Chapter Ten #2
“I feel bad for her coming home to this,” Freddie said.
“That’s what she gets for letting her felon brother live with her and her kids.”
“I suppose.”
“Can I drop you at HQ?”
“Nah,” he said. “I’ll hop on the Metro and leave my car at work for the night.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yep. I’ll see you at zero seven hundred?”
“If not before.”
“Let’s hope not.”
“I’ve got my fingers and toes crossed for a quiet night—but not my legs.”
“Ewww, gross.”
“Nothing gross about it, my friend.”
“On that disgusting note…” He waved and jogged off toward the Metro.
Sam drove home thinking about the families of her four victims and wishing they’d made more concrete progress that day, but investigations like this required methodical police work that didn’t happen quickly.
The Secret Service waved her through the Ninth Street checkpoint, and she parked in her assigned space in front of their home.
Since the street was devoid of black SUVs, Sam decided to pop into her dad’s before she headed home. “Where are they?” she asked Eric, the agent on duty at the door.
“On the way home from the Feds game.”
“Okay, thanks,” Sam said, glad to hear Nick had been able to arrange the last-minute outing for himself and Scotty. She walked to the house three doors down from hers, dashed up the ramp and gave a quick knock on the door before going in. “Anyone home?”
“Back here, Sam,” her stepmother, Celia said.
Celia and Skip were at the kitchen table eating dinner while watching the news. Sam kissed them both and helped herself to a bottle of water from the fridge, downing half of it in one big gulp.
“Tough day at the office, dear?” Skip asked.
“Yeah.” Sam took a seat at the table. “I’m totally dehydrated, sweaty and frustrated.”
“We saw the warning the department issued asking people to stay inside,” Celia said as she fed Skip a bite of chicken. “It’s such a shame that people need to be afraid like this.”
“Believe me, I know. It’s infuriating to all of us, but until we get these bastards, we have to take precautions.”
“Any leads?” Skip asked.
Sam told them about Tamara Jackson’s connection to Trace Simmons, the search of Simmons’s home and finding the car at AU.
“It’s a start,” Skip said.
“It’s slow going.”
“Always is with this kind of thing. You have to dot the Is and cross the Ts one step at a time.”
“I hate that. I want to figure it out and lock them up right now.”
“My poor, impatient baby girl,” he said with an indulgent smile.
“Yeah, yeah, that’s me. Couple of other developments today,” she said, telling them about Stahl and the Alford plea as well as the meeting with Forrester.
“Forrester’s office didn’t give any indications?” Skip asked.
Sam shook her head, took a roll from the basket on the table and tore off a bite. “Just be there at two tomorrow.”
“I’m not worried about an indictment, and you shouldn’t be either,” Skip said.
“That’s good to know, but until I hear him say the words, I’m sweating it.”
“Try not to lose any sleep over it.” Celia patted Sam’s hand. “You’ll know one way or the other tomorrow.”
“Imagine those headlines in addition to all the others,” Sam said with a wry smile.
“What’re you thinking about Stahl?”
“That I’m not settling for anything less than an admission of guilt, even if that means I have to live through a trial to get it.”
“Good,” Skip said, “because I’ll let you accept that plea over my cold, dead body.”
“I speak for Celia and the rest of your family when I say we don’t want to talk about your cold, dead body.”
“What she said.” Celia used her thumb to point to Sam.
“That son of a bitch needs to own up to what he did, not slink off to prison without having to admit it.”
“Couldn’t agree more, Skippy. Glad we’re on the same page, as usual. I’d better get home and see what my boys are up to.”
“Scotty was here earlier,” Celia said. “He’s in a full-on depression over the start of school.”
“I used to feel the exact same way,” Sam said. “Remember?”
“All too well,” Skip said, half his face lifting into a smile. “You went into a funk every year around this time that lasted for weeks. Especially before the dyslexia was diagnosed.”
“School was the seventh circle of hell for me.”
“And somehow you ended up with a high school diploma, a college degree and a graduate degree,” Skip said, the expressive side of his face beaming with pride.
“I have no doubt that our Scotty will find his stride and go all the way. He’s one of the smartest, sharpest kids I’ve ever known.
He reminds me a lot of his mom at that age. ”
Sam smiled, stood and bent to kiss his forehead. “That’s nice to hear. I often think he’s like Nick.”
“He’s a lot like you, too,” Celia said. “Nurture is every bit as important as nature.”
“You guys are good for my morale.”
“We love you,” Celia said bluntly.
“Love you, too.” Sam kissed her stepmother’s cheek as she left the kitchen to head home, thankful for the family that surrounded her in good times and in bad.
She’d been back in touch with her mother recently after a twenty-year estrangement that had stemmed from her parents’ contentious divorce.
Sam and her sisters had helped to see their mother through the aftermath of a lumpectomy for Stage 1 breast cancer earlier in the summer.
Fortunately, the doctors had gotten it all and had recommended no further treatment.
Brenda had spent a day with them at the beach, and it had gone well.
Sam’s relationship with her was slowly but surely improving.
Brenda was now settled in a townhouse in Arlington, Virginia, so she could be close to her three daughters and her grandchildren.
It was still somewhat odd, Sam thought as she walked to her own house, to be back in touch with her mother, but it was nice to put that negativity in the past where it belonged.
One thing she had learned was that no one knew what went on inside a marriage except for the two people in it, and that included her parents.
Speaking of marriage, Sam was thrilled to see the street lined with black SUVs, which meant her husband and son had gotten home while she was at her dad’s. She went up the ramp to their house, and Eric opened the door to admit her.
“Thank you,” she said to the agent. In the kitchen, she found Nick leaning against the counter, drinking a beer. His face lit up with pleasure at the sight of her.
“It was a nice surprise to see your car out there,” he said, reaching for her. “I didn’t expect to see you until much later.”
Sam snuggled into his embrace and brought him up-to-date on the latest with the case. “We’ve done all we could today. Now we wait for the lab and to see if the shooters will strike again.”
“I heard about the warning to citizens. Pretty hard-core.”
“Had to be done.”
“You like the gangbanger for the shootings?”
“I don’t know. It doesn’t add up. If he was intent on getting Tamara back, killing her brother would put a damper on the romance. Plus, there’s nothing to indicate he has above-average skills with a gun.”
“True.” His hand made a soothing circle on her back.
“What’ve you done with the boy child?”
“I sent him to take a shower and get his backpack ready for tomorrow.”
“How’d he take that directive?”
“As you might imagine.”
Sam laughed.
“I used to love the first day of school,” Nick said.
“You were one of the dorks who ruined the curve for the rest of us, weren’t you?”
“Maybe.”
“How many times did you make the honor roll?”
“May I decline to answer out of fear of being mocked for the rest of my life?”
She looked up at him. “How. Many. Times?”
“All the times?” he said with a weak smile.
“Oh my God! How did I not know this before I said, ‘I do’?”
“You knew I got an academic scholarship to Harvard. How do you think that happened?”
“I’ve honestly never thought about how, but now that I know, this may be grounds for an annulment.”
“Nice try, babe,” he said with a laugh. “As if I’d ever let you go for any reason, and besides, I think you can only get an annulment before the marriage is consummated. Since we’ve consummated ours about six thousand times, I’d say you’re screwed in more ways than one.”
Sam laughed. “You think you’re so smart.”
“I know I’m smart, and now you know it, too.” Looking down at her, he said, “By the way, that’s twice you’ve mentioned leaving me in one twenty-four-hour period. Should I be worried?”
“Not even kinda.” She closed her eyes, laid her head on his chest and let out a deep breath, relieved to be back in his arms after a hellish day.
He always made her feel better, even when boasting about his impressive academic record.
“If we ever have biological kids, do you think they’ll get my school brains or yours? ”
Only because she was pressed so tightly against him did she feel his entire body go rigid over the fraught subject of babies.
“I don’t know,” he said. “Hopefully, we’ll get the chance to find out.”
“What if we have a kid who’s like me? A classic underachiever in school. Wouldn’t that make you crazy?”
“Not at all. I’d be so in love with any kid of ours that I’d be more afraid of spoiling him or her rotten than what kind of grades they get.”
As usual, he said the perfect thing. “That’s good to know.”
“Anything you want to tell me, babe?”