Page 51 of Shielding Aubree

He gave her another smug look, lifting up one brow as he started to speak. "New Mexico Case 202524243. Laurel Able-"

"Case 202524248."

Startled, he stopped speaking and looked at her. "What?"

"You said 202524243. It's 202524248, sir."

His eyes narrowed and he leaned forward to look at the tab on the folder.

"Huh. It is an eight." He looked up at her and back down again, spinning the folder around to look at the numbers. "How did you see that from your seat across the table?"

"I didn't need to see it, sir. Once you said Laurel Able, I knew the case number."

He pulled back an inch or two, his gaze fixing on her face with a glare of suspicion. "You mean to tell me that you know the numbers on these case files."

She nodded. "Yes, sir."

Again, he glared back at her. "Are you telling me that you're some kind of Rainman?"

Aubree steeled herself and managed to keep a bland and hopefully professional look on her face. "No, sir. I believe that Raymond Babbitt was an autistic savant. I'm neither. I just know my cases."

Shannon looked at her as if he was looking through a microscope. "Who is Raymond Babbitt? What does he have to do with the case?"

Aubree licked at her lips and felt a slight tug of pain as her air-conditioner dried lips started to crack. "Raymond Babbitt doesn't have anything to do with the case."

He shook his head as if he was trying to clear out cobwebs or jog something loose. "Then why did you mention him?"

Aubree leaned back against the chair and barely held back an audible groan. Her back was starting to kill her, and she couldn't see the end of this conference in sight. "You asked me if I was like Rainman. The character of Rainman was played by Dustin Hoffman and-"

"See?" Shannon waved his hand at her, his elbow poking into the tabletop. "Now you're mentioning this Hoffman guy."

Aubree wanted to drop her head down to the tabletop and sob.

Obviously, the prosecutor wasn't a man who liked films.

She wasn't a big fan of Rainman the film itself, but her father and mother liked the film. She'd watched it as a child by default, just being in the room with them. Her older brothers had been able to escape the movie. She'd been stuck but enjoyed some of it. Not so much the Tom Cruise character but Dustin Hoffman's.

"So are you going to tell me that these people aren't involved in the case?"

Aubree barely kept herself in the chair across from the irritating man.

If she didn't want to keep her job, she could stand up, stretch her back and tell this... man what she really thought about his mental acuity.

And really, if she was honest with herself, it wasn't the job that kept her in her seat and struggling to be civil with him. She really did want to see these cases through to the end. Not for the police or the government, but for the victims of these crimes.

She'd just spent the last two hours going through every little aspect of the cases and proving that her memory as far as her case work was ironclad.

Maybe he was just tired, but she was too. If he was looking for some indication that she was having issues with her memories about her cases.

Aubree was about ready to push back from the table and ask for a break.

A knock on the conference room door turned Aubree's attention away from the prosecutor and her dwindling patience.

The woman standing in the doorway looked like a Hispanic version of Wonder Woman in her 'undercover' garb. Her suit coat was tailored to her form and Aubree felt more than a little self-conscious in front of her. Her NMPD uniform was pretty bland and shapeless as it fit men and women on the job.

Reaching into her coat, the woman at the door pulled out a leather folio and opened it. "Alara Aparicio. FBI Special Agent."She gave the prosecutor a flat look before she lifted a brow in his direction. "Can we have the room?"

Aubree barely kept her expression in control as the prosecutor stood and started to shuffle his papers into his briefcase.