The good humor drained from her face. He’d expected that, given their recent past encounters. “Um, okay. Sure.” Her eyes flicked to his. “What is it?”
Joseph rubbed at his chin in feigned contemplation. “I’ve just been wondering, or I’ve been curious, I guess. When you were in that room with Alton Dalessio, how’d you know he was going to shoot? Not that I doubt you or anything. It’s not like that at all.” He tilted his head to the side, hoping to appear genuinely curious. “It’s just, from where I was standing in the doorway, it looked like Dalessio was about to drop his weapon.”
Amelia kept her eyes straight ahead. To her credit, no part of her facial expression belied so much as a hint of anxiety. In fact, he would have been convinced that she was relaxed if he hadn’t spotted the way her knuckles were going white under her crushing grip on the steering wheel.
As if she could sense the scrutiny in that pregnant silence, she turned to meet his curious gaze.
In the split-second when her eyes first fell on his, he could have sworn he spotted the low-burning fire of fury in her expression. But as quickly as the flames had appeared, the ire vanished.
He realized then that she knew the game he’d started, and he was hard-pressed to keep the smirk off his face. If she knew the game, his victory would be all the sweeter.
Deeply satisfied, he turned toward the never-ending line of cars. “Sorry, like I said, I don’t mean to sound like I’m doubting you. But…” he let the word hang in the air with a long pause, “I vouched for you, under oath. It might ease my conscience a little if I knew more about what you were thinking at the time.”
“Yeah.” Her voice was harsh, almost like she’d just finished chain-smoking an entire pack of unfiltered cigarettes. As she cleared her throat, her stare didn’t so much as drift in Joseph’s direction. “Dalessio was dangerous. We both knew that. I’d just finished passing the bodies of four little girls he’d killed, so it wasn’t a stretch to assume he’d put a bullet in my or Yanira Flores’s skull if he got the chance.”
“I completely agree.” And he did. Joseph was glad that Alton Dalessio was dead, but the creep’s untimely death was useful. “But I suppose I’m mostly wondering how you knew he wasn’t willing to surrender. Some guys like that, even some mass shooters will throw down their weapons so the cops won’t kill them, you know? It doesn’t make any sense to us, but there’s some twisted logic in their heads that they follow.”
Shifting awkwardly in her seat, Amelia turned to meet Joseph’s gaze with a sudden look of dominance. “It was a situational assessment. You know those, right?”
“I do.”
“You weren’t standing where I was. You didn’t see the look in his eyes, and you weren’t there when he told me he wasn’t going to prison. I’ve seen that look before, and I knew what it meant. He was about to make his last stand.” She shook her head. “As soon as I saw his arm lifting, even after I’d told him to drop his weapon, I knew what he was going to do.”
Joseph drummed his fingers along the doorframe as he pretended to mull over her words. He hadn’t actually seen her fire the shot that had killed Dalessio, but as far as the FBI was concerned, he’d been the only reliable witness. Though one of Dalessio’s victims, a sixteen-year-old girl named Yanira, had been inside the room with Dalessio, she’d been too scared to be reliable enough to pull into an official FBI hearing.
Joseph casually leaned against the headrest, choosing his words carefully. Not too threatening, they had to apply just the right amount of mental pressure. “I guess it’s a good thing that I was there to back you up, then. I don’t think the Bureau would’ve been all that keen on that response. Especially not with the spotlight that’s been shining on law enforcement in the past couple years.”
He swore he could hear her teeth grate together.
Though he wanted nothing more than to lay out his leverage over her, to request a pit stop, to see that beautiful shadow of defeat in her eyes as he watched her undress, he knew better. Amelia was smart and resourceful, and if he wanted her to bend to his will, he had to be patient.
He had the upper hand today, and he’d have the upper hand tomorrow.
This was a game he’d played before, and he’d never lost.
11
Shifting her weight from one foot to the other, Amelia fought against the urge to keep more than a professional distance from Joseph Larson. Fellow agent or not, Joseph’s presence gave her the same sense of safety and comfort as a stick of lit dynamite.
As they waited for Donovan Gillem to enter a code into the keypad so they could access MCC Chicago’s surveillance room, Amelia made a last-minute effort to pull together her thoughts.
Though her gut instinct—the same one that had kept her from falling victim to Mr. Davids, her grade school math teacher—told her there was a vile intent hidden beneath Joseph’s composed exterior, she had no tangible evidence to back up the suspicion.
Sure, her personal dealings with Joseph had revealed the truth of him being a prick with no qualms about lying to his so-called friend. As long as that lie meant he’d get laid. But in the near decade she’d spent in the military, in a profession dominated by men, she’d met plenty of guys whose skeevy behavior qualified them as womanizers.
Most grew out of the phase, but maybe Joseph was one of the special jerks who clung to their frat boy mentality.
His questions about Alton Dalessio could have been driven by genuine curiosity, as he’d assured her they were. If Amelia hadn’t been justified when she’d shot Dalessio, and if Joseph really had covered for
