The Bodies Left Behind

Kathryn. We’ll do everything we can.”
    If he gets away  . . .
    “But I want to proceed as if we’re going to win.” He said this confidently, which reassured Dance somewhat.They got started, Seybold asking dozens of questions about the crime—what Dance and O’Neil had witnessed and the evidence in the case.
    Seybold was a seasoned prosecutor and knew what he was doing. After an hour of interviewing them both, the wiry man sat back and said he had enough from them for the time being. He was expecting another witness momentarily—a state trooper—who had also agreed to testify.
    They thanked the prosecutor, who agreed to call them the instant the judge ruled in the immunity hearing.
    As Dance and O’Neil walked back to the lobby, he slowed, a frown on his face.
    “What?” she asked.
    “Let’s play hooky.”
    “What do you mean?”
    He nodded at the beautiful garden restaurant, overlooking a canyon with the sea beyond. “It’s early. When was the last time anybody in a white uniform brought you eggs Benedict?”
    Dance considered. “What year is it again?”
    He smiled. “Come on. We won’t be that late.”
    A glance at her watch. “I don’t know.” Kathryn Dance hadn’t played hooky in school, much less as a senior agent with the CBI.
    Then she said to herself: Why’re you hesitating? You love Michael’s company, you get to spend hardly any downtime with him.
    “You bet.” Feeling like a teenager again, though now in a good way.
    They were seated beside each other at a banquette near the edge of the deck, overlooking the hills. The early sun was out and it was a clear, crisp June morning.
    The waiter—not fully uniformed, but in a suitably starched white shirt—brought them menus and poured coffee. Dance’s eyes strayed to the page on which the restaurant bragged of their famous mimosas. No way, she thought, and glanced up to see O’Neil looking at exactly the same item.
    They laughed.
    “When we get down to L.A. for the grand jury, or the trial,” he said, “champagne then.”
    “Fair enough.”
    It was then that O’Neil’s phone trilled. He glanced at caller ID. Dance was immediately aware of his body language changing—shoulders slightly higher, arms closer to his body, eyes focused just past the screen.
    She knew whom the call was from, even before he said a cheerful, “Hi, dear.”
    Dance deduced from his conversation with his wife, Anne, a professional photographer, that a business trip had come up unexpectedly soon and she was checking with her husband about his schedule.
    Finally O’Neil disconnected and they sat in silence for a moment while the atmosphere righted itself and they consulted their menus.
    “Yep,” he announced, “eggs Benedict.”
    She was going to have the same and glanced up for the waiter. But then her phone vibrated. She glanced at the text message, frowned, then read it again, awarethat her own body orientation was changing fast. Heart rate revving, shoulders lifted, foot tapping on the floor.
    Dance sighed, and her gesture to the waiter changed from a polite beckon to one of mimicking signing the check.

© JERRY BAUER
    JEFFERY DEAVER is the New York Times bestselling author of twenty-five suspense novels, and the originator of the acclaimed detective hero Lincoln Rhyme, featured in the bestsellers The Broken Window, The Cold Moon, The Twelfth Card, The Vanished Man, The Stone Monkey, The Empty Chair, The Coffin Dancer, and The Bone Collector. As William Jefferies, he is the author of Shallow Graves, Bloody River Blues, and Hell’s Kitchen. Two of his recent novels feature investigative agent Kathryn Dance: The Sleeping Doll and Roadside Crosses. His short fiction is anthologized in two collections from Pocket Books: Twisted and More Twisted.
    He’s been nominated for six Edgar Awards from the Mystery Writers of America, an Anthony Award, and a Gumshoe Award, and was recently short-listed for the ITV3 Crime Thriller Award for Best International Author. He is a three-time recipient of the Ellery Queen Readers Award for Best Short Story of the Year, and a winner of the British Thumping Good Read Award. He has also won a Steel Dagger for best thriller of the year for Garden of Beasts and a Short Story Dagger from the British Crime Writers’ Association. His thriller The Cold Moon won a Grand Prix from the Japanese Adventure Fiction Association and was named Book of the Year by the Mystery Writers Association of Japan. His novel The Bone