“Hell if I know.” Bishop sounded as tired as Yang felt. “My source has turned in for the night. I don’t know what’s happening in your neck of the woods or what, if anything, the agents on the case have to report.”
“Surely after Senator Chastain’s death they will be suspicious and want to move Eliza to a safe house. I can make my play when she is in transport.”
“Maybe,” Bishop allowed. “Or maybe they’ll wait to move her until they’re assured the Chastains didn’t go naturally. Howdidyou kill the senator, by the way?” Bishop asked.
Yang smiled. “We all have our secrets and our sources. You and I both know we live longer by not revealing them.”
Bishop snorted. “Fair enough.” Then he returned them to their previous subject. “My bet is the feds leave Eliza at BKI for as long as possible. Theyhatehaving to expend resources to house and guard witnesses. And besides, if they’ve been to that damned compound, they’ll figure she’s plenty safe there.”
Yang had seen the Black Knights Incorporated property. The security was topnotch. A twenty-four-hour guard. Ten-foot-high brick walls topped by razor wire. More motion-sensor cameras than he could count. Plus…the men who worked there were armed to the teeth and trained within an inch of their lives in various and sundry ways to kill their enemies.
“Everything has a weakness,” Yang assured Bishop. “Even that compound. If you ask me to find it, I will.”
“I’ll know more tomorrow once my source checks in,” Bishop said with a weary sigh. Yang could hear the man turning on the shower. The spray through the phone sounded like rain on a tin roof. “In the meantime, I’ll start working on phase two. Given the events of the night, we need to add a few more breadcrumbs to the trails that lead to Chuck Reynolds.”
Bishop had determined Chuck Reynolds, the current senate minority leader, would be the obvious fall guy for the night’s nefarious activities. For one thing, Reynold’s was deep in the pockets of corporate lobbyists. For another thing, it’d been recently rumored he’d flown to a private island to rape an underage boy. But most importantly fortheircause, John McClean had gotten his hands on the pièce de resistance, hard proof that Reynolds had made millions through insider trading.
Yes… if Bishop was good at anything, it was picking patsies.
Chuck Reynolds’s days as a free man had been numbered the minute Bishop caught wind that John McClean might suspect Bishop for being the mole inside the federal government.
That was therealreason McClean had called together the night’s guests. Not to share the proof he had on Reynolds, but to share his suspicions about Bishop.
Or at least that’s what Bishop had told Yang. But it occurred to him he had never asked Bishophowhe had come to know about McClean’s suspicions.
Curiosity had him asking now, “Howdidyou find out about tonight’s gathering? Senator McClean strikes me as the kind of man who…plays his cards close to his vest, as you Americans like to say.”
Yang heard his own words parroted back to him. “We all have our secrets and our sources, Yang. You and I both know we live longer by not revealing them.”
With that, the line went dead.
Yang stared into the bathroom. He should probably shower as well. But sleep beckoned.
Murder was tiring work.
18
Black Knights Inc.
There are two kinds of pain in the world. The kind that uses you, and the kind thatyouuse.
It was her father’s favorite saying. Eliza had never really taken it to heart until she’d woken up at noon to a throbbing head, an aching eye, and the memory of the carnage from the night before.
And then there’s what happened with Fisher.
She wasn’t sure if he was the cherry on top of a shitastic sundae or the only bright spot in an otherwise bleak and brutal night.
Maybe a little of both, she decided.
Because while he’d given her what she asked for, a taste of what could be, a distraction from all her grief and horror, he’d also hammered in the last nail on the coffin lid to her dreams.
Yes, despite telling herself he’d never love her the way she loved him, there’d been a part of her that had held out hope. That had thought…maybe, someday.
More fool me, she chastised herself now as she placed the sourdough in her favorite Dutch oven and popped on the lid.
Taking her dad’s words to heart, all afternoon she’d used her pain to cross things off her to-do list. She’d called her father to bring him up-to-date on the visit from the feds while assuring himagainthat she was safer at Black Knights Inc. than anywhere else. She’d phoned Agent O’Toole to ask if she needed to come down to FBI headquarters to give an official statement, but the nice lady agent had allowed her to simply email her statement instead.
“Best if you stay inside those ten-foot walls until we determine if we need to move you,”O’Toole had said. And when Eliza had asked if there was any new information on the Chastains’ deaths, she’d heard the hesitation in O’Toole’s voice.“I usually don’t share information about cases with witnesses, but given who your dad is, I’m sure you’ll find out sooner rather than later. Especially since he was the one to actually give us this lead.”
