From the beginning of it, at two cups of coffee past eight in the morning, Reg Mitchell knew that he was too old for Emma Patterson. He hadn’t started out loving her, he hadn’t even wanted to like the girl. Assistant Director Jarowlski had intruded into his task force, implying that they couldn’t do the job. The fact that they couldn’t didn’t help in the least. His guys were pretty good, but in the midst of serial killer and terrorist cases, the three agents assigned to Reg didn’t think white collar crime was “sexy” enough to warrant their full attention.
Supposedly, this Agent Emma Patterson was some sort of analytical genius, but he doubted it. So, when the knock came on his door he just sat there, his jaw clenched. The knock came again, a soft thud, thud, thud. Stepping over the towering pile of phone records, surveillance logs, and bank records jammed between his battered gray desk and the wall, he opened the door.
She wore an ultra professional navy suit, but she had shoulder length brown hair with starkly contrasting light streaks. It was the kind of hair his fifteen-year-old daughter had. It also didn’t help that she didn’t reach his chin. “Emma Patterson,” she said, her voice too bright for 8 a.m. “AD Jarowlski said I was supposed to come take a look at the Bowden case.”
He waited for a few seconds, but she just stood there expectantly. “Come in,” he said finally, standing back to let her enter the office.
“I hope I’m not stepping on any toes.” She smiled at him, full lips painted a slight pink color. “I just want to help out if I can.”
Reg knew he shouldn’t be noticing her lips, didn’t want to be. She wasn’t even his type. His ex-wife and had been tall, willowy, and pale. “Well, I don’t know what more you can do,” he said. “Our task force has looked at every bank statement this guy has, as well as that of his wife and his business partner. We can’t find the money.”
“Can I see the file?” she asked.
“File?” Reg knew the smile on his face was almost predatory. He couldn’t help it. He pointed to a stack of six cardboard file boxes occupying the corner of his office. “Those are Bowden’s files. Plus, we have about five million computer files on the guy.”
She bounced her high heeled blue shoe against her calf as she stared at the pile. “You have someplace I can work?”
Reg watched her face. It didn’t change, there wasn’t one sign that the size of the task bothered her in the least. He’d listened to the three other agents whine for weeks about the amount of paperwork they’d had to look through. Maybe this kid wasn’t such a terrible idea. “We’ll find you a desk,” he said.
“Great!” she said, and to his dismay her smile seemed to light the dim interior of his office. “Got any advice for how to tackle this one?”
Reg shrugged. “If I had I would have done it myself.”
“What’s your instinct with this guy? You think he just tucked it in a mattress somewhere?” Emma asked.
“Two million? I don’t think so. That would be a hell of a mattress. No, he’s filtered it off somewhere. That’s what he’s good at after all.”
“Not that good,” she said. “You caught him.”
Reg shrugged, pulled the wire rimmed glasses from his face and squeezed the bridge of his nose. “Won’t do me a bit of good if we can’t get the evidence to make it stick.” Five years ago he hadn’t needed glasses.
“I’ll find it,” she said, and it sounded encouraging, not egotistical. She flipped a hand through her hair and said, “Just show me where to work.”
* * *
At 10:13 a.m. she found it. It had taken her two months. She came into his office without knocking and slammed the printout on his desk. “Twenty-five Mustang convertibles and, now that I know what to look for, it won’t take long to find the rest,” she said.
“What?”
She sat down in the seat across from him and put a lavender fingernail on the printout. “What a geek! If he would have bought Honda Civics I never would have caught it.” She leaned back in the chair, bit her bottom lip, and chuckled. The sound of it nearly echoed off the walls of the office. “What is it with men and cars anyway?”
She should have looked juvenile, Reg thought, but she didn’t. Today’s outfit was a red pantsuit and she had some kind of sparkly bracelet on her right wrist. He found himself returning the smile. “He bought cars?”
She sat forward again. “Yeah, all in separate names from separate accounts. A couple of them traced to suspected aliases. When I found the first Mustang I thought nothing of it, a celebration purchase, no big deal, after I found the second I got curious. Twenty-five Mustangs bought within two weeks in the same sixty-mile radius isn’t that hard to miss.”
“Nice,” he said. “Did you call the prosecutor’s office?”
She shook her head, looking confused. “That’s your job,” she said. “You’re in charge of this task force.”
She’d made a huge break. She would have been more than justified in taking all the credit for it. “Thanks,” he told her.
“Look,” she said, her voice softer. She looked down, swallowed, looked up again. “I’d rather not go back to Violent Crimes. I was hoping if I did well with this case, I might request a transfer. Could you put in a good word for me?”
He knew she had blue eyes with green around the center. He knew that instead of coffee she drank some sort of dreadful orange herbal tea. He’d made note of it when he overheard that she hadn’t had a steady boyfriend in a year, that most men were too immature for her. It was a bad idea, this girl working for him. For a few moments he didn’t say anything, he heard the light above his desk skittering with the beat of dying florescent gas, then said, “Yeah, sure.”
* * *
It had been a hellacious day, and it was only three o’clock. He hated personal phone calls at work, hated the blur of personal and professional life. The first call was his ex, who was livid because their daughter wanted to go to UCLA. The thought didn’t exactly thrill him either, but as Kim’s college days were about two and half years away, he didn’t see the big deal. So he told her as long as Kim went to school, he didn’t care where it was. He stopped just short of adding that he couldn’t blame the kid for wanting to get as far away as possible from her mother. The second, slightly less painful call was his daughter. “She’s got some new boyfriend dad. He’s like half her age. I wish I could come live with you.”
“I’ll think about,” he had said. Kim had been ten during the divorce, the judge had said the all-hours nature of Reg’s job didn’t provide a “stable environment” for a little girl. Now Kim was almost sixteen. She was a good, responsible kid, and if her mom would agree to her moving, it might work. He was staring at Kim’s picture, when the knock came at his door. “Yeah?”
The door opened, and Emma’s face poked in. “You hear the news?”
Staring blankly for a minute, Reg tried to pull his head out of his family problems. “What?”
The door came open and she sat in her chair. About fifteen different people sat in that chair every week and still he thought of it as her chair. “The jury finally came back on Bowden.”
“And?” he said, giving her his full attention.
She smiled, today her lips were a shade darker than fire engine red. It looked good. “Guilty on all charges,” she said. “Nice work, you.”
He let out a short breath of air. “It wasn’t me who found out where he’d stashed that money.”
She flipped her hand through her hair again. “It was you who testified in court, and you who caught him in the first place.” It was longer, her hair, brushing her shoulders, and the streaks seemed to be fading.
“Just my job,” he said, shrugging his shoulders and wishing, vainly, that he had enough hair to cover his scalp.
“Maybe,” she said. “But you’re good at it.”
Every time she came in, the energy she carried pulsed through his office. At first, he’d thought it was her age, then he found out she’d worked in Violent Crimes for three years, which should have taken the shine off of anyone. Not Emma Patterson, though.
“Thanks,” he said.
“So,” she said, leaning to put her elbows on his desk. “You taking us out for burgers to celebrate or what?”
The desk sat between them, filled with an outdated PC, three white foam takeout boxes, and about four hundred manila files all marked “Urgent.” All he could see were smart blue green eyes and the pink fingernails drumming the top of his nameplate.
“Why not?” He didn’t know whether to pray that the other three agents came or pray that they didn’t.
* * *
Four and a half months later, he looked out his tiny window and saw the lamp above Emma’s desk still shining across the office. He walked over and opened the door.
“Hey, Agent Patterson,” he still couldn’t call her Emma or even just Patterson, in fact half the time he tried to avoid saying her name at all. He called the men by their first names or last names, whatever they preferred: Carter, Juarez, and Jake.
She looked up, blinking hard. “What time is it?”
“After seven. You should go home.” There were smudges underneath her eyes and the sleeves of the pale green shirt she wore were rolled up to her elbows.
She rested her head on one hand and lightly pounded the computer screen in front of her with the other. “This sucks, you know?”
“Yeah,” he said. “I know.”
“We may never find what we need,” she said. “It may not even exist. It was probably some freakin’ verbal contract.”
Nodding slowly, he felt a half smile forming at her choice of words. He hunched his broad shoulders a little. “Can’t win them all,” he said.
“Then why are you still here?” she said.
He looked at the floor. “I don’t know.”
“Doesn’t your family mind?” Emma asked.
He looked up quickly, “Family?”
“You told me about your daughter when we went out for burgers. You said Al’s is her favorite place near the park,” Emma said.
He almost deflected the comment. Carter, Juarez and Jake new better than to ask him personal questions. “Kim lives with her mom in Baltimore,” he said.
“Divorced?” she said. She sat up straighter in her seat, “That surprises me.”
He huffed, “Why?”
Emma smiled and tilted her head. “Your one of the good guys Reg,” she shrugged. “You just seem like the type to have a nice little family stashed away. Plus, well, you’re a decent looking guy.” Suddenly, she looked away, and Reg swore that she flushed.
“What about your family?” he asked.
“My Mom is still trying to convince me this whole FBI thing was a bad career choice,” she said. She tried to make it sound like a joke, but he heard a faint echo of something else shuddering underneath it.
“You worried she was right?” he asked.
For the first time since he’d met her all trace of a smile disappeared from her face. She didn’t look at him. “I’m here, aren’t I?”
He backed up into his office. “You should call it a night.”
“Sure thing, boss,” she said with a tiny nod, and he watched her swallow hard, twice.
* * *
He hadn’t been at work for even five minutes when Juarez stuck his head in the door. “Hey boss, you should come see this.”
Reg followed the younger agent across the office until they reached the door of the small staff lounge. Juarez stopped.
“Well?” Reg said, impatiently.
“See for yourself,” Juarez said with a slight grin.
Reg opened the door and his first impression was that the place was a mess. There were printouts of paper everywhere, along with crushed paper cups and snack sized pretzel bags. A scary looking, squishy orange tea bag lay at the edge of the table dripping a faint beat onto the linoleum below. Then he saw Emma. She was dead asleep, her head awkwardly tilted against the back of the ugly plaid couch. In her hand was a piece of paper with something circled in bright red ink.
Reg gently took the paper from her hand and stared at it. He instantly recognized the phone number that was circled. They had all been searching for it, even after three months, in stack after stack of phone records from Harmony Systems Incorporated. Proof that the company’s CEO was involved in a retirement savings fraud scheme.
“Atta’ girl,” he said softly.
She started awake and stared at him blankly. “Reg?”
She’d never called him by name before. “Good morning,” he said, and felt himself grinning like an idiot. He couldn’t help it. “I see you’ve been hard at work,” he said, holding up the piece of paper.
“Yeah,” she nodded. She looked at her surroundings. “I’m not ever working that hard again. I didn’t find that thing until 5 a.m.”
Reg started laughing. It flowed up from the center of him and pulsed out. Juarez stuck his head in. “You okay, boss?”
Reg nodded. “What? You’ve never heard a guy laugh before?”
Juarez gave him a look. “Not if the guy was you.”
Emma sat up and stretched her arms behind her. “Hey, if it’s okay, I think I’m taking a vacation day.”
“Yeah, it’s okay,” Reg said. “Why don’t you let one of us drive you home?” he said. “Juarez?”
Juarez shook his head. “I took the Metro today and Jake and Carter aren’t here yet,” he said.
“Fine,” Reg said. “Come on, Agent Patterson. I’ll take you home.” He held out his hand, and she took it, letting him pull her to her feet.
She followed behind him silently as he walked from the offices, through the narrow, maze-like, corridors and to his parking spot. He unlocked her door, and she blinked slightly. “This truck is older than I am,” she said.
“So is the driver,” he said. The truck was, in fact, older than he was. It was a 1953 pickup he had inherited from his father.
“Nice,” she said, her voice flat with exhaustion. I like old things.”
She was asleep before they left the lot. As he drove through the snarl of early morning traffic, he forced himself not to stare at her. He tried not to look at the way her head tilted, just by inches, toward his shoulder.
He knew where her apartment was, they had dropped her off after their last round of celebratory burgers. A tiny, antique little apartment on the third floor of tiny, antique little building that was tucked behind a Indian specialty market. As he approached the building he searched for an elusive parking space, but there wasn’t one to be found. He wanted to stop, wanted to gently shake her shoulder, tell her she had done well, make sure she made it inside.
“Emma,” he said.
She opened her eyes immediately. “Are we there?” she asked.
“Yeah,” he answered. “Do you have your keys?” he asked.
Patting the pocket of her blazer she nodded. “Thanks Reg.”
He pulled into the empty space next to a fire hydrant and she slowly climbed out of the cab of the truck. It wasn’t until some honked behind him that he stopped watching her walk toward the building.
* * *
His daughter was coming for lunch. She was living with him, a “trial period” during the summer. Her mother hadn’t called once in the three weeks since Kim’s arrival and Kim had shown no interest in contacting her mother. Reg had spent the last three months cleaning up his spare bedroom. Painting it one color, and then another, and going crazy trying to decide what to get for it. Finally, he broke down and asked Emma what she thought. “What is Kim’s favorite color?” Emma asked.
“Green,” he said, glad that he knew.
“Then paint the room green and give the girl some money when she gets here to buy whatever she needs for it,” Emma had told him. “The green will show her you thought about her, and the money will let her do things her own way.”
It was incredibly logical and it had irritated him that he had been unable to come to such a simple conclusion on his own. It also made him wonder if it was because Emma was so much closer to his daughter’s age, and he didn’t care for that thought either.
There was a knock at the door. He looked up, and Kim stuck her head in. She wore her short, now dark red, hair in two short bushy ponytails at the base of her skull. “Ugh, Dad this office is terrible, haven’t you heard of color?”
“No, he hasn’t,” Emma’s voice came from behind Kim.
Reg swallowed hard. For some reason, he hadn’t thought of the two of them meeting each other, at least not today. Kim turned around, and Reg fought the urge to grimace. Seeing them standing next to each other, Kim was taller than Emma by a solid four inches. “You must be Agent Patterson.”
“How did you know?” Reg said quickly, wondering if he had said more about Emma than he’d realized.
“Duh, Dad,” Kim said flashing him a look. “She’s certainly not Jake, Juarez, or Carter.”
“Good point,” Emma said, extending her hand. “You must be Kim. You look a lot like your father.”
“Well,” Reg said, climbing to his feet. “I guess I don’t need to introduce you two.”
“You guys headed out for lunch?” Emma asked, leaning on the door jam.
“Yeah,” Reg said. “Did you need something?”
Emma shrugged and smiled. “It can wait.”
“Is it something …” Reg started.
“I said it could wait,” Emma interrupted. “You two have a good time.”
Reg watched as Emma walked back to her desk, looked up and saw Kim giving him an odd look. “She’s pretty, Dad,” Kim said. “You gonna ask her out?”
“I’m her boss,” Reg said.
“Would you get in trouble?” Kim asked.
“Yeah, maybe,” he said. “Besides, I thought you didn’t want your parents to have ‘soap opera relationships.”
Kim rolled her eyes. “Oh please, I wasn’t talking about you. You’re like, fossilized.”
Reg stared at his teenage daughter and then felt his teeth grinding. “I’m what?”
Kim grinned again and blew a bubble gum bubble. “Fossilized, you know, out of circulation for a millenia or so.”
In spite of himself, Reg laughed. “Come on, let’s go to lunch.”
Emma waived from her desk as they walked past and when they got in the hall Kim elbowed him. “Dad, do you like her?”
He almost ignored the question, but then he put an arm around his daughter’s skinny shoulders, and said, “Yeah, Kimberly Jane, I think I do.”
* * *
He was actually leaving at five o’clock. It was happening more and more often now that Kim was in school. She’d joined the basketball team and they had games twice a week. Jarowlski had given him crap about his reduced overtime hours, but Reg had threatened to quit and that had ended the lecture.
Reg wasn’t looking forward to the weekend, Kim was going to visit her mom for the first time since she’d moved, and Reg had this irrational fear that his daughter was going to move back with her. Then there was the fact that before he’d known Kim was going to be gone he’d bought tickets to a football game. They were nosebleed seats, but he had been looking forward to it.
His door was open and he could hear Emma murmuring gently at her computer. She worked too hard, like he always had, and to some degree probably always would.
“Hey, Emma,” he called out.
“Yeah Reg?” she asked. Since the day he’d taken her home, they’d been on a first name basis. It still baffled Carter, Jake, and Juarez, but Reg enjoyed it.
“Do you have a second?”
Something about his voice must have tipped her off. She had the red suit on again. Luckily, the office was empty. “What is it?”
“Have you ever thought about transferring again?” Reg asked.
She frowned. “Why, is something wrong?”
“No, but I’m about to ask you a question, and if you say yes, one of us is going to have to find a different section to work in,” Reg said, staring at his desk. It was quiet for a few seconds, and he got the guts to look up at her.
She looked serious. “What’s the question?”
“Want to go with me to a football game on Saturday?” he said the words so quickly they stumbled over themselves.
She nodded three times very quickly. “Yeah, of course.”
“Yes?” he said releasing a breath.
“Yes,” she said.
Reg Mitchell let out a long-held breath of air and smiled.
Jenel Alan 