Part 2 (1/2)
There was something indefinable about seeing a fellow Athena Force member-a kind of recognition and simple comfort that went beyond just spotting an old friend. Katie saw Kayla step out of the impromptu meeting going on and head her way.
”Katie,” Kayla said and smiled. They shook hands in a brisk, businesslike fas.h.i.+on rather than hugged-purely for any cameras that happened to be pointed in their direction. ”I can't thank you enough for this. Let's go someplace more private to talk.”
She led the way with quick strides. They'd always been the same height, but Katie recognized even more similarities. She and Kayla both moved with authority and confidence, thanks to their training both at the Academy and through their careers. Kayla's skin was shades darker, and she'd let her long dark hair grow. Her brown eyes still looked disarmingly warm. That probably served her very well in interrogations-Katie knew that intimidation, for all its dramatic presentation, was generally less useful than empathy in soliciting information.
In short, Kayla looked great, if strained at the moment. As they walked toward a row of high hedges, backs to the cameras, she caught Kayla exchanging a look with a tall, good-looking detective standing nearby. A look. You didn't have to be an investigator to read his regard for her, and to see it was something more than just professional courtesy.
”So I guess the press is all over this one,” Katie said and winced as she adjusted her bag on her shoulder. Her ribs were making their protests felt. Again. ”Why the cloak and dagger?”
”Parabolic microphones. Some of the more enterprising news reporters have them around here. They can't air the footage, unless they want to lose any cooperation in the future from the department, but they can still use the information they get in other ways.” Kayla shook her head. ”Lots of 'unnamed sources' come from surveillance. I'm not willing to take the chance. Besides, guess who's here as our special media guest?”
”60 Minutes?”
”I just wish. No, Shannon Connor.”
”Shannon!” Katie blurted, shocked. Not that she couldn't have foreseen it happening, of course. Shannon Connor had been a promising student at the AthenaAcademy-in Kayla's group, the Graces, in fact-but she'd shown a dark side, and had made history as the first girl ever expelled from the Academy. Not that she wasn't bright, but she was ambitious and bitter. Since getting thrown out of the school, she'd gone on to a relatively successful career in broadcast journalism...but she was always looking for dirt on the Academy and its graduates. ”She'd better be looking to help, not just digging for trouble.”
”You know Shannon. She's looking for any angle that will make us look...” Kayla shrugged.
”I can't believe she'd stoop that low. Not with kids at stake.”
”She's a reporter. Of course she'd stoop that low.” Which might have been ungenerous, but Katie wasn't much inclined to grant Shannon Connor any benefit of the doubt, either.
The hedges had a gate, which Kayla swung open and motioned her through. The other side was cool and green and open-a community garden, pretty and peaceful, xeriscaped with desert plants. Secluded.
A young lady slumped, hands folded, on a concrete park bench under the skeletal branches of a large tree. She looked up as Kayla and Katie approached, and got to her feet quickly.
Kayla's daughter, Jazz, looked taller than Katie remembered, but that was the way with kids.... They grew while you weren't watching. Jazz looked much more mature, though. She'd always been self-possessed, but the time at the AthenaAcademy had given her even more of that. Except for a hint of nervousness in the quick way she glanced at her mother, she looked as cool as ice.
She was dressed in blue jeans and a pink top, long-sleeved and hooded. Warm enough for a walk, but not for sitting on a cold bench. She was s.h.i.+vering.
”Officer,” Katie called and got an instant response from one of the uniformed cops near the gate. ”Can you lend me your jacket?”
He slid it off and handed it over; Katie draped the police-issue jacket around Jazz's thin shoulders. ”There,” she said. ”Better?”
”Yeah,” Jazz agreed softly. ”Thanks. Hi, Katie.”
”Hi, honey. So, bad day, huh?”
”Pretty bad.” Jazz swallowed hard and glanced again at her mother, who was watching her with so much love and concern it made Katie's heart turn over. ”They almost got me, but Teal and Lena , they made sure I got away. I didn't want to leave them, Katie. I didn't!”
”I know you didn't. Here. Sit with me.” She took a seat on the cold concrete bench and patted the empty spot next to her. ”Maybe your mom can get you something to drink? Some water?”
It was a pretext, but a necessary one; she couldn't just tell Kayla to leave, and Kayla needed an excuse to go. When Jazz nodded gratefully, the two women exchanged a quick glance, and Kayla reached down to hug her daughter before walking off in search of refreshments.
Katie waited until she was sure Kayla was out of earshot.
”You don't have to be brave with me,” she said, and Jazz crumbled, sobbing against her. Katie put her arms around her, wincing as Jazz hugged back, but she bit her lip and stood the pain. She stroked the girl's soft, silky hair with slow movements. ”You've been brave all day, haven't you?”
”I had to.” Jazz gulped. Her voice was more like a little girl's now, shaking and high-pitched. ”Everybody was counting on me. I had to remember, and tell people, and-”
”And you did that, you did. But you were scared, too, and that's okay. It's okay, you understand?”
Jazz pulled back, eyes swollen and streaming tears. She gave Katie a pleading look. ”Mom never is.”
”Your mom is scared a lot, but she tries not to let it show.” Katie gave the girl a smile, a small one, appropriate to the mood. ”Like me. But you need to break down sometimes to be stronger later. You understand that? I'll bet your mom cries later.”
”She-” Jazz gulped air and looked more thoughtful. ”Sometimes, I guess. She closes the door. I hear her crying, but only when things were really bad at work or something.”
”Well, today, they're really bad at work and she's afraid for you, too. So give her a break. Let her take care of you, okay?”
Jazz nodded. Her body language was slowly uncoiling from the wire-tight posture it had been, and Katie breathed a cautious sigh of relief. The last thing the kid needed was to bottle all this up. It was traumatic, and Jazz was-like all Athena students-advanced for her age. A recipe for emotional disaster.
”You feel like telling me the story now? One last time?”
Jazz bent her head and sat up again, hands braced on either side on the cold concrete bench. Her voice was soft, and still a little unsteady, but Katie heard every word. ”We decided to go to the movies. It was-we had the day off.”
”Why didn't you ask for transportation? Call a cab?”
Jazz didn't look up. ”We wanted to walk. It was a nice day.”
Girls her age didn't want to walk, they wanted to get where they were going fast, and have fun even faster.
”Jazz, if you lie to me, you're putting Teal and Lena in danger. You know that, don't you?”
Jazz's head jerked up in outright astonishment. Katie raised an eyebrow and waited as Jazz found words. ”I didn't lie!”
”I'm afraid you did. And you lied to your mother, and to the police, and now you think you can't change your story. But you can, Jazz. n.o.body thinks you're at fault here.”
”But-”
Katie let a little hardness creep into her voice. ”You weren't going to the movies. You didn't take the school transportation service because you didn't want anybody to know where you were going, and you didn't take a cab because you didn't want any record. Right?”
Jazz looked as bewildered as if Katie had just pulled a rabbit out of her ear. ”How-?” She swallowed the question and flushed pale pink under her matte-tan skin. ”I didn't lie. We would have gone to the movies. We were planning to do it late afternoon.”
”So where were you going in the morning?”
”It's supposed to be a secret. Teal made me promise.”
”Teal made you promise.”
Jazz nodded slowly. ”There was someone from the school in trouble. She needed help. Teal and Lena promised to meet her. I wasn't really supposed to go along, but I followed them and caught up after I overheard. Besides, I wanted to go to the movies.”
Precocious didn't half cover it, Katie thought. She wondered if she'd been so difficult at Jazz's age, thought back and decided that it was entirely possible. ”Where were you going? And who were you meeting?”
”We were going to the mall. It's only a couple of blocks away. I don't know who we were meeting, it was a secret. Teal and Lena didn't want to talk about it.”