Page 46 of Hunted in the Silence

“What did she say to you?” Brynn asked, curiosity getting the better of her. “Just now.”

Cole held her gaze for a long moment.

“She said I should stop being so careful,” he said. His voice was even, hiding nothing.

Brynn looked back at him. A part of her was glad that someone had finally put a name to the thing that had been building between them all these weeks, because neither of them had been able to yet. And she hated to admit it, but without that nudge, they may never have.

Still, she didn’t say anything. She didn’t have to.

The morning grew quiet for a moment, as if time itself had slowed just for them.

Cole’s expression shifted again, a longing reflecting in his eyes that Brynn felt in the center of her chest, and he turned to face her directly. “Brynn, I—”

His radio crackled and Olivia’s voice came through with something about the woman in custody and a development in the first interview, and just like that, the moment ended, absorbed back into the work that was still unfinished and still required everything they had.

Cole reached for the radio.

But his eyes stayed on Brynn’s face for one more second before he answered the call, and they said everything. This conversation wasn’t over. Merely postponed.

And Brynn was ready. More than she’d ever been for anything in her life.

Chapter 15

The woman’s name was Patricia Voss.

Cole was sitting across from her in the interview room at BPD while she weighed the cost if continuing pretending. She’d dropped the confused civilian act within the first ten minutes, the way Silas had predicted, when it became clear that nobody in the room was going to buy it. That’s when things got interesting. A careful, eerie stillness came over her, no doubt calculating the best way to make things shake out in her favor.

She was thirty-four. Dark hair pulled back in a low ponytail, her initial composure replaced with something more guarded. She had the soft-spoken manner all three of Brynn’s intake girls had described, the kind that made you lean in slightly to hear her, which was probably the point. A voice that made you feel like the most important person in the room without her having done anything specific to make you feel that way.

Cole had sat in a lot of interview rooms across from a lot of suspects. He knew the difference between someone who was afraid and someone who was calculating, and Patricia Voss was calculating. She had an intensity about her that said she’d seen and done a lot and knew how to read a room and its exits.

Olivia sat to Cole’s left. She’d been quiet since they came in. It was deliberate, communicating that she was someone who watched everything and missed nothing, a tactic that would set most people off kilter.

“You understand what you’re looking at,” Cole stated plainly. “Federal trafficking charges. Conspiracy. The full structure of what Devlin has been running in this region for the last four years, and your position in it.”

Patricia focused on her hands lying flat on the table. “I want a lawyer.”

“You’ll have one. That’s not what I’m asking right now.” Cole kept his voice even. “Right now, I’m telling you what the picture looks like from where I’m sitting, so that when your lawyer gets here you’ve had time to think about what you want to do with it.” He paused. “Andre Devlin is still out there. When we find him, and we will find him, the question of who cooperated and who didn’t is going to matter significantly to how the rest of your life goes.”

Patricia looked at him. Something moved behind her eyes, quick and restrained.

“He’ll know I talked,” she said.

“He’s going to know you were arrested regardless,” Olivia told her, her first words since they’d sat down. Her voice was calm and held a distinct chill. “The question of whether you talked is separate from whether he believes you talked. For a man like Devlin, those tend to end up in the same place.”

Patricia was quiet for a long moment.

“I need the lawyer first,” she said, and Cole felt a small part inside him relax.

“Of course,” he said. He stood, buttoned his jacket. “Think about Devlin’s ledger while you wait. Think about whether you know where it is and whether that information is worth something to you.”

He left her there and walked out into the hallway where Carson was leaning against the wall with his arms crossed, having watched the interview through the glass.

“She knows where he is,” Carson said.

“She knows something,” Cole agreed. “Whether it’s current, I don’t know. Devlin moves. But she’s been managing his operation from the inside for at least two years. She has more than she’s showing.”

“She’s scared of him.”