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“I’m not following—”
“Two.” Raisa didn’t need to explicitly state what she’d do at three. If this woman was stalking her, she knew who Raisa was. It didn’t hurt that Raisa also had her forearm shoved up against her windpipe and, between the two of them, was clearly in control of the situation.
“Lady, you are paranoid. I’m not—”
“Thr—”
“Okay. Okay, okay, okay. Fine, you’re right. Christ, let me go,” the woman said, slapping at Raisa’s arm. Raisa released her, but didn’t relax. “Isn’t that police brutality?”
Raisa lifted her brows. “We both know I’m not the police.”
“You’re a glorified cop,” the woman said, all piss and vinegar.
“Why are you following me?” Raisa demanded, uninterested in all her diversionary tactics. Giving her more time just to let her figure out ways to lie.
“Good lord, I’m just a student,” the woman said, all huffy about it, still rubbing at her neck as if Raisa had actually caused any damage.
All her bluster seemed like too much, though. She wanted to convince both of them that Raisa was the unreasonable one in the situation, but it had been Raisa who’d been followed by a stranger while out on her morning run. “That doesn’t answer my question.”
“I’m trying to get into grad school,” the woman said. “For forensic linguistics. It’s a hard program to break into, so I thought if I could talk to you ...”
She shrugged and trailed off.
That was plausible. Raisa was one of two forensic linguists employed on a full-time basis by the FBI. While there were certainly smarter, more experienced experts in her field, that type tended toward academia. They might have been called in to consult on bomb threats and kidnappings every once in a while, but Raisa was the one who dealt with those kinds of cases on a daily basis, along with murderers, rapists, and run-of-the-mill white-collar criminals. She had a range of experience someone sitting in a classroom wouldn’t be able to impart.
But this was Tacoma, it wasn’t the right time of year for grad school applications, and Raisa had contact information on her website.
A student looking to get into a graduate program—unless independently wealthy—wasn’t flying out to Washington and then stalking Raisa just to get her advice on grad schools.
Even if she’d been looking for a recommendation, she probably would have tried email first.
“Okay,” Raisa said. “Now the truth.”
The woman’s eyes flew to hers. She smothered the surprise in them quickly but didn’t do as good a job at keeping the annoyance out of the twist of her lips.
“Yeah,” Raisa drawled. “You can try another lie on for size, but I already started with about zero patience and it’s only wearing thinner. In fact, I’m about to call in backup. So, if you’d like to do this here instead of at the police station, I’d suggest you start telling me what you really want.” When that got nothing out of her, Raisa pushed on. “Isn’t that why you’re following me in the first place? To get something?”
The woman’s eyes darted over Raisa’s shoulder, but Raisa knew better than to fall for the basic ruse. She kept her attention on the woman’s face even as she reached for her phone. At the movement, the woman lifted her chin, decision apparently made.
“Okay, fine,” she said. “I’m Kate Tashibi.”
“The documentarian?” Raisa asked.
A couple of weeks prior, she’d gotten an email from Kate, asking her to talk about the Alphabet Man, an infamous serial killer who’d tattooed ciphers onto his victims, using them to taunt law enforcement with coded messages. Raisa had deleted the message before she’d even gotten to the end of it, then informed the front desk of the FBI field office that any of Kate’s calls should be held.
“You’ve been ignoring my requests,” Kate said.
“Yeah, some people would take that as a hint.” Raisa turned away, no longer worried or interested. Now she just wanted to put as much distance between them as possible. “Next time you follow me, I’m having you arrested.”
“For sharing a sidewalk?” Kate called after her.
“You want to test me?” Raisa asked, shifting once more so she was walking backward. Kate needed to see that she was serious about this. “Because I’m pretty sure you don’t just happen to frequent the same coffee shop as I do.”
Kate’s mouth worked until finally she spit out, “I’m telling an important story.”
Raisa usually tried to take the high road. At work she was forced to do so, more often than not, and it wasn’t just the criminals who tested her, either. There were plenty of fellow agents who made condescending remarks about her specialty, who looked at her like she was a novelty at best and a waste of resources at worst. Most of the time, she could rise above it.
But Kate Tashibi was a vulture.