In Graywolf's Hands. Marie Ferrarella

Elliot took a pistachio nut from his jacket pocket and began to work at it with his nails.

      Straightening, she saw Elliot shell the nut. For as long as she’d known him, he’d always carried a supply of pistachio nuts in his pocket. With the understanding of a loving wife, Janice replenished his supply every morning. “Isn’t it kind of early for that?”

      He shrugged. “Gives me something to do.” Seeing the wastebasket, he tossed the shell into it and took out another nut. “I think he’s out, Lyd.”

      She nodded, annoyed. Frustrated. “Looks like the good doctor was right.” So much for questioning Conroy now. Though Elliot had seniority, the assistant director had made her lead on this case. “Why don’t you go back to the office and see about running down some of those phone calls that have been coming in? Take Burkowitz with you,” she said, naming one of the agents appointed to the special task force. “And while you’re at it, find out if the bomb squad has found something useful.” She knew there’d been evidence galore, but whether or not it led anywhere was another story. Most of the time they were left with a plethora of puzzle pieces and no unifying tray to place them in. “No sense in both of us hanging around until Mr. Wizard here wakes up.”

      She’d get no argument from him on that. Elliot was already crossing to the door. “That might be a while, Lyd. Sure you want to hang around, waiting?” He’d never met anyone who hated waiting more than Lydia. “We could have Rodriguez page us.”

      He nodded toward the door and the man they had posted at the desk out front. It was one of their own now, instead of a local policeman, something the Bedford chief hadn’t been overly happy about. As always, there was professional jealousy and the matter of jurisdiction clouding things up. But at bottom, they all wanted the same thing. Not to have this kind of thing happen in Bedford ever again.

      She looked back at Conroy. Unlike Elliot’s endless supply of pistachios, the supremacist was going to be a difficult nut to crack. She wanted to be sure that she got first chance at him. “I’d feel better being here.”

      After four years he could pretty much read her like a book. “Lyd, the bombing wasn’t your fault.”

      Logically, no. But emotionally it was another story. “Thanks, but it might have been prevented if I’d been a little faster, dug a little deeper. We ignored that first rumor.”

      “Because it was a rumor, one of over a dozen—the rest of which were bogus,” he reminded her. “Hell, Lyd, we had our hands full.” He also knew her well enough to know that he was wasting his breath. “The term’s ‘special agent’ not ‘super agent.’”

      The comment succeeded in evoking a smile from her. “Who says?”

      Elliot had his hand on the door, and he was shaking his head. “You’re getting more stubborn every day.”

      She looked at him significantly. “I had a damn good teacher.”

      “Haven’t got the faintest idea what you’re talking about,” he deadpanned as he left the room.

      Lydia heard the door close as she turned back to look at the man in the bed. He hadn’t moved a muscle since they’d walked in. The only sounds in the room were the ones made by the machines arranged in a metallic semicircle around his bedside.

      He looked almost peaceful. It made her physically ill to be in the same room with him.

      “What kind of a sick pervert blows up women and children?” she demanded of the unconscious man in a low, steely voice that seethed with anger.

      Only the sound of the monitor answered her question.

      Impatient, she blew out a sigh. “You’ve got to wake up sometime,” she told him. “And when you do, I’m going to be right here to squeeze the names of those other men out of you. You’re going down for this, my friend, and you’re not going down alone.”

      She knew that would be little comfort to the parents of the teenager who’d senselessly died, but maybe it would keep others from following Conroy’s example. Lydia already knew for a fact that this kind of thing had never happened in Bedford before and she wanted to make sure that it never would again. She wanted to do more than send a message to the New World supremacy group who’d been behind this, she wanted to smash it into unrecognizable bits.

      With Elliot gone, there was no one to distract her. Unable to remain any longer in the room with a man she loathed with every fiber of her being, she turned on her heel and walked out. She paused long enough to talk to the agent who was sitting at the desk less than five feet from the door.

      “I want to know the second he opens his eyes, Special Agent,” she told him. “Not the minute, the second. Clear?”

      The dark head bobbed up and down. This was his first assignment. “Absolutely, Special Agent Wakefield.”

      Had she ever been that eager? she wondered. When she’d first come to the Bureau, had she seemed this wet behind the ears?

      Somehow, she doubted it. There were times when she thought she’d been born old. At other times she knew it was her father’s death and the job that had done this to her.