Page 3 of Last Seen
He jammed his glasses back on. “It’s a bit more than a technicality, Halley. It cost the lab millions to ransom the data they stole and ruined the integrity of multiple cases. We’re open to lawsuits now, and the board ... They need a scalp, and I’m sorry to say they decided on yours. It was a unanimous vote. I hope you understand. I really have no choice here.”
A barista comes over. Halley doesn’t know this one; she’s all of eighteen and fresh as a thorny rose, with her septum piercing and sleeve of tattoos. “Can I get you something?”
“Oh. No. I was just ...”
“If you’re not buying something, I’m afraid you need to leave.”
“Right. Of course.”
She wanders up Wisconsin, turns left on P Street, crosses Thirty-Third. Her friends’ town house is four stories and redbrick Federalist swank, like everything in this neighborhood. What was this morning’s elegant freedom is now a bleak set of mossy steps to a basement. Small. Lonely. And completely unaffordable. She can rely on her friends’ generosity for a few more days, maybe, but then? Every step she’s made in the past few weeks was in anticipation of getting promoted and landing a raise, not losing everything.
It hits her again, hard, and she sags against the door. She is going to have to let this dream go. She has to swallow her pride, move back home with Theo, and try to start again.
She collapses on the sofa. She can’t keep on like this anymore. She is being tested. Normally, if there is anything she loves in this life, it’s tests. She was always the weird kid who couldn’t wait to sit for anexam. It didn’t matter if it was a pop quiz in biology or the SATs or the last final for her graduate degree in forensic science or, now, as an adult, the annual boards she takes to keep her license active. Her heart races in anticipation; she sharpens her pencils; the paper appears on her desk—now the link to the test file on the computer—and off she goes. If there are real superpowers, test taking is hers.
This one? She’s failing miserably.
She enters the apartment, drops her bag on the floor, sinks onto the sofa, head in her hands. She yanks out the clip, and the dark mass flows over her shoulders.
Okay. Think.
Before she joined NISL, at Ivan Howland’s relentless behest, thank you very much, she’d had offers from the FBI, the CIA, Homeland Security, and ATF, mostly thanks to her grad school professors singling her out and putting her on the radar of the organizations so she could do internships with each. She also had an offer to go home to her local police department. Lord knows they were always understaffed and needed as much help as they could get. There was something slightly romantic about the idea, helping police the community she grew up in. Very Mayberry.
But that was ten years ago. When she was twenty-four, she had the arrogance of youth on her side. She had a mission. She would solve crimes with science and might even become famous for it.
Ivan Howland had pounced on her at an American Academy of Forensic Sciences cocktail party just as she was making the decision about where to start her career, pitching a new lab program that he’d just gotten funding for. There was a lot more money in the private sector. They would be the most sophisticated lab in the country, the place where complicated cases would be solved. Cases local law enforcement couldn’t afford to solve themselves. They had the funding to stay in front of the caseload, enough to staff a state-of-the-art lab and provide backup to the alphabet agencies.
She jumped at the chance. The freedom of the offer, not to mention the money included, was enticing. And ten years later, as she is about to hit the pinnacle of his promises, a pinnacle he wouldn’t have reached without her, he cuts her loose without a second thought.
She supposes there are plenty of cheaper scientists out there now. And plenty more specializing in forensics than when she came out of school. People who won’t complain when someone decides to play grab-ass with the interns. Someone who’s not stupid enough to click on a link in a phishing email labeled as an internal meeting invite that even the FBI agent who’d investigated said was impeccable.
She has contacts. She has people she can reach out to. Several of the ones she turned down said if she ever changed her mind, to call immediately. She will make a list. Hopefully one or two still have their positions.
And of course, let’s not forget the reason she is in a basement apartment in a Georgetown town house instead of driving home to her spacious four-bedroom home in McLean. The six-two, black-haired, blue-eyed ATF agent named Theodore Donovan. Her husband. Her soon-to-be ex-husband.
She loves Theo. She really does. And he loves her. But not quite enough. They’ve had normal issues over their decade of marriage, but it’s been getting harder and harder to be the happy-go-lucky, band-loving, bar-hopping, museum-attending couple they used to be. Their conversations, always so broad-ranging in the beginning, became smaller, more focused. More entrenched. The fights are now singular. Repetitive.
She wants a family. He doesn’t.
He claims it’s because of his job, that it’s too dangerous, that he’d rather not have a child at all than orphan one, but she knows he’s just stalling because the idea of a kid terrifies him. She always thought they wanted the same thing. Then, when he said he didn’t want kids, she thought she could change his mind. She was wrong.They’ve been fighting about it for five years, and now their love is permanently damaged.
Halley is the one who suggested the separation, and he agreed so quickly she knew it was over between them. He didn’t fuss, didn’t cry or moan, just sighed heavily and said, “You know I will always be here for you.” Made her feel worse, but she thinks he’s relieved. No more wife glaring at him over dinner, pressuring him to pony up that genetically gorgeous sperm and give her babies.
But now? What is she going to do? The paperwork has been drawn up. They’re supposed to meet this evening after work to sign everything. She’ll have to get in touch with the lawyers and ask them to hold off. And tell Theo. Will he take her back? Probably. But only if she gives up her dream of children for good. As in, he’s “getting a vasectomy, so deal with it” for good.
The tears come at last, hard and deep sobs that shock her with their intensity. She’s crying for more than her job, her failed marriage, her childless belly. She’s crying for the promise of a life that no longer exists. Nothing can change what’s happened over the past ten years. She can’t get a do-over. She is thirty-four years old, her eggs are drying up, and her entire world has just crashed down around her ears. She had it all, and now, in a heartbeat, it’s gone.
When she is spent, when the tears have stopped, and the reality sets in, she changes clothes, careful to get the seams just right on her pants as she folds them—she won’t be able to afford to dry-clean them after every wear anymore—and tackles scrubbing the tiny basement kitchen. It’s not dirty, but it gives her something to do. Cleaning is meditative.
Within ten minutes, the kitchen is sparkling, and she has no answers. Now what?
Maybe a walk? Drive across the bridge, sneak into her house, and take the dog for a run? Something, anything, to take her away from this shitty morning. No, she can’t chance it with Charlie. Theo might be home, and she just cannot face him right now. She’ll just go downto the Potomac, trace the canal path. It’s a pretty day with a gruesome interior. Maybe some fresh air will help her think.
Thick dark hair back in a ponytail, sneakers on, she is almost out the door when her phone rings. She sees her dad’s smiling face on the screen.
She debates answering. He has a way of sensing when things aren’t going right for her. She will have a hard time not just spilling all her woes. But she adores her dad, and he doesn’t call during the day very often. He teaches at the private school back home, astronomy and physics, and his classes usually overlap her workday. Something could be wrong. She slides open the phone.
“Dad? Is everything okay?”
