Page 100 of Wicked Sin

She laughs. “I’ll put them in the conference room. You take Ms. Reid to the lineup room. McBride is almost ready, and that’s a quiet place to be out of the way, anyway.”

“You don’t want me in there?” Luke winks, so I know this is an in-joke between them.

The captain looks him up and down. “No offense, Vasquez, but the chances of you telling someone to get fucked is too high.”

He grunts, and I suppress a smile. She’s probably not wrong.

She claps him on the shoulder. “At least I know how to say it diplomatically.”

“I’ll keep on keeping our witness company, then.”

“You do that.”

She flits away to the elevators, and Luke leads me down a hall and through a keycard protected door. On the other side of that, there’s another hallway, and I’m officially lost.

“So, who is the cavalry, exactly? The FBI?” My pulse jumps a bit at the thought of seeing them again after ditching them. I didn’t do anything wrong, but a lifetime of being conditioned to face the worst judgment has made me jumpy.

“Probably. And the Secret Service has its thumb in this, too. They all seem attached at the hip. Here we go.”

He opens another door, and we’re in a dark anteroom, looking through one-way glass at something out of a movie or a TV show. An empty room with height lines painted on the far wall.

My pulse jumps again. It’s pounding now.

“Have a seat,” he says. “McBride will come in and do the official stuff for this. Until then, let me entertain you with terrible knock-knock jokes.”

“Okay.” My voice sounds faint to my own ears. Small.

Luke steps closer and wraps his arms around me. The hug feels good. “I’m here,” he whispers. “Even if I can’t hold you during the identification, know that this hug is very much continuing in spirit.”

“Thank you.” Over his shoulder, I catch a glimpse of a set of televisions, all showing different video feeds from around the building. “What are those?”

“This whole place was wired for telecom stuff. This wing is secure, for example, so if we want to stay here to stay close to an interrogation, but there’s a meeting happening in the conference room, you can call in from here. Honestly, I don’t think anyone has ever used it. But we do use the video conferencing there for task force stuff when a big manhunt is on, or when we sent the forensics from your case to Quantico for the FBI to process.”

“Fancy.” I watch the captain step into the conference room, then turn back to Luke. “So, I guess this means our time together is coming to an end.”

He hauls me in close for another tight, squeezing hug. “Fuck, Taylor. We’ll still be friends.”

“Because it got complicated there for a while.”

“It may always be complicated,” he murmurs. “I don’t mind that. I’m not easily scared off.”

And I will try my best to distance myself. To push him away, because I’m broken and I like to test all the boundaries I bump up against, and then go brittle. Sharp.

Self-defence in the most dysfunctional way possible.

But before I can admit that to him, the door opens and Sarah McBride steps in.

“Hi, Taylor. Thank you for coming in.” She smiles, and my panic eases a bit. “Have you ever done one of these before?”

I shake my head, giving her my full attention while she explains the process.

“You can turn around, look at the back wall, and after they line up, I’ll get you to turn around again. It’s important that you stay quiet. The glass isn’t completely soundproof. But remember, they can’t see you. And you are safe in here. Got it?”

I nod. “Yes.”

“Good.” She moves to an intercom and presses it. “Bring the lineup in, please.”

I catch sight of a uniformed cop opening the door before Luke touches my back, and I turn around.

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