But as I approach, I notice someone standing beside it, as though she’s guarding it from any cop who might try it with a ticket. She frowns down at her watch, clearly impatient, and maybe that wouldn’t be so unusual except that when she looks up, she catches sight of me and I get the eerie certainty that I’m the person she’s been impatient for. She straightens, her eyes on me like I’m a flight risk.

And maybe I am. I’m not ashamed to say I really and truly think about turning and walking in the exact opposite direction. Is interest in my small part in this story high enough that a reporter could’ve actually tracked down where I live?

But once again, something makes me stay.

I walk toward her, steeling myself for confrontation.

“This is a no parking zone,” I say bluntly. Reid would be proud of that, I think.

The woman raises a dark eyebrow. “You’re Margaret Mackworth?”

I raise an eyebrow back. “You’re . . . ?”

The right side of her mouth hitches. “Your roommate told me you’d be coming back. I’m Special Agent Shohreh Tirmizi. I work for the FBI.”

She doesn’t pause to allow me to process that information. She simply pulls a leather fold from her pocket and shows me an honest-to-God badge. A badge! Now that I’ve seen that, I decide she has many other law enforcement-type qualities, at least such qualities that exist in my imagination. She has a suit on like Olivia Benson from SVU! Also she is tall.

“Yes,” I say. “I’m Meg. Is he—”

But she doesn’t wait for me to ask my question. “My partner and I have been working with Reid Sutherland for the last eight and a half months.”

I blink at her. “I thought it was six.”

“Don’t believe everything you read in the papers.”

Somehow, from her tone, I get the sense she’s not just talking about the timeline information.

“Is he okay?” I say before she can cut me off again.

“He’s fine. He’s had a lot of statements to give after the arrest. And given some of the accusations circulating about him in the press—” She breaks off and gives me a meaningful look, as if she knows all about the way I clicked through the gossipy stories containing those accusations: Reid and his revenge mission; Reid orchestrating some kind of numbers-game setup of Alistair Coster.

“Well,” she finishes, “we’re trying to limit anyone’s access to him for a few days.”

I furrow my brow. “But I’m not—” I don’t know how to finish that sentence. I’m not anyone? I’m not trying to access him, to ask him whether some parts of those stories are true?