Instinct

41. Remember the Choices You Made

When the FBI agent walked back into the interrogation room Stephanie was being held in, she had a distinct flash of déjà vu dating back to the day Daniel Seymour had given her up in Quinn. These were, after all, similar circumstances. She briefly wondered why she always had to be the one left in chains, at the end of the day.

Since she'd been apprehended at the mall and taken to this police station, she'd been handcuffed to the table and left alone while witnesses made statements and arrests were finally made at the mall. It would be lying to say she was okay with it, but she supposed it wouldn't kill her. So, for an indeterminate amount of time, she'd stared at the silver cuffs pressed tightly around her wrists and bit the inside of her cheek until it was raw and bleeding.

"Am I being release yet?" Stephanie asked with a hoarse voice.

The agent, a man with greying hair and a stern face, sat down across from her, looking to like he had all the time in the world. He didn't respond immediately. Rather, he sat back with his hands in his lap and pursed his lips. Stephanie didn't like the way his wizened eyes appraised her. Neither did she enjoy being kept in suspense. She just wanted to go home. Finally, he sighed and sat forward, resting his clasped hands on the table.

"That depends," he said.

He had a smoker's voice: rough. Stephanie didn't even have to try that hard to smell the tobacco on his suit.

"Depends on what?" she prompted, because she didn't know what else to do.

He was putting her on edge. She guessed that was the point. The fact that they couldn't technically do anything to her because of her fame didn't reassure her as much as she had hoped it would. Feeling invincible was one thing, believing in it was another – a dangerous faith.

"Look," he said. "All evidence says you're innocent in this, and your story checks out."

"So you got the Facility wolves?" she broke in. "You got them all? The ones that did this?"

"We had them in custody, yes," he said, as if it was only a minor detail.

Stephanie locked onto the flippant tone and the evasive quality of his answer. She straightened up, suddenly fearful.

"What do you mean, you 'had them'?"

"That," he replied. "Is none of your concern right now, Miss Armstrong."

"The hell it isn't – they tried to kill me! They killed other innocent people. You're supposed to catch people like that and make sure they can't do it again."

He sighed, "My point exactly, Miss Armstrong. It's my job to catch people who do things they shouldn't. I never signed up to risk my life trying to apprehend animals."

Stephanie swallowed. Her heart was racing. Not this again.

"They don't matter anyway," he said. "They are being dealt with, Miss Armstrong, just not by us. The general public won't be exposed to the likes of them again for a long, long time."

It wasn't much of a reassurance. More questions sprung to mind at his cryptic explanation. Stephanie couldn't utter a word of any of them.

"My concern, right now, is what we're going to do with you and your family."

"What do you mean?" she asked.

There was a sharpness to her voice that she hadn't intended to be there, and couldn't quite hide. Her hackles would have risen if she had any in this form.

"It's a dangerous world out here, increasingly so. We need to be able to ensure your protection."

Stephanie felt like there had to be another side to his seemingly innocent words.