“How far along are you?” Will joined thembedside.
She tossed her hair out of her face. “Eightmonths.”
Taylor met Will’s eyes. Will shook his head. Taylorsighed. “I’ll call for backup,” Will said again, and Taylornodded.
“No. Please no.” Hedwig held up her cuffed hands insupplication. “I’ll make a deal with you.”
“This ought to be good.”
“Save your breath,” Will told her.
“But I didn’t kill that man. You have to believe me.I didn’t have anything to do with it. I swear.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Taylor said. “You weren’t even in LAat the time.”
“I wasn’t in LA at the time.”
Will already had his cell phone out and wasdialing.
Hedwig said desperately, “If you call the police,they’ll hand me straight over to the FBI and I’ll be killed. And mybaby too.”
“Someone’s been watching the X-Files again,”Taylor told Will.
Will snorted.
“Anyway, you won’t be handed over to the FBI. You’llbe handed over to the Marshal Service, who may or may not hand youback to us.”
It worried him, though. That…teary-eyed intensity asshe gazed up at them. Not that he hadn’t known his share ofbold-faced liars. Enough so he thought he was pretty good attelling truth from fiction. Believed he had an instinct for it. Andit was a silly lie — not being in LA at the time — easilydisproved, right? So she’d probably come up with something betterif she was alibiing herself. She’d had enough time to think of astronger story. Seven months.
Hedwig was still pleading, still insisting. “It’sthe truth. I’m telling you the truth. If you’re not going to listento me, if you’re going to drag me back to LA, then at least doyourself a favor and take me in on your own. If you’re halfway goodat your job, we all might even make it alive.” Even with her handscuffed, she unconsciously, protectively cradled her belly.
It wasn’t science, but…
“Brandt, wait.”
Will paused, his look watchful.
“We’ve got her in custody. We don’t need localsupport now. Let’s take her back on our own.”
Will’s expression was pained. “Come on. You don’tbelieve that bullshit about the police and the FBI trying to killher?”
“No.” Taylor said more firmly, “No way. But it won’thurt to be on the safe side.”
“Yeah, well I don’t think you and me trying totransport her back to LA is on the safe side.”
“If she cooperates —”
Will’s jaw dropped. He recovered immediately. “Uh,buddy boy…” He glanced at their prisoner, who was tensely followingtheir exchange. “If anything goes wrong…”
“What could go wrong? We’re just going to drive upto Sierra Blanca, board a plane with her, and fly back in to LosAngeles.”
“Like she goes into labor.”
Taylor chewed his lip.
“It’ll be our heads on Popsicle sticks.”
Taylor nodded. “But what if, just on the off chance,there is something to what she’s saying?”
“What is she saying? So far all I’ve heard is theusual I been framed!”
“I was framed,” Hedwig put in.
Will raised his eyebrows.
“Who framed you?” Taylor asked.
“I don’t know.”
“Oh! Well!” Will gave Taylor an exasperatedlook.
“If I knew, I’d have given the name up a long timeago,” Hedwig protested. “But it’s someone at the DEA. I know thatfor sure.”
“Why’s that?” asked Will. “Why couldn’t it be theFBI? Or the CIA? Or the PTA?”
“Because I was working with the DEA as an informant,and some of the information I had implicated agents at a highlevel.”
The pause that followed her words was filled in bythe dogs baying in the kennel behind the house and Ramirez’scontinuing, though increasingly hoarse, rants from downstairs.
“You’re saying there’s a mole in the DEA?” Taylorheaded off Will’s questions.
But Will had another question in mind. “Who were youinforming on? Who was the target?”
Hedwig hesitated.
Will’s gaze met Taylor’s. “Who?” they questioned atthe same time.
“Mikhail Bashnakov.”
“Who?” Taylor could feel Will’s stare.
He said carefully, colorlessly, “Mikhail Bashnakov.The Technician.”
“Yes,” Hedwig said softly.
There was a flash of white outside the bedroomwindow, followed by a long rolling boom of thunder. Perfect timing.Pretty funny, in fact. Except…not. Taylor had the horrifyingsensation of having reached his hand into a cookie jar, only tofind a coiled rattlesnake.
“Who’s Mikhail Bashnakov?” Unlike Taylor, Will madeit a policy not to concern himself with crimes that were unrelatedto the DSS. It was Will’s view that their game preserve was stockedwith all the bad guys they could ever require — and that wascertainly true.
“He’s a kingpin in one of the Russian drug cartels,”Taylor told him.
Hedwig nodded confirmation.
“Oh. Good.” The mildness of that made Taylor’s lipstwitch. Yeah. No wonder he loved Will.
“Let me see if I have this straight,” Will stated.“You were framed for killing a DSS director by someone within theDEA who was afraid that your information would implicate him — orher — in the Russian drug trade?”
“Yes. That’s what I believe.”
“And I believe this is total bullshit.”
“What if it’s not?” Taylor intervened.
“You keep saying that. What if it is?”
“Well, what does it matter in that case? I’m notsaying we turn her loose. I’m saying we take her back to LAourselves. That was the original plan, right? Escort her back toLA?”
“Yes.”
“So?”
When Will had no immediate response, Taylor pressed,“So that’s what we do. Except we don’t advertise the fact thatwe’ve picked her up. We just…take her back.”
“Yes,” Hedwig pleaded. “That’s all I’masking. That you take me in yourselves.”
“See. I don’t trust that.” Will nodded at Hedwig’sstrained face.
“I don’t trust it either. That just means we’reprepared for anything she might try.”
He could see Will struggling with it, but it madesense. Right? This had been the plan from the beginning —before Denver PD lost Hedwig in the system. Whatever the hellsystem that had been. True, the original plan would have suppliedthem with backup and resources they didn’t currently have, but ifthere was a chance that what Hedwig was telling them was true — andTaylor followed the news enough to know there was more than achance that it was — the best chance of all of them reaching homesafe and sound was to slide in under the radar. To make it back toCalifornia before anyone knew they’d even located their quarry.
“This is the way you want to play it?” Will askedfinally.
Taylor nodded.
“Okay.” Will’s smile was
