Shadow Unit 4 by Emma Bull & Elizabeth Bear

Author:Emma Bull & Elizabeth Bear [Bull, Emma & Bear, Elizabeth]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: science fiction mystery, behavioral analysis unit
Publisher: Emma Bull
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

J. Edgar Hoover Building, Washington, D.C., August 25, 2008

Esther Falkner was late to the briefing room that morning.

She abhorred lateness. Lateness was undisciplined and unprofessional, and she had too many years of training in her corner to ever consider it anything but implicit disrespect for one’s team and one’s job. But Ben had called at noon speaking perfectly calm, perfectly reasonable, to tell her Rebekah was curled up in the shower in tears.

For only the third time since joining the Anomalous Crimes Task Force, Esther Falkner shut her office door.

“Go on,” she said, seated back at her desk. Phone crooked between her ear and her shoulder and hands spread out over the crisp military corners of files full of pictures of dead children. Breathed in. Breathed out.

“From what I could get out of her, she was out with Tonya Preston and Patty Chung at City Place. They put itching powder down the back of her shirt,” Ben said evenly. “Deborah called me at work. Beckie’d already locked herself in the bathroom when I got home.”

Falkner couldn’t decide whether to be proud or hurt that her littlest called her father first.

“Itching powder.” A kid prank. Nothing of any lasting harm, except the part with the random cruelty. The files slipped and gave under the pressure, ran across the desk. She looked down at her hand and eased it, lifted the knuckles. Breathed in. Which meant Rebekah would have taken the bus home alone, albeit in the middle of the afternoon, without letting anybody know first. Resourceful, said the part of her mind which commanded FBI teams; a good extraction operation using the local resources. “Resourceful,” she told the files under her palm, soaking murder into her hands; all the perfectly ordinary cases of bright, well-loved young children who just disappeared.

“Es?” Ben said, softly.

“I’m here,” automatic, before she realized it was a technical falsehood. Falkner gathered herself, shut her eyes, stretched her threatening, throbbing back. Breathed in, breathed out. “I’m here, Ben.”

Which was when Nicolette Lau tapped on her door, two quick raps that somehow managed to be unobtrusive. Falkner started, reflexes firing, that bland, smooth professional mask fingersnapped back into place. Not fast enough; there should have been no jerk, no jump, no need. Caught out.

Lau didn’t say a word, just waited patiently on the other side of the narrow strip of double-plate bulletproof glass that Falkner had made a point of never blocking, like most supervisory agents, with blinds.

Falkner raised her eyebrows, one quick inquiry, and Lau pointed to the briefing room. Her face was drawn, mouth tucked tight. Case. Falkner gave a nod, replying, and went back to Ben, the phone.

She was going to be late to the briefing.

“I don’t think she had a reaction to it. But,” Ben said. But. “Mrs. Preston.”

There was something faint and static on the other end of the line. Water running, the shower? Ben would be sitting outside the bathroom door. Head leaned back against the lock. Waiting for his daughter to come out.

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