“Six months,” I grind out through clenched teeth.
Grayson chokes on his spit. “You got a six-month suspension?” When I jerk up my chin, he coughs out, “How? I’ve been here all day. Other than tearing our team apart, the highest suspension was two weeks. So, why the fuck is yours twelve times that?”
I commence my reply with a shrug. “Supposedly loud noises, such as a gun firing close to someone’s ear, does more than scare them.”
Grayson is smarter than he looks. He reads my riddle in a way no one ever has—no one since Melody. “Could have been worse. I would have inched back the trigger when the gun was still in her mouth. She deserved to die after what she did.”
In sync, our eyes stray to the room at the end of the hall. No one will admit it, but we know Tobias’s body is in there being prepared for transport to his hometown of Tiburon.
I stare at the door for several sobering minutes before switching my focus back to Grayson. “Has anyone told his daughter?”
He shrugs. “I don’t know. I was told I wasn’t privy to that information.” I didn’t know you could hear a jaw tick until now. “Want to get out of here? Grab a beer or something? If I don’t blow off some steam, I’m going to shoot someone… again.”
I contemplate Grayson’s offer for all of three seconds before shaking my head. As much as I don’t want him shooting up the place, I failed to save Tobias, so the least I can do is make sure he makes it home. I did the same thing with Joey. I drove with him in the back of the ambulance from the ranch to the coroner’s office in the city. If Tobias was being driven to his final resting place like Joey, today’s trip would have been a lot longer than the two-hour one Joey and I took six years ago, but since he’s being flown home, it will be around the same amount of time.
When Grayson stands to his feet, I copy him. “Reach out when you’re back? Or better yet, come find me. They may have dismantled our team, but we’ll always have each other’s back.” When I lift my chin, he slaps my shoulder twice before pulling me in for a man-hug. “And call your girl. This shit has gone on long enough.”
Stealing my chance to reply, it’s way too late to mend that bridge, he tousles my hair before spinning on his heels and stalking down the corridor. My lips curl into an ill-timed grin when his exit occurs with his middle fingers being projected at the office his father, and several executive members of the Bureau remain.
I stop watching his dramatic exit when my name is called. When I crank my neck, the agent in charge of Tobias’s transportation asks if I’m ready to leave. Nodding, I slip the piece of paper Tobias handed me into the pocket of my trousers before following the agent’s solemn walk.
As suspected, Tobias’s body is in the room Grayson and I were staring at. He’s covered by the same plain white sheet the first responders covered Joey with, but one of his arms isn’t lifelessly flopped over the edge of the gurney. Thank God. I don’t think I could have handled seeing that image for the third time in my life. The first was Mr. Gregg’s.
“Is he going straight to a funeral home?”
The unnamed agent shakes his head. “A coroner from San Francisco will meet the transport team at Tiburon. Although he was killed on duty, we need the exact cause of death cited on his death certificate.”
“His carotid artery was severed.” Shock resonates in my tone. I’m not a medic, but the cause of Tobias’s death is as obvious as the sun hanging in the sky.
The agent pulls an agreeing face. “I’m aware of that, but if we want Agent Fedora to spend the remainder of her life in jail, we need to ensure the defense can’t come back with anything.”
“What could they possibly come back with?” I’m shouting, and it’s unacceptable, but I’m not as good at reeling in my anger as I was once. It takes practice, and I’ve had no one to practice on for a very long time.
My attitude takes a step back when the agent replies, “They could say his death was a result of a heart attack, not the stab wound to his throat. That he bled out quicker because of the blood-thinning medication he was on. Or they could even go as far as saying he died because the tumors in his lungs grew unmanageable, and his death just happened to correlate with the events of last night.”
“He had lung cancer?” I sound shocked. Justly so. Despite being double the age of every man in his team, Tobias was the fittest. “Did his daughter know?”
The agent hangs a clipboard onto the end of Tobias’s gurney before moving to wash his hands in a stainless steel sink on our right. “His daughter?”
“Izzy…” I pause before correcting, “Isabelle.”
He yanks two towelettes out of the dispenser next to the sink, dries his hands, then dumps the napkins into the bin. “There’s no mention of a daughter in any of his files. Tobias was never married.” He checks the clipboard again to ensure he’s not missing anything before disclosing, “He moved his father into his property not long after he joined the Bureau. He passed away the beginning of last year.”
“Then who’s cited as his next of kin?”
He flips over two pages on the clipboard before lifting his eyes to me. “A detective in Ravenshoe. Regina W—”
“Wamba?” I interrupt. That was the only name other than Isabelle that Tobias mentioned on repeat. “He must not have updated his information because he has a daughter…” I stop when I realize I could be spilling secrets that aren’t mine to share. If Tobias kept Isabelle’s identity on the down-low, he did it for a reason, much like Mr. Gregg kept Melody’s hidden. “Unless I was mistaken. Perhaps she was his girlfriend?” I pull on the collar of my shirt, acting as if I just dumped myself in a sticky situation. “Awkward.”
“Indeed,” the agent agrees, laughing.
When he commences pushing the gurney toward the exit at the back of the holding room, a Ziplock bag full of Tobias’s personal belongings slides down the sheet. They’re items that were found on Tobias and in the drawer he kept locked at headquarters. The information inside could be invaluable to someone seeking his true identity.
“Do you want me to hold them for you?” I offer, my voice friendly.
Once again, my smaller build and boyish features work in my favor. “That will be great. Thank you.”
FOR THE TWO-HOUR flight from New Mexico to a small airstrip in Tiburon, I search for clues about Tobias’s daughter in his belongings. Not a single shred of evidence about his private life is found. Not one. There are no pictures. No birthdates registered in his cell phone. Nothing. All I have is the sequence of numbers he handed me.
