I clear my throat after I trail into silence, and she simply looks at me again, taking my measure. Or maybe she’s using some sophisticated interrogation tactic on me. Honestly, if it’s the latter, it’s pretty effective, because for a second I consider telling her about the time I shoplifted a Werther’s Original from the bulk candy section at the grocery store. When I was eight.

“I don’t have any information for you,” I say, finally, submitting to her considerable powers. “He never told me—”

“I know that,” she says, and the way she says it tells me she knows Reid, trusts him. “I came because he asked me to.”

For the first time since Friday, my heart leaps with hope.

From the inside of her Olivia Benson jacket, Agent Tirmizi draws out an envelope, stuffed thick with paper. Even from here I can see Reid’s handwriting across the front:

A letter. Of course.

Even though I want to reach out and snatch it, to run up to my apartment and shut the door while I pore and pore over it, I wait until she holds it out to me, and I take it from her hands gently.

“Thank you,” I tell her.

She has that assessing look again. “You should thank me for more than this letter.”

I blink at her, confused. She really seems as though she’s waiting for something specific.

“Um . . . oh!” I say, struck with an idea that doesn’t seem all that good, but at least it is one. “Yes. Thank you for . . . your service?”

This feels awkward. I am obviously also against financial crimes, but you know. This seems kind of insistent, under the circumstances.

For the first time, she seems to take pity on me, or maybe that’s the face she makes when she’s trying not to laugh.

“Reid mentioned you to me earlier this spring,” she says.

“He did?”

She nods. “After you’d e-mailed him to meet. It was—that came at a critical time. Reid had met with us several times that week.”

“Oh.” I try to imagine what those meetings would have been like. Would they have been in a windowless room, one table, two chairs, Reid and an FBI agent facing each other beneath an industrial light fixture? Or would Reid have been ushered into a bland but comfortable conference room? Would they have poured him tea, spoken to him gently, encouragingly? I suppose I could ask Agent Tirmizi, but as with so many questions I have—I only want to ask them of Reid.

“I suggested he might want to take you up on your offer. To give himself some relief from all this.”