“Agent Monroe!” O’Shea called through the partially ajar front door.
“In here,” he returned, though his gaze had drifted sideways to the narrow strip of wall between the front door and light switches where a key rack hung. Carter’s keys were on the middle peg, and above it, taped to the wall was a folded-over note with Lincoln’s name written on the front in horribly familiar script.
O’Shea appeared in the open doorway.
“Wait!” Lincoln lifted a hand, fingers spread, in the universal sign for STOP. His eyes, however, remained locked on the note even as phantom flames licked his skin. “Come around to the back door.”
Jo’s face materialized over O’Shea’s shoulder. “Why?”
“This is a crime scene.”
Lincoln withdrew his phone and snapped pictures of the note and scene, then pocketed the device. He knelt and tugged a glove from the pocket of Carter’s discarded coat. Because Carter was a good agent. Always prepared. His right hand gloved, Lincoln carefully stepped through the foyer and peeled the note off the wall.
It was a diagnosis for Special Agent Carter Warren: Fear of never being good enough.
Lincoln’s legs were gonna go. Possibly also his stomach. Surely his skin, burned right off by flames. He had to get out of the path of evidence. Stumbling, he lurched for the stairs and barely saved the note, held aloft, as he collapsed gracelessly on the lower steps. He lifted his other hand, covering his mouth and muffling the strangled cry that was on the verge of breaking loose.
Jo, gloved and cautious, appeared from around the office wall and made her way over to him. “Lincoln, what’s going on?”
“He’s got him.” He held the note out to her, his hand shaking much like Carter’s had earlier in the library. She took the note from him, cursing, and as Lincoln clasped his hands in front of him, sunlight streamed in through the glass transom above the door, reflecting off the braided silver of his ring and momentarily blinding him. And opening his eyes, all the way. One of a pair that Carter had picked out, for them. This was very real. He stared up at Jo and Mark and let the threatening tears fall. “Dr. Fear has my husband.”
Eighteen
Rapid-fire keystrokes and mumbled voices penetrated the fog that had settled over Lincoln since last night, that had grown heavier as hopelessness had ballooned by the hour. After calling in to Beverley and Kirk and finding Carter’s phone stashed in Lincoln’s guitar case of all places, they’d left the house for ERT to process—a crime scene now—and retreated to their temporary command at the hospital. Lincoln hadn’t wanted to be there, hadn’t wanted to be at the library or lab either. By two in the morning, his snapping and pacing had led Jo to threaten him with handcuffs if he “didn’t sit his scrawny ass down in a chair and sleep for an hour.” Judging by the crusties he was fighting to open his eyes, he’d been out for more than just one. He shifted in the chair, vaguely aware of the other agents moving around him, more aware of the one who was missing. He forced his eyelids open, blinking rapidly to clear the fog. Jo stood across the room next to O’Shea, who was breathing down the neck of some poor agent behind a computer.
“What time is it?” he asked, and half a dozen pairs of eyes swung to him.
“Almost six,” O’Shea answered.
Jo picked something up off the desk—coffee, thank fuck—and brought it over to him. The bitter taste sent fresh misery tumbling through him, missing Carter’s perfectly brewed coffee from home, missing the biscuits and muffins that Carter brought him with Ginger’s bitter coffee.
“Any news?” he asked.
“ERT finished up around three.”
“Anything? Gray hairs? DNA on the mug?”
She shook her head. “Nothing on the mug. Just dark brown for the hair.”
“Probably Carter’s. Fuck.” He gulped another swallow and slumped in the chair. He wanted to rocket out of it, but if he did that, he’d start pacing afresh, and Jo would threaten to handcuff him again.
“We’re testing to be sure,” she said.
“And the phone?”
“Cyber’s about to crack it.” She tilted her head toward where O’Shea now knelt beside Agent Reyes at the computer. “Or maybe she already did.” Jo stretched out a hand for Lincoln. “Upsy-daisy.”
He slid his hand into hers and let her haul him up, back to the world of the living. “Did you bring in Larry?”
Beverley had made that call; Lincoln had agreed. Larry was their prime suspect. An agent’s life—Carter’s life—was on the line, as well as Barry’s and Trudy’s. Lincoln would do anything to get them all back alive.
“We can’t find him.”
“Which means Carter was right.” He’d disappeared hours after confronting Larry. That couldn’t be ignored, couldn’t be a coincidence.
“I can see it all, the way you laid out the evidence, but I’m not sure I buy it.”
“The way Carter laid it out to me.” Carter had put it together, and Lincoln hadn’t listened. As much as Carter had been trying to find evidence to prove his case, Lincoln had been unconsciously looking for evidence to disprove him. “And you said he fit the profile.”
