Page 32 of Catching Fire

She lasted all of twenty minutes after the agents had left.

The four of them had been told to stay put and go about their normal days. Sebastian and Kalan were off duty today, Maggie didn’t have clients, and Seline had been told to only come into the university for classes …

“Can you do something here?” Kalan asked. “You look really worried.”

No shit, Sherlock!

It was one of her favorite English phrases and she bit her tongue not to yell it in anger now.

“Iamworried! My new friend put herself out as bait to save me and now he has her and we don’t know where she is or if she’s even alive!” Once she started speaking her stomach clenched. Maggie and Sebastian were looking at her as if they couldn’t look away. She was yelling, but she couldn’t stop. “I bought this house at the upper limit of my buying ability, but I did it because I am on a tenure track. I could make tenure in two years! But now …”

“I don’t understand …” Kalan reached out, his expression mimicking his words. “Why is tenure so important?”

She lashed out. “Do you have any idea how hard it is to get a job in academia? I have student loans up to here!” She motioned over her head. “Tenure is job security. Tenure is the best promotion I can get besides becoming department chair or a dean.And I don’t want those things!”

A tenured position at an American university had been her dream. She was so close and the BRK was stealing it from her. She turned to her friend though she was still breathing heavily, still on the verge of tears thinking about what she might lose just because her genetics put her in Sanders’ crosshairs. “I’m so sorry. I thought you were crazy to go after Geller the way you did. But I understand now. This bastard has flipped my whole life upside down.”

Maggie was nodding along in sympathy, maybe the only one who truly understood. She’d taken Seline’s hands in her own to calm her but Seline still couldn’t stop the runaway train that was her voice.

“First Sanders and now the FBI and the school are slowly stripping away everything I’ve worked for. If this lasts any longer, I won’t have any life left to fight for!” That was wrong. She knew that. Nothing had been truly lost yet, buteverythingwas in jeopardy. Not to mention her very life if Sanders did get her.

She couldn’t process it all.

“Take some deep breaths.” She felt Kalan’s hand on her back, and it was all she could do not to shrug him off and yell at him not to use his ‘soothing unruly victims’ bullshit on her.

After her outburst finally faded away, they all managed to take seats around the living room. Seline sat on the front edge of her once-comfy couch again. It seemed as if they would have a meeting, talk this all out. Only no one was talking.

Finally she asked, “Where are Watson and Decker?”

“They're out looking for Marina,” Maggie told her, as she reached out to put her hand on Seline’s arm. But then, at the last moment, she pulled it back. Maybe she realized Seline couldn't be calmed.

“We have to dosomething,”she repeated her initial plea. “At least,Ido.”

“We're supposed to stay put,” Sebastian told her, but she wasn't having any of it.

She understood: he and Kalan were firefighters. Their lives depended on following protocol and doing what the ranking officer told them to do. Hers might depend on breaking the rules.

Up until now, it had been easy to be motivated by her fear of losing tenure. Everything in her life was fragile, set up like dominoes. If she lost her chance at tenure, she would lose her salary, maybe even her position. But just a simple salary cut meant not making her mortgage. Her house would be foreclosed on. She could handle one major crisis, but not this many at once.

She could lose it all. But in a blink, her worries disappeared. What if she just considered it all gone already, what was left? Marina’s life. Her own life. The lives of every other future victim of the Blue River Killer.

Screw tenure. This was much more important.

“Where do we go first?” she asked the room. When no one answered, she turned to Maggie. “Where did Geller take you?”

She knew but only in a vague sense, that Merrit Geller had taken Maggie to Sanders’ cabin in the National Park.

“He won't go back to the cabin,” Maggie answered calmly. “The FBI knows exactly where it is.”

Something had nagged at Seline, and she hadn't asked before because she truly didn't want the answer. But with Marina’s life on the line right now, if she wasn't already dead, Seline didn't have the luxury of ignoring what she didn't want to hear. “How do they know he took his victims there?”

Maggie looked to Sebastian, the two of them exchanging a glance that spoke volumes. The look that passed between them clearly said they didn't want to tell her. But Seline took half a step forward, planted her feet and glared.

Maggie answered her. “They found blood. They matched it to at least eight of his victims.”

Merde!she thought.

“So he first went to a place that his family owned … Where would he go now? What was his second-choice option?”

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