The Next Accident - Lisa Gardner [125]
The hotel had explained the mixup to Quincy upon his return. He’d relayed the story to Kimberly. She’d smiled in an attempt to find humor in the situation, but Quincy could tell the incident had left her shaken, and news of Glenda’s attack had only further frayed her nerves.
“So Special Agent Rodman is all right?” Kimberly asked for the third time. Her voice had taken on the anxious edge he remembered from two days ago. Nothing he’d offered in the last ten minutes seemed to change it.
“Special Agent Rodman is an extremely capable woman,” Quincy said, trying a new tack as he rounded up his socks. “She took her training seriously, and when the moment came, that training paid off. She not only met the threat, but she took out Montgomery with two clean shots.”
“She must be an excellent marksman.”
“I believe she’s won a few medals.”
“I’m a good shot,” Kimberly said. “I practice three times a week.”
Quincy raised his head and met his daughter’s eyes. He said firmly, “You’re going to be fine, Kimberly. Rainie is staying here with you, and you’re a capable young woman. You’ll be safe.”
Kimberly’s gaze fell to the floor. She was gnawing on her bottom lip; he couldn’t tell if he had reached her or not.
“What about Special Agent Rodman’s hand?” she asked.
“I don’t know. Montgomery confessed that he sprayed the phone with Teflon to protect the plastic, then applied hydrofluoric acid, which is an extremely corrosive chemical. The acid reacted with the moisture of Glenda’s hand, burning her fingers and part of her palm. I’m not sure of the long-term prognosis.”
“It’s her right hand. She could be permanently damaged, or scarred.”
“She’s receiving the best medical attention you can get. I’m sure she’ll recover.”
“But you don’t know—”
“Kimberly!” he said sharply. “Albert was going to kill her. You know that, I know that, she knows that. Instead, she controlled her fear and pain and disabled her attacker. This is a triumph. This is a lesson in the value of hard work and proper training. Don’t give this victory away. Don’t demoralize yourself like that.”
“I don’t want you to go,” she whispered.
Quincy closed his eyes. The irritation drained from his body. He felt simply rotten instead. “I know,” he said softly.
“It’s just . . . So you have Albert in custody. So he went after Glenda. There’s still something wrong . . . something else going on. If Albert looks the way you say he does, I can’t see him getting anywhere near Mom. Plus, there’s the matter of brainpower. If Albert was this clever, he wouldn’t have had problems at the Bureau in the first place. Don’t you think?”
“He fits the description of the man in Mandy’s AA group,” Quincy said, though he knew that wasn’t really an answer.
His daughter knew it too. She gazed at him miserably, obviously needing more than he was giving. He wished he knew what to do at times like this. He wished he knew how to make his daughter feel safe and confident and strong. And then he really did miss his ex-wife, because Bethie had always been better at these moments than him. He held a doctorate in psychology. Bethie, on the other hand, had been a mom.
“I love you, Kimberly,” he said.
“Dad—”
“I don’t want to go. Maybe sometimes it seems that I do. Maybe we both mistake my sense of duty for desire. But it is duty. Montgomery has information about Grandpa that I need to know and he claims he’ll only give that information to me. It’s been forty-eight hours, Kimberly. If we don’t find Grandpa soon . . .” His voice trailed off. His daughter had taken law enforcement classes; he knew that she understood as well as he did how the probability of finding Abraham alive decreased with each passing hour. The UNSUB had claimed that Abraham was tucked away safely. Quincy, however, had subsequently