He returned to his seat across from her and the room fell silent except for the turning of pages as each of the agents began to learn the details of what had been accomplished through the different investigations and what was ahead of them.
Despite the fact that September had arrived on Wednesday, two days before, brilliant warm sunshine drifted into the windows and dust motes floated in the air.
Georgina was a fast reader and easily retained what she read. She was finished long before the others and leaned back in her chair, hoping to escape the faint scent of Alexander that drifted across the table.
He wore the same spicy cologne he’d worn when they had been married. The scent of it stirred not only memories of being held in his arms, of making love, but also a depth of failure she had tried for two years to put behind her.
She looked back down at the folder and opened it to the photos of the victims. Failure was not an option now. She might not make friends easily, she might be incapable of any real intimacy with anyone, but she was going to work her butt off to find out what happened to these people.
“I think they’re still alive,” she said, breaking the silence that had filled the room. “We have no bodies, and the note, if it’s really from the perp, implies he’s keeping them as some sort of scientific study.”
“I agree,” Agent Tim Gardier replied. He was the youngest agent in the room. Painfully thin, with glasses and a head full of red hair that had probably not seen a barbershop in the last five years, he was also a genius computer geek and a genuinely nice guy.
“I don’t know, maybe we just haven’t stumbled on their bodies yet,” Nicholas said.
Georgina mentally groaned. Just what they all needed, negativity at the very beginning of an investigation.
“It would be quite a challenge to house and feed seven captives,” Agent Frank Webb added. “Especially if only one person is responsible for all this.”
“It’s too early in the investigation to make the assessment that we’re only hunting one perpetrator,” Alexander said. “What I hope is that the note received this morning really is from our man, and I hope it’s the beginning of him becoming chatty.”
“He hasn’t had much to say until now,” Nicholas said, a frown cutting across his broad forehead. “We don’t even know if he’s finished or if he intends to kidnap more people.”
“You’re right,” Alexander said with a touch of impatience in his voice. “We don’t know much of anything about this person. We don’t know if he has enough ‘research subjects.’ We don’t even know if his plans for more subjects include someone in this room.”
These words sobered everyone. Their discussion lasted until one o’clock in the afternoon at which time Alexander called for a lunch break.
“Everyone back here at two o’clock sharp and I’ll start breaking this down with assignments,” he said.
Alexander was still seated in his chair with his focus on the contents of the folder as Georgina and the rest of the agents left the room.
She had no idea where the others were going, but she found herself walking next to Tim, who was obviously heading in the same direction as she was, to the cafeteria in the basement of the building.
“I have a feeling we’d better fuel up while we can,” Tim said as they stepped into the elevator to ride down two floors. “I’m seeing long hours and few breaks in my future.”
She gazed up at him, noting that the lights in the elevator turned his red hair into a furry ball of orange. “Have you worked with Alexander before?”
“Never as lead, but he has a reputation for being tough and driven. You should know how he works.” The elevator stopped and the doors opened, and together they followed the hallway that would lead them to the cafeteria.
“He’s definitely tough and driven,” she replied.
Alexander had always been driven, it was part of what had attracted her to him in the first place. She could only imagine since the Gilmer case, which had gone wrong the last time he’d been lead investigator, that his drive for success was even deeper.
She grabbed a salad and Tim took two cheeseburgers and fries and they found a quiet table in the corner that suited them both. She knew Tim was comfortable with her, but like her, he wasn’t necessarily a people person.
They ate quickly, not talking about the work ahead of them, but rather Tim explaining about a new computer program he was working on. Georgina found most of his talk gobbledygook, but she apparently nodded and murmured in the right places for he seemed pleased with both her and himself by the time they had finished their meal.
When they returned to the “war” room, Alexander was still in the same place he’d been when they’d left, letting her know he hadn’t taken a lunch break.
She wasn’t surprised. There had been many times during their marriage when they’d been working separate cases that she’d have to remind him to stop and eat or to fall into bed and catch a couple hours of sleep.
She knew how he worked. Without anyone in his life to tell him to slow down, he’d go until he crashed and burned. But he wasn’t her worry anymore, she reminded herself.
She and Tim were followed into the room by most of the rest of the team. Nobody wanted to be the last one back from lunch.
The minute everyone was seated, Alexander once again went to the head of the table. “Right now we’re all going to function on the supposition that the note we received is real, that our perp is holding these people and he’s from the Baton Rouge area,” he began. “I’m assigning Tim and Jeff to work on getting locations of all abandoned buildings and warehouses on the outskirts of town. If this person is holding seven people captive, then it would be in a place where nobody would see his activity and nobody could hear our victims scream.” His jaw tightened.
Georgina’s stomach clenched as she thought of seven people, including a little girl, yelling for help or shrieking with pain, from a place where nobody could hear them. Her determination to hunt and find, to capture and end this case, filled every cell in her body.
It was a familiar, welcome emotion, one where she dwelled most of the time. Work was her life...despite the dangers of being an FBI agent, it felt safer to her than personal relationships or friendships. She knew her failings and she did neither of those well.
“I want Nicholas and Frank to work on finding some sort of connection between all these missing people, besides the obvious that four of them were FBI agents,” Alexander continued.
“Isn’t that enough of a connection?” Frank asked as he raked a hand through his thinning gray hair.
“I don’t think so. If that was the case, why would our perp go all the way to Mystic Lake? Why take somebody from Bachelor Moon? If all he wanted was random FBI agents, then he could have taken his pick from people who work right here. There has to be more of a connection. It feels to me like these people were specifically targeted, and we need to find out why.”
“We’ll get on it,” Nicholas replied with a firm nod of his head.
Alexander looked at the last two male agents in the room. Terry Connors and Matt Campbell, both seasoned agents who were known for their attention to detail.
“I want you two to go over all the information we have from both the Bachelor Moon and the Mystic Lake disappearances and maybe your fresh eyes can see some detail, something that so far has been missed. You can travel to Bachelor Moon, but at this point, will interact with Mystic Lake authorities by phone or whatever. As we go along, if you need to travel there, we’ll make arrangements.”
Georgina tensed as she realized she was the only person in the room who hadn’t been handed a specific assignment. Alexander’s blue gaze met hers.
“Georgina,