home to get my gun. Missy wasn’t there, as she’s over to her sister’s. I got my rifle, loaded it up, too, and I started thinking why the hell wasn’t Missy home. Started thinking she’d earned herself a couple good smacks. I don’t know how to explain, but I heard myself thinking those things, and it made me sick. It made me scared. I called Lindy, and he came over.”
“You did the right thing, Ty.”
“No, I didn’t. I took the drink. I took the money.”
“And you called Lindy.”
“You have an illness, Mr. Crew,” Abigail said. “He exploited your illness, used it against you.”
“Lindy said the same, thank you, ma’am. I’m ashamed to tell Missy. She’s still some pissed at you, Brooks, but she’s glad I’m not drinking. Things are better with us, and she knows it. She’ll be more pissed if you put me in jail. Lindy said you wouldn’t.”
“Lindy’s right. I’m going to need the money, Lindy.”
“It’s locked up in my truck.”
“And I’m going to need you to come in, make an official statement, Ty.”
“Missy’s going to be pissed.”
“I think she might be a little pissed about the drinking, but when she hears it all, start to finish? I think she’s going to be proud of you.”
“You think so?”
“I do. I’m proud of you. I’m glad you didn’t try to kill me.”
“So’m I. What’re you going to do, Brooks?”
“I’m going to put all this together, all right and tight, then I’m going to go arrest Blake for solicitation of murder for hire of a police officer.”
29
The next step, Abigail thought, when she got home from taking Bert to Sunny. It felt strange, and a little sad, she realized, to walk into the house without Bert. It’s just for a short time, she reminded herself. A quick trip —that changed everything.
When Brooks came home, they’d drive to the airport, take the private plane to Virginia, check into their two rooms. She’d have plenty of time to set up the cameras and video feed.
Plenty of time to obsess, worry, overthink, if she let herself.
So she wouldn’t. She focused on the task at hand and began to transform herself into Catherine Kingston.
When Brooks arrived, he called out, “Where’s my woman?” and made her smile.
She was someone’s woman.
“I’m upstairs. Is everything all right?”
“As it can be. Blake’s got his lawyers scrambling, and I expect a deal’s coming along. He might even slip out of this, seeing as Ty was admittedly impaired, but even so, he’ll be done in this town. I don’t expect …” He trailed off as he got to the doorway and saw her.
“I repeat, ‘Where’s my woman?’”
“It’s a good job,” she decided, studying herself in the mirror.
The hairstyle and the careful makeup sharpened the angle of her jaw. Contacts darkened the green of her eyes. The careful padding transformed her from slim to curvy.
“They’ll probably ask the hotel for any security feeds, once they know the hotel. We’ll be in by then, but they’ll run them to see when I checked in, and if I came alone. That’s the reason we take separate cabs from the airport, have different check-in times.”
“You look taller.” Eyeing her, he walked over, kissed her. “Definitely taller.”
“I have lifts in my shoes. Just an inch, but it adds to the illusion. If any of this leaks to one of Volkov’s moles, they shouldn’t be able to match me. Abigail’s not in the system, and that’ll make it very hard to connect Catherine Kingston or Elizabeth Fitch to Abigail Lowery. I’m ready whenever you are.”
“I’ll get the bags.”
He’d never flown private, and decided he could get used to it. No lines, no delays, no crowds, and the flight itself smooth and quiet.
And he liked the wide leather chairs positioned so he could face Abigail—or Catherine, he supposed—and the way the light played over her face as they winged north.
“They’ve started a fresh file on Cosgrove and Keegan,” Abigail told him, as she worked her laptop. “They’ve applied for warrants to monitor their electronics and communications. They may find something. Cosgrove especially tends to be careless. He gambles,” she added, “both online and in casinos.”
“How’s he do?”
“He loses more than he wins, from what I’ve gathered through his finances, and his gambling pattern, it was the gambling—and the losses—that allowed the Volkovs to pressure him into working for them while I was under protection.”
“Gambling problem,” Brooks speculated. “And he caves when pressured. How would he respond to an anonymous source claiming to have information about his connection to the Volkovs?”
She glanced up, tipped down the large framed sunglasses she’d added to her illusion. “That’s an interesting question.”
“If he folds under pressure, blackmail might push him into making a mistake.”
“He’s not as smart as Keegan, which is why he hasn’t moved up the ranks as smoothly, I believe—in the marshals or the Volkov organization. I calculated the Volkovs would have eliminated him by now, but apparently he’s seen as having some value.”
“Have you ever done any fishing?” Brooks asked her.
“No. It appears like a tedious pastime or occupation. I don’t understand what fishing has to do with Cosgrove or the Volkovs.”
He pointed at her. “First, I’m going to take you fishing sometime, and you’ll see the difference between restful and tedious. Second, sometimes you hook a little fish and it can lead to a bigger catch.”
“I don’t think … oh. It’s a metaphor. Cosgrove is the little fish.”
“There you go. Hooking him might be worth a try.”
“Yes, it might. Greed responds to greed, and his primary motivation is money. A threat, something with just enough information that proves the source has evidence. And if he uses his electronics or phones to communicate, they’d have enough to question him.”
“Which could lead to that bigger fish. And it’d add more weight to your testimony.” He held out the bag of pretzels he opened, but Abigail shook her head. “What’s your bait?”
“Because you need bait to hook even a little fish.”
With a nod, he bit into a pretzel. “Wait till you drown your first worm.”
“I don’t even like the sound of that. However, there was a woman in witness protection after testifying against her former boyfriend, a low-level gangster involved with the Volkovs’ prostitution ring in Chicago. She was found raped and beaten to death in Akron, Ohio, three months after the conviction.”
“Was Cosgrove her handler?”
“No, he wasn’t assigned to her, but everything I was able to gather at the time pointed to his being the one to pass her information on to his Volkov contact. I know enough to compose a believable and threatening message.”
“Another pebble in the river.”
“What river? The one with the fish?”
Laughing, he gave her foot a bump with his. “Could be, except if we were sticking with that metaphor, you don’t want to be tossing any pebbles. Might scare those fish away.”
“I’m confused.”
“In this metaphorical river, we toss the pebbles because we want a lot of ripples.”
