Page 91 of The Turning of the Tables

Are you home? How are you feeling?It was Elliot.

I also had an earlier one from Quincy.Did they let you out today?

And one from Hart.Let me know if you need anything. Especially bakery.

I started with Quincy.

They did. Tired, but glad to be home. Are you all better yet?

Yes!came back almost immediately.Maza is back, too, but he’s not allowed back on the case because it’s now too personal. So it’s Maginot.

Did you run the viral on the last victim?I asked her, nodding to Noah as he delivered my toast. He’d made two slices, probably because that was one banana’s worth. He cocked his head at me.

“Quincy,” I told him, gesturing with the phone.

“Eat your toast,” he replied, but then went back to going through the movies, looking for something we could watch.

All three of them, Quincy replied to my question about DNA.All three matched.

Three?

The guy the killer turned into an Arcanabomb, a woman they found on a bench at Byrd Park, and a guy who was pulled out of the water treatment plant last week.

The WHAT?That last one was horrifying to imagine.

Yeah. That was almost really bad. The killer threw the body into one of the reservoir lakes. They have alarms for things like that, though, and nobody ended up with bad water. Caused a massive freakout at city hall.

I couldn’t even imagine. It would have been catastrophic if it had worked.Holy shit, I sent back, then took another bite of my toast. It tasted really good, and my stomach growled even as I ate it.

Right? They got him on camera, though.

They have an ID?

No. He wore a balaclava. But we have height, build, weight, etc.

It wasn’t as good as an ID, but it was better than the approximations we’d had to make based on shoe prints.Better than where we were,I sent back.

Maginot is hopeful. Especially since we haven’t had any since.

That we know about, I warned her.

Right.

The woman was just on a bench?

She was also rigged with a bomb, but it rained and nobody was there when she went. A neighbor heard, looked out, then called.

Lucky,I sent, then grimaced at the thought that a woman’s body exploding on a bench alone was ‘lucky’ in any sense of the word.

Yeah, Quincy agreed.I have a mountain of paperwork to catch up on—but I’m SO GLAD YOU’RE HOME.She left the question of when I’d be coming back unsaid.I hope to see you soon, she sent.

Ditto, I replied, although the idea of going back to work or even seeing anyone other than Noah was mildly terrifying. But I probably had to.

At least if I wanted to keep my job.

I’d deal with whatever the policy on that was in the morning.

I ate some more of my toast and tried to decide what to send back to Hart.