Cuff Lynx by Fiona Quinn Page B

somewhere with Vine. I wasn’t jealous. Or upset. I wasn’t . But he didn’t tell me he was doing fieldwork when he left early this morning. For a moment, I imagined our future lives together. “Hi, honey. How was your day?” “Classified. And yours?” “Also classified. Shall we grab takeout for dinner?”
    “You okay, Lynx? You seem grim,” Randy said.
    “Nope, just mulling.” My phone vibrated, and I glanced down at the text.
    Graham says if you take his place Saturday, he’ll spring for a spa day that morning. xx C.
    I typed back. Ha! Glad to give him the night off. So you two were already going?
    Celia responded: I was going; he was being dragged, LOL. It’ll be fun to hang out together xx C
    P.S. Dress at my house after spa. Have new gowns for you to choose, making appointments now.
    Celia was going to be my date to the ball. Was that safe for her? Well, my assignment was to go, enjoy, and observe. That seemed harmless enough. And since Celia knew everyone, it might just make things easier. Good.
    I unlocked my file cabinet and pulled out the envelopes with my different aliases. Depending on the circumstances, I needed to fill my wallet with supporting ID, credit cards, insurance cards, and family pictures. I chose “Leslie Snyder.” That way if Celia called me Lexi it would sound the same-ish.
    Celia was well practiced with keeping her tongue from wagging. Her husband’s work made her ultra-aware that lives and welfare often depended on his diplomatic secrets. It was nice having at least one person outside of Iniquus who knew what my job entailed. Everyone else thought I did data entry. I caught Jack with his eyes hard on me. I gave him a little smile as I put the rest of the envelopes away, and stuck my alias in my back pocket.
    Sitting down, I leafed through the data that ATF had collected. I focused intermittently at the videos that Axel showed on the main screen while the men took notes and discussed timetables and warrants. They posted their notes on the board, and started to discuss weak spots, what could go wrong, and what their responses could be.
    Axel’s phone vibrated, and he confirmed the warrants were in house; they could roll. Everyone stood to gather their things.
    “Stop. Just stop.” I scratched my fingers through my hair. “This is the wrong guy.”
    There was stunned silence as my teammates froze, followed by an explosion of disbelief.
    “It’s not him. I promise you,” I said.
    “How could you know that, Lynx?” Jack asked.
    I shifted through the photos and held one up. “Because the palm print on the wall is shoulder-height, left handed.”
    “I’m not following you, Lynx,” Axel said, moving over to take the image from my hand and putting it in the DLP projector for everyone to see. Dusting powder showed a handprint on the wall directly in front of where the man had stood. Axel had said the print had been wiped, so while we knew a hand had been there, the identifiers weren’t conclusive.
    “The guy rested his left hand on the wall for stability, which means he used his right hand for the retrieval.” I passed Axel another photo that he fed into the projector. “Bruising on the witness was to the left eye made by a right-handed hook punch. And look at this note.” I handed another photo to Axel. “The letters slant right, not left. The perp is right-handed. Goffman is left-handed.”
    “Those clues could add up to the guy being right-handed, but not necessarily, especially the slant of his letters.”
    “True, Axel. But look.” I moved to the front of the room and pointed to the screen. “He uses a sarcasm stroke. A sarcasm stroke abruptly lifts the pen, cutting a stroke short when crossing a T. In right-handed people, it points right. On a left-handed person, it points left. These point right. And, if that isn’t enough, then look how the side of his paper is smudged on the right.” I gestured up and down the side of the image. “That’s where his hand