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"What's happening?" Amber asked, feeling a sudden wave of near panic at the thought that something worse might be happening to Joseph. Something she couldn’t control or help with.
"You need to wait outside and let us work ma'am," the nurse said in a tone that didn't allow for any argument.
Amber had to go out into the hall, waiting out there, looking through the glass panel of the door and hoping that Joseph was going to be all right. The hardest part was that there was nothing Amber could do here to make things better. Joseph lay in a hospital bed while other people worked on him, and she couldn't do anything other than stand there, holding the diary that had been left near him.
The police had let her look it over for now, but she would have to give it back as soon as she left the hospital. It was evidence in the ongoing assault case, after all. Park was standing at the far end of the hallway, looking slightly bored. He looked up as Amber came hurrying out but didn’t come over to the room. He obviously knew that there was nothing he could do, either.
It occurred to her that he probably wasn’t there just in case Joseph's attacker came to finish him off or even just to get a statement from him when he woke up. The cop was there in case Joseph died, and this suddenly turned into a murder investigation. Amber hoped with all her heart that wouldn't be the case.
Amber started to go through the diary, trying to understand what it was doing at the scene. She checked on the familiar puzzle designs, the sections that she'd written there that were more personal. Someone had obviously taken this from her apartment, someone who knew enough about her work and personal life to do it when Amber wasn’t home. But who could it be?
She stopped as she saw the first of the notes in the margins, frowning. Someone had solved one of the puzzles there. No, they hadn’t just solved it; they’d sketched out a better version of it. There were more notes on other pages, comments on Amber's work in a neat hand, and casual solutions to what she had assumed were some of her more fiendish puzzle ideas. Amber was starting to ponder the implications of that when a voice cut through the silence.
"Amber, I came as soon as I heard!"
Amber turned to see Agent Simon Phelps, her partner in the FBI, hurrying down the corridor towards Joseph's room. Simon was broad-shouldered with an athletic build, with blond hair and blue eyes. He was immaculately dressed in a dark suit, while his square-jawed, good-looking features were currently tight with worry. He obviously knew how much it would mean to Amber that Joseph had been attacked.
"What happened?" Simon asked. "Was it a mugging? Or maybe something to do with his job?"
Those were the same assumptions that Amber had made because those were the assumptions that any normal personwouldmake with something like this. Even working in law enforcement, no one would assume that this was about anything else.
Amber held up the diary. "It's to do with me, Simon. This is because of me. They left my diary behind at the scene. My workbook. They must have taken it from my apartment."
"Someone broke into your apartment?" Simon's worry only appeared to be compounded by that. "When?"
"I don't know," Amber admitted. That was another part of all of this that terrified her. Someone had broken into her apartment and taken her diary without her noticing. "It must have been while we were away on a case. This, all of this, it was aimed at me."
The more Amber thought about it, the more she realized the importance of that. This meant that she had enemies, people who would want to hurt her. Who could those enemies be, though? As an FBI agent, she had put away many dangerous criminals, and some of them might be seeking revenge, but realistically, the people she'd put away didn't have the means to break into her apartment or hurt Joseph. They were all still behind bars.
Could it be someone else? Had she managed to upset someone else while working on a case to the point where they might do something like this? Amber couldn't think of anyone. Before she'd been an FBI agent, she'd just been a puzzles editor. Was this some kind of rival puzzle expert? Someone she'd upset by beating them in a competition?
The doctor came out of the room. "He's fine for now. We've managed to stabilize him, and we think he'll make a full recovery, given time. For now, though, Mr. Connolly needs rest."
"Can I stay with him?" Amber asked.
"For now," the doctor said. "But it may be some time before he wakes up. If you leave us your number, we'll call you as soon as there's any change."
Amber didn't want to go, not yet. She went into the room, sitting beside Joseph's bed. She couldn't help looking at the diary, flicking through it and taking in the annotations, trying to understand the mind of the person who could so neatly solve and improve on her puzzles. She barely heard Simon come in behind her, obviously there for her as much as for Joseph.
As she pored over the diary, Amber felt a deep sense of unease. She had an enemy out there somewhere that much was clear, but who could it be? She couldn't think of any particular rival puzzle experts or anyone she had upset in a competition. The criminals she'd put away weren't in a position to do this. So who had the motive to hurt her, and why now?
As she turned the pages of her diary, she saw a note in the margins that caught her attention. It was a message written in the same neat handwriting as the earlier annotations. It read: "Almost good enough".
Almost. That one word was both an insult and a challenge. It seemed that whoever had stolen the diary didn't think that she was a good enough puzzler. Was this all just their way of getting Amber's attention?
Amber sat there pondering it. Even as she did, she heard Simon's phone going off. He grabbed for it, checked the name on the screen, and hurried to answer, looking even more serious than he had been when he walked in there.
"Agent Palliser?" he said. Amber winced slightly at the name. Agent Palliser was their boss, and she could only imagine one reason why she would call out of the blue. A reason that Amber wasn’t sure she was in a position to deal with right then.
"I understand, ma'am. What's the case?" Simon asked, confirming Amber's suspicions. He paused for several seconds before he spoke again. "Understood. Agent Young is here with me. I'll tell her what's happening. But, ma'am, I'm not sure if she'll be able to do this right now. There's a... personal emergency for her. I understand, ma'am, I'll ask."
He hung up, leaving Amber staring at him, knowing what was going to come next.
"What's going on?" she asked. "I guess Palliser wasn't calling about Joseph."
Simon shook his head with an apologetic look. "She has a case for us. A town called Verdice, maybe an hour away? They've had two women killed in a week, both found hanging from bridges there. They think it's a serial killer, and Palliser wants us there to look into it."
He made it into a question, silently asking Amber if she wanted to do this. Their boss might have assigned them a case, but Simon clearly understood how difficult this situation was for her.
