Page 63 of Holmes, Margaret and Poe

“As if the DNA was planted.”

She smiled sourly. “That’s the way I’m leaning.”

“Nothing else?”

“Mahoney just called me,” she said, and explained about the dead gunrunner, his friend Ibrahim, and the missing .50-caliber machine gun and Stinger missiles.

“But we were told those missiles were all accounted for.”

“We were told wrong.”

“But unless you have a link from Leslie Parks and Ibrahim to Captain Davis, what do we really have on him?”

Cantrell brooded on that for a few moments before conceding, “Not much that wouldn’t get tossed out in court.”

“Then you don’t have much of a choice, do you?”

“No. I’ll call the holding facility and have him released.”

“Sorry to disappoint you,” Sampson said, getting to his feet.

She got up as well and gazed into his eyes with curiosity. It made him feel a little awkward. “No disappointment whatsoever, Detective,” she said. “I asked you to do a job and you did it extremely well.”

Sampson did not break eye contact. “Need any more work like that done? Or do I go back to my other cases?”

Cantrell studied him a moment longer, then looked away and laughed. “I’m trying to figure out some way to keep you around, but I’m failing, I’m afraid.”

“Oh,” he said. “That’s good.”

“That’s good?” she said, looking at him with amusement.

“I think so,” Sampson said. “Because once I’m no longer on official loan to you, it isn’t a conflict of interest for us to go have a late lunch somewhere.”

Cantrell took a step back, but the amusement mostly remained. “You’re asking me out on a date, Detective?”

“I don’t know you well enough for a date. It’s just lunch. Unless you’re taken?”

“Taken?” She laughed. “I’m taken by the job. By this investigation.”

“All the more reason to go out to lunch with me.”

She looked at him, a little puzzled, a little pleased. “But why?”

“I don’t know,” Sampson said. “I’m usually fairly shy, but I was just sitting there, and, I don’t know, I felt compelled to ask you.”

“Compelled?”

“That’s what it felt like.”

She squinted one eye. “Age? Marital history? Kids?”

Sampson said, “Forty-six. Widower. A seven-year-old daughter, Willow.”

Cantrell’s expression melted a little. She said, “Forty-eight. Widow. Never had the pleasure.”

They stood there and stared in silence at each other for several long moments.

“Well, Rebecca?” Sampson said finally.

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