Callahan:
Both. Do we have a deal?
Handler:
I'll confirm in ten minutes.
I waited. Paced. Tried not to think about what Dom would say when he found out, about the look on his face when he realised I'd made this call without consulting him.
The confirmation came:
Handler:
Deal accepted. Bishop will be released within the hour. Information delivery to follow.
I sent back the security details. Partial. Incomplete. Enough to seem valuable without actually giving Harrow clean access. Then I deleted the conversation, cleared my call logs, and removed any evidence of the trade.
Bishop would be free. That was what mattered.
Everything else was an acceptable loss.
I went back downstairs and found Dom still in the interrogation room. Webb was slumped in his chair, exhausted and defeated.
“Anything new?” I asked.
“No. He's told us everything he knows.” Dom looked at me. “Where did you go?”
“Made some calls. Followed up on a few leads.”
“What leads?”
“The judge Webb mentioned, Carolyn Reeves. I have a contact who might know how to approach her.”
It wasn't a lie. Just not the complete truth.
Dom studied my face. “You're being evasive.”
“I'm working quickly. We have twelve hours according to Adrian, and I'm not wasting them.”
“Cal—”
“Not now, Dom. We have work to do.”
I moved to the table and started reviewing my notes, cataloguing what Webb had given us, building the case piece by piece.
Dom watched me for another moment, then left. Probably to check on Adrian, probably to report that I was being difficult again.
Good. Distance would make the next part easier.
Four hours later,I had a lead.
One of Webb's contacts, a court administrator who'd handled evidence transfers, had been flagged in the financial records as receiving payments from the same offshore accounts Harrow used.
I found his address, confirmed he was home, and made a plan that didn't include Dom, because Dom would insist on coming and I needed to do this alone.
I left through Ravenswood's east entrance and drove across London to a neighbourhood that existed in the grey space between respectable and rough.
The administrator lived in a terraced house that had seen better decades. I knocked and waited. The door opened on a man in his sixties who looked at me with instant suspicion.
