“Sounded like it came from the basketball court.” I set down the soda and peeked out from under the stall. We’d been talking as if we were alone. Talking about things no one should overhear. I rose to my feet and unlocked the door. “I’ll go see who it was. You wait here.”
Vero held up her wrists. “Like I have any choice?”
I crept past the showers toward the door to the basketball court, pausing to listen before cracking it open. The court was still dark. Diffuse light filtered through the windowpanes in the doors to the hallway.
Cam’s back was hunched, his body restless as he paced the center line. The soft crack of his knuckles ticked through the room like the second hand of a clock.
“Finlay!” Vero hissed from the bathroom. “Finlay, what’s going on?”
Afraid Cam might hear her, I slipped through the door into the gym and let it close behind me, ducking under the metal bleachers and peering through the slats. Cam whipped around as the hallway doors were thrown wide.
Joey stormed onto the court. “What the hell are you doing here? I thought I told you not to come back!”
Cam raised his hands. “I’m sorry, Joe! I swear, I didn’t have any choice!”
The rear door of the gym flew open. Joey went rigid as two armed men dressed in black strode in.
CHAPTER 30
Joey surrendered his hands as Feliks’s men approached him. One of them frisked him, taking his gun from its holster. The other called out an all clear. I sucked in a breath as Feliks entered the room. His long strides were imperious, the scruff on his jaw and the length of his hair the only hints that he’d been behind bars less than a day ago.
“You’ve got a lot of nerve coming here,” Joey told him.
“Perhaps,” Feliks admitted, adjusting the cuffs of his suit, “but I have a rather urgent situation that must be dealt with once and for all, and since my attempts to delegate the matter were not as fruitful as I would have liked, I had no choice but to remove myself from custody and handle the unpleasantries myself.” One of the men placed Joey’s gun in Feliks’s outstretched hand. Cam flinched as Feliks checked the magazine and snapped it back in place.
“Ms. Donovan,” Feliks called across the gym, “if you would be so kind as to join us.” I yelped as a meaty hand closed around my arm and hauled me out from under the bleachers. A huge man dressed in Feliks’s standard-issue bodyguard black deposited me roughly in the center of the court. “Where is her friend?” Feliks demanded.
One of his bodyguards smirked and said something in Russian. The others laughed. Vero rattled her handcuffs, shouting a string of expletives from the locker room.
“Leave her,” Feliks told them, unamused. “I don’t have a lot of time,Ms. Donovan, so pardon me for getting right to the point.” He gestured to Joey with his gun. “Is this the man you’ve identified asEasyClean?”
“What… how… how could you know that?” I stammered. The clanking and swearing in the locker room grew louder.
“This is the last time I will ask you, Ms. Donovan. Do you or do you not suspect Detective Joseph Balafonte of beingEasyClean? Did you and your nanny not discuss these suspicions on more than one occasion over the last eighteen hours?” He flicked off the safety.
My heart thumped wildly in my chest. Eighteen hours was a strangely specific window of time. My mind raced back to eighteen hours ago. It would have been the middle of the night, while Vero and I were at the crime scene exercise in the woods, just before I’d walked back to our dorm and found Cam under our window…
I touched my cell phone through my pocket. I’d had my phone with me that night. But Vero… she had left hers in our room.
I whirled to Cam. “You bugged Vero’s phone?” He winced.
Feliks raised his voice. “Ms. Donovan, my patience has limits.”
“Yes… I mean, no! Yes, I suspected Joey might beEasyClean,but I never said I was sure! I can’t prove it’s him! Whatever it is you’re planning to do, I don’t think—”
Feliks’s hot breath fanned my face as he leaned close and whispered, “You are not here to think, Ms. Donovan. You are here to do what I hired you to do. And now that I’ve made the task simple for you, you will cease this pointless stalling and finish the job.” He shoved the gun in my hand and stepped aside, his arm sweeping toward Joey, presenting me with a clear target.
I kept the gun pointed at the floor, my head swinging frantically back and forth. “I can’t do this! I could be wrong. And even if I’m right, he doesn’t deserve to die just because he tried to blackmail you!”
“I’m surprised by your lack of enthusiasm, Ms. Donovan. I assumed you would be eager to punish the man who attempted three times to murder your children’s father, yet here he is, standing before you, and you are unwilling to put him down.” When I didn’t speak,Feliks clasped his hands. “Very well. I have presented you with an opportunity for retribution. Do you decline?”
“Yes, I decline!”
“Then I will present you with an order. Kill him. Now, Ms. Donovan. We are running out of time.”
One of his men pressed a gun to my temple. My whole body tensed against the shock of cold steel. I lowered my eyes to Joey’s gun. It grew impossibly heavy in my hand as Joey backed away from me toward the bleachers. His eyes darted to the exits, but Feliks’s men had them covered.
Feliks stole up behind me and whispered, “Ekatarina has expressed her doubts about you from the beginning.” His arms came around me, lifting my hands until the gun was pointed straight out in front of me. My heart lurched as he moved my finger toward the trigger. “I told her I knew that you weren’t what you claimed to be. And yet, there is a facet of you I find fascinating, a glimmer that makes me curious,” he said into my hair as he adjusted the direction of the barrel, “and I think, if I turn you just the right way in just the right light, you might prove yourself to be valuable.” His hands drew slowly away from me, leaving me holding the weapon.
