Alex Kava Bundle - Alex Kava [193]
Tully made his way back to his daughter and her friend, anticipating her disappointment.
“I’m sorry, Emma, I’ve got to leave.”
Immediately, her eyes grew dark, her smile slid off her face.
“Josh, did you say you were here with your mom?”
“Yeah, she’s getting us popcorn.” He pointed to an attractive redhead in the line. When she noticed Josh pointing, she smiled at him and shrugged at the stagnant line in front of her.
“Josh, Emma, would you mind if I ask Josh’s mom if Emma could join you for the movie?” Tully steeled himself for his daughter’s panic and horror.
“No, that would be cool,” Josh said without hesitating, and Emma immediately seemed pleased.
“Sure, Dad,” she said.
Tully wondered if she knew how cool she was pretending to be right now.
When he introduced himself to Jennifer Reynolds, she also seemed pleased to help him out. He offered to repay her another night by treating all of them to another movie. Then he kicked himself when he noticed her wedding band. But Jennifer Reynolds accepted his offer without hesitation, and with a flirtatious look that even an out-of-practice, newly single guy didn’t need to decipher. Despite his curiosity, he couldn’t help feeling a bit excited.
He smiled all the way to his car, greeting people in the parking lot and jingling his car keys. The evening was still warm and the moon promised to be brilliant despite wisps of clouds. He slid behind the steering wheel and checked his reflection in the rearview mirror, as though he had forgotten the configuration of his face when it was happy. What an unusual feeling, happiness and excitement, and all in the same evening. Two things he hadn’t felt in years, though he knew both would be short-lived. He drove out of the theater’s parking lot feeling he could take on anything and anyone. Maybe even Albert Stucky.
CHAPTER 11
Tully followed Cunningham’s directions and turned at the intersection. Immediately, he saw spotlights in the back alley of a small strip mall. Police cruisers blocked the street, and Tully pulled up beside one, flashed his badge and drove through the maze. He tried to take a lesson from his daughter’s new friend Josh by pretending to be cool. Fact was, his stomach felt hollow and perspiration slid down his back.
Tully had seen plenty of crime scenes, severed limbs, bloodied walls, mutilated bodies and sick, disgusting killer signatures that ranged from a single long-stemmed rose to a decapitated corpse. But all those scenes, up until now, had been only in photographs, digital scans and illustrations sent to him at the FBI Cleveland Field Office. He had become one of the Midwest’s experts in developing precise criminal profiles from the bits and pieces law enforcement officers sent him. It was his accuracy that had prompted Assistant Director Kyle Cunningham to offer Tully a position at Quantico in the Investigative Support Unit. In one phone call and without ever having met him, Cunningham had offered Tully a chance to work out in the field, starting with the hunt for one of the FBI’s most infamous fugitives—Albert Stucky.
Tully knew Cunningham had been forced to dismantle the task force after months of nothing to show for their time and expense. He also knew he owed his good fortune to the agent he had replaced, an agent who had been temporarily assigned to teaching at law enforcement conferences. Without much digging, he discovered the agent was Margaret O’Dell, whom he had never met but knew by reputation. She was one of the youngest and one of the best profilers in the country.
The unofficial word was that O’Dell had burned out and needed a break. Rumors suggested that she had lost her edge, that she was combative and reckless, that she had become paranoid and obsessed with recapturing Albert Stucky. Of course, there were also rumors that Assistant Director Cunningham had sidelined Margaret O’Dell to protect her from Stucky. The two had played a dangerous game