Page 17 of The Wolves Come at Night
She knew that in addition to Garrett Woods, his boss at the FBI, he was talking of the shadowy man known as Atlantic, the head of Operation Angelmaker, an offshoot of the CIA that claimed Baldwin as their own personal assassin whisperer. What a side gig. When one of the governments of any nation’s wet work specialists went off the grid or started unsanctioned killings, Baldwin was called in to do an “assessment.” Get the creeps back on track, killing for the right people, not themselves.
A nasty job, but Baldwin was up to the task. He had a deep, unassailable conscience, and the psychopaths, for the most part, listened to him. Yes, he did have too many people to answer to.
Taylor didn’t. She was responsible now to Baldwin, and the city, but her team was no longer hers. Sam had moved to DC and was consumed with consulting for the FBI and teaching at Georgetown, and her burgeoning relationship with Xander Whitfield. Taylor, should she choose, was a free agent.
“I don’t know,” she said, as she’d been saying since Florian offered her a job. “It would mean time away from Nashville, and from you. Plus wads of training, and riding a desk until I could get up to speed. That’s not something I’m interested in right now. I’m already stuck in the office as is.”
“But you aren’t happy. And I hate seeing you like this.”
“I’m happy with you. That’s enough.”
He kissed her softly. “It won’t be. Not forever.”
“Why do you say that?”
He sighed deeply. “Honey, you are like a feral cat, and I mean that in the best possible way. You will come inside eventually, and accept the warm cushion and bowl of milk, maybe even consent to have your back scratched, but you will never be happy as a house cat. You will only be happy roaming the woods.”
“Are you profiling me, Dr. Baldwin?”
“Do you want me to?”
“No. I can’t imagine what you might dig up.”
She touched the healing scar on her temple, a habit she really needed to break. At least it kept her hands off the well-faded scar on her neck. She’d spent enough time being psychoanalyzed when she’d had the aphonia after the gunshot that nearly took her life. Not being able to speak had freaked her out. She’d done a cool technique for her PTSD called EMDR—Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing—and the legit portion of it worked. The non-legit—offered at the hands of a madwoman—nearly killed her. Regardless, she had her voice back and wasn’t flinching and getting overwhelmed with adrenaline every time someone snuck up on her or a car backfired. She’d even been spending time at the gun range again, something that had always relaxed her. She was healed from her recent run-in with the serial killer the press called the Pretender. Mostly. At least on the outside.
“Wanna talk some more about Georgia Wray?” Baldwin said, interrupting her thoughts, and now it was her turn to sigh deeply. He knew her too well.
“Honestly? I’m probably reading into things, but I get the sense there’s something else happening, though I have no idea what. The more I think about it, I really don’t think my guy today was a suicide. It was set up too perfectly. There was a note, a piece of paper ripped from a notebook. And though there were a ton of notebooks in the house, none were spiral bound. We found the gun under him, just where it would have been if he shot himself and collapsed onto it—but who shoots themselves in the face? Under the chin, in the mouth, the temple, the chest, yeah. But who holds a handgun a couple of feet from their nose and pulls the trigger? That, and the whole placement of her body on the mountain and the shooting… He was up on that mountain with her, no doubt, because that’s who our witness identified. But what if someone else was there, and Justin somehow escaped and was followed back to his house? What if he was the target and Georgia Wray was a casualty? And…I mean, the odds of these two college kids wandering into a murder hiking near Radnor Lake, following a specific set of GPS coordinates? It’s wildly coincidental. And don’t even get me started on this whole GPS thing. It’s too weird.”
“That’s a lot of what-ifs. So do you think the developer of the GPS game is in on it?”
“I don’t know. Also feels like quite a stretch. He’s a kid. Then again, so are Georgia Wray and Justin Osborne.” She rolled to face him. “See what you’ve done to me? I’m being handed a cut-and-dried case to make me shut up about not being in the field anymore, and I’m turning it into zebra hooves instead of horses.”
“I love it when you Occam’s razor me, honey.”
“Shut up and kiss me, goof.”
He did.
Nine
Wednesday: New Haven, Connecticut
Dr. Avery Conway arrived home from a long overnight shift in the emergency room and followed all her usual habits: dropped her bag and shoes and everyday mask in the mudroom, plugged in her phone, washed her hands thoroughly with plain soap, not antibacterial, divested herself of her clothes, which went straight into the wash. She had a stack of clean yoga pants and T-shirts folded neatly in the laundry room cabinet. She pulled on the fresh clothes, put her hair into a stubby ponytail, and wandered into the kitchen. She poured a glass of wine and took a deep sip. She was one of the few people she knew who drank wine in the morning, but that’s the weird way her day was structured. Took another deep drink, then topped off the wine and sat at the bar counter where the mail waited for her. Her housekeeper always brought it in for her before she left for the day, separating the stack of the weekly circulars and other junk from the good magazines, letters, and bills.
Avery riffled through it with half an eye, trying to reorient herself from the noise and chaos of the hospital to her quiet, serene sanctuary, stopping only when she saw the envelope from Vanderbilt. The crest said From the Office of the President, and the linen was thick and creamy, as befitted her alumnus. Oddly, the envelope wasn’t sealed.
Sloppy of them, she thought. Must have had the prospectives there for the weekend and made them stuff envelopes.
Avery had suffered just such an indignity the summer before her senior year in high school when she’d gone to Nashville for a prospective visit. She had no idea they’d be put to work for two hours stuffing envelopes for an alumni mailing. It was drudgery, and she was annoyed, but she’d gotten her own early acceptance letter the following week and all petty grievances were put aside. She was a Vanderbilt graduate now. Her darling daughter was following in her footsteps. Anchor down!
Not that it mattered.
Avery glanced around her spacious kitchen, the leathered marble and white cabinets, the champagne brass fixtures, the monstrous Italian stove and refrigerator large enough to park a battleship inside. Vanderbilt had put her on the path to these…things. A degree. A career. Even a husband, a boy she’d met in her freshman English comp class whom she’d loved with all her heart and married the first chance she’d gotten. When she’d graduated from Vandy med school and started her residency in New Haven, she’d discovered she was pregnant, and she’d never been happier. A full life. The life she always wanted.
The babies came quickly, three in four years—two rambunctious boys, Riordan and Julian, and a sweet little girl she named Carson after her own mother––while she was finishing her residency and getting her practice up and running. The people around her marveled, called her superwoman. She was. She was invincible. Driven. Dedicated. Brilliant. So incredibly happy.
Then Richard died. An aneurysm exploded during a bike ride down the Farmington Canal Heritage Trail. Avery thought she might curl up and die along with him. Her scripted, perfectly planned life was suddenly off the rails. She had three teenage children and was a widow at thirty-nine, bereft of her soul mate, the man who made her laugh, who shared her ambitions, though his were cozier in nature—Richard had started an organic bakery in New Haven that catered to the students with fresh, delicious, allergen-safe pastries. He’d dedicated his life to helping others, and he was gone in an instant.
