“You must’ve been shocked to hear he was back on the scene.”
“That’s one word for what I was.”
“What are some of the other words you’d use to describe it?”
“Outraged, furious, jealous… Mostly, I was hurt. I thought we were on our way back to where we belonged. It was a gut punch to find out otherwise.”
“Help me understand something,” Freddie said. “Ivanov was married—and, by all accounts, happily—to a woman who’d taken enormous personal risks to support his cause. They divorced only for her safety. Surely, you knew that.”
“I did. I kept tabs on him from a distance.”
Very interesting, Sam thought.
“But you didn’t know he was in the country or spending time with your ex-wife?”
“No, I didn’t know that until my kids told me.”
“What reason would a happily married man have to take up with an ex-girlfriend?” Sam asked. “Oh wait. She was the vice president. Of course that’s what he wanted with her. Re-create a little of the old magic and bend her to his will at the same time. That’s some world-class multitasking right there. His wife probably said, ‘Go do whatever is needed to advance our cause.’ Being in bed with the vice president of the United States, literally, would be quite a coup for them.”
“Shut up about things you know nothing about,” he said in a suddenly sinister tone of voice.
Chapter Thirty-One
Sam tilted her head, gauging his meaning. “Am I wrong about him sleeping with her to gain influence with the U.S. government? I mean, he comes swooping in, a blast from the past she never really got over, which he probably knew, and now you’re iced out again. I can see how that would make you mad.”
He slapped his hand on the table. “She got over him. She was long over him.”
“I thought you heard her say he was the one who got away. I’m married to my one who got away, and let me tell you, no one else could ever compare to him.”
He leaned in, glaring at her with absolute contempt. “That’s not true in this case. I am the love of her life, not him.”
“Would she agree with that assessment? Let’s make a note to ask her, Detective Cruz.”
“So noted,” Freddie said.
“None of this is any of your business,” Curtis snapped. “It’s personal.”
“Were you angry enough about Sergei reentering Gretchen’s life that you decided to get rid of him?” Sam asked.
Curtis folded his arms, sat back in his chair and smiled. “Wouldn’t you like to know.”
“Curtis,” Devon said. “Answer the question.”
“I didn’t kill him.”
Sam glanced at Freddie, who pulled up the security footage from Curtis’s building that showed him leaving at two thirty in the morning on the day Sergei was found dead. “Where are you going in the middle of the night?”
As Curtis viewed the video, the sweat reappeared, beading on his forehead and upper lip. “For a drive.”
Freddie showed the video of him returning five hours later, with date and time stamps on the screen.
“Just a random, five-hour drive?” Sam asked.
“I couldn’t sleep.”
“When we subpoena the security video from the Naval Observatory, will we see you lurking around your ex-wife’s home?”
“I never went anywhere near there.”
