“Why would I want to do that?”
Gaspar stood guard, left hand clasped over his right wrist, his watch face visible, marking the time.
The salon’s main door opened. Marion Wallace returned. “Was there anything else you needed from me before I return to my guests, Agent Otto?”
Kim’s stomach snake thrashed violently. Acid bubbled up her esophagus. But she refused to flinch. She swallowed hard.
“No,” she said.
“Call to schedule something with my assistant if you need to see me again,” Marion said, and Kim watched her walk through the main door again.
“Agent Otto, Agent Gaspar.”
Sonorous male voice. Like radio. Unmistakable.
Kim’s skin crawled.
“Hello, Hale,” she said.
Which was as curt as she dared to the boss’s right hand man.
Michael Hale. Grandfathered in place before the boss recruited her or Gaspar. Binding ties between Hale and the boss ran from merely distasteful to downright disgusting. Kim avoided Hale whenever possible.
“Where is she?” Hale asked.
Demanding, as always.
“Primping,” Gaspar said, pointing at the powder room door.
“Cooper sent me to assess and report.” Hale’s derivative power was enormous. He wielded it more overtly than the boss ever would. “Get her out here.”
Gaspar rapped twice on the powder room door.
Sylvia came out. She recognized the new man in the room. She approached. She parted her newly glossed lips. She flashed her pixie smile.
“Mr. Hale, so nice to see you again.” Sylvia extended her gloved hand, and touched his arm ever so briefly. Ownership. A lover’s caress. “How is Mr. Cooper?”
They all knew each other. Mildly surprising. Maybe Hale had bedded Sylvia. Unremarkable. Hale was a notorious womanizer. Definitely not the boyfriend type.
But Cooper?
Elle had described Sylvia’s FBI boyfriend.
Cooper. Self-described serial monogamist. Could he have been that dumb? Maybe Hale wasn’t the only Hoover building occupant Sylvia had screwed.
Kim berated herself for being so stupid.
Hale ignored Sylvia’s greeting. “Otto, what’s this about?”
Sylvia returned to her perch on the white sofa. She was more relaxed than anyone else in the room. Kim delivered by rote, “Susan Kane, a/k/a Sylvia Kent Black, has agreed to testify against her accomplices in matters related to the murder of Harry Black.”
Hale looked straight at Sylvia.
“That so?” he said. “You’re going to admit everything?”
Sylvia batted her eyelashes and raised her right hand and said, “The truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help me God.”
Hale flushed pink from his stiff white collar right up to his sandy hairline. His eyes narrowed, either in incomprehension or calculation. Kim couldn’t tell. His tone was hard enough to cut diamonds. He said, “In exchange for what?”
“Dangerous people will be looking for me. You and Mr. Cooper can fix that, can’t you?” Sylvia’s tone was so sweet it made Kim’s teeth ache.
Hale’s face turned redder. “You agreed we wouldn’t need to help you again. Yet, here you are, and it’s not a minor prostitution charge this time, is it?”
Sylvia’s breathless little voice begged, “I’m innocent, Mickey. You know I didn’t kill anybody. Helping me again shouldn’t be a problem for Charlie, should it?”
Hale looked like he’d swallowed a turd. His eyes bulged from his head. “We’re not in the immunity business. But if your testimony is valuable enough, I suppose we might help. What are you offering?”
She said, “Who killed Harry.”
Hale was unmoved. “That might be of minor interest to the Margrave Police Chief. It’s of no interest to me.”
Sylvia remained quiet for a minute. Then she looked at Kim, and Gaspar. Then her gaze returned to Hale. She said, “I suppose I could talk about
Kim had to hand it to her. Men had followed women like Sylvia right off a cliff since the dawn of sex. Sylvia was smoking hot. And while not brilliant, she was undeniably clever. Harry Black, the poor bastard, had never stood a chance. Yep. Sylvia was a stone cold bitch.
Hale’s eyes were slits. “What do you mean? Exactly?”
Sylvia straightened her skirt and crossed her remarkably long legs, giving him a full shot view up her thigh. “I shouldn’t say more until my lawyer is present, should I? Maybe we can get the whole truth recorded tomorrow morning? Would that work? I’m at the Hay Adams. These agents can escort me. I’ll call my lawyer and we’ll take care of everything tomorrow. How’s that?”
Hale covered the short distance to Sylvia and grabbed her bicep and jerked her off the sofa and shoved her hard against Gaspar. “Bring her to Cooper’s office in the morning. Eight o’clock sharp.”
And then he stalked out.
Which was when Kim knew for sure. Hale was expendable. They all were. Except Cooper. Rank had its privileges. Cooper was the top dog. Untouchable without hard evidence. Suicide to try.
If the situation went sideways others would take the hit.
Gaspar had been right all along.
They were all involved in it.
Reacher, too. Had to be.
Cooper was the leader. Had Reacher crossed him somehow? Had Cooper sent them to find Reacher for some private purpose?
Possible.
There was plausible deniability all around if they succeeded. If they failed, everyone except Cooper went down. Cooper would make it so.
CHAPTER FORTY
Kim paced the room for a solid half hour, seeking solutions, but getting nothing except impatient and thirty minutes older. Gaspar waited quietly, butt in chair, long legs stretched out and crossed at the ankles, hands folded, eyes closed. He said, “We could follow orders for once. We could deliver Sylvia in the morning. And return to normal life.”
His laconic style was familiar to her by then, but no less maddening. “But don’t you feel like a first class patsy? And what do we tell Roscoe? Have you even thought about that? She’s going down in flames and Sylvia walks free? Again? Sixty-seven
