Finally, drunk and more or less content, Morton Nagle drifted off to sleep.

Chapter 36

They sat around the TV, leaning forward, watching the news like three reunited sisters.

Which in a way they were, thought Samantha McCoy.

“Can you believe that?” Rebecca asked in a low, angry voice.

Linda, who with Sam was cleaning up the remnants of a room-service dinner, shook her head in dismay.

James Reynolds, the prosecutor, had been the target of Daniel Pell.

Sam was very disturbed by the assault. She remembered Reynolds well. A stern but reasonable man, he’d negotiated what her lawyer had said were fair plea bargains. Sam, in fact, had thought he was quite lenient. There was no evidence that they’d had any involvement in the Croyton deaths—Sam, like the others, was stunned and horrified at the news. Still, the Family’s record of petty crimes was extensive and if he’d wanted to, James Reynolds could have gone to trial and probably gotten much longer sentences from a jury.

But he was sympathetic to what they’d been through; he realized they’d fallen under the spell of Daniel Pell. He called it the Stockholm syndrome, which Sam had looked up. It was an emotional connection that victims develop with their hostage takers or kidnappers. Sam was happy to accept Reynolds’s leniency, but she wasn’t going to let herself off the hook by blaming her actions on some psychological excuse. Every single day she felt bad about the thefts and letting Pell run her life. She hadn’t been kidnapped; she’d lived with the Family voluntarily.

A picture came on the TV: an artist’s rendering of Pell with darker skin, moustache and black hair, glasses and a vague Latino look. His disguise.

“That’s way bizarre,” Rebecca offered.

The knock on the door startled them. Kathryn Dance’s voice announced her arrival. Linda rose to let her in.

Samantha liked her—a cop with a great smile, who wore an iPod like her gun and had shoes with bold daisies embossed on the straps. She’d like a pair of shoes like that. Sam rarely bought fun or frivolous things for herself. Sometimes she’d window-shop and think, Neat, I’d like one of those. But then her conscience tweaked, and she decided, No, I don’t deserve it.

Winston Kellogg too was smiling, but his was different from Dance’s. It seemed like his badge, something to be flashed, saying: I’m really not what you think. I’m a federal agent, but I’m human too. He was appealing. Kellogg wasn’t really handsome, certainly not in a classic way. He had a bit of double chin, was a little round in the middle. But his manner and voice and eyes made him sexy.

Glancing at the TV screen, Dance asked, “You heard?”

Linda said, “I’m so happy he’s all right. His family was there too?”

“They’re all fine.”

“On the news, they mentioned a deputy was hurt?” Rebecca asked.