“It all makes sense from their perspective. We have to figure out where they, whoever they are, are coming from.” Tessa kept her gaze to the window.
Gil exited the garage and drove back to the front of the hotel. Tessa opened her door, and Gil stopped her from climbing out by grabbing her arm. “Stay in contact. I may not be able to respond for a while, but I want updates.”
“You got it.”
“And Tessa?”
“Yeah?”
“Thank you for protecting Ivy today.”
Tessa flashed her full-wattage smile. “Anytime, Gil.”
TWENTY MINUTES LATER,he stood against the wall of the interrogation room while Morris scooted his chair close to their shooter. “Billy, you and I have already chatted.” Morris had a gruff voice, and it didn’t have a soft setting, but he wasn’t barking at this guy. It was a good call, because with the way Billy Rice wastwitching and scratching, he had to be desperate for a fix, and yelling at him wouldn’t be the key to unlocking his lips.
“Yeah. We chatted when you jumped on me and messed up my game.”
“Your game?”
“I already told you. It wasn’t real. The gun. The bullets. Fake. I was supposed to go in, shoot into the air, get the girl, and go out the back. Then I’d get my blow and my cash. And the girl would get, well, whatever it was she was supposed to get out of that.”
What was this guy implying? Gil pressed his palms into the wall, his heels into the floor.
Morris cocked his head to one side. “I’m not following you.”
“It’s a game. They do this stuff all the time.”
“What stuff?”
“Role-play.” Billy looked at Gil, then back to Morris. “These rich people get a kick out of it. They stage a kidnapping, then the boyfriend gets to play the hero and rescue her. They all live happily ever after. It’s not my thing, but it’s not the weirdest stuff I’ve ever heard of.”
“In this role-play game, does the girl know she’s going to be kidnapped?”
“Yep. They said all I had to say when I grabbed her was, ‘You want to be sure no one gets killed, you come willingly.’ That was the code. He made me memorize it. Said when she heard that, she’d realize it was part of the game.”
“What were you supposed to do if she didn’t come willingly?”
“They told me she would pretend to put up a fight because that’s what you do when you get kidnapped, but she wouldn’t fight too hard.”
Billy’s eyes narrowed as something occurred to him, penetrating the fog of his addiction, and he whispered, “You don’t think I wouldhave hurt her, do you? I wouldn’t have hurt her. She’s pretty. Nice clothes. Looks like the type who would take care of kittens and stuff. I like my blow, but not enough to hurt a girl. I’m not that far gone.”
That was debatable.
“So you were supposed to grab her, take her out back, put her in a car, get your payoff, and that was the end of it?”
“Yeah.”
Morris frowned. “What about all the other people?”
“What do you mean?”
“The other people. The fifty people you scared half to death and who spent some time with their faces pressed into the filthy floor of the hotel while you played this game. A game, by the way,theydidn’t know you were playing.”
“Didn’t think about that.”
“While you weren’t thinking this through, did it not occur to you that the police would arrest you?”
Billy brightened like a kid whose favorite teacher asked a question he knew the answer to. “I asked about that, but they said once I told you it was part of the game and showed you how the gun was fake, that it would be cool.”
