“We’re done for tonight,” he said. “Nothing happens until Stavros moves in the morning.”
The building was settling into that strange pre-dawn quiet, the hour when exhaustion felt almost peaceful and the world outside hadn’t decided what it was going to be yet.
Stavros was asleep somewhere, still believing the night had gone his way.
Morning was coming.
And so were we.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Jack was already in the shower when my alarm went off at six thirty. I lay there for a moment, listening to the water run and the house settle around me.
I’d showered as soon as we’d walked into the house a few hours before, deciding it was best to get the grime of the day and the police station off of me before I got into bed. So I was downstairs and dressed, pouring coffee into mugs, when he came into the kitchen. He was dressed in dark jeans, boots, a white button-down with the KGSO logo stitched over the breast, and the shoulder holster he wore the way other men wore a suit jacket. His badge was already on his belt. He’d shaved, and he somehow managed to look like a man who was well rested and ready to make one of the biggest arrests of his career.
“Surveillance check-in was five minutes ago,” he said, scrolling his phone. “Stavros is still home. He’s up and moving. Hops said he’s currently in his home gym doing a workout.”
The plan was clean. Units had been staged since seven at the King George Yacht Club. He normally arrived just before nine according to the manager of the yacht club, and reserved the private terrace overlooking the grounds. While Stavros was enjoying his last civilized breakfast, a secondary team would be executing the warrant on his home and other vehicles.
We drank our coffee standing at the counter and didn’t talk about what was coming because there was nothing left to talk about. The work was done. The evidence was locked. All that remained was the walk through the door and the words that would end Nikolai Stavros’s life as a free man.
His phone buzzed. He looked at the screen.
“He’s moving. Heading toward the yacht club right on schedule.” A pause while he read. “Time to roll out.”
“Creature of habit,” I said.
“Everyone is, even if they don’t want to be.” He set his mug in the sink. “Let’s go.”
The drive took twenty minutes. Jack called Martinez. Unmarked units were already in position around the yacht club. Plainclothes at the entrance. Marked cruisers on the access road, out of sight from the building.
The morning was cool and gray, the sky the color of old pewter, the fields dark with dew. It was a Virginia morning that hadn’t decided what it was going to be yet. The river appeared between the trees as we got closer to the waterfront, flat and silver, and the road wound through a corridor of oaks that were so old their branches met overhead and turned the asphalt into a tunnel of green and shadow.
The King George Yacht Club sat at the end of a private road on a bluff above the Potomac. It was white clapboard with dark shutters, and it had a deep covered porch with rocking chairs overlooking the river. The grounds were immaculate, every hedge trimmed, every flower bed edged, the gravel drive raked smooth. The parking lot was already filling up—golf carts lined up near the pro shop, couples in tennis whites heading for the courts, families drifting toward the main entrance for the Sunday brunch that had been a King George institution for decades.
Stavros’s Mercedes sat in the designated valet lot beside the building.
Jack pulled up to the front entrance. Martinez’s unmarked sedan was already there. The marked cruisers sat back on the access road. Containment was the goal, not assault. If Stavros decided to run, he’d find every direction closed. But Jack didn’t expect him to run. Men like Stavros didn’t run. They sat in leather chairs and called their lawyers and believed that money could make anything go away.
We walked through the front entrance together. The lobby was bright and busy. The Sunday brunch crowd filled the main room, the clink of mimosa glasses, the low hum of conversation and laughter. A hostess looked up from her stand and Jack showed her his badge without breaking stride.
“Private terrace,” he said. “Which way?”
She pointed.
Jack walked through the main room and I was beside him. Heads turned as we passed, not because anyone knew what was happening, but because Jack moved through a room the way weather moved through a valley, and people noticed. Martinez stayed near the entrance, positioned between the terrace and the front door. Not because he expected trouble, but because Jack didn’t leave gaps.
The private terrace was separated from the main dining area by a set of glass doors and a century’s worth of exclusivity. It was wide and stone-floored, open to the river on three sides, the railing running along the edge of the bluff. Below it the Potomac stretched wide and flat, the far shore soft with haze. The morning air was cool and damp and smelled like mud and salt and the green tangle of the riverbank. Rocking chairs lined the railing. A single table with a white cloth was set near the water.
Stavros was at the table. He had his back to the building and his face to the river, and he was reading the newspaper with unhurried focus. An espresso sat at his right hand, still steaming. A plate held the remains of toast and fruit. He was wearing a white linen shirt with the collar open, and the morning light caught the silver in his hair. From where I stood he looked exactly like what he’d spent decades constructing himself to be, a man of wealth and taste and absolute immunity from consequence.
Jack’s boots sounded on the stone. Stavros heard them and turned his head, not quickly, but with a measured pause.
He saw Jack. He saw the badge. He saw me standing three steps behind Jack’s shoulder. And something moved behind his eyes, fast and calculating, the machinery of a powerful mind processing an unexpected variable. But it wasn’t fear. It wasn’t even surprise. It was irritation. The look of a man who’d found a stain on his shirt at a dinner party. A minor problem. Manageable.
“Sheriff Lawson,” Stavros said. He picked up his espresso and took a sip. Deliberately. Making us wait while he drank. “I have to say, you’re persistent. But this is a private club and you’re interrupting my morning.”
“Nikolai Stavros, you’re under arrest,” Jack said. “Stand up and put your hands behind your back.”
