Silver knew this was his way of getting back at her. He’d never gotten over being made a fool of with the tape — he’d stammered out four different lies before admitting his infidelity, his pretense of civility momentarily slipping to reveal raw hatred.
He’d successfully hidden his true colors for their first three years together, but after that, following a difficult pregnancy, his real personality had emerged little by little. Silver had initially attributed it to stress from work, but he grew increasingly dismissive and cold as time went by, except when he wanted sex. Towards the end of the relationship, Silver came to believe that being around his family was a concession he’d made in order to appear to have a respectable home life, for display at the frequent business-related events he took them to — and later, when he was making the preparatory moves to enter the political arena.
Perhaps that was the other part of what this was all about. Being a devoted father who was raising a daughter under his custody would be a surefire winner at the polls.
She was still shaking from fury when she pulled into the lower East Side parking structure adjacent to her office at 26 Federal Plaza.
If it was a fight Eric wanted, he had grossly underestimated her.
There was no way he was getting Kennedy.
No way in hell.
Chapter 2
“I want her dead.”
The speaker was gaunt, with skin permanently jaundiced from nicotine and cirrhosis, a blue knit longshoreman’s cap pulled over his head. He kept his arms around his food tray, a reflexive posture learned quickly in prison which made it harder for other inmates to grab your food. Not that any would try with Rob Bollinger, who was standout dangerous, even in a facility that housed some of the most violent offenders in the state. “And her partner, too.”
“Like I said, it’s already in play. Although snuffing her is going to be harder than getting him. We’ve had to contract out for the hit on her,” his lunch mate disclosed, his eyes roving around the room. Carl Lexington was Rob’s number two man inside and coordinated all the day-to-day operations — drug distribution, assaults and killings, and communications with the outside world when commissioning the occasional special request from Rob.
“I’m never getting out of here — I’ll be rotting in the joint for the rest of my life, and it’s because of them.” Rob’s whisper increased in volume as he spoke, rage broiling below the surface. He’d been inside for six years, serving four consecutive life sentences for his role in the leadership of Seventh Sons, one of New York’s most violent motorcycle gangs.
Once his appeals had been exhausted and he’d been incarcerated for good, Rob had shifted into operating a profitable prison drug-smuggling business, subsidized with a sideline of contract killings on other inmates. It had been rough at first, competing with the white supremacists, the Mexicans and the other gangs, but after he’d proved himself an absolutely vicious adversary, he’d been able to secure a foothold, and now ran twenty percent of the trafficking racket.
But he would never see the free world again, and Rob harbored a grudge against the cops who had led the investigation that had resulted in his brother being shot to death outside of an industrial supply warehouse in upstate New York, leaving Rob severely wounded, having taken two slugs in the torso and one in the leg, which pained him every day — and always would.
Shots fired by the agent who had somehow gotten one of his most loyal street soldiers to roll on him.
“Silver Cassidy and Andy Teluride.” Rob pronounced their names with distaste. “I hear she’s in the city now. No longer upstate, although he still is.”
“Security is tight at FBI headquarters, so we have to be careful and patient. But we’ll get her.” Carl spat a piece of gristle on to the floor. “He’s a done deal — dead man walking. Probably within the week.”
Rob scowled impatiently. Decades of meth and heroin use had destroyed any elasticity in his skin; he resembled a hairless Shar Pei more than a human. Except for the eyes, which burned with a feverish intensity.
“Who’s going to do it?”
“Jeb’s gonna dust him,” Carl whispered. “He’s already been practicing — it’s been a while since Iraq, but he still reckons it will only take one shot. We’ve contracted with the Russians for her. I don’t want this traced back to us. Being in the city, she’s a higher risk proposition — anything goes wrong, we have a world of problems if it’s one of our crew. The Russians will do anything, and they don’t care who they’re taking out if the money’s right — most of the time they don’t even wanna know who it is…”
A typical contract killing cost fifteen grand on the street from someone competent. A gang bang shooting went for five. But to take out a cop, much less an FBI agent, had cost fifty from the Russians after considerable negotiations.
One of the Mexican gang members three tables over spent a little too long glaring at Carl before averting his gaze, prompting him to lean in to Rob and mutter, “We’re going to have a war in here before much longer. The beaners are looking to grab the rest of the heroin biz, and they don’t wanna share. It’s been the buzz for the last few days. You might wanna stay out of the yard till I can get it cleaned up. Could get messy,” Carl concluded, making a mental note of the young, tattooed man’s face. Staring Carl down like that was a sign of disrespect — you didn’t disrespect the Seventh Sons and live to talk about it. That this punk had dared to indicated just how out of control things were getting.
Rob nodded. “I’ll get sick for a week. I can pay off the block guard to leave me be or get me into the infirmary until it’s over. You need anything?” Rob asked, mopping up the last of the unidentifiable stew with his bread before popping the soggy mess into his mouth.
“Nah. I got this. But it’s gonna be ugly. Watch your back.”
Carl stood, prompting three members of his entourage at the next table to follow suit. Another three waited to escort Rob back to his cell. While it was unlikely anyone would move on them in the cafeteria, they were taking no chances. Rob counted over forty inmates loyal to him, each one indebted to him in ways they could never repay. He wasn’t worried about a little scuffle with some Mexicans who were mistaken about how easy it would be to encroach on his business. Once a few of them had been carved and left to bleed out, they’d get the message. That was a universal language everyone understood.
Rob finished his apple juice and smiled to himself, revealing a mouth filled with discolored teeth — another legacy of his taste for meth.
He pushed back from the table and was almost immediately encircled by his bodyguards — heavily muscled bikers with full-sleeve tats and numerous knife and bullet scars. Even in the joint, in a jungle of vicious and hardened criminals, these men stood out as menacing.
Rob nodded at the tallest man, deeply tanned with a shaved head and an elaborately styled beard, and the group moved to the exit, where four guards stood watching impassively, though wary of any aggressive moves. They’d heard the rumors, too. Something was going to go down, and they didn’t want to get caught in the crossfire.
There was a lingering atmosphere of imminent violence as the inmates walked by, radiating danger with every step.
The Mexicans across the room glared at them, their gaze a promise of death.
Rob sneered, and then the group was out of the mess hall.
Just another breakfast of champions in Attica.
The killer hummed to himself as he studied the blueprints on his flat-screen monitor. He pushed the little work lamp to the side and moved a few tools to the right corner of his computer desk, clearing space for a bottle of water. He was tempted to turn on the television or the radio, or scour the Internet for some mention of the latest killing, but opted instead for patience.
A wave of dizziness washed over him, and he closed his eyes, suddenly fatigued. Unbidden, a hazy image came to the forefront of his awareness — a house ablaze, fire engines battling to contain the out-of-control inferno, orange flames licking the night like a hungry lover. A kaleidoscope of impressions flooded his psyche: ambulances,
