Ryan entered the building through the back door. He didn’t need anyone asking him why he was back again tonight. He stopped by his office to check his messages, and pick up a few folders, in case he needed to explain to anyone why he had come. It was late, and the building was quiet and mostly empty. He only passed one door with light streaming out from under it, peering through the window he saw Ethan Cross at his desk. No wonder he and Hawkins got along so well, they kept similar hours. Ryan passed by quickly and headed for the elevators; the bio labs were in the basement, and he was anxious to get there and deliver the sample. As he turned the corner, he was surprised to find that the hall by the elevator was not empty. He hesitated, wondering if he should take the stairs, but it was a woman he had never seen before, so he decided to chance it.
If she didn’t know him, his presence wouldn’t seem unusual to her, would it? And he was certain that he didn’t know her, he would have remembered. She was tall and slim, with honey-blonde hair and the most amazing violet eyes he had ever seen. She was wearing a silky, low-cut blouse, a short skirt and a pair of gleaming stiletto heels that accentuated her legs. As he stopped next to her, she glanced over, and he smiled. They both got on the elevator.
“I don’t remember seeing you here before. Are you new?” he asked.
She shook her head lightly,
“Just visiting family. I’m not a cop,” she laughed lightly.
“I did think the outfit was a little nice for a cop,” he grinned.
She returned the gesture; it was a nice smile, quick and bright.
“Well then, you must be a cop.”
“Ouch,” he put a hand to his heart.
She giggled softly. Then the elevator arrived at the lobby and the doors slid open. The blonde turned to leave,
“Have a good night.”
“You too,” he waved.
She was cute, clever too. As the doors closed, he cursed himself for not getting her name. They had chemistry. But perhaps he shouldn’t be thinking of such things right now, he had more than enough on his plate to keep him busy. Still… maybe he would see her here again, if she came back for another visit. Something to look forward to. The elevator reached the basement level and Ryan got off. The corridors were brightly lit, but completely empty. He wondered if Carson would still be here. He wandered down the hall, unsure exactly where his lab was. He didn’t come down here very often. Finally, he came across the only room that seemed to be occupied. The man inside was on the young end of middle aged, maybe just over 40, he was slight and wiry, with thin glasses and a hairline that was just beginning to recede at the front. Ryan decided to take a chance that this was his guy. He knocked gently on the lab door, the short man jumped, then beckoned him in.
“Are you Carson?” Ryan asked.
“You must be Taylor’s friend,” he offered his hand and shook warmly. “Most people call me John.”
“Nice to meet you, John. Name’s Ryan.”
“Good to meet you. How is Hawkins doing? I’ve heard that she… well, hasn’t been feeling well.”
“Well,” he sighed. “Her last assignment went a little bad, she took it hard. But a little stress leave, some rest, she’ll be alright.”
“That is good to hear. Taylor is good people. If there is anything I can do to help…”
“You will be helping her a lot by doing this test for her.”
“Can I ask how it will help? She wouldn’t explain.”
“Well, I will have to respect her wishes, then. But I am sure that she will explain it to you, when she’s ready. Just know that it is important to her, and that you are helping.”
“Very well. I won’t press any further, for now.”
“I am sure she appreciates it.”
“You have the sample there?”
“Right here,” he proffered the evidence baggy.
John Carson took the bag, looked at the small pieces of envelope and nodded,
“Alright, give me some time, I will call you when the results are in. I could email it to her, but I assume she doesn’t want this to be traceable.”
Ryan shook his head.
“Then bring a USB drive for the data.”
“Thanks, John.”
“Let’s just not make a habit of this, huh? It’s just lucky that I didn’t have my kids tonight.”
“I’ll see you soon, I hope.”
The next evening, Ryan followed Hawkins back into her office. She had cleared off a table in his absence and laid out a pair of gloves and some electrical wiring. She pushed them aside and opened her laptop.
“You have the data?” she asked urgently.
He handed her the USB drive.
“Did Carson say if it he got anything?”
“He said he got nothing from the flap, but the stamp gave a full profile.”
“That’s enough,” she plugged in the drive and pulled up the data.
“So, what now?”
“Now I analyze the data. Then you can run it through the database tomorrow at the NIA. It won’t take long, you can wait here. Just make yourself at home.”
Ryan sat down on a stack of boxes and pulled out his phone. No messages. He stood up and began pacing the room. There was a whiteboard set up with pictures of all the victims on it, a summary of the details of the crime below each. He let his eyes linger on the photo of Grace Hawkins. It surprised him a little, that she was up there. There was nothing different about it, nothing special. It was all perfectly professional. It must bother her, it being there like that. But she gave no sign. He turned away, looking for something else to occupy himself. He stopped at the table, idly curious about the pair of gloves that had formerly occupied the centre of the table. What was she doing with them? He reached out to pick them up.
“Don’t touch those.”
At the sound of her voice, Ryan almost jumped out of his skin, Hawkins looked up from the screen.
“You fidget like a little kid.”
“What can I say? I’m a snoop at heart,” he grinned sheepishly. “And I was really bored. What’s the deal with these anyway, they dangerous?”
Stolen story; please report.
“You could say that. They are a weapon prototype, actually.”
“What are you doing with them?”
“Just keeping myself busy. A hobby, like you suggested. This is a bit of a holdover, from was when I worked in the lab. I used to help test new designs.”
“I didn’t think you were an engineer,” he said.
“I’m not, I did biological consultation. I ensured that the various products, usually drugs and chemicals, did what they thought they did to people, helped oversee the testing, that sort of thing.”
“What do these do?”
Hawkins chuckled,
“These are gloves that use new battery technology and a metal alloy webbing to create something similar to a stun gun, except wearable and easily concealed. Pretty cool, huh?” she grinned.
“Amazing. Why didn’t these make production?”
“Well, there were a couple of reasons for it at the time. For one thing, the battery technology hadn’t advanced far enough. See these?” she pointed to batteries the size of a watch face woven into the back of the gloves. “Back when I was with R&D, several years ago, batteries this powerful were much larger. It made the technology impractical. Not to mention that no one had thought to weave the metal into fabric. They were using it sort of like a net, you know, throwing it at people,” Hawkins laughed as she recalled. “They used the batteries as a corner weight, to counter the tendency of the net to catch the wind and blow back at the person who threw it. But that method was pretty impractical too. During one of the field tests, the agent who was using it got the netting caught in a tree, it whipped around and one of the batteries hit him in the face. He was unconscious for a solid 15 minutes. The project got scrapped soon after that.”
“I can’t imagine why,” Ryan laughed. “It sounds like it was a terrible idea.”
“It was a terrible idea,” Hawkins laughed, too. “But the inventor was a smart guy. He had a good idea, he just needed to wait for the technology to catch up. Recently, he started to play around with it again, and then he got the idea to form the mesh into gloves, over an underlying insulating layer. It seems much more practical and much less dangerous. I guess he liked my work on his original product, because when he learned I was in the field, he requested that this prototype be sent to me for testing after it got cleared through the first level at R&D. They still need someone to test it under real-life conditions. I just haven’t gotten around to it yet. Thought I would look them over, while I had some time to kill. Maybe once this is over, I can get around to a proper test.”
Ryan looked down at the prototypes; they really were nicely done. It seemed that the inventor had woven the metal into the fabric, and it had a little switch on the outside of the wrist, so that the gloves weren’t energized all of the time. It was very neat, meticulous work. They would probably be very useful for the agency, some day in the future. Hawkins certainly kept her finger in a lot of pies.
“So, what made you leave the labs? You seem to really enjoy this stuff.”
“Oh, I like it well enough as a hobby, I suppose,” she shrugged. “But it was never really what I wanted to do. I only got into it because of my father. It’s a damn good thing he can’t see me now.”
Ryan looked over at her, her tone had changed abruptly, and it surprised him.
“What do you mean?” he asked.
“Oh, nothing really,” she sighed. “He never wanted me to be an agent, you know? Even when my mother was still alive, he was against it. But ever since I was a little girl, this was all I wanted to do. My mom, she worried, but at least she understood the drive. My father, on the other hand, had managed to accept worrying about his wife all the time, but he just couldn’t handle the thought of his only child taking those risks too. Mom always told me that he’d come around, when he saw how good I was at it,” Hawkins leaned her head back, remembering. “But then my mother was gone, and my father’s worst fears were realized. After that, he shut down, I couldn’t even bring up the subject of working at the NIA. He forbid me from taking those risks. I was never very good at doing what I told, but this wasn’t just an order, I knew that if I went into this line of work, it would kill him. Instead, I tried to change my own mind, tried to get excited about doing other things. I went to university, studied chemistry and biology, just like my father. Even though I was reasonably good at it, I couldn’t see myself working at a university, conducting research, being a doctor, none of those things seemed to fit. I did try, for his sake, but I always was the stubborn type, so in the end it still came back to the NIA. My concession to my father was working in the labs, I was still a lab rat, just a highly classified one,” Hawkins laughed sadly. “I promised him no field work, no danger, but I knew that I didn’t really mean it. If somebody offered me the chance, I knew I would take it, without hesitation. So, when I got the opportunity to work undercover, I thought it was perfect. I couldn’t tell my dad what I was doing, even if I wanted to, so he never needed to know that I was in danger. In the end, I never did end up telling him that I wasn’t working in a lab anymore. I didn’t want to worry him. He believed that was all I was doing, until the day he died, and I never corrected him. Now here I am, actively seeking the same man who killed my mother. I’m going to go out on a limb and say that dad would not have been a huge fan of my plan.”
“It must have been hard for him, to lose your mother that way.”
“It was. I mean, the spouses of cops, firefighters, people who risk their lives that way, they might think that they are prepared for the worst, but knowing that it could happen any day doesn’t make it any easier when it does.”
“Not for you, either.”
“No,” she admitted. “Not for me, either. And the hardest part for him was that it didn’t end. The pain never eased because the person who killed her was never brought to justice. My dad went to his grave knowing that the killer was still out there, still preying on others. The families, the people who have waited almost 30 years for some form of closure, just have to watch as the same person kills again and again with seeming impunity… They are the ones that get hurt the most. Someone has to put an end to it.”
“I think that your father would have understood that,” Ryan said.
“Maybe,” Hawkins mused. “Though I doubt he would have understood why it had to be me. But I have to do this, so I guess he will just have to forgive me, if he can.”
Ryan could see the profound grief and fierce determination mingled in her eyes.
“Do you want to talk about it?” he asked. “About your mother, I mean? Sometimes it helps to have somebody just listen.”
“No offense Stone, but there is only one person I want to talk to about my mother’s death.”
“Really? And who’s that?”
“I don’t know, yet. I’ll get back to you if we get a DNA match,” she replied darkly.
Hawkins turned her attention back to the computer screen. Ryan dropped into a chair, reflecting on what she’d just told him. It wasn’t that what she had said was all that shocking, most of it was even in her personnel file, what was strange was that she actually told him, with hardly any prompting. Maybe she really was starting to warm to him. He pulled out his phone, trying to kill time.
Finally, Hawkins tapped him on the shoulder.
“How’d it go?” Ryan rubbed his eyes and put his phone away.
“Well, Carson was right, we got a nice, clear profile. And can tell you that the sender was male, but that’s all until you run it.”
“That is amazing!” he could barely believe their luck.
“Don’t get too excited,” she cautioned. “We still need to find a suspect that is consistent with the profile.”
Hawkins closed her computer and pulled out the USB.
“The profile is on here. You just need to log onto a secure computer and run it through CODIS. Do you have the instructions I gave you?”
Ryan patted his pocket lightly.
“Right here.”
“Well, if you have any trouble, make sure to call me.”
“I’ll do it first thing in the morning. Don’t want to raise too many suspicions by making another late-night visit this week. People may expect that from you, but if I try it too many times people are going to start asking questions,” Ryan rubbed the back of his neck. “Do you think it made a difference?”
“What’s that?” Hawkins mumbled.
“This little ruse, do you think it was worth it?”
“I thought about that,” she replied slowly. “What do you think would have happened if you’d asked some intern to compile that evidence log and then bring it to me? Or if I’d spread it around that I thought I had a new piece of evidence?”
“It would have been gone before we got there,” Ryan concluded.
“Exactly. Just another piece of lost evidence, just like every other time. If there is one thing our suspect is good at, it’s keeping his finger on the pulse of a case. If we’d done this officially, he’d have been watching us, and we’d have tipped him off somehow. I’m sure of it.”
“Well, I guess everything worked out, then,” he said contentedly.
“You talk like we have this solved,” Hawkins shot him a warning look out of the corner of her eye.
“We have his DNA, what else do we need?” Ryan asked.
“If there’s one thing I’ve learned in this job,” Hawkins cautioned. “It’s that it isn’t settled until the jury verdict is in. This is still far from over, don’t forget that.”
“Right,” Ryan sighed. “Well, get some sleep, Hawkins. You look like you need it.”
“Thanks, Stone. You look like shit, too,” she sniped. “Call me as soon as you have a result.”
“Of course,” Ryan waved and headed out, still revelling in the thrill of a hard-won lead.
He played it cool, following Hawkins’s lead, but really, he could barely contain his excitement. He had always been of the opinion that there was no better feeling in the world than getting a break, and in this case, the feeling seemed to be intensified by the risk they were taking to get it. They were working without any safety net, and the heightened sensation was both terrifying and addictive. He could see himself getting used to the rush. He was almost disappointed that come tomorrow this would be all wrapped up. Hell, he might even get that promotion after all.