“Deducing.”
“It sounds less cold-blooded when I say I’m guessing.”
“Point.” He personally adored the way random passersby reacted to Hannah’s towering intellect. Especially since she often “turned it off” and sounded like a typical child immediately afterward … until something new teased her intellect. “You needn’t do that on my account.”
“Thank you. Anyway. I’m guessing that after the case update, she moved up your timetable for social interactions. Which made you smile.”
“So it did. Right on all counts.” He swung both bags off the bed. “Shall we?”
“Obviously. I like Boston, but I miss our house.”
“Those are my exact sentiments as well.”
“Uncle Tom, I don’t want to know what happened to that boy you tried to teach empathy, do I?”
“You do not.”
“Ah.”
Forty
Hilton Boston Logan Airport
“What can I do for you, Ava?”
“Well, Jan, first I’d like props for remembering you’re in California. It wasn’t easy, because my mind is the opposite of a steel trap.”
A snort. “Congratulations. You finally remembered something that you have literally known for years. I’ll FedEx you a cookie.”
“Two cookies.”
“I’m sorry to say we’re still working on your, uh, problem, so I don’t really have an update yet. Is that why you called?”
“That, and to give you an update. I know we’re supposed to come to HR or a union rep when someone makes us uncomfortable…”
“Whoa, whoa. Is this a #MeToo thing? Should I be recording this conversation?”
“No! Nothing like that.” If only. Not to belittle the movement, but she’d rather worry about being sexually harassed than a serial killer chatting her up. “Nobody’s sexually harassing me. Well, India thinks I should score, so he’s trying to fix me up with one of his wife’s relatives. Would that be sexual harassment by proxy?”
“I can honestly say I have no idea.”
“Besides, if someone ever tried it, G.B. would devour them.” She paused at the thought and decided it wasn’t much of an exaggeration. Two years ago, the new VP cornered one of G.B.’s colleagues when he thought he had the room to himself. For some reason, the gentleman in question thought taking his dick out was an appropriate way to make an introduction. He never heard G.B., who clocked him over the head with a water pitcher. It took him four minutes to regain consciousness, and three hours to file his termination paperwork.
“It’s not a #MeToo thing,” she reiterated. “But an employee got a bit in my face and was asking me a lot of questions about my personal life and acting incredibly strange and I have to tell you, it made me uneasy.”
“Becka Miller.”
(??????????????????)
“Ava? Are you there?”
“Okay, how did you know that?”
“She’s an admirer. Your name is all over her application paperwork.”
“Okay, weird.”
“It’s not that strange. I think,” Jan said gently, “and this is off the record and I can’t prove any of it and we never had this conversation, which I’m definitely not recording to cover my ass, but I think she has a bit of a crush.”
“I…” Ava trailed off. The close talking. The shouting. The excitability. The murder talk. Coincidentally running into her in Boston. “… I don’t think that’s it. She was pretty together the first time we met. But she knew I wasn’t from Boston, then followed me to Boston, and she didn’t start acting weird until we saw each other in Boston.”
“Would you like to file a complaint?”
“No.”
“Then what can I do for you?”
“I just—look, I get that this is skating right up to the line—”
“Whenever you say that, you’re already over the line.”
“What can you tell me about her?”
A sigh from the other end. “Ava. I could lose my job.”
“I know. I know it’s a lot to ask. That’s why I made sure to remember you were in California before I called.”
A snort. “Look, all I can say is, she sailed through all her paperwork and her psych evaluation looked great.” Although not required by the FAA, Northeastern Southwest required psychological screening for all air crew before they could join Team “We fly everywhere!”.
“And?”
“And that’s it. Honestly. No red flags. She even joked a little about how being an orphan actually helped her choose this line of work—no family to let down when she’d inevitably work during the holidays.”
“But … she has a family. A brother, at least. That’s what she said when we saw each other in Boston and she freaked right out. Because, again, something’s up with her.”
“Ava, honestly, that’s all I can tell you. And I shouldn’t have told you even that much. If you don’t want to file a complaint, my hands are tied.”
“There’s nothing to file a complaint for,” Ava fretted.
“Then I’m ending this conversation by assuring you that I don’t think you’re in any physical danger from Becka Miller.”
“Well, that—wait, just physical danger?”
“I’m hanging up now.”
“Am I in emotional danger? Psychological danger? Jan? Hello?” Dammit. One thing about Jan, she was as ruthless as Ava about ending phone calls. When she said she was hanging up (so to speak—did they even have the phone receivers required to hang up over at Human Resources? Or were they all on their smartphones?), she never bluffed.
So Becka’s smart, did great on her tests, aced her psych eval, and poses no physical danger to me. But she’s also an orphan who may or may not have a creepy brother she may or may not resent and who talked about me to strangers to an extent that the HR rep knew instantly who I was calling about.
Yeah, not convinced this puts her in the clear.
If Ava was a cop, she’d have nothing. But she wasn’t a cop, which was the advantage of being a pilot instead of a police officer: she didn’t need much more than her intuition to look into something.
She’d lay it out for Tom, see what he thought. Maybe after some kissing. Well, no. This was important. Before the kissing, then. But then immediately after she laid out the Becka speculation, on to the kissing.
Always good to have your priorities straight, she figured. Right?
Forty-One
Mall of America
South Street Dining Area
Bloomington, MN
She could see at once meeting at the food court had been a bad idea. Tom looked tense, which given his line of work was alarming. What could freak out a guy who carved up corpses for a living? A rubber glove shortage? A zombie apocalypse? (To be fair, that last would upset her, too.)
He didn’t even notice her until she was almost on top of him (figuratively). “Hey,” she said, reaching out and taking his hand. “It’s great to see you.” It was. He was in khakis, loafers, and a black polo that set off his build and eyes to wonderful effect. Ava knew she had it bad when she thought how sexy he looked when the decidedly unsexy mall lighting hit his shaved skull. “Are you all right?”