For three hours, I’m in an interrogation room. They try to wear me down while I’m cold and uncomfortable. My bladder is ready to burst, and I want to scream. After a time I’m silent, except for saying two things. I want a bathroom and a lawyer.
They don’t let me call anyone. Milt keeps telling me he’s on my side and can’t believe what happened. He says he got me out of Trick’s apartment as soon as he realized where I was, and that he just needs me to tell the truth about what Trick did to me. I stop trying to ask what took Milt so long to come because he always cuts me off and responds with his own questions.
When I’m allowed to go to the bathroom, I’m relieved. But that’s replaced by cold fury as various agents watch me pass with what seems to be open hostility. All right then. Screw them.
As I’m returned to the interrogation room, a man in an expensive, shiny gray suit stands near the door and nods at me.Lawyer.Thank God.
I didn’t call him, so I know who must have sent him. Logically, it’s not in my best interest to use a C Crue lawyer, but I’m so tired and uncomfortable that I don’t want to wait to get my own lawyer. And I couldn’t really afford one anyway.
The man’s name is Rudy Talbot, and he’s got a pointed goatee and a giant onyx and diamond ring on his right ring finger. He seems easygoing for about five minutes. Then the interrogation begins, and a shark emerges. Any hesitation from the agents is blood in the water for him. He weaves around the questions in tightening circles and slowly tears into them over and over.
I have very little to say, which suits Mr. Talbot just fine. I tell him I left the poker game voluntarily with Mr. Patrick, that we’re old friends, and that we got reacquainted. Clutching my hands in my lap, my gaze fixes on Talbot and never wavers. “That’s all I have to say.”
“Good,” he says with a nod. As a C Crue lawyer, he’s probably never defended anyone as innocent as I am before. It takes him about fifteen minutes to get them to let me go.
It’s obvious that the search of the apartment has been fruitless, except to show Trick likes wild sex, because the agents look frustrated and furious as I pass them, like I’ve betrayed them rather than the other way around.
I have no idea what I’m going to do. My feet are still bare, and I don’t have a jacket or my phone. The FBI finally offers me shoe covers, but I ignore them. What Milt should do is offer to call my family for me, but he doesn’t bother. His main focus is Talbot and has been since the lawyer arrived.
It’s Rudy Talbot who reassures me that everything will be okay. He escorts me downstairs himself and delivers me, quite literally, to the door of a Range Rover that the massive Sasha Stroviak is leaning against.
Stroviak opens the door, and Rachel Palermo, who I recognize from her old Instagram, sits inside. She’s tiny, barely clearing five feet, and small-boned, with an exquisitely pretty face and black hair that gives way to lavender on the ends. “Hi, Laurelyn. I’m Rachel.”
“Here’s Flynn too,” Stroviak says, looking past me.
Turning, I spot another suited man. I recognize a lawyer when I see one and know he must have been with Trick. I wait because I want to hear what he says. Connor McCann gets out of another truck that’s parked across the street. He strides over, unhurried, looking like an MMA fighter with a score to settle.
“What’s the word?” McCann says to the lawyers.
“Is this Laurelyn?” Flynn asks in a hopeful tone.
I nod.
McCann shrugs off his coat and thrusts it at me. “Put this on. Where are her shoes?”
“They offered her shoe covers for her feet,” Talbot says. “She refused them.”
McCann smiles. “They don’t charge for those, baby. You could’ve covered your toes up.” The warmth and gentle teasing almost make me like him, except I can’t trust him. I know what he is.
“Where’s Trick?” I ask softly as McCann wraps the warm coat around my shoulders.
“Trick,” Flynn says, shaking his head. “That kid is a piece of work. I think if he doesn’t stop soon, they’ll either order a psychiatric evaluation or shoot him.”
McCann’s brows rise. “What’s he up to?”
“He is running circles around them. In twenty years, I’ve never seen anything like it. He’s quoted the Bible, Tupac, and Cormac McCarthy. He told them the plots of a couple thrillers. The FBI took notes, not realizing he was summarizing works of fiction. There was some singing. Rolling Stones songs mostly. And some bad poetry that he may or may not have made up on the fly. It’s hard to keep up.”
“What’s wrong with him?” McCann says, frowning. His gaze slides to me and then back to the lawyer.
“He’s messing with them. He hooks them when they ask a question. He’ll answer, ‘Now that’s interesting. You know the truth is…’ and off he goes. In the beginning they kept trying to corral him back around to a point, kept trying to redirect him to answer the original question. They thought he was stoned and that I wasn’t going to be able to control him. They were excited actually. But now they’re exhausted. At one point when they went to get him coffee at his request, I said, ‘What did you take last night? LSD? Magic mushrooms?’ And he looks at me, clear-eyed, then drops his head and whispers, ‘Don’t be an asshole, Flynn. I’m stalling. I’m not leaving this building until I know Laurelyn Reilly’s all right and can leave too.’”
I stare at the red-haired lawyer, my heart twisting. I don’t know whether to hate Trick or hug him. “That’s what he said?”
The lawyer nods, his face a map of faint freckles and grim sincerity.
“I’m out. Go get him,” I say. When no one moves, I turn to McCann. “Make him go.”
McCann looks between the lawyers. “Yeah, if you can get him out, do it.”
