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Delgado kept his eyes on her and calculated. Trades like this happened all the time. He even knew of cases where the Bureau let a killer walk in return for information deemed more important. And this—Bailey Stone, the target of his task force.
And Riley Wolfe.
Delgado was not actually salivating. But he wanted this to be real, wanted it badly. And because he wanted it so much, he thought it through again. A big risk; he knew nothing about this woman. But the payoff . . . he decided it was worth it. “All right,” he said. “You walk.”
“Super,” she said.
“How do I get Riley Wolfe?”
“Simple,” she said. “You find his mother.”
Delgado felt a surge of disappointment, but his face didn’t move. He’d spent the last few weeks trying to fi
nd Wolfe’s mother, with no success. But he knew better than to give any information at all away, even by a slight change of expression, if he didn’t think it mattered. “Why would I do that?” he said.
She shrugged. “Sooner or later, he turns up to see her,” she said. “Always. And he sits there, holds her hand, and he tells her stuff.”
“What kind of stuff?”
“Aw, you know. Where he’s been, what he’s doing, all that shit,” she said. “It’s like he updates her on his whole life.” She snorted. “I mean, she can’t hear him, right? She got no brain activity at all for like twenty years now. But what the fuck. He tells her.” Delgado said nothing. “Come on, Special Agent. What the fuck, it’s a gimme here. You bug the room, you hear Wolfe tell you how to find Stone, and then you grab him on the way out. Huh?”
Delgado’s heart was pounding so loudly he was sure she could hear it. But his face stayed impassive. He studied her face for another minute. Finally, he reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out his phone. “All right,” he said. “You’ve got a deal.”
* * *
—
Delgado hurried back to the office, more excited than he’d been in a long time. He had a name, and the name of the extended-care facility, and that meant he had Riley Wolfe. And of course, the task force would have Bailey Stone.
There were plenty of reasons to be skeptical, and Delgado would normally lean toward believing them. But this time, he believed Betty. Not that he would ever really trust somebody like Betty. But Delgado trusted his instincts, and this just felt right.
And so he rushed back to the office to get right on it. He hurried in the door, making a beeline for his computer. But three steps in, he was stopped by a shout from the far side of the office.
“Hey! You got my lunch?”
Rosemond. Delgado lurched to a halt. He’d forgotten all about food. But then he smiled and turned to face her.
“No,” he said. “But I got dessert.”
23
Benny was not aware that his hands were twisting and untwisting, together and separately. He was fidgeting because he was nervous. That was something he did not have a lot of practice at, so he wasn’t very good at it. He was sweating, too, the kind of sweat that has nothing to do with being either hot or physically active. It was being near this woman. She set him on edge. More than that, she scared the shit out of him. Not many things did. Benny was no powder puff. He was a very tough guy, and he had come up in the world a long-ass way by proving it.
But this woman—Benny had seen her in action. It was the scariest thing he’d ever seen. And he had a very strong feeling he was not quite tough enough to survive her. And that made him nervous.
And that was a bad thing. You did not go into face time with Patrick Boniface nervous. You say the wrong thing because you’re off your game, the consequences were severe. In fact, the consequences were this woman. She didn’t say anything—not a fucking word so far—and she didn’t really do anything you could call scary. And she mostly kept the good side of her face toward Benny, which was a relief, because the other side of that face was a fucking nightmare. It looked like it had melted or something.
But that wasn’t it, either. Benny had seen plenty of people with faces fucked up by wars and fires and diseases and who the fuck knows what else. With this woman, the face was just a small part of what made her so freaking scary. The rest of it? It was tough to put your finger on what the rest of it was. It was maybe just her, something you couldn’t name but knew was too much for you. Something on an animal level of awareness, maybe from scent or ESP or who the fuck knows what, whatever it was that makes wild animals know they’re in over their head.
Whatever it was, she just looked at you, and you could almost picture the sort of shit she wanted to do to you, and how much she’d enjoy doing it. And since he’d seen her do it, and enjoy it—well, shit. That look put all the reflexes in high gear, got your glands to start squirting adrenaline, made the sweat jump out of your pores.
So being alone with her made Benny very fucking edgy. Even as she led him through this passage carved out of rock, where the temperature was always a steady sixty-two degrees, the sweat had soaked his shirt. She didn’t say a word, just led him on. Once he saw her glance briefly at his hands and smile. That’s when he became aware that he was fidgeting like a kid caught shoplifting.
He stopped doing the squirmy-wiggly thing with his hands. But he was still a complete mental case by the time they got to the office door. She looked at him, and he froze. But she just put a hand on Benny’s chest, pushed him back, and opened the door, closing it in his face without a word after she stepped through.
Benny took the moment to compose himself. Close the eyes, deep breaths, in through the nose, out through the mouth. Three of them and he was a lot calmer. It was a technique he’d learned from an old Green Beanie when they were mercs together in Zaire. It worked. By the time the door opened again, he was a little calmer, ready to face Boniface.
Bernadette tilted her head into the room. She stood a little too close to the doorway, so Benny had to squeeze past her, and she watched as he tried to squirm his way through without touching her. But he made it, and she closed the door with another of those psycho smiles.
