He hung up, leaving Faith staring at the wall.Turk whined and nuzzled her.She continued to stroke his fur and stare straight ahead.
“Shit,” Jessica said.
She stormed over to Faith and sat next to her, also staring at the wall.Faith opened her mouth to apologize, but that seemed stupid at the moment.
“You get torn a new asshole too?”Jessica asked.
“You could say that,” Faith confirmed.
Jessica nodded.“Yeah.Markham spent the entire call pretending not to gloat that he was right about you.”
Faith frowned.“About me?”
“Yep.When I was first assigned to you, he suggested that I refuse the assignment and ignore every threat levied against me for refusing it.He said you were poison and if I worked with you, I would ruin my career.”
That hurt Faith more than she cared to admit.The hint—slight but present—of belief in Jessica’s tone hurt more.She resisted the urge to run a shaking hand over her face and instead said, “If you want to step back, you can step back.You don’t need to risk yourself.”
Jessica chuckled bitterly.“It’s a little too late for that, Faith.”Then, maybe realizing what she’d just said, she added, “And I don’t want to back off.We’re partners, and we’re doing the right thing.It’s not our fault that Bridgette’s a mosquito who’s decided our veins are the juiciest around.”She took a deep breath, formed a pert O with her mouth, and blew it out in a rush.“So what do we do now?”
Faith took a moment to think about that.She needed to get ahead of the situation with Bridgette, but she didn’t know a way to do that right now that wouldn’t backfire horribly.They needed to move on with the case, but with Craig lawyered up and in possession of a very robust defamation case, it was going to be impossible to move forward with him unless some sort of evidence popped up out of the blue that proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that he was the one who had killed Jackson Entwhistle and Raelynn Hayes.
Well, if hewastheir killer, at least he wasn’t going to kill anyone else.Not with the eyes of the world on him.On the other hand, if he wasn’t their killer, then Faith and Jessica had just cast an enormous umbrella over the real killer.No matter which way she looked at it, they were in a bad spot.
And for all the suffering they might endure, any future targets the killer might have would suffer more.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Faith and Jessica got lunch to go and took it back to the hotel.There were no news vans waiting in the hotel’s parking lot, so Bridgette hadn’t figured out where they were staying, at least.
They ate in silence, Turk included.The pallor of that morning’s disaster hung over them like a cloud.
But they had to keep working.Innocent lives depended on it.
“I want to explore the connection between Entwhistle and Hayes,” Faith said.“We know they worked together, and we know they both ran afoul of Daniels.I want to know what specifically Hayes’ problem with Daniels was and if there’s any more dirt that could connect the two.”
Jessica nodded.She opened her laptop and began searching for information in the TSA’s records.Her shoulders were bunched tightly, her lips nearly bloodless.“Jon called,” she said as an aside.“He saw us on the news.He thinks we should cool off until things blow over.”
Faith’s heart sank to her chest.“Shit.I’m so sorry, Jessica.”
She shrugged, a quick lift and drop of her bunched shoulders.“Well, that’s the job, right?Not everyone can handle what we do.”
Faith didn’t know what to say to that.Part of her thought Jon was a world-class loser for dumping Jessica over some spin-doctored news report.Another part of her understood that he and Jessica had been on one date, and she was now in the news screaming at reporters and possibly defaming an innocent man.The last part wasn’t true, but again, spin-doctored.
It was just shitty.It was all shitty.
“Huh,” Jessica said.“That’s interesting.”
Faith’s mind rushed back to the case.“What is it?”
“Looks like Entwhistle and Hayes were involved in an incident at Thurgood Marshall five years ago.”
“What kind of incident?”
“The Unibrow Bomber.”
Faith frowned.“The what?”
“Yeah, that’s another example of journalistic idiocy for you.The Unibrow Bomber was a student at the University of Baltimore who made a suitcase bomb that he intended to detonate on a flight to Los Angeles.He had a unibrow, hence the childish pun.The bomb instead detonated in the baggage handling area of Thurgood Marshall.It killed five baggage handlers and two TSA agents.One of the baggage handlers held on for about three days before her family chose to pull the plug.”She turned to Faith.“You seriously don’t remember?It was big news.”