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‘Yes, sir,’ she said. ‘I know. We were close. Certainly, I will bring you the printouts immediately.’ She hung up.
‘I don’t think anyone’s told him,’ Lucy said.
‘No one here has told Peyton Gault.’
‘Right. That was Mr. Wesley.’
‘I must talk to him,’ I said. ‘Do you trust me to take him the printouts?’
Lucy was staring at the monitor again. The screen saver had come back on, and brilliant triangles were slowly slipping through and around each other like geometry making love.
‘You can take it to him,’ she said, and she typed Prodigy. ‘Before you go … Wow, you’ve got new mail waiting.’
‘How much?’ I moved closer to her.
‘Oops. Just one so far.’ She opened it.
It read: What is gold foil?
Lucy said, ‘We’re probably going to get a lot of that.’
Sally was working the front desk again when I walked into the Academy lobby, and she let me through without the bother of registration and a visitors’ pass. I walked with purpose down the long tan corridor, around the post office and through the gun cleaning room. I will always love the smell of Hoppes Number 9.
A lone man in fatigues was blasting compressed air into the barrel of a rifle. Rows of long black countertops were bare and perfectly clean, and I thought of years of classes, of the men and women I had seen, and of the times I had stood at a counter cleaning my own handgun. I had watched new agents come and go. I had watched them run, fight, shoot and sweat. I had taught them and cared.
I pressed the elevator button, boarded and went down to the lower level. Several profilers were in their offices, and they nodded at me as I walked by. Wesley’s secretary was on vacation, and I passed her desk and knocked on the shut door. I heard Wesley’s voice. A chair moved and he walked to the door and pulled it open.
‘Hello,’ he said, surprised.
‘These are the printouts you wanted from Lucy.’ I handed them over.
‘Thank you. Please come in.’ He slipped on reading glasses, reviewing the message Gault had sent.
His jacket was off, a white shirt wrinkled around woven leather suspenders. Wesley had been perspiring and he needed to shave.
‘Have you lost more weight?’ I asked.
‘I never weigh myself.’ He glanced at me over the top of his glasses as he seated himself behind his desk.
‘You don’t look healthy.’
‘He’s decompensating more,’ he said. ‘You can see that from this message. He’s getting more reckless, more brazen. I would predict that by the end of the weekend, we will nail his location.’
‘Then what?’ I was not convinced.
‘We deploy HRT.’
‘I see,’ I said dryly. ‘They will rappel from helicopters and blow up the building.’
Wesley glanced at me again. He placed the paperwork on the desk. ‘You’re angry,’ he said.
‘No, Benton. I’m angry with you, versus being angry in general.’
‘Why?’
‘I asked you not to involve Lucy.’
‘We have no choice,’ he said.
‘There are always choices. I don’t care what anybody says.’
‘In terms of locating Gault, she’s really our only hope right now.’ He paused, looking directly at me. ‘She has a mind of her own.’
‘Yes, she does. That’s my point. Lucy doesn’t have an off button. She doesn’t always understand limits.’
‘We won’t let her do anything that might place her at risk,’ he said.
‘She’s already been placed at risk.’
‘You’ve got to let her grow up, Kay.’
I stared at him.
‘She’s going to graduate from the university this spring. She’s a grown woman.’
‘I don’t want her coming back here,’ I said.
He smiled a little, but his eyes were exhausted and sad. ‘I hope she’ll be back here. We need agents like her and Janet. We need all we can get.’
‘She keeps many secrets from me. It seems the two of you conspire against me and I’m left in the dark. It’s bad enough that . . .’ I caught myself.
Wesley looked into my eyes. ‘Kay, this has nothing to do with my relationship with you.’