Page 11 of Wrong Door

When they reached the precinct, Pruitt set them up in a small conference room at the rear of the building. It was a cramped but functional space with a table, a whiteboard, and no windows. She pulled the Ostroff file and set her own laptop down to start adding to what would become the Hale file. Since then, they had been working and studying it all as the framework of the case began to take shape.

As he was reading about a review of one of Ostroff’s exhibits from three years ago, Miles started to feel overwhelmed. He slid back from the table and told Vic he needed some air. She nodded, barely even looking up from her own work. Miles was thankful for this, as he was well aware that it was the same excuse he’d used back at the flower shop.

The side exit door of Pruitt's precinct let out onto a narrow alley between the building and a neighboring parking structure. Miles had discovered it by accident an hour ago when he was looking for the men's room. It was quiet out here and dim, the alley too tight for through traffic, and the only light came from a fixture above the door and the ambient glow of the street at either end. It was warm enough that his jacket felt unnecessary, but he kept it on.

He leaned his shoulder against the brick and took his phone out of his pocket. He then pulled up Sarah's contact and hit FaceTime.

She picked up on the third ring. She was in her apartment, sitting at the kitchen table with a cup of something in front of her. Her hair was down and she looked slightly tired. There was a flatness around her eyes that softened when she saw him on the screen.

"Hey," she said.

"Hey. Bad time?"

"No, I was just sitting here thinking about calling you, actually." She smiled to let him know she meant it. "How's Savannah?"

"Warm. Complicated." He gave her the condensed version after letting out a soft sigh: Nadia Ostroff in her studio, Desmond Hale in his flower shop, the chromium compound working its way through two very different delivery mechanisms, both of them patient and deliberate. He told her about the container with the wrong handwriting on the label, about the floral foam soaking tray, and about the metallic smell that had started to irritate his eyes by the time he stepped outside. As he figured, speaking it out loud did seem to help a bit. The entire time, Sarah listened without interrupting, nodding and saying things like “My God,” or “Yikes” when appropriate. And Sarah did seem to be the only serious agent he knew who could get away with a yikes here and there.

"Two vics already," she said, when he was done. "And you think there are more in the pipeline?"

"Almost certainly. There always are with these creeps. The amount of groundwork he did on these two, he's not improvising. He knows exactly where he's going."

Sarah nodded slowly, turning her cup in her hands. "What else?"

"Well, we’re working with a detective named Pruitt. She’s very good at what she does, sort of no nonsense, but giving us our room. We've got a conference room in the back of her precinct and about fifty pages of background on the first two victims to go through—and counting. Friends, neighbors, customers, delivery drivers. It's going to be a long couple of days."

“Send me some of it and I can see if the taskforce can take some of that crap off your shoulders.”

“Are you sure?”

“Absolutely. Now…I do have something to tell you." She looked a little nervous as she bit back the beginnings of what seemed to be an uncertain smile.

"Okay. What’s up?"

"Hayes called me today. He wants me to be the lead on one of the task force groups. One of the discipleship-identification units."

Miles was quiet for a moment. He could see her watching the screen for his reaction, not anxious exactly, but attentive.

"That's a significant offer," he said. “And maybe why you’re so sure about me sending over this info.”

“Exactly. And yes, it is a very significant offer." She said it straightforwardly, not falsely modest, not overselling it. "I'd be running my own team. Real authority, real scope. It's the kind of thing you don't turn down if you want to move."

"Then you shouldn't turn it down."

"I’m pretty sure I’m going to take it. But it means a lot less overlap with you." She looked at him directly through the screen, waiting for his reaction. "We'd be working different aspects of the same investigation but not really working together day to day. And with the travel both of us do already, we'd see each other a fair amount less than we do now."

"That's the job, I guess," he said.

It was a very passive statement, but he recognized a small, disreputable sense of relief surface before he could catch it. If she was leading her own unit and the natural rhythm of their work pulled them apart, some of the pressure he'd been carrying might ease on its own. Some of the guilt he felt about his interest in her might find less surface to grip.

He was aware of how that reflected on him but wasn’t ready to analyze it just yet.

He was also aware, looking at her on the small screen in the dim alley outside a Savannah precinct, that the idea of seeing her less produced something that had nothing to do with relief. It sat adjacent to it and felt entirely different. He truly did care for her and the idea of seeing her less hurt more than he wanted to admit.

"You should do it," he said. "Seriously. You've been the most precise analyst on the task force since it started. Hayes knows that, and I’ve sure as hell seen it.”

She studied him for a moment, and her expression made him wonder if she was a little hurt that he wasn’t more affected. "You're sure?"

"I'm sure."