“Give your big brain a little rest. Let’s sit down a minute. I’ve got a couple updates for you.”
“Updates? Why didn’t you already tell me?”
“You were involved when I first got home,” he reminded her. “Then I was distracted by shower sex.”
He sat at the counter, and since she’d already poured it for him, picked up his second glass of lemonade.
“I guess we’ll take them in order. I had a talk with Roland Babbett. The cameras I borrowed from you did the trick, caught him going into the Ozarks Suite using B-and-E tools to do it.”
“You arrested him?”
“In a manner of speaking. I have to say I liked the guy, once we got things aired and ironed out.”
He ran it through for her, but she didn’t sit. Instead, she kept her hands busy scrubbing then quartering small red-skinned potatoes.
“You told him he frightened me.”
“I may have colored your reaction a little differently than the reality of it, but I figure your pride can handle it.”
“You…prevaricated so he’d feel some sympathy toward me and less curiosity about the cameras, the gun and so on.”
“I like ‘prevaricated.’ It’s an important word, and classier than ‘lied.’ ”
“You believe him, too, believe he’ll just leave and not pursue his investigation.”
“I do. He’s a family man at the base of it, Abigail, and with his wife expecting their third child, he doesn’t want to risk his livelihood on this or go through the upset and pressures of a trial. His firm isn’t going to want to deal with the publicity we could generate, especially as one of their operatives saw photos of the damage on the hotel. And over that, he doesn’t like Blake or the boy.”
“But he works for them.”
“Roundabout, yeah. I work for them, roundabout, as I’m a public official. Doesn’t mean I have to like them, either.”
“You’re right, of course.”
“I made him a good deal, one he can live with. He can turn in his reports, fulfill the contract with the client, move on.”
“If there’s no more danger from that quarter, the logic you used to contact the authorities now, to move forward with testifying, doesn’t hold.”
He reached out to still her hands for a moment, to bring her eyes to his. “It does if you consider that down the road something like this may happen again. If you consider you’re never going to feel rooted here, the way I think we both want you to, until you finish this.”
“That’s true, but perhaps we could delay, take more time to…” She trailed off when he said nothing, only looked at her. “Delay is an excuse. It’s fear, not courage.”
“I’m never going to question your courage, or criticize the way you’ve coped.”
“That means a great deal to me. I want it over, Brooks. I do. And having taken appreciable steps toward that end is frightening, but it’s also a relief.”
“Then I hope you’ll be relieved to know Captain Anson’s in Chicago. He intends to contact Agent Garrison tonight.”
“He called you?”
“Late this afternoon, on the drop phone.”
“I’m grateful to him.” She began mincing garlic, her eyes trained on her hands, on the knife, as the pressure built in her chest. “I hope she’ll believe him.”
“You picked a smart, capable, honest woman.”
“Yes, I was very careful in my selection.”
“Anson’s a smart, capable, honest man. We couldn’t do better.”
