In Graywolf's Hands

Looking after him, Lydia thoughtfully folded the card between her thumb and forefinger and tucked it into her jacket pocket.

“Damn but I never thought I’d live to see the day.”

Roused from her thoughts, Lydia spun around to face Elliot. “See what day?”

He was grinning. Wait until Janice hears about this! “The day you were flirting.”

“Flirting?” Lydia echoed incredulously. “Are you out of your mind? I was not flirting.”

“No?” Elliot crossed his arms at his chest, waiting to be convinced. “Then what do you call it?”

“Talking.”

“I see.”

There were times when her partner got on her nerves—royally. “Don’t give me that smug smile.”

He made no attempt to eliminate it. “I wasn’t aware that it was smug.”

“Well it is,” she told him. Because one of the nurses had stopped what she was doing and was obviously eavesdropping, Lydia pulled her partner aside, out of earshot. “What is this, a conspiracy? My mother calls to find out if I’m alone in the bathtub and then you come along and tell me you think I’m flirting.”

Elliot made a mental note to later ask her what had prompted her mother’s question. For now, he shrugged innocently. “Can’t help it. In spring a person’s mind often turns to thoughts of love, remember?”

What did that have to do with anything? “It’s autumn. Remember?”

Unruffled, Elliot laughed. “I’m late, it’s been a busy year.”

Okay, she’d been a good sport long enough. This had to stop. “Elliot, I’m packing a gun.”

The look he gave her was completely unimpressed. “I’m shaking.”

This was getting them nowhere. And the day stretched out in front of her, long and unaccommodating. “Let’s go, we have a prisoner to interrogate.”

“Lead the way.” Her partner’s expression had turned appropriately serious, but there was a twinkle in his eye she had trouble ignoring.

Chapter 4

John Conroy was not a particularly large man. The height of five foot eight listed on his driver’s license was charitably stretching the truth. Bandaged, bruised and buffered by white sheets in a bed, he looked small and non-threatening.

Looking at him, it was almost hard for Lydia to believe that this was the man who had helped to carry out an attack whose ultimate goal was to kill as many people as possible. Which made her wonder why he had picked a weeknight. Was it that he couldn’t wait, or that he had thought there was less of a chance of being caught?

There was something to be said for impatience, she thought as Elliot closed the door behind them.

“Evil comes in all sorts of packages, doesn’t it?” Elliot commented, noticing the way she was looking at the man in the hospital bed.

“The Bible says that Satan was the most beautiful of all the archangels,” she murmured, moving closer to the prisoner.

She noted with satisfaction that along with the various devices hooking Conroy up to vigilant monitors, a tarnished steel bracelet encircled his wrist, chaining him to the railing, keeping him from escaping if he could somehow summon the strength. She’d made a point of putting it back on him last night. Nice to see that the doctor hadn’t removed it again.

Conroy looked as though he was unconscious. Lydia studied his face intently, watching for a telltale flutter of his lashes that would give his game away. There was none.

“Not that,” she added, “this puny, unimpressive piece of work could have ever been remotely placed in that category.”

Not getting a reaction to her insult, Lydia bent until her face was level with Conroy’s.

Elliot came closer. “What are you doing?”

“Getting in his face.” She spared her partner a momentary glance before looking back to Conroy. “Seeing if he’s really unconscious. Are you, Conroy?” she asked loudly. “Are you really out, or just playing possum? Not going to do you any good, you know. You have to come up for air sometime.”

Elliot laughed to himself. “Well, those golden tones would certainly rouse me right up.” Finding a place for himself in the single-care unit, Elliot took a pistachio nut from his jacket pocket and began to work at it with his nails.

Straightening, she saw Elliot shell the nut. For as long as she’d known him, he’d always carried a supply of pistachio nuts in his pocket. With the understanding of a loving wife, Janice replenished his supply every morning. “Isn’t it kind of early for that?”

He shrugged. “Gives me something to do.” Seeing the wastebasket, he tossed the shell into it and took out another nut. “I think he’s out, Lyd.”

She nodded, annoyed. Frustrated. “Looks like the good doctor was right.” So much for questioning Conroy now. Though Elliot had seniority, the assistant director had made her lead on this case. “Why don’t you go back to the office and see about running down some of those phone calls that have been coming in? Take Burkowitz with you,” she said, naming one of the agents appointed to the special task force. “And while you’re at it, find out if the bomb squad has found something useful.” She knew there’d been evidence galore, but whether or not it led anywhere was another story. Most of the time they were left with a plethora of puzzle pieces and no unifying tray to place them in. “No sense in both of us hanging around until Mr. Wizard here wakes up.”

She’d get no argument from him on that. Elliot was already crossing to the door. “That might be a while, Lyd. Sure you want to hang around, waiting?” He’d never met anyone who hated waiting more than Lydia. “We could have Rodriguez page us.”

He nodded toward the door and the man they had posted at the desk out front. It was one of their own now, instead of a local policeman, something the Bedford chief hadn’t been overly happy about. As always, there was professional jealousy and the matter of jurisdiction clouding things up. But at bottom, they all wanted the same thing. Not to have this kind of thing happen in Bedford ever again.

She looked back at Conroy. Unlike Elliot’s endless supply of pistachios, the supremacist was going to be a difficult nut to crack. She wanted to be sure that she got first chance at him. “I’d feel better being here.”

After four years he could pretty much read her like a book. “Lyd, the bombing wasn’t your fault.”

Logically, no. But emotionally it was another story. “Thanks, but it might have been prevented if I’d been a little faster, dug a little deeper. We ignored that first rumor.”

“Because it was a rumor, one of over a dozen—the rest of which were bogus,” he reminded her. “Hell, Lyd, we had our hands full.” He also knew her well enough to know that he was wasting his breath. “The term’s ‘special agent’ not ‘super agent.’”

The comment succeeded in evoking a smile from her. “Who says?”

Elliot had his hand on the door, and he was shaking his head. “You’re getting more stubborn every day.”

She looked at him significantly. “I had a damn good teacher.”

“Haven’t got the faintest idea what you’re talking about,” he deadpanned as he left the room.

Lydia heard the door close as she turned back to look at the man in the bed. He hadn’t moved a muscle since they’d walked in. The only sounds in the room were the ones made by the machines arranged in a metallic semicircle around his bedside.

He looked almost peaceful. It made her physically ill to be in the same room with him.

“What kind of a sick pervert blows up women and children?” she demanded of the unconscious man in a low, steely voice that seethed with anger.

Only the sound of the monitor answered her question.

Impatient, she blew out a sigh. “You’ve got to wake up sometime,” she told him. “And when you do, I’m going to be right here to squeeze the names of those other men out of you. You’re going down for this, my friend, and you’re not going down alone.”

She knew that would be little comfort to the parents of the teenager who’d senselessly died, but maybe it would keep others from following Conroy’s example. Lydia already knew for a fact that this kind of thing had never happened in Bedford before and she wanted to make sure that it never would again. She wanted to do more than send a message to the New World supremacy group who’d been behind this, she wanted to smash it into unrecognizable bits.