finished whatever she started.
Except that once with the Osorio op.
But that hadn’t been because she’d walked away. She’d been taken away, drugged, tortured. Otherwise she would have finished that too.
She started the engine and drove to the gate, waited for the bar to rise, then pulled out of the parking lot.
Her cell vibrated against the console, and she grabbed it. Barton. “Make me happy.”
“I found what our intruder was probably looking for. A thumb drive. I plugged it into my laptop, and whatever is on this thing, it’s going to take someone above my pay grade to break into it.”
“Take it to Snipes. Tell him I need whatever’s on it ASAP.”
“On my way.”
Sadie tossed her phone aside. Why the hell would Walsh keep something so important from her? Had he been protecting her? His aunt? Or someone else?
Whatever the answer, she needed it . . . now.
25
7:15 p.m.
Devlin Residence
Twenty-First Avenue South
Birmingham
Lieutenant Brooks had been out of his office all afternoon, and he hadn’t taken calls on his cell. Kerri had wanted to talk with him about the carjacking and Sue’s murder. She’d gone to the Redmond residence in hopes of speaking with Violet’s parents, but the media had been all over the place, along with an official BPD cruiser.
Her frustration had hit overload. She’d had to close all of it out of her head, at least for a few hours.
She decided to focus on dinner and some quality time with Tori. She prepared an old reliable: spaghetti. She and Tori both loved it. When Tori was a toddler, Kerri had made it almost every day.
But her little girl wasn’t a toddler anymore, and she was hurting.
Sarah Talley had tried to commit suicide. The girl had taken an overdose of her mother’s sleeping pills. Fortunately, her mother had discovered what she’d done in time to avoid the worst. Sarah would remain in the hospital for observation and a psych evaluation for the next seventy-two hours.
For Tori, this was a stunning blow. Fear, hurt, and anger were no doubt tearing her apart.
Additionally troubling was that Tori didn’t want to talk about it.
A truly frustrating and infuriating part for Kerri was that Sykes hadn’t called to let her know. She’d had to find out from Diana when she picked up Tori. At this point, Kerri was so angry with Sykes and Peterson she wasn’t sure she would ever be able to work with either one again. On top of that she was absolutely terrified by the idea that she had shared the story she’d learned from Sue Grimes with the LT, and now Sue was dead, and very possibly the student to whom she had been referring was missing. It was far too big a coincidence to be just any Walker student gone missing. It had to be the anonymous girl.
Kerri had always considered the folks in MID—in all the BPD, really—as family. The past week, today in particular, had greatly damaged that relationship.
As insane as it all was, she couldn’t bring herself to believe the LT would have passed along this information to anyone who would have hurt Sue. Not intentionally.
Yet somehow there had been a leak. Sue had been perfectly fine all these months since the incident. Then when she’d shared the story with Kerri, she’d ended up dead less than twenty-four hours later.
This could not be coincidence.
Oh, and she couldn’t forget the big reward the Walsh family was offering. Following up on the leads called in would do nothing but slow down the task force. Agent Cross would probably delegate that detail to her and Falco.
“Mom.”
Kerri shook off the disturbing thoughts, moved the pan of pasta from the stove, and poured it into a colander in the sink to drain. “Hmm?”
“Do you think it’s possible to do something awful and then forget you did it?”
Shutting off the burner beneath the sauce, Kerri turned to her daughter. “It’s not impossible. There are cases of trauma-induced amnesia. Why do you ask?” She knew why, but her daughter didn’t need to know she’d already considered the scenario.
Whatever answer Kerri had expected, the deluge of tears and sobs was not it. She hurried around the island to hold her daughter. “Please tell me; what’s happened?”
It was a foolish question considering the Myers girl’s death and now with Sarah’s suicide attempt.
Tori stared up at her mother, her face red and damp. “I can’t remember doing anything wrong, but Sarah thinks I pushed Brendal.”
“She told you this? When?” Kerri had never known Sarah Talley to be