Free Ashes to Ashes by Tami Hoag Page B

most would split between the mayor and Ted Sabin, liking their odds better with elected officials than with a cop. Any minute now the concourse could be swarming with them.
    If they followed Sabin into the concourse and caught sight of her, if someone called her name or pointed her out within earshot of the ravenous pack, she was bound to get cornered about the government center gunman. Eventually someone might make the mental leap and connect her to rumors of a witness in the latest homicide, and then the last few hours would truly deserve listing in the annals of all-time shitty days. Somewhere on the lower third of the list, she figured, leaving plenty of room above for the string of rotten days to come.
    But luck was with her for once today. Only three people tried to intercept her on their way to the twenty-second floor. All making clever comments on Kate's morning heroics. She brushed them off with a wry look and a smart remark, and never broke stride.
    “What's that about?” Angie asked as they got off the elevator, her curiosity overcoming her show of indifference.
    “Nothing.”
    “He called you the Terminator. What'd you do? Kill somebody?” The question came with a look that mixed disbelief with wariness with a small, grudging flicker of admiration.
    “Nothing that dramatic. Not that I haven't been tempted today.” Kate keyed the access code into the security panel beside the door to the legal services department. She unlocked the door to her own office and motioned Angie inside.
    “You know, you don't
have
to take me anywhere,” the girl said, flopping into the spare chair. “I can take care of myself. It's a free country and I'm not a criminal . . . or a kid,” she added belatedly.
    “Let's not even touch on that subject for the moment,” Kate suggested, glancing through her unopened mail. “You know what the situation is here, Angie. You need a safe place to stay.”
    “I can stay with my friend Michele—”
    “I thought her name was Molly.”
    Angie pressed her mouth into a line and narrowed her eyes.
    “Don't even try to bullshit me,” Kate advised—for all the good it would do. “There is no friend, and you don't have a place to crash in the Phillips neighborhood. That was a nice touch, though, picking a rotten neighborhood. Who would claim they lived there if they didn't?”
    “Are you calling me a liar?”
    “I think you've got your own agenda,” Kate said calmly, her attention on a memo that read:
Talked w/Sabin. Wit to Phoenix House
—
RM
. Permission. Odd Rob hadn't mentioned this in the mayor's office. The note was in a receptionist's hand. No time notation. The decision had probably come just before the press conference. All that subterfuge on her part for nothing. Oh, well.
    “An agenda that probably centers on staying out of jail or a juvenile facility,” she went on.
    “I'm not a—”
    “Save it.”
    She hit the message button on her phone and listened to the voices of the impatient and the forlorn who had tried to reach her during the afternoon. Reporters hot on the trail of the government center shootout heroine. She hit fast forward through each of them. Mixed in with the news hounds was the usual assortment. David Willis, her current pain-in-the-butt client. A coordinator of a victims' rights group. The husband of a woman who had allegedly been assaulted, though Kate had the gut feeling it was a scam, that the couple was looking to score reparation money. The husband had a string of petty drug arrests on his record.
    “Kate.” The gruff male voice coming from the machine made her flinch. “It's Quinn—um—John. I, ah, I'm staying at the Radisson.”
    As if he expected her to call. Just like that.
    “Who's that?” Angie asked. “Boyfriend?”
    “No, um, no,” Kate said, scrambling to pull her composure together. “Let's get out of here. I'm starving.”
    She drew in a long breath and released it as she pushed to her feet, feeling caught off guard, something