Free Blood Moon by Alexandra Sokoloff Page B

with annoyance, and a tension that went deeper than that.
    Epps looked at him stonily. “All due respect, you have no fucking clue what she’s going to do. No one does.”
    He was right. Not that Roarke had any say in the matter, ultimately. Since he was suddenly the center of the investigation, it was on Epps to dictate the terms. Epps briefed Reynolds and pulled two other agents from another team in to rotate shifts with them. Roarke felt relegated to the sidelines as Epps conferred with the backup. He finally went for coffee to avoid looking useless.
    When he came back to the conference room, Epps had the game plan. “So we start with you going home, in plain sight. No point in you staying in the building. She’s not going to come after you here.”
    Roarke barely refrained from answering back about her “coming after him.”
    “We don’t know she knows where I live,” he said, but that was just contrariness, and Epps didn’t even bother responding. No one in the room had any doubt that Cara Lindstrom could find out where he lived.
    Epps continued as if he hadn’t spoken. “We stake out the house today and tonight, see if we can just pick her up watching you. Let’s remember that she uses wigs, sunglasses, to change her appearance.”
    And costumes , Roarke thought. He knew now she had gone with Mark and Jason Sebastian to a Halloween festival dressed in a Catwoman costume. Under the circumstances, a perfect disguise.
    Epps indicated the case board, the sketch of Cara. “But she’s also distinctive, there’s a focus about her that stands out. She won’t be invisible. And she covers her neck, so always be on the lookout for a high collar, a turtleneck.”
    Yes, the turtleneck . Was she aware now of how that had given her away? Would she find some other way of covering her scar, now? Or was it a moot point? It was fall, going on winter. Thousands, tens of thousands of women in San Francisco would be wearing scarves.
    Epps had taken complete charge. “Singh, get word to the single room occupancies, and the sketch of her—”
    Roarke spoke up automatically. “She won’t use an SRO.”
    Everyone looked at him.
    “She used an SRO last time she was in the city,” he reminded them. “She won’t do it again.”
    “How would she even know we knew that?” Epps asked, exasperated.
    Roarke shook his head. “Doesn’t matter if she knows it or not. She won’t do the same thing again.”
    Epps’ face was tight. “Maybe. Contact them anyway,” he said to Singh.
     
    When he was finally allowed to leave, Roarke exited the building in what felt like a painfully ostentatious way, walking with his carryon suitcase on the sidewalk to the underground BART station, stopping in to a café to buy coffee, picking up a newspaper at a news stand. Jones was following him and Epps was already headed over to Roarke’s neighborhood to plant himself in a stakeout.
    Roarke couldn’t fault the plan, he knew it made sense. It still was a new and disturbing feeling that Cara was following him. He wondered if she knew that they’d be watching for her, if she’d anticipate that and take precautions not to be caught.
    Despite himself, he spent the short train ride edgy and scanning the car and platforms for her, as if setting a trap for her would automatically manifest her. He exited the train at Twenty-Fourth Street/Mission and rode the escalator up to the plaza, where he walked through clouds of marijuana smoke strong enough to bring on a contact high. Twenty-fourth Street was not quite the junkie central that Sixteenth and Mission was, but the BART station plaza could sometimes give Sixteenth a run for its money. Pimps and dealers scattered like roaches as they saw Roarke coming. They could spot a lawman from a block away.
    A block up from Mission the neighborhood abruptly changed, from taquerias and seedy bars to boutiques and specialty shops hawking overpriced artisanal food. Noe Valley had become so gentrified it had