“Nigel?” she asked. “Is everything alright? I was just getting a coffee.”
Nigel held her stare for a few seconds, the most he’d done in the past two days. “No, you weren’t,” he said.
“Huh? I was. I swear.”
“Can I come in?” he asked.
This all seemed incredibly uncharacteristic of him. What was going on here? She looked back at her room, quickly scanning to make sure it was presentable. “Okay, but why?”
Byford walked past her and took a seat at the dressing table. “Shut the door, please.”
Ella did as he asked, slowly walked back to the room and perched herself on the end of the bed. “Nigel, what’s going on? I’m worried.”
“Don’t be. In fact, that’s part of the problem. I might be new to this job, but I know a struggling agent when I see one. Ella, you’re having a hard time, aren’t you?”
Ella became flustered; her face turned red. She didn’t know whether to go for brutal honesty or modest insincerity. She was more taken aback by the sudden change in Byford’s demeanor.
“Yes, I am. Is it obvious?”
“Not to most people, but I’ve been trained to spot distress. You exhibit all the classic signs. Do you want to tell me what’s wrong and I’ll see if I can help? Working serial cases is hard enough, and even harder with a stressed partner.”
“You want the short version? Everything is going wrong. Work, relationships, this case, everything. It’s all come at once, like some grief tsunami.”
Byford leaned forward in the chair. “And the long version?”
Ella laughed. “That would take a long time.”
“You’d be surprised how minuscule your problems are in the grand scheme of things. Relationships, let’s start there. Problems with your husband, boyfriend, girlfriend?”
“Boyfriend.” There was that word again. “We’ve only been seeing each other two weeks, but basically, he doesn’t trust me. When I told him I was partnered with a man, he flipped.”
“Wow, it’s been a long time since I’ve been the other guy. I’m guessing from that statement he hasn’t seen my face?” Byford laughed. It was the first time Ella had seen anything but a straight expression on his face.
“He might have. I don’t know. It’s Mark Balzano.”
“Mark is your boyfriend? I know him. A fine agent, but not great boyfriend material. Do you love him?”
“No. Not even close.” Ella surprised herself with how easy it was to declare such a thing.
“Then you know what you have to do. And if he’s borderline abusive, you need to do it soon.”
“Break it off,” Ella said.
“Yup. When people show you who they really are, believe them. Now, this case, what’s the issue?”
“Isn’t it obvious? We’re nowhere close to the finish line.”
“So? We’ll keep working until it is. It’s as easy as that. Just because you’ve solved cases in a week, doesn’t mean they’ll all go that route. It took us ten years to track down Bin Laden.”
Usually, Ella hated condensing solutions down to a single sentence, but in this case, it seemed to work. Byford was right. All they could really do was carry on.
“True. I mean, it’s obvious, but you’re right.”
“Sometimes you just need someone else to say the words. Now, what else about work is getting you down? I’ve been with the FBI for fifteen years, so I’ve seen it all. Been there, done that.”
Here came the tricky part. Ella didn’t know whether she really wanted to drag Byford into this world of troubles. Besides, Mia wouldn’t be too pleased if Ella went round telling people about their falling out.
“Me and my ex-partner. FBI partner. I went behind her back and did something I shouldn’t have. That’s why I’m with you and not her.”
“Do you want to talk about what you did?”
“I visited someone she didn’t want me to, and I didn’t tell her. She found out through the other person, then everything went to hell.”
Byford looked unimpressed. “Big deal. And this was Agent Ripley?”
“It was.”
“Well, I can’t speak for her, but it sounds like you’re both being overdramatic here. You probably shouldn’t have done that, but at the same time, she should really give you a chance to apologize. Has she done that?”
“No. She hasn’t.”
“Then she’s being unfair. This isn’t all on you. You made a mistake. Shit happens.”
Ella welcomed the suggestion that she wasn’t the bad guy in this scenario. She wasn’t perfect, but neither was the other person involved. “Thank you for the encouragement. But Mia breaking it off with me felt like the ultimate failure, like I’d let her down. It was the one thing I didn’t want to do, but I got tangled up in this web and things just got worse and worse. You know?”
Byford adjusted his chair then sat forward again. “Oh, I do know. Remember the other day, you asked me why I left counter-terrorism?”
Ella recalled their conversation in the back of the cab. “I do.”
“Here’s the story. You might feel better afterwards. So, there I am, about three years ago, I wake up to a phone call in the middle of the night from the director. He wants me in England immediately. A religious fanatic with an assault rifle has taken twenty-four hostages in a grocery store. Been there for two days already and the British police didn’t have the skillset they needed. So I jump on a plane, and the entire ride there I’m trying to figure this guy out. What does he want? How can I talk him down? This whole scene was nothing new to me, so I was pretty confident I could talk the hostages out of there.”
Ella listened closely. Finally, she was getting a glimpse of the person, not just the career.
“I get there and I’m talking on the phone to the gunman. I give him what he wants, which is status. He wanted to be mentioned in the same leagues as the major terrorists, so I tell him he’s got the whole country paralyzed with fear. I tell him that if he comes out now, he won’t spend his life in jail, but he will if any lives are lost. We come to a deal, and that deal was I meet him at the door, and he gives me his weapon.”
Ella put herself in the situation. She wouldn’t know what to do for the best. She couldn’t imagine playing such a crucial role in the lives of so many.
“So I’ve got about a thousand people watching. The cops, the press, even the Prime Minister of England. I go to the door, open it up and that’s when I see this terrorist just standing there, laughing. I realize right then and there that it’s all over. That’s the moment my whole being shatters and never mends. My career is over, my mind is broken, and there’s a good chance my life is too.”
“Why? What happened?”
“I watched the target gun down everybody in that store right in front of me. I’ll never forget the terror on their faces when they realized what was about to happen. Paralyzing fear, acceptance of death. The gunman unloaded on the hostages and as fast as I was, I wasn’t any match for burst fire from a Beretta 93R. Seven people died before I managed to stop him. Blood washed down the aisles, body parts rained on me. I still see the massacre to this day whenever I go to sleep. I know I’ll never escape it.”