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“What are you smiling about?” she asked as I returned to the table.
“Nothing.”
She accepted the lie and took a bite of breakfast.
“I’ll try to make time another day,” I added, meaning it.
“I understand. That’s more important.”
After cutting another bite, I tried another bridge-building question. “What’s the story that goes with the tattoo?”
Her face dropped. “A reminder that life is short. My cousin died way before her time.”
“I’m sorry.”
We finished breakfast and made the drive to her work without either of us taking verbal jabs at the other.
“Sorry about the cyborg comment this morning,” I said as I opened the car door for her to exit.
She climbed out, and the kiss we exchanged wasn’t short or awkward.
As I drove toward the field office, I traced my lips with my thumb. She’d put feeling into the kiss, and I’d reciprocated. The scent of strawberry lingered with me.
Once I settled in at the office, Neil and I spent the morning reviewing the video of the latest bank job. We’d started working backwards, hoping to catch sight of the woman casing the location, but still came up empty. When I returned from a quick lunch, Neil waved me over.
“We finally got a lead,” he announced.
I wended my way over to his desk. “Tell me the DNA got a hit.”
He nodded and smiled. “Yeah, but you’re not going to believe it.”
“Does it give us an address to try?”
“She’s in the missing persons database—a kidnapping case years ago in Phoenix.” He handed me the single sheet from forensics.
I read the name and had to sit down.
Fuck.
Benson.
Deborah E. Benson of Phoenix, Arizona. Looking farther down the page, the parents were listed as Seth and Marjorie Benson.
I could breathe again, and I relaxed back into my chair.
It wasn’t the Bensons I knew and hated. Their father was Lloyd Benson, and they all lived in Los Angeles. Just a fucked-up coincidence—Benson was a common enough name. The problem with a hit on missing persons was that it gave us no addresses or associations to check to find her.
After a few more deep breaths, my heart slowed. I had to get better about this. Just the fucking name sent me up a wall—not exactly a calm, cool, professional response.
Neil stretched his neck. “I sent word to the Phoenix Field Office to notify next of kin that we got a hit.” He laughed. “I wouldn’t want to be the one going out to the family, though.Hi, Mrs. Benson, we have good news and bad news. The good news is that your daughter is alive. The bad news is that she’s turned to a life of crime and won’t be out of prison before she’s fifty. Pretty weird, huh?”
“Yeah, weird is right.”
Since I was the official lead, I had some discretion on tasks. “How about I redo the Falls Church video and you take Gaithersburg?”
“That works for me.”
We had to re-review the video from both prior jobs now that we had the woman’s face, to see if we’d missed her casing either of the locations. On the first pass, we’d only been looking for the guy with the limp. More boring but critical work lay ahead if we were going to catch the Fawkes Crew.
