Once Pined

Riley had seen him twice in the hospital. The first time had been devastating. He’d been unconscious from his injuries, with an IV in each arm and an oxygen mask. Riley had blamed herself bitterly for what had happened to him.

But the next time she’d seen him had been more heartening. He’d been alert and cheerful, and had joked a bit proudly about his foolhardiness.

Most of all, she remembered what he’d said to her then …

“There isn’t much I wouldn’t do for you and April.”

Clearly he’d had second thoughts. The danger of living next door to Riley had proven too much for him and now he was going away. She didn’t know whether to feel hurt or guilty. She definitely felt disappointed.

Riley’s thoughts were interrupted by April’s voice behind her.

“Oh my God! Blaine, are you and Crystal moving? Is Crystal still there?”

Blaine nodded.

“I’ve got to go over and say goodbye,” April said.

April dashed out the door and headed next door.

Riley was still grappling with her emotions.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

“Sorry for what?” Blaine asked.

“You know.”

Blaine nodded. “It wasn’t your fault, Riley,” he said in a gentle voice.

Riley and Blaine stood gazing at each other for a moment. Finally, Blaine forced a smile.

“Hey, it’s not like we’re leaving town,” he said. “We can get together whenever we like. So can the girls. And they’ll still be in the same high school. It’ll be like nothing has changed.”

A bitter taste rose up in Riley’s mouth.

That’s not true, she thought. Everything has changed.

Disappointment was starting to give way to anger. Riley knew that it was wrong to feel angry. She had no right. She didn’t even know why she felt that way. All she knew was that she couldn’t help it.

And what were they supposed to do right now?

Hug? Shake hands?

She sensed that Blaine felt the same awkwardness and indecision.

They managed to exchange terse goodbyes. Blaine went back home, and Riley went back inside. She found Jilly eating breakfast in the kitchen. Gabriela had put Riley’s own breakfast on the table, so she sat down to eat with Jilly.

“So are you excited about today?”

Riley’s question was out before she could realize how lame and clumsy it sounded.

“I guess,” Jilly said, poking her pancakes with a fork. She didn’t even look up at Riley.

*

A while later, Riley and Jilly walked through the entrance to Brody Middle School. The building was attractive, with brightly colored locker doors lining the hallway and student artwork hanging everywhere.

A pleasant and polite student offered her help and directed them toward the main office. Riley thanked her and continued down the hall, clutching Jilly’s registration papers in one hand and holding Jilly’s hand with the other.

Earlier, they had gone through registration at the central school office. They’d taken along the materials that Phoenix Social Services had put together – records of vaccination, school transcripts, Jilly’s birth certificate, and a statement that Riley was Jilly’s appointed guardian. Jilly had been removed from her father’s custody, although he had threatened to challenge that decision. Riley knew that the path to finalizing and legalizing an adoption wouldn’t be quick or easy.

Jilly squeezed Riley’s hand tightly. Riley sensed that the girl felt extremely ill at ease. It wasn’t hard to imagine why. As rough as life in Phoenix had been, it was the only place that Jilly had ever lived.

“Why can’t I go to school with April?” Jilly asked.

“Next year you’ll be in the same high school,” Riley said. “First you’ve got to finish eighth grade.”

They found the main office and Riley showed the papers to the receptionist.

“We’d like to see someone about enrolling Jilly in school,” Riley said.

“You need to see a guidance counselor,” the receptionist said with a smile. “Come right this way.”

Both of us could use some guidance, Riley thought.

The counselor was a woman in her thirties with a mop of curly brown hair. Her name was Wanda Lewis, and her smile was as warm as a smile could be. Riley found herself thinking that she could be a real help. Surely a woman in a job like this had dealt with other students from rough backgrounds.

Ms. Lewis took them on a tour of the school. The library was neat, orderly, and well stocked with both computers and books. In the gym, girls were happily playing basketball. The cafeteria was clean and sparkling. Everything looked absolutely lovely to Riley.

All the while, Ms. Lewis cheerfully asked Jilly lots of questions about where she’d gone to school before, and about her interests. But Jilly said almost nothing in reply to Ms. Lewis’s questions and asked none of her own. Her curiosity seemed to perk up a little when she got a look at the art room. But as soon as they moved on, she became quiet and withdrawn all over again.

Riley wondered what might be going on in the girl’s head. She knew that her recent grades had been poor, but they had been surprisingly good in earlier years. But the truth was, Riley knew almost nothing about Jilly’s past school experience.

Maybe she even hated school.

This new one must be daunting, where Jilly knew absolutely nobody. And of course, it wasn’t going to be easy to get caught up in her studies, with only a couple of weeks left before end of the term.

At the end of the tour, Riley managed to coax Jilly into thanking Ms. Lewis for showing her around. They agreed that Jilly would start classes tomorrow. Then Riley and Jilly walked out into the bite of the cold January air. A thin layer of yesterday’s snow lay all around the parking lot.

“So what do you think of your new school?” Riley asked.

“It’s OK,” Jilly said.

Riley couldn’t tell if Jilly was being sullen or was simply dazed by all the changes she was facing. As they approached the car, she noticed that Jilly was shivering deeply and her teeth were chattering. She was wearing a heavy jacket of April’s, but the cold was really bothering her.

They got into the car, and Riley switched on the ignition and the heater. Even as the car got warmer, Jilly was still shivering.

Riley kept the car parked. It was time to find out what was bothering this child in her care.

“What’s wrong?” she asked. “Is there something about school that upsets you?”

“It’s not the school,” Jilly said, her voice shaking now. “It’s the cold.”

“I guess it doesn’t get cold in Phoenix,” Riley said. “This must be strange to you.”

Jilly’s eyes filled up with tears.

“It does get cold sometimes,” she said. “Especially at night.”

“Please tell me what’s wrong,” Riley said.

Tears started to pour down Jilly’s cheeks. She spoke in a small, choked voice.

“The cold makes me remember …”

Jilly fell silent. Riley waited patiently for her to gone.

“My dad always blamed me for everything,” Jilly said. “He blamed me for my mom going away, and my brother too, and he even blamed me because he kept getting fired from whatever jobs he could get. Anything that was wrong was always my fault.”

Jilly was sobbing quietly now.

“Go on,” Riley said.

“One night he told me he wanted me gone,” Jilly said. “He said I was a dead weight, that I was keeping him down, and he’d had enough of me and he was through with me. He kicked me out of the house. He locked the doors and I couldn’t get back in.”

Jilly gulped hard at the memory.

“I’ve never felt so cold in my life,” she said. “Not even now, in this weather. I found a big drainpipe in a ditch, and it was big enough for me to crawl into, so that was where I spent that night. It was so scary. Sometimes people were walking around near me, but I didn’t want them to find me. They didn’t sound like anybody who would help me.”

Riley closed her eyes, picturing the girl hiding in the dark drainpipe. She whispered, “And what happened then?”

Jilly continued, “I just scrunched down and stayed there all night. I didn’t really sleep. The next morning I went back home and knocked on the door and called for Dad and begged him to let me in. He ignored me, like I wasn’t even there. That’s when I went to the truck stop. It was warm there, and there was food. Some of the women were nice to me and I figured I’d do whatever I had to do to stay there. And that night is when you found me.”

Jilly had grown calmer as she’d told her story. She seemed relieved to let it out. But now Riley was crying. She could hardly believe what this poor girl had gone through. She put her arm around Jilly and hugged her tight.

“Never again,” Riley said through her sobs. “Jilly, I promise you, you’ll never feel like that ever again.”

It was a huge promise, and Riley was feeling small, weak, and fragile herself right now. She hoped that she could keep it.

CHAPTER THREE

The woman kept thinking about poor Cody Woods. She was sure that he was dead by now. She’d find out for sure from the morning newspaper.

As much as she was enjoying her hot tea and granola, waiting for the news was making her grumpy.

When is that paper going to get here? she wondered, looking at the kitchen clock.

The delivery seemed to be getting later and later these days. Of course, she wouldn’t have this trouble with a digital subscription. But she didn’t like to read the news on her computer. She liked to settle down in a comfortable chair and enjoy the old-fashioned feel of a newspaper in her hands. She even liked the way the newsprint sometimes stuck to her fingers.

But the paper was already a quarter of an hour late. If things got much worse, she’d have to call in and complain. She hated to do that. It always left a bad taste in her mouth.

Anyway, the newspaper was really the only way she had of finding out about Cody. She couldn’t very well call the Signet Rehabilitation Center to ask about him. That would cause too much suspicion. Besides, as far as the staff there was concerned, she was already in Mexico with her husband, with no plans ever to return.

Or rather, Hallie Stillians was in Mexico. It felt a bit sad that she’d never get to be Hallie Stillians ever again. She’d gotten rather attached to that particular alias. It had been sweet of the staff at Signet Rehab to surprise her with a cake on her last day there.

She smiled as she remembered. The cake had been colorfully decorated with sombreros and a message:

Buen Viaje, Hallie and Rupert!

Rupert had been the name of her imaginary husband. She was going to miss talking so fondly about him.

She finished her granola and kept sipping her delicious homemade tea, made from an old family recipe – a different recipe from the one she’d shared with Cody, and of course minus the special ingredients she’d added for him.

She idly began to sing …

Far from home,So far from home —This little baby’s far from home.You pine awayFrom day to dayToo sad to laugh, too sad to play.

How Cody had loved that song! So had all the other patients. And many more patients in the future were sure to love it just as much. That thought warmed her heart.

Just then she heard a thump at the front door. She hurried to open it and look outside. Lying on the cold stoop was the morning newspaper. Trembling with excitement, she picked up the paper, rushed back to the kitchen, and opened it to the death notices.

Sure enough, there it was:

SEATTLE – Cody Woods , 49, of Seattle …

She stopped for a moment right there. That was odd. She could have sworn that he’d told her he was fifty. Then she read the rest …

… at the South Hills Hospital, Seattle, Wash.; Sutton-Brinks Funeral Home and Cremation Services, Seattle.

That was all. It was terse, even for a simple death notice.

She hoped that there would be a nice obituary in the next few days. But she was worried that maybe there wouldn’t be. Who was going to write it, after all?

He’d been all alone in the world, at least as far as she knew. One wife was dead, another had left him, and his two children wouldn’t speak to him. He’d said barely a word to her about anybody else – friends, relatives, business colleagues.

Who cares? she wondered.

She felt a familiar bitter rage rising in her throat.

Rage against all the people in Cody Woods’ life who didn’t care whether he lived or died.

Rage against the smiling staff at Signet Rehab, pretending that they liked and would miss Hallie Stillians.

Rage against people everywhere, with their lies and secrets and meanness.

As she often did, she imagined herself soaring over the world upon black wings, wreaking death and destruction upon the wicked.

And everybody was wicked.

Everybody deserved to die.

Even Cody Woods himself had been wicked and deserved to die.

Because what kind of man had he been, really, to leave the world with no one to love him?

A terrible man, surely.

Terrible and hateful.

“Serves him right,” she growled.

Then she snapped out of her anger. She felt ashamed to have said such a thing aloud. She didn’t mean it, after all. She reminded herself that she felt nothing but love and goodwill toward absolutely everybody.

Besides, it was almost time to go to work. Today she was going to be Judy Brubaker.

Looking in the mirror, she carefully made sure that the auburn wig was properly aligned and that the soft bangs hung naturally over her forehead. It was an expensive wig and no one had ever caught on that it wasn’t her own hair. Beneath the wig, Hallie Stillians’ short blond hair had been dyed dark brown and trimmed into a different style.

No sign of Hallie remained, not in her wardrobe and not in her mannerisms.

She picked up a pair of stylish reading glasses and hung them on a sparkly cord around her neck.

She smiled with satisfaction. It was smart to invest in the proper accessories, and Judy Brubaker deserved the best.

Everybody loved Judy Brubaker.

And everybody loved that song that Judy Brubaker often sang – a song she sang aloud as she dressed for work …

No need to weep,Dream long and deep.Give yourself to slumber’s sweep.No more sighs,Just close your eyesAnd you will go home in your sleep.

She was overflowing with peace, enough peace to share with all the world. She’d given peace to Cody Woods.

And soon she’d give peace to someone else who needed it.

CHAPTER FOUR

Riley’s heart pounded and her lungs burned from breathing hard and fast. A familiar tune was stuck in her head.

“Follow the yellow brick road …”

As tired and winded as she was, Riley couldn’t help but be amused. It was a cold early morning, and she was running the six-mile outdoor obstacle course at Quantico. The course was nicknamed, of all things, the Yellow Brick Road.

It had been called that by the US Marines who had built it. The Marines had placed yellow bricks to mark every mile. FBI trainees who survived the course were given a yellow brick as their reward.

Riley had won her yellow brick years ago. But every now and then, she ran the course again, just to make sure that she was still up to it. After the emotional stress of the last couple of days, Riley needed some full-on physical exertion to clear her head.

So far, she had overcome a series of daunting obstacles and had passed three yellow bricks along the way. She had climbed over makeshift walls, pulled herself over hurdles, and leaped through simulated windows. Just a moment ago she had pulled herself up a sheer rock face by a rope, and now she was lowering herself back down again.

When she hit the ground, she looked up and saw Lucy Vargas, a bright young agent she enjoyed working and training with. Lucy had been glad to be Riley’s workout partner this morning. She stood panting at the top of the rock face, looking down at Riley.

Riley called up to her, “Can’t keep up with an old fart like me?”

Lucy laughed. “I’m taking it slow. I don’t want you to overdo it – not at your age.”

“Hey, don’t hold back on my account,” Riley yelled back. “Give it all you’ve got.”

Riley was forty, but she had never let her physical training lapse. Being able to move fast and strike hard could be crucial when battling human monsters. Sheer physical force had saved lives, including her own, more than once.

Even so, she wasn’t happy when she looked ahead and saw the next obstacle – a shallow pool of freezing cold, muddy water with barbed wire hanging over it.

Things were about to get tough.

She was well bundled for winter weather and was wearing a waterproof parka. But even so, the crawl through the mud was going to leave her soaked and freezing.

Here goes nothing, she thought.

She threw herself forward into the mud. The icy water sent a severe shock through her whole body. Still, she forced herself to start crawling, and she flattened herself as she felt the barbed wire scrape her back slightly.

A gnawing numbness kicked in, triggering an unwanted memory.

Riley was in a pitch-dark crawlspace under a house. She had just escaped a cage where she had been held and tormented by a psychopath with a propane torch. In the darkness, she’d lost track of how long she’d been in captivity.

But she’d managed to force the cage door open, and now she was crawling blindly in search of a way out. It had rained recently, and the mud underneath her was sticky, cold, and deep.

As her body grew ever more numb from the cold, a deep despair crept through her. She was weak from sleeplessness and hunger.

I can’t make it, she thought.

She had to force such ideas out of her mind. She had to keep crawling and searching. If she didn’t get out, he’d eventually kill her – just as he’d killed his other victims.

“Riley, are you OK?”

Lucy’s voice snapped Riley out of her memory of one of her most harrowing cases. It was an ordeal that she would never forget, especially because her daughter later became a captive to the same psychopath. She wondered if she would ever be entirely free of the flashbacks.

And would April ever be free of those devastating memories?

Riley was back in the present again, and she realized that she’d crawled to a halt under the barbed wire. Lucy was right behind her, waiting her for her to finish this obstacle.

“I’m OK,” Riley called back. “Sorry to hold you up.”

She forced herself to start crawling again. At the water’s edge, she scrambled to her feet and gathered her wits and her energy. Then she took off down the wooded trail, certain that Lucy wasn’t far behind her. She knew that her next task would be to climb across a rough hanging cargo net. After that, she still had almost two miles to go, and more than a few really tough obstacles to overcome.

*

At the end of the six-mile course, Riley and Lucy stumbled along arm-in-arm, panting and laughing and congratulating each other over their triumph. Riley was surprised to find her longtime partner waiting for her where the trail ended. Bill Jeffreys was a strong, sturdy man of about Riley’s age.

“Bill!” Riley said, still gasping for breath. “What are you doing here?”

“I came looking for you,” he said. “They told me I could find you here. I hardly believed you wanted to do this – and in the dead of winter, too! What are you, some kind of masochist?”

Riley and Lucy both laughed.

Lucy said, “Maybe I’m the masochist. I hope I can run the Yellow Brick Road like Riley can when I’m her ripe old age.”

Teasingly, Riley said to Bill, “Hey, I’m ready for another go at it. Want to join me?”

Bill shook his head and chuckled.

“Huh-uh,” he said. “I’ve still got my old Yellow Brick at home, and I use it as a doorstop. One’s enough for me. I’m thinking about going for a Green Brick, though. Want to join me for that?”

Riley laughed again. The so-called “Green Brick” was a joke around the FBI – an award given to anyone who could smoke thirty-five cigars on thirty-five successive nights.

“I’ll pass,” she said.

Bill’s expression suddenly turned serious.

“I’m on a new case, Riley,” he said. “And I need you to work with me on it. I hope you’re OK with this. I know it’s really soon after our last case.”

Bill was right. To Riley, it seemed like only yesterday when they’d apprehended Orin Rhodes.

“You know I’ve just brought Jilly home. I’m trying to get her settled into her new life. New school … new everything.”

“How is she doing?” Bill asked.

“She’s erratic, but she’s really trying. She’s so happy to be part of a family. I think she’s going to need a lot of help.”

“And April?”

“She’s absolutely great. I’m still blown away by how fighting with Rhodes made her feel stronger. And she’s already very fond of Jilly.”

After a pause, she asked, “What kind of case have you got, Bill?”

Bill was silent for a moment.

“I’m on my way to meet with the chief about it,” he said. “I really do need your help, Riley.”

Riley looked directly at her friend and partner. His expression was one of deep distress. When he’d said he needed her help, he’d really meant it. Riley wondered why.

“Let me take a shower and get into some dry clothes,” she said. “I’ll meet you at headquarters right away.”

CHAPTER FIVE

Team Chief Brent Meredith wasn’t a man to waste time with niceties. Riley knew that from experience. So when she walked into his office after her run, she didn’t expect small talk – no polite questions about health and home and family. He could be kindly and warm, but those moments were rare. Today, he was going to get right down to business, and his business was always urgent.

Bill had already arrived. He still looked extremely anxious. She hoped she would soon understand why.

As soon as Riley sat down, Meredith leaned over his desk toward her, his broad, angular African-American face as daunting as ever.

“First things first, Agent Paige,” he said.

Riley waited for him to say something else – to ask a question or give an order. Instead, he simply stared at her.

It only took Riley a moment to understand what Meredith was getting at.

Meredith was taking care not to ask his question aloud. Riley appreciated his discretion. A killer was still on the loose, and his name was Shane Hatcher. He’d escaped from Sing Sing, and Riley’s most recent assignment had been to bring Hatcher in.

She’d failed. Actually, she hadn’t really tried, and now other FBI agents were assigned to apprehend Hatcher. So far they’d had no success.

Shane Hatcher was a criminal genius who had become a respected expert in criminology during his long years in prison. So Riley had sometimes visited him in prison to get advice on her cases. She knew him well enough to feel sure that he wasn’t a danger to society right now. Hatcher had a weird but strict moral code. He’d killed one man since his escape – an old enemy who was himself a dangerous criminal. Riley felt certain that he wouldn’t kill anybody else.

Right now, Riley understood that Meredith needed to know whether she’d heard from Hatcher. It was a high-profile case, and it seemed that Hatcher was quickly becoming something of an urban legend – a famed criminal mastermind capable of just about anything.

She appreciated Meredith’s discretion in not asking his question out loud. But the simple truth was, Riley knew nothing about Hatcher’s current activities or his whereabouts.

“There’s nothing new, sir,” she said in reply to Meredith’s unspoken question.

Meredith nodded and seemed to relax a little.

“All right, then,” Meredith said. “I’ll get right to the point. I’m sending Agent Jeffreys to Seattle on a case. He wants you as a partner. I need to know whether you’re available to go with him.”

Riley needed to say no. She had so much to deal with in her life right now that taking on an assignment in a distant city seemed out of the question. She still had occasional returns of the PTSD she had suffered since being held captive by a sadistic criminal. Her daughter, April, had suffered at the same man’s hands, and now April had her own demons to deal with. And now Riley had a new daughter who had been through her own terrible traumas.

If she could just stay put for a while and teach a few classes at the Academy, maybe she could get her life stabilized.