cameron shrugged. “Simple. Find him.”

Rowan looked nervously at Reynolds. The last time they’d worked together, Cameron had Rowan hacking into systems he had no business being in. It had been a bone of contention between Reynolds and Cameron.

“By the book,” Reynolds stated.

“By whatever means necessary,” Cameron countered. “To quote Murdock,” she added. Cameron glanced back at Rowan. “Angel is not on the run. Not yet.”

“How can you be sure?” Eric asked.

“Because the point of this whole operation of his was to get three million dollars. We find where he stashed the money, we find him.”

“Provided he hasn’t already snatched it up and fled,” Tori said.

“Doubtful,” Cameron said. “There’s law enforcement crawling all over the place.

Reynolds shook his head. “I don’t agree with you,” he said. “At our briefing, we were led to believe that Angel Figueroa was a hit man. He has just killed two of our FBI agents. He killed four federal marshals. He killed two deputies. All in order to escape. No way he hangs around waiting for a chance to claim the money. I think he’s long gone from this area.”

Before Cameron could speak, Sam beat her to it.

“You’re wrong, Agent Reynolds. It was always about the money,” Sam said. “Cameron is right. Find the money, we find him.”

Reynolds narrowed his eyes at her. “So he did share some things with you after all. I suspected as much.”

It was Tori who protested this time. “Why the hell are you treating Sam as a goddamn suspect?” she demanded. “She was the one who was abducted.”

Reynolds raised his hands. “Hey, I’m simply trying to get caught up on everything,” he said. “I’ve worked with Cameron before. She tends to gloss over things if they don’t suit her.”

Cameron laughed. “Oh, now come on, Reynolds. Are you going all the way back to when you were on Collie’s team? I thought we were past that.”

Andrea leaned closer to Eric. “I thought you said he’d mellowed,” she whispered.

He grinned. “Apparently not with Cameron.”

Reynolds put his plate on the table, his gaze still on Cameron. “I hear you never came close to Angel while you were tracking him. Is that true?”

Andrea’s eyebrows rose as did Tori’s. She couldn’t imagine who Reynolds had heard that from. But the outburst she expected from Cameron never came. Instead, it was a rather lazy smile that Cameron gave him.

“I guess it depends on what you consider close,” she said. “He had half a day’s head start on us.” She shrugged. “I thought we did pretty damn good.”