CHAPTER ONE
‘I’ve just sent you a photograph,’ Kate murmured into her phone. ‘He followed me into Captain Jack’s, but I lost him. I’m keeping a watch on the door.’
‘What does Captain Jack’s sell?’ asked Marcus, her partner.
‘Guess.’
‘Clam chowder?’
‘Not even close.’
FBI agent Kate Valentine was standing in a Maine shopping mall, outside a business called The Ice Cream Factory, not because she wanted any ice cream, but because the windows gave her a perfect view into the shop opposite.
The Ice Cream Factory – average age of customer, 12 - sold a dazzling variety of frozen dairy produce, against a Wonka-esque backdrop of steampunk factory equipment, stripey waistcoats and day-glo syrups.
She was far less certain about Captain Jack's: from what she could tell, it sold leisurewear to men who were most comfortable in a suit and tie.
They were mostly accompanied by a wife or a girlfriend, who had long since passed the limits of her own endurance.
Kate truly felt for those women, bravely trying to stay civil and upbeat, while their life partners agonized over a pair of navy deck shoes.
But she also felt for the men. Imagine waking up one day and realising that this-this combination of elasticated stonewash, nautical stripes, and workman shirts–was your new uniform.
That you'd never be cool again, if you ever were.
Her Dad had escaped it, she realised. Murdered in his early forties, he lived on in Kate’s memory— everyone’s memory— as a youthful, debonair figure, fond of scarves and hats and other little touches of personal style.
He’d loved clothes, everyone’s clothes, and far from having to bully her husband into a shopping trip, her mom had genuinely treasured his eye and his opinion.
There was a thing people would do, automatically, without thinking, if ever Kate showed them pictures of her parents.
There was a particular trio of photos, taken at a friend's wedding in Los Angeles, two years before she was born.
They looked a little drunk, a lot in love, and, above all else, just stunning, like two stars of the silver screen, Bogart and Bacall, Taylor and Burton.
And people would look at that triptych of faded Kodaks and exclaim, ‘Oh, but they’re beautiful!’
They didn’t always say the ‘but’. But… they didn’t need to.
It was there, nonetheless. Staring in the Ice Cream Factory window, Kate was once again reminded that she didn’t look much like either of the people who’d made her.
She wasn’t ugly. Tall and slim with freckles and auburn hair, she believed that the handful of people who’d ever called her ‘pretty’, were telling the truth.
But pretty was a long way from her parents’ old-fashioned glamour.
Besides which, it had been a long time since anyone had called her anything.
Perhaps, she thought, she’d hit that age where you weren’t described so much as labelled – doctor, attorney, FBI agent, mom, wife, mistress…
Did that matter? Of course it didn’t.
It shouldn’t.
Shit.
Ice hockey jacket, backpack, and high tops, tall as a tree, the guy had just walked straight out of Captain Jack's.
As she turned to follow him, she realised he'd bought something small – a pair of socks, maybe.
The guy was no slouch. If he was confronted, he could say he'd been there to make a purchase. That he hadn't been following her.
But he had. He’d followed her in traffic, a couple of weeks ago, when she was trying to wrap up the Elijah Cox case.
Then she’d caught him at it again. Technically on leave, she’d decided to lure him into the shopping mall with the aid of her partner, who wasn’t on leave. He was just on his lunch break.
‘I’m some way behind him on the down escalator,’ she said. ‘He’s carrying a small silver bag from Captain Jack’s. Where are you?’
‘I’m going up,’ Marcus replied. ‘I’m on the first floor.’
Kate started to pick her way through the crowd of people on the down escalator.
Why did people stand there, still as statues, on the escalator?
What were they doing? Enjoying the view?
It was worse. The people in front had unfolded a huge map of the Mall and were having an argument about it.
They’d seriously, actually come to this Mall for a family day out. What was the matter with people?
They were approaching the fourth floor now.
The map family had given way to a huge couple armed with shopping bags, a pizza, and a large, gilded mirror.
She found herself entangled with them on the landing as they disembarked.
By the time she'd rejoined the escalator, she couldn't see her guy at all.
Unless… was that him up ahead, going down?
'Where are you?' she asked Marcus, forlornly. He'd hung up. She was just redialing when a shrill alarm sounded and the entire escalator shuddered to a halt. Kate very nearly lost her balance. 'What's happened?' she said, to no one in particular.
‘Some jerk switched the escalator off,’ said a voice somewhere below her.
Down on the third floor, there was garden furniture, barbecues, and pool accessories.
There were also two members of the store security team, along with Marcus and the young man they'd been pursuing.
He was a kid, really, and a sad, embarrassed kind of look crossed his face when Kate appeared.
He knew her and she knew him – a few weeks back, Marcus had looked up his plates and discovered that he lived downstairs from her, on the same block.
‘There’s a penalty for tampering with the escalator,’ said one of the store guards, whose badge read REYES.
‘It wasn’t tampering,’ Marcus said, irritably. ‘I stopped it in pursuit of a felon.’
‘I’m not a felon,’ said the kid, hotly.
'FBI,' Kate explained to the guards, displaying her badge. 'This young man is Tavone Willem Kelly, and we want to question him.'
‘You’ll need to come to the office,’ insisted Reyes.
‘We’ve got our own office,’ Marcus growled.
‘I wasn’t offering you the use of our office,’ replied Reyes, incredulously. ‘It’s where you’ll be detained until we get to the bottom of this mess.’
It was Marcus’s turn to laugh. ‘Detain? Listen, Jack –’
‘No, Marcus,’ Kate interjected sternly. She’d seen enough antler-clashing for one day. ‘I think we can resolve this situation, gentlemen.’
Within fifteen minutes, the escalator was running, store guards Reyes and Esposito were enjoying coffee and doughnuts, and Tavone Willem Kelly was on the back seat of Kate's black sedan.
Kate wasn't sure if women were naturally better at negotiating, but she did know that trading threats and insults had gotten them nowhere.
She didn’t feel too generously inclined towards Tavone right now, though.
The last case she’d solved had been full of direct messages to her; its instigator had used his knowledge of her innermost secrets to taunt and torment her.
To discover, at the same time, that she was being followed by a young man who lived in the same block was…
well, it made her feel vulnerable. And feeling vulnerable made her angry.
So when she’d caught him tracking her again…
‘Why have you been following me?’
Tavone took a deep breath. He opened his mouth, but no sound came out. He tried again.
‘I worked out you were with the Bureau,’ he said, eventually. ‘I saw your vest one day when you’d left it in the car. I want to join.’
Kate and Marcus exchanged a glance.
‘Are you serious?’ Kate asked.
‘Yes. I know how you apply, I just – ’ He reddened slightly. ‘You guys do a lot of following people, right?’
‘It’s one part of the job,’ Kate said. ‘You seem to get quite a kick out of it yourself.’
'I wasn't trying to frighten you, I promise,' Tavone said. 'I just wanted to see if I was any good at it.'
He still had that gawky, awkward look of kids whose minds couldn’t keep pace with their bodies. Every movement unsure, not quite calibrated, like a large duckling.
‘I made you pretty fast when you were in your car,’ Kate said. ‘The brown SUV. And again this morning, outside the post office.’
‘There were lots of other times when you didn’t spot me then,’ Tavone said, a faint smile on his lips. And he still had a kid’s face, Kate noted, soft and open.
‘I don’t find it funny,’ she said, sternly. ‘Imagine having to live like that, always looking over your shoulder. Not feeling safe, even in your own home. You scared me, Tavone. And I don’t believe your bullshit about wanting to join the Bureau. I think you’re just a creep.’
He looked genuinely upset, blinking fast, his cheeks reddening.
'I'm not!' he said. 'I promise you I'd never follow someone to creep them out!
It's happened to my mom and my sister. You know, at night, waiting for a bus.
Guys, just… It's one of the reasons I want to join the Bureau.
And I actually stopped a robbery once, you know.
When I was 15, it was in the local newspaper. I'll show you…'
He started to rummage in his backpack. Marcus put a big beefy hand on top of the kid’s.
‘We don’t want to see your press clippings, kid. This isn’t a big adventure.’
‘I know it isn’t! I’m serious. I’m “demonstrating a longstanding history of interest”. That’s what they said in the careers talk we had. Well, I’m interested. I stopped a crime. I received a commendation from Lieutenant Da Silva of the 8th Precinct. He said I could go a long way.’
‘Mm. All the way to jail,’ Marcus said. Kate shot him a look.
‘Are you telling me the truth, Tavone?’ she asked, looking him in the eye. She could usually spot a liar.
He looked her right back. 'Yes, I am. And I'm sorry if I scared you. It didn't cross my mind. You don't seem like you're scared of anything.'
‘In this job, you have to be afraid,’ Marcus said. ‘If you’re not, you’ll wind up dead.’