The Whispering Room

“Sounds like somebody wanted to make sure he didn’t talk.”

“You think Betts had him killed?”

“I think there were a number of people who wanted Nathan Mallet to go away.”

“Including you guys?”

“We’re not in the extermination business,” he said.

“Not lately, anyway,” she muttered. She walked back over to the chair, but she didn’t sit. She was too amped for that. “Why wasn’t I told any of this before?”

“You weren’t asking questions before. When you came back to work after your baby was born, you started shaking things up. That’s when you got our attention. We couldn’t allow you to take things too far.”

“Allow?” Her outrage flared. “That’s why you had me removed from the Courtland case. You didn’t want me connecting it to Johnny.”

“We didn’t want you going anywhere near Sonny Betts with some half-cocked notion of revenge.”

“I’m not into revenge,” she said. “What I am into is justice.”

“You’ll get it,” he said. “It may take a while, but you’ll have your justice.”

“And why should I believe that?” she asked coldly. “When I haven’t been able to trust a single word out of your mouth yet.”

Nash stood at the window and watched her stride across the parking lot to her car.

He’d done a piss-poor job of containing this whole situation, but at least now he was dealing with Evangeline Theroux face-to-face.

He’d never had much of a taste for the machinations that came with his job. He preferred a much more straightforward approach, though he didn’t delude himself into thinking this was over. Evangeline Theroux was now a woman on a mission, and he knew she wouldn’t give up without a fight. She’d keeping digging and digging until she uncovered the truth.

But truth was a relative term.

The question now wasn’t so much if she found out, but when and how. It was a matter of degrees and increments. Control was the key.

His phone rang and he removed it from his pocket to glance at the name on the display: Louisiana Correctional Institute for Women.

He closed his eyes and drew a breath. “Hello?”

“Dad?”

At the sound of his daughter’s voice, Nash’s chest tightened and he felt a familiar wave of helplessness wash over him even as he tried to keep his voice calm and normal. “Hi, baby. How are you today?”

“Not so good. This place is awful, Dad. I don’t think I can stand it here one more day. I’m going crazy. Sometimes I wish I could just…” Her voice caught as she trailed off. She sounded like the lost little girl that she was. “I just want to come home.”

“I know you do.” He drew another breath as he ran a hand through his hair. “But that’s not going to happen anytime soon.”

“I know.”

“I’ll try to come up there to see you this weekend,” he said. “Would you like that?”

“Yes. But, Dad… when’s Mom coming? It’s been so long since I’ve seen her. Is she mad at me?”

“No, baby. She’s just busy. New husband and all that. I’ll give her a call and see if we can stagger our weekends. That way it won’t be so long between visits. Would that help?”

“I guess so. I just want to get out of here. Please, Daddy. Please. There must be something you can do.”

She started to sob quietly into the phone.

Nash looked out over the sun-baked parking lot as his throat tightened and his chest felt ready to explode. “You killed someone, Jamie. I can’t make that go away.”

Twenty-One

Evangeline called Mitchell as soon as she got back to her car. While she waited for him to answer, she lifted her gaze to the building in front of her and idly counted the floors. For a moment, she thought she spotted Nash in the window of his office. Then she lost him in the glare of sunlight off the glass, and she decided it probably hadn’t been him anyway.

“Hebert,” Mitchell said on the other end.

Evangeline leaned forward and started her car. “Where are you right now?”

“I’m at the station,” he said. “What’s up?”

“I thought we might take a drive out to the lake.”

“I’m all for that,” he said. “But something tells me we’re not going out there for lunch.”

“We’re going to see Sonny Betts again,” Evangeline said.

“Wait a minute. I think we have a bad connection. Because I could have sworn I just heard you say something about going to see Sonny Betts. And I know you didn’t actually say that because you’re not stuck on stupid.”

“What’s stupid about wanting to ask him a few more questions regarding the murder of his former attorney?”

“What isn’t stupid about it? One, you’re not even on the case, and two, you heard what Lapierre said about Betts. We don’t make another move on a guy like that unless we have got some heavy-duty artillery to use against him. Right now, we’ve got squat.”

“I’m not suggesting we go in with guns blazing,” Evangeline said. “I’m talking about a friendly little chat. I’m headed out there right now. I was kind of hoping you’d meet me.”

“And then Lapierre can kick both our asses, is that it?”

“What do you care about Lapierre? You’re moving to Houston.”

“That’s not a done deal, and it’s beside the point anyway.”

“What if I told you that Betts had something to do with Johnny’s death?”

He gave a loud, exasperated sigh. “Based on what, Evie?”

“Based on what Special Agent Declan Nash of the FBI just told me in his office. Johnny’s death wasn’t random, Mitchell. There’s a good chance he was set up.”

“By who?”

“Nathan Mallet.”

“Why would Nathan set up Johnny?”

“Because I think Johnny found out Nathan was dirty. He worked for Betts.”

“And just what do you hope to prove by going out there and rattling Betts’s cage again?”

“This time, it’s not Betts’s cage I’m trying to rattle,” she said. “It’s Declan Nash’s.”

Evangeline was five minutes from her rendezvous point with Mitchell when she realized she was being followed. Earlier she’d spotted a red Mustang behind her when she left the federal building, and she’d thought at first it might be Nathan’s stolen car.

But the driver made a right at the first traffic light, and Evangeline hadn’t caught sight of the car again.

The vehicle behind her now was a black Lincoln with heavily tinted windows.

Keeping an eye in the rearview mirror, Evangeline made a quick left on a red light, hoping to lose the tail, but the Lincoln shot up behind her, tapping her bumper just as a car approaching from the other direction swerved in front of her.

Evangeline had no choice but to hit the brakes as the two cars wedged her between them. Heavily armed men spilled out of the vehicles and surrounded her car with enough artillery to start a small war. Guns were suddenly pointed at her from every direction.

“Get out of the car now!”