Page 53 of Fire and Bones
The bio-profiles were consistent with Green and Star.
Neither corpse yielded prints.
Thacker was pleased and asked if I’d be there for Hill the following morning.
Presumed Hill.
I agreed and left.
Exhausted.
Never wanting to see charred or seared meat again.
Hoping to avoid social interaction of any kind, I grabbed a spicy turkey club at Rich Coffee on MacArthur Boulevard—Thacker’s recommendation—then headed to Doyle’s house, thumbed the code into the keypad, and slipped in as quietly as I could.
Luck was with me. I encountered no one. Presumably, Doyle was at work and Lan had punched out for the day.
After showering in the hundred-acre glass cubicle, I ate my sandwich while entering notes onto my laptop.
When finished, I again considered calling Ryan. Peeks at my voice mail, email, and text messages throughout the day had shown that he hadn’t tried to contact me.
My phone said 10:40.
Screw it. Someone had to be the adult.
I dialed. Got voice mail. Disconnected, leaving no message.
I killed the light and collapsed into my mound of goose down pillows.
Was asleep in seconds.
I awoke to cloud-shrouded moonlight filtering through glass. To shadows dancing a shape-changing ballet on the walls, the ceiling, the quilt.
No shutters. No Birdie.
I wasn’t in my own bed.
A moment of cerebral groping, then recollection.
Doyle. DC. The Foggy Bottom fire.
Rain was falling outside the window wall framing the headboard. Tree branches lifted and dropped, occasionally scraping the pane with a gentle tic tic tic.
Had the muted staccato awakened me?
I held my breath, listening.
Heard nothing inside but the murmur of air flowing through vents.
Though I welcomed the blissful cooling provided by Doyle’s central AC, the intermittent blowing dried the lining of my nose and mouth.
I reached for my drink.
Three hundred and eighty million tons of plastic are produced each year, as much as half that for single-use purposes. Refusing to contribute to that atrocity against the planet, I never buy or drink bottled water.
Damn.
Lan had taken my Yeti to the kitchen for washing. In my exhaustion, I’d forgotten to retrieve and fill it.