Total pages in book: 115
Estimated words: 107079 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 535(@200wpm)___ 428(@250wpm)___ 357(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 107079 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 535(@200wpm)___ 428(@250wpm)___ 357(@300wpm)
The bullets that were dug out of my apartment’s walls and ceiling.
And it all snapped into place. “Oh, fuck,” I whispered.
I ran out of the bathroom and raced downstairs, to the evidence room. I searched through the racks of boxes, looking for one we’d received from Chicago PD, back when I first started the case. Bullets recovered from Radimir Aristov’s wedding, bullets that came from Gennadiy’s gun, when he’d fired in self-defense. They’d been dug out of a wall, too. Seven of them.
Except—I held up the evidence bag—now, there were only four. Three were missing. The same number that the attacker had fired at my apartment.
I felt a cold sweat break out across my back. I’d been scared plenty of times in my life, but I’d never felt so utterly disturbed.
Someone was trying to frame Gennadiy. Someone at the FBI.
I dug out the burner phone Gennadiy had given me and dialed. The line rang two times. Three times. Fuck. It was twenty minutes since Halifax left. He could be arresting Gennadiy any minute. Pick up! Pick up!
“Alison?” It was the first time I’d heard him say my name, and despite everything, the sound of it in his Russian accent sent a silvery tremble straight down to my groin.
“Get rid of your gun!” I told him. “They’re coming to arrest you!”
I could hear the frown in his voice. “My gun is clean.”
“Not anymore, it’s not. Someone switched out the evidence. They’ll run ballistics on your gun, and it’ll tie you to a crime scene. Get rid of it!” I was wincing, listening to myself. I didn’t want to think about how many laws I was breaking, telling a suspect about an active investigation. If anyone found out, I wasn’t just out of the FBI, I was going to jail.
“Why are you doing this?” asked Gennadiy.
“Because someone tried to kill me last night,” I said breathlessly, “and the one thing I’m sure of is, it wasn’t you.”
Silence for a moment. Then he started to say something, but he was interrupted by the rising wail of police sirens.
“Gennadiy?” I asked, panicked.
“I have to go.”
A door banging open. Raised voices. “Gennadiy?!”
But he was gone.
22
GENNADIY
They led me out of the casino in handcuffs. Me.
They took me to the FBI office and shut me in an interrogation room. There were three of them: two agents called Hadderwell and Fitch, and Alison’s boss, Assistant Director Halifax. They demanded to know where I was between three and four a.m. the night before. I told them the truth, that I was driving around, doing business. I couldn’t prove it, but they couldn’t disprove it. And thanks to Alison, they had nothing that placed me at her apartment. I’d passed my gun to Valentin seconds before the FBI burst into my office, and by now it had been sawed up, melted down, and probably buried for good measure.
“This is bullshit!” yelled Halifax. He’d been grilling me for an hour, and he was red in the face, his tie askew where he’d pulled at it to loosen it. “We know it was you!”
I scowled at him. I was having to recite the alphabet backwards to keep from lunging across the table at him. Someone in the FBI was trying to frame me. The familiar hatred of cops bloomed in my chest, clouds of anger spreading and darkening. But now there was a new element I’d never felt before, a rawness within the anger that flashed hot as lightning.
Whoever was behind this, they’d tried to kill Alison. My eyes burned into Halifax. Was it you? I looked at Hadderwell and Fitch. Or you? Or you?
The door crashed open. Silhouetted in the doorway was six-foot-four of muscle wrapped in Armani, topped with the sort of tousled surfer curls that make women sigh. Conrad Bryce stared at Halifax and the two agents in mock-horror. “Are you questioning my client without counsel present?!”
“Just a friendly conversation,” grumbled Halifax.
Conrad marched across the room and set his leather briefcase down on the table, a wall between the FBI and me. “Which is now over,” he told Halifax firmly.
Less than ten minutes later, I was walking out of the interrogation room a free man. This is why it’s worth having the best defense attorney in Chicago on permanent retainer. And it doesn’t hurt that we have a hold over Conrad that’s more powerful than money.
I wasn’t ready to leave, though. The cold ball of fear in my stomach wouldn’t let me. I’d spoken to her on the phone, so I knew she was okay. But I wasn’t going until I’d seen she was okay.
Halifax and the two agents walked me down a hallway, into the lobby…and my heart lifted. Alison was walking in through the main doors with a takeout coffee. She must have had a friend—my money was on the blonde with glasses–tip her off when the interrogation ended so she could be in the lobby just as I passed through.