Page 53 of Justice for Samara

“If not, you need to go back to the academy, ’cause you don’t know shit about info harvesting!”

“I’ll be there in a few. Hey, call it in over at Bolivar’s Pizza and I won’t have to wait as long.”

“Okay. See you in a few. Bye.”

“Bye, baby.” And the phone went quiet.

It took her less than thirty seconds to find the phone number, and the pizzas were ordered in under a minute. She went ahead and paid for them with her card. He’d fed her. She could damn well feed him.

“Oh, god, this is good,” she said with a full mouth as she ate. It was her third slice, and she wasn’t even embarrassed about it. What she had in her hand was easily the best pizza she’d had in years.

“Yeah, they use really fresh stuff.” He put down a pizza bone and wiped his mouth. “Okay, so what did you get done this afternoon?”

“I took a map and mapped out the locations where the women reported the assaults.”

“Any pattern?”

She shook her head. “None that I can tell. So I set up interviews with two of them tomorrow, and I’ll try to get in touch with two more before I go out. I might be able to get a third one that way.”

“Good plan.”

“You gonna eat that?” she asked and pointed at the last slice of pizza.

Michael threw his hands up in surrender. “Nooo. You go right ahead. Damn, girl, that’s what, four pieces?”

“Some gentleman. Everyone knows you shouldn’t criticize a lady’s consumption of pizza.”

“Oh, is that right? Nobody ever told me that. Thanks for informing me.”

“You’re welcome.”

There was something on his mind, she could tell, and she wondered if he’d finally spill it. “Listen, I don’t want you to think I don’t trust you to take care of yourself. I do. But I’d be lying if I said I was comfortable with you being alone right now.”

Well, there it is, she thought. “I can handle myself.”

“I know you can, but he managed to overpower you once before. He’s a slippery bastard. He could do it again.”

“I’m keeping my guard up. Plus I’ll only be out during the daytime. I don’t want to be out at night.”

“I’d prefer if you weren’t.”

“Then fine. It’s fine.”

He stood and started picking up their mess from the pizza. “I should tell you, we’re getting a little help from another agency.”

“Who?”

“Carter has a friend who’s an FBI agent in Texas.”

“Wow. Okay, so what do you think a Texas FBI agent is going to be able to bring to the table?”

“Some expertise we don’t have. A long, solid history of seeing stuff like this and being able to analyze it. And he may be able to expedite our DNA and tox screens.”

He picked up his drink and her drink, so she followed him to the sofa and sat down. “Now thatwouldbe helpful.”

“Yeah. Problem is, if the victim is Glenna, we can’t match the DNA unless we have familial DNA. The best way would be at the time of family notification. But I don’t know of a way to get that done. You can’t notify a family about the death of a person you can’t confirm is deceased, and I’m afraid if we tell them what we suspect, they’ll tell him, which is what we need to avoid. I really don’t know which direction to go from here.”

She nodded. “Yeah. I see the problem. But maybe this Texas guy can help you in some other way. I dunno. It’s worth a shot. Nice guy?”