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Someone tapped Sue on the shoulder and she jumped, her mind having run away with her as her fingers fussed with her hair, trying to get the knots out before tying it back up again. She turned to face the other person, a woman, she assumed, seeing as it was the ladies room, and smiled half-heartedly at Special Agent Abigail Stevenson, a profiler who had been with the Bureau for almost ten years and looked like it had been forty. Sue, who had never really understood what profilers did until this case, understood that Abigail spent most of her life in a windowless office surrounded by evidence of the worst of the worst of society, that she burrowed her way into the minds of psychopaths on a daily basis, that going without sleep for a week was commonplace and that any and all relationships she might have had were completely ruined not only by the fact that a lot of men were intimidated by a woman who worked for the FBI and carried a gun, but also by her own knowledge of what people could and did do to each other. Yet, even knowing this, Sue had still tried to befriend the profiler. Not only was Abigail the only other woman working the case, though that had been one point that had led Sue to pursue a friendship with Abigail, but also Sue had seen Abigail and had saw a human being who was isolated and who needed to see that not everyone in the world was a sicko intent on shocking the consciences of the rest of the world.�Hey,� Abigail said, making sure she was facing Sue. Everyone had been pretty good about it, though Sue had had trouble in the original briefing when everyone was sitting at an oval shaped table where she couldn�t see half the people�s mouths and the other half seemed to be talking into their files. Thankfully Myles took prodigiously thorough notes that he had had photocopied for her as soon as the meeting was over. Myles had been good about things like that on this case. �Tara and Lucy called. They want to know if you�re still on for dinner tonight. They said to send an e-mail when you get a second.�
�Thanks,� Sue said. She wasn�t sure how she was going to get away early enough to make the eight o�clock reservations that the three of them had at a restaurant in DC, especially when they hadn�t stopped for the day any earlier than ten in almost five days, but she was determined to get at least a few hours of quality girl-time with her friends. �Hey, you should come. We�re having dinner and drinks, nothing fancy. It�ll be fun,� she said, waning to get to know Abigail outside of the CASKU �tomb�.
Abigail shook her head. �You haven�t seen your friends in almost a week. I would just be intruding.�
�Not at all. I�ll just call and change the reservations from three to four. I insist,� Sue said in her �do not even think about arguing with me� tone. �It�ll do us both some good to get away from here for a little while,� she added gently.
�Fine,� Abigail said, though she was clearly still unsure about the whole thing. �What time are we leaving?� |
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