He watched as her pencil swept with ease over the paper creating a sketch within minutes. She was in her element, but he also wanted to use this as an opportunity to talk more about her work—and his concerns about it.
“This is his face,” she said as she turned the drawing toward Max. “He’s approximately six feet tall, two hundred pounds. Dark hair with light blue eyes. You can see his other features here. A strong jawline, dimple on the left cheek, a few freckles.”
He stared at the face. At first glance, the subject didn’t look like a violent man, but Max knew better than to make a judgment based on appearances. Sometimes the people you least suspected were the most violent.
He took a moment more to examine the drawing, but he couldn’t deny his inherent skepticism. “Can I ask you something?”
“Yes.”
“How can you be so sure that this sketch is accurate? That any sketch you do is accurate?”
Her eyes widened. “Are you questioning my abilities as a sketch artist?”
He shook his head. “Not you specifically. It’s just that when I was a rookie in the FBI, I got burned badly by a sketch artist. Turns out we got the wrong guy. The guy who actually committed the crime was able to murder another innocent person. I lost many a night’s sleep over that.”
She leaned back from the table. “It’s an art not a science.”
“Exactly. So there’s bound to be human error.”
“But even from a scientific approach you wouldn’t throw out all drawings just because some are flawed. Remember, the sketch artist is only as good as the eyewitness account. And we all know the high rate of error in witness accounts.”
“But this sketch.” He pointed down to the paper. “This drawing is accurate because you’re drawing based on your personal knowledge of him over time. Not just a single account like a witness in a lawsuit for example.”
“Yes, that’s true. The error rate on a sketch like this is much lower given how well I knew this man—assuming the person drawing has the requisite artistic ability. You can’t really compare what I did just now to what would happen normally where I would meet with a witness and then draw based on their factual description.”
“That’s precisely my point though. I’m sorry if I offended you. It’s just something that was on my mind.”
“Don’t let one bad experience with a sketch artist impact your view of what I do. I take my work and its accuracy very seriously.”
He’d obviously hit a nerve. “Like I said, I wasn’t trying to question you specifically.”
She crossed her arms. “Regardless of what your intent was, you’re basically questioning my career. At a time when I’m a key witness in a high-profile case.”
She was right. He never should’ve opened his mouth. “I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking about that.”
“It’s like you’re trying to ice the kicker. Don’t forget I still have to testify.” She laughed even though he could tell that she wasn’t exactly filled with humor.
“Forget I even brought it up. Let’s talk about something else.” He knew he’d offended her and didn’t know if she was going to let it drop.
“How long are we staying in Pikeville?”
“We’ll have to play it by ear. I want to see what intel the FBI has on Ward.”
The petite waitress with bleached blond hair walked over and pulled their bill out of her notepad. Then she quirked a curious eyebrow. “You two here visiting the town?”
He jumped in, not wanting to put any extra pressure on an already stressed Sydney. “Just passing through for work.”
“Ah, well, I hope you enjoyed the food here.” She frowned when she saw Sydney’s half-eaten burger.
“It was delicious. Just a bit too much.” Sydney smiled at her.
The waitress nodded and walked away.
“Let’s get back to the hotel,” he said. “Try to get some rest. We’re going to need it.”
* * *
Sydney awoke with a start. Darkness surrounded her, and something flashed in her peripheral vision. Where was she? And what was that shuffling noise she heard? Then it came flooding back to her. She was in a hotel room in Pikeville. But she wasn’t alone.
Her eyes adjusted to the dark, and she saw a figure in her room. She opened her mouth with an instinctive urge to scream, but the intruder lunged on top of her, silencing her with his hand over her mouth.
“You’re coming with me,” the man said in a low, menacing voice. The only thing she knew for sure was that the attacker wasn’t her ex-boyfriend Rick. But that didn’t change her determination to fight him off. No way was she letting him take her out of that hotel room.
He was strong, but she was trained so something like this could never happen again. She refused to be a victim. She was a fighter. Saying a quick prayer for strength, she bit down on his hand as hard as she could.
The intruder yelped and when he loosened his grip she screamed to alert Max through the unlocked adjoining door. But she wasn’t going to wait for Max to come to her rescue. No, she reared back and connected hard with the attacker’s jaw with a right uppercut. He stumbled a bit, and she delivered a swift kick to his midsection, forcing him to double over from the impact.
“Sydney!” Max’s voice rang out in the darkness.
The intruder ran quickly toward her door, throwing it open and escaping into the night. Then Max came into her room. She could see in the shadows that his gun was drawn.
“He just ran out,” she said.
“Stay here.” He ran out the door, but she didn’t listen to him. She was right behind him.
“There.” She pointed toward the parking lot. The man, dressed all in black, was at the edge of the parking lot jumping into a dark colored sedan.
“I can’t go after him and leave you by yourself,” Max said. “We don’t know that he was alone.”
“No. You should go. You need to interrogate him.”
“It’s too risky. I’m sorry. My first priority is always going to be your personal protection. I can’t pursue him under the circumstances.”
She watched as her attacker disappeared from sight into the darkness.
“Are you all right?”
She shook out her right hand. “Yeah. My hand hurts a bit from punching him, but I’ll be fine.” She took in a breath of air, realizing that she was breathing hard. “But how did he find me? That’s the question we need to answer first.”
She walked back into her hotel room, and he was right behind her. She flipped on the light.
“I can tell you’re frustrated, and you have every right to be. You were just attacked in the middle of the night. And you’re right about how you were found. This location wasn’t even in the system. So an electronic system breach wouldn’t have provided this information.”
He paced back and forth. His dark hair was slightly disheveled from sleep. Then he turned back to face her with his eyes wide. “I need to look through your stuff. Your bag, your purse. Anything you’ve had on your person since yesterday.”
She got what he was saying. “You think someone put some type of tracking device in my stuff?”
He nodded. “It would make a lot of sense, and it would explain all of these breaches.”