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SEVENTY-FIVE

“UNO,” CAMILLE CALLS OUT, setting down a card in the pile.

“You’re down to one card?” Grace looks over her cards at Camille. “Are you sure you’re playing right?”

“Why, are you accusing me of cheating?” Camille winks at her.

“I’m just saying …”

“You won’t have this card.” Lincoln sets down an ace into the pile.

“Camille Striker?”

Camille turns and sees a man, roughly shaved and middle-aged, wearing a button-down shirt and jeans.

“Wondering if I could have a word with you.”

Looks like law enforcement. She’s ready with a response — no comment — but not in front of the kids. “I’m watching these kids.”

“Understood. We’ll step over here. They’ll never leave your sight.” The man walks over to the threshold of the room and leans against the wall.

Presumptuous of him, but okay. “I’ll be right back,” she tells the kids.

The man has his credentials open as she approaches. “Francis Blair, FBI.” He quickly tucks away the wallet. “Wanted to have a word with you.”

“Shoot,” she says. “Doesn’t mean I’ll have one with you.”

“I understand. Sounds like Sergeant Janowski hasn’t had much luck with you.”

“But you think you will?”

He smirks, nods at the kids. “Funny — Sergeant Janowski told me that just the other day Marcie Bowers denied knowing who you were or ever hearing your name. And now here you are, babysitting her kids.”

“Maybe we just met,” she says, trying to stay on top of this but feeling like this conversation is going to be different from the others.

“Maybe. Yeah, maybe.” Blair works his jaw. “Sergeant Janowski also told me that you used to work for the US Marshals Service in Chicago as a computer technician. He thinks you’re Silas Renfrow’s girlfriend, and you hacked into some secret information and found out where Silas was being held. You helped him escape. Which would put you in the soup for the murders of everyone who was killed that day.”

“If that were true, yeah.”

“Is it true?” he asks.

She looks this guy over. Typical Bureau guy, in her experience — one part cocky, one part self-righteous, but competent. In his case, she suspects, more than competent. “I’m not sure I want to answer that question,” she says.

He smiles, too ready of a smile. A smile that isn’t a smile. “Looks like you’re carrying,” he says, nodding to the bulge at the ankle area of her pants.

“I have a permit.”

“Not for a hospital you don’t. You can’t have a firearm in here. Unless you’re law enforcement, like me. And I’m pretty sure you’re no longer law enforcement, Camille.”

Shit. He’s right. She didn’t think of that.

Dammit. He has her, and he knows it.

“One call to Sergeant Janowski and you’re on the hook for — what? What’s the state charge on this? Unlawful use of a weapon? We’ll figure something out. Is that what you want, Camille? Right now, in the middle of all this shit, you have to spend the better part of a day, if not overnight at this point, in a local jail?”

She steels her jaw. “What the fuck do you want?”

“I want the truth,” he says. “The local cops can chase their tails all they want. I prefer it that way for now. But you and I both know you’re no computer technician. So tell me everything I need to know, and do it now.”