She studied her nails. “We could make it a felony. I hear academic institutions are quite fond of employing felons.”
The threat was crystal clear: cooperate or we’ll ruin you.
They weren’t here to rescue me. They were here to use me. I just wasn’t sure how.
I kept my mouth shut. My teeth ground together as the agents bantered amongst themselves.
If they were going to arrest me for something, they would have already done it, which meant they needed something from me.
I just had to figure out what it was.
An involuntary yawn spilled out of my mouth.
Agent Sanders reached into his suit jacket and produced a photo.“Dr. Hawthorne, do you know this man?”
Jude.
I took one look at the photo of the man I had fallen in love with. He was holding one of those felt boards with his name in little white letters; the ones people held up when they were arrested and booked.
It couldn’t have been from when he was taken away tonight. He looked a few years younger. His hair was long and he looked like the weight of the world was on his shoulders. I had no ideaJude had been arrested before, though I suppose it shouldn’t have come as a surprise.
Denying that I knew him wasn’t going to be the hill I would die on tonight. “Yes.”
“What’s his name?”
“Jude Greear.” That’s when I realized the sign Jude was holding in the mugshot didn’t say Greear. It said Graham.
Agent Dutton’s eyebrows lifted in surprise. “Greear?”
I nodded. “That’s what he told me.”
Agent Sanders slid the photo across the table, closer to me. “Where did you meet him?”
“At the Four Horsemen casino in Atlantic City.”
“And this is the man who kidnapped you outside of that casino on May 23?”
How did I answer that? Yes, Jude had kidnapped me. But he had done it to get me out of harm’s way.
In the eyes of the law, it was still kidnapping.
But . . . it also wasn’t.
“I was in trouble. He helped me.” It was the simplest version of a very complicated truth.
“Because your brother owes a debt to John Valentine,” Agent Sanders said.
Wait . . . how did the FBI know that? Joel, Jude, and I were the only ones who knew. Well, us and John Valentine.
Still, I didn’t speak.
Agent Sanders turned the line of questioning to what I had done since arriving in Las Vegas.
That’s when I realized exactly what Jude had done.
He had given me truth.
Whereas I wanted to go straight to the casino to start playing, he insisted on spoiling me and spending the day together.
