“Not anymore, it’s not. Someone switched out the evidence. They’ll run ballistics on your gun, and it’ll tie you to a crime scene. Get rid of it!” I was wincing, listening to myself. I didn’t want to think about how many laws I was breaking, telling a suspect about an active investigation. If anyone found out, I wasn’t just out of the FBI, I was going to jail.
“Why are you doing this?” asked Gennadiy.
“Because someone tried to kill me last night,” I said breathlessly, “and the one thing I’m sure of is, it wasn’t you.”
Silence for a moment. Then he started to say something, but he was interrupted by the rising wail of police sirens.
“Gennadiy?” I asked, panicked.
“I have to go.”
A door banging open. Raised voices. “Gennadiy?!”
But he was gone.
22
GENNADIY
They ledme out of the casino in handcuffs.Me.
They took me to the FBI office and shut me in an interrogation room. There were three of them: two agents called Hadderwell and Fitch, and Alison’s boss, Assistant Director Halifax. They demanded to know where I was between three and four a.m. the night before. I told them the truth, that I was driving around, doing business. I couldn’t prove it, but they couldn’t disprove it. And thanks to Alison, they had nothing that placed me at her apartment. I’d passed my gun to Valentin seconds before the FBI burst into my office, and by now it had been sawed up, melted down, and probably buried for good measure.
“This is bullshit!” yelled Halifax. He’d been grilling me for an hour, and he was red in the face, his tie askew where he’d pulled at it to loosen it. “We know it was you!”
I scowled at him. I was having to recite the alphabet backwards to keep from lunging across the table at him. Someone in the FBI was trying to frame me. The familiar hatred of cops bloomed in my chest, clouds of anger spreading and darkening. But now there was a new element I’d never felt before, a rawness within the anger that flashed hot as lightning.
Whoever was behind this, they’d tried to kill Alison. My eyes burned into Halifax.Was it you?I looked at Hadderwell and Fitch.Or you? Or you?
The door crashed open. Silhouetted in the doorway was six-foot-four of muscle wrapped in Armani, topped with the sort of tousled surfer curls that make women sigh. Conrad Bryce stared at Halifax and the two agents in mock-horror. “Are youquestioning my client without counsel present?!”
“Just a friendly conversation,” grumbled Halifax.
Conrad marched across the room and set his leather briefcase down on the table, a wall between the FBI and me. “Which is now over,” he told Halifax firmly.
Less than ten minutes later, I was walking out of the interrogation room a free man. This is why it’s worth having the best defense attorney in Chicago on permanent retainer. And it doesn’t hurt that we have a hold over Conrad that’s more powerful than money.
I wasn’t ready to leave, though. The cold ball of fear in my stomach wouldn’t let me. I’d spoken to her on the phone, so I knew she was okay. But I wasn’t going until I’dseenshe was okay.
Halifax and the two agents walked me down a hallway, into the lobby…and my heart lifted. Alison was walking in through the main doors with a takeout coffee. She must have had a friend—my money was on the blonde with glasses–tip her off when the interrogation ended so she could be in the lobby just as I passed through.
Alison gave me a cold glare as we approached, and I did the same, keeping up the pretense. Then, as we passed and I looked back over my shoulder, there was a brief second when the others couldn’t see.
Her expression changed in a heartbeat. Fear. Panic. And something that reached right down inside me and hit me where I lived: concern. She’d just survived an attempt on her life, and she was worried aboutme.
Park, I mouthed, and she nodded.
An hour later, Alison roared up on her bike and pulled in next to my car, then hurried across the grass to me. We were in the same spot where I’d given her the cesium tip, but today a cold wind was blowing across the lake, cutting straight through my suit, and winding cold fingers around my bones.
Alison pulled off her helmet. “We’d better make this fast. My boss thinks I’m at the sandwich store. What the fuck is going on?”
I stepped closer and, immediately, I could feel myself reacting to her. The base instincts, first, my cock hardening in my pants at the sight of her legs in that tight leather. Then the more complicated feelings: the ache in my chest when I saw the lock of hair that had escaped her tight bun and fallen across her cheek, the temptation to hook it with one big, clumsy finger and brush it back behind her ear… God, the pull towards her was off the charts, now.
She saw me staring and frowned. “What?” She crossed her arms, tough as ever. But I could hear the tiny tremble in her voice that gave away how scared she was. And that brought out the most dangerous feeling of all, the one that made me want to pull her to my chest and shield her from the entire fucking world. When I thought of someone breaking into her apartment, pointing a gun at her…I am going to find this man.I am going to find him and personally remove him from this world–
I blew out my breath through my nostrils. A few months ago, I’d hated this woman. Now, the idea of someone hurting her made me crazy.
I looked away and forced my voice to be level. “One of my rivals must be trying to get rid of me. They know you’re investigating me, so if you’re murdered, I’m the prime suspect. They send an assassin to your apartment, then have someone in the FBI fake the evidence so it points to my gun. If you hadn’t told me to get rid of it, I’d be in jail for the next decade.”
