Free Quiver by Holly Luhning Page A

is much talk about him. I will keep a watch for you.”
    I nod and almost feel for some reason that I should thank her, though I’m unsure why.
    “Dani, I wonder if you could do me a favour. For the book.”
    She’s going to ask me back on the project. We started looking for the diaries together, and she wants to ask me back, to work together.
    “I speak to you as a colleague,” she says. “We have common interests.”
    “Yes. I have always valued that connection.” After a month of reports and papers at Stowmoor I’m very ready for her to ask me back in. I want to be involved in something glossy, something more glamorous, more public, than shuffling through the gates of Stowmoor every day.
    She smiles, sets down her cutlery, leans back and pushes a few stray tendrils of blonde behind her ears. “I would like a visitor pass. To interview Foster.”
    “You’re joking.”
    “Dani, I am not. You can get me a pass.”
    “Maria,” I say loudly. The man at the next table swivels his head in our direction. “Maria,” I say again, almost in a whisper, “you can’t magically get a pass to someplace like Stowmoor.”
    “Dani, I do not mean to offend. I know, it is a difficult thing.” She touches my knee under the table. “That is why I ask for your help.”
    “Why do you want to see him?” I think about pushing her hand off my knee. I don’t move.
    “It is for an interview, for the book. He can speak to me for research if he agrees, yes?”
    “It’s more complicated than that.” Much more complicated. Aside from the legalities of such an interview, I cringe to think of the lecture I would get if I even brought up the idea with Sloane.
    “Yes, his visitor list, I imagine it would be restricted. But you could arrange something, for me?”
    I move my leg away from her hand. “I can’t help you get a pass. Even if you somehow got one, I’m not sure you could publish any part of a conversation.”
    “Dani, not everything has to be official. Besides, I would like to meet him for my personal interest. Is that so odd?”
    “So this is all about satisfying curiosity?” I try to sound authoritative, but I come off as sarcastic.
    “Isn’t everything?” She shrugs her shoulders, as if we’d been talking about trying a new nail colour.
    She’s potentially found the diaries and now she wants me to risk my job to satisfy her whim of getting an interview with
    Foster. No invitation to work with her, to be involved on the project we’d originally thought of together. But she insists: We’re colleagues. I don’t think so.
    I stand, bump the lopsided table, jostle my glass. Water slops onto the plywood, soaks the Honey, Torture flyer Maria had pushed towards me earlier. “Sorry, Maria, I have to go.” I give a few curt excuses and stomp up the rickety steps to the congested street.
    “Dani,” she calls after me, “I’ll be in touch.”
    Her suggestion that I help get her a visitor’s pass is ridiculous. Though I can’t say part of me wouldn’t love to see those two in a room together. She thinks she can just flit into a forensic hospital, charm Foster, and he’ll be her docile pet, tell her everything, and she can write it down in a perfect little story.
    She’s delusional. I’ve never assessed Maria, clinically. But it’s possible she could be diagnosed with some disordered tendencies, histrionic, narcissistic. She needs to be constantly at the centre of attention, to create drama. Everything is a game to her, entertainment, even the idea of hearing about a murder right from the killer. But she would be in over her head with Foster. I would love to see her flounder.

Chapter Eight
    He pulled the silver Audi sedan into the dockside parking lot. “They’re unloading already,” he said, and pointed to a large freighter at the end of the wharf. Workers ferreted among the orange and black cargo containers. Some held clipboards and Styrofoam cups of coffee. A forklift driver scooped three stacked