Blood List(11)

"But Robbie doesn't have to be on call 24/7. His office is ten minutes from his house. He works forty hours a week and gets two weeks a year. Two uninterrupted weeks. He gets to spend evenings with his family. Every night." She rolled over and bit his shoulder. "While you, Mister Glamorous-Too-Good-for-a-Desk-Job-Superman, disappear for weeks at a time, following Palomini around, trying to catch this guy, leaving me at home with the kids. When was the last time we had two weeks off together?"

Doug grinned at her. "Last year. We went camping in the mountains. Sound familiar?" She widened her eyes and shook her head in false denial. "And we don't have kids, Maureen."

She grinned back. "Seven months."

"What?" he asked.

"Seven months. You. Me. Babies. Seven months."

He pulled back and searched her face with his eyes. She was beautiful, and ten times more so when she smiled. "You're serious."

She beamed. "Ultrasound confirmed it two days ago. I'm nine weeks along."

"We're having a baby—wait, babies?"

"Twins." She giggled.

Doug beamed. "Really? Boys or girls?"

"Too early to tell." She rolled off him, took his palm, and slid it down to her belly. "Two little peanuts, right here, just growing away."

He kissed her, long and slow. Pulling back, he looked into her eyes. "Why didn't you tell me sooner?"

She looked outside. "I wanted to be sure. After trying for so long, and nothing. I didn't want you to be disappointed."

He enveloped her with his arms, careful not to crush her tiny form. She smelled like butterscotch. "You'll never disappoint me, Mo. Never. You're my rock."

"I love you, too, Doug."

They lay together a while, listening to the sounds of nature. An owl hooted in the distance. Some critter foraged in the brush. Song birds chattered in the trees.

Doug realized he'd been dozing, Maureen draped across him like the world's loveliest blanket, her head on his chest. He squeezed her, gently. "You awake?"

"Yeah," she said, but didn't look up. "I'm telling Branson when I get back next week. The firm has a great maternity leave program, and they'll cover my clients while I'm gone."

He chuckled. "Right. As if they could stop you from working at home. You'll go nuts in two weeks without badgering some bank or another into a multimillion-dollar deal." He moved his hands down her body and gave her a playful double-squeeze.

"Quit," she said.

He jerked his hands up to her lower back. "Sorry."

"Not that." She paused. He waited. "I want you to quit. Transfer. Something, anything, as long as it's safer and doesn't take you away from me. From us. I make enough money to support a family. You could do anything you want."

He opened his mouth but nothing came out.

"Not now. After. Catch this guy first. You don't have it in you to leave in the middle of a job. I know that. But nail this guy, then quit. Transfer to another department, leave altogether, whatever. We can move anywhere you want. I don't care. But quit. Be a dad to our babies."

Doug tried again. "I'll talk to Gene," he said. "But right now I need to go."

She squeezed him. "I know. Come home safe, or I'll kill you."

"Love you, too, babe," he said.

She let him go.



* * *



October 20th, 8:04 AM MST; FBI Field Offices; Salt Lake City, Utah.



"Here we go, people," Gene said as he flipped open his phone. He read the message. Salt Lake City. "Go figure. We're already in the right city."

"Great," Marty said. "Now all we need to do is interview everybody in the city and see who's feeling homicidal." Jerri rolled her eyes and looked at Carl. Doug waited for Gene to continue.

Gene gave his brother a grim smile. "Well, we can do a little better than that. Sam, tell them what you've got."

"Well, kids," Sam said through the speaker phone, "one of the new toys we've been working on for some years is face-matching software. DHS first field-tested it at an Oakland Raiders game back in '01, comparing football fans with mug shots."

"I remember that," Jerri said. "Almost a quarter of the Raiders fans were ex-cons, but only five percent of the 49ers. It was totally a Big Brother play. Really irked the civil libertarians."

"That's the one," Sam said. "It was pretty accurate, and they've been refining it since. We've got the traffic camera data and several phone shots from the Jenny Sykes murder, which we can compare to the security tapes from both SLC and Des Moines airport terminals. We got great shots of everyone as they boarded and exited the plane, and we know that D Street's phone was on that plane.