I tilt my head, pointing for her to enter.
“What’s up with you?” she asks.
I rub my palms over my eyes.
“That bad, huh?”
“She’s getting onto my last nerve, on day one,” I say. “What are you still doing here?”
“I am cataloging the evidence from the Lagner estate,” she says. “I think we can close at least twenty of our cases.”
“I closed almost a hundred of them, at least for us for the time being,” I say.
“You did?
“It was all hers,” I say and throw the list to the end of my desk so Rachel can grab it.
“That’s pretty epic,” she says.
“Epic?” I almost shout out. “It’s a nightmare. As if she’ll ever stop. I can already see it in her eyes; she’s waiting, preparing. She isn’t doing this to get out of jail; she probably would’ve broken out of it in one day. She wants something. And I don’t know what, why, or how. It drives me nuts! She drives me nuts!” I jump up with my last words, the anger of the day floating through my chest.
“You caught Avery Zayne,” Rachel says. “Just let yourself feel the victory for a moment.”
“I am not so sure we really caught her,” I say.
“You think she’d go to all the lengths to insert herself into the unit?”
“I don’t know,” I say. I don’t know what to think or believe right now. “We have to be very, very careful with everything. She can’t go anywhere alone. Maybe she wants files or needs to go back to the storage, I don’t know.”
I swipe up my phone and open the tracking of her ankle monitor. She is at the address she took me to, stationery.
The logical explanation would be that she’s asleep.
But my gut tells me otherwise.
“Want my opinion?”
“No, but tell me anyway,” I say.
“It doesn’t matter if she wants something. Let her try to get it. We’ll be breathing down her neck the moment she tries. Let her test our security, let her mess up, and she’ll be off your plate. Let her help us, and we’ll go down as the ones who closed all open cases.”
I smirk and shake my head. Rachel has always been a pragmatist, one I have to keep in check here and there because our work is complex and has clear rules to follow.
“You’ll mark my words,” I say. “The day will come when our heads roll because of her.”
“Nah,” she says and sits on my table. “You are way too good for it.”
“She knows things,” I say. “It took her one second to figure out what’s going on with us. She probably had me watched for years. Her first name is arrogance, and her last is uncanny ability.”
Rachel laughs.
“Let her mess up then,” she says and gets up to leave. “Get some sleep,” she says with a knowing look as she closes the door to my office behind her.
I sigh as I get up and pack my stuff.
On my way outside, I stop by the security front desk and tell Mike to alert me immediately whenever Avery uses her card to enter the building.
Then I get to the garage and pick up my car. The greater the distance between the HQ and me as I drive to my place in Brooklyn, the more uneasy I feel.