by Barker, Kira
“She didn’t die of exposure or an animal attack,” Wessex interrupted, “but of blunt-force trauma to the back of the head. The bites and predation marks all happened post-mortem. The body was found by a jogger at just after six in the morning.”
All I could do was stare at him, unblinking.
“You don’t need me to do your job for you,” was what I finally settled on replying. “I’m sorry I can be of no help to you. I told you everything I know.”
Donahue tried one last time. “So you don’t think that Darren Hunter killed her?”
I knew for a fact that he didn’t, but left it at an ambivalent shrug. “He didn’t while I was there, at the cabin. Whatever happened after I left his house I cannot account for.” Which actually was the truth.
The detectives both stared at me for another endless minute as if that would make me crack, before Donahue thanked me and led me back outside. After helping me into my coat, he handed me his card, with the telltale, “If you can think of anything else,” straight out of every deadbeat cop show that had ever aired on TV.
“I’ll let you know if I do,” I told him. “But, as I said, I’m the wrong person to talk to.”
As I stepped outside and hailed a cab, I wondered if I’d said too much. I’d stuck to the truth wherever possible, and the few white lies I’d dished were well in the realm of being plausible. Sure, my story wasn’t the most airtight alibi that I could have offered for Darren, but I remembered well that he’d repeatedly told me that the better the story, the more likely it was that it was wrong. People usually spent entire evenings or weekends on their own, with only one or two people to corroborate their whereabouts. It was the perfectly planned-out schedule that was suspicious—not the guy who spent the evening banging his ex after a breakup, then fell asleep from exhaustion.
I almost couldn’t believe it, but right now it seemed as if we were actually going to get away with this.
Chapter 20
I knew I had jinxed it the moment I stepped into my suite and found the entire gaggle of suits there waiting for me. I’d expected that to happen sooner or later, but not for all of them to show up at once, ready to beat a confession out of me. Rather than react to it, though, I just walked calmly by them to drop my overnight bag in the walk-in closet, and fixed myself a drink before I made a move to face the inquisition. By then, the scowl lines on Agent Smith’s forehead seemed to have become permanent, and she didn’t even react when I asked her if she wanted a drink.
“What the fuck do you think you are doing?” she bit out, her eyes virtually sparking with anger.
“I’m above legal age and don’t intend to drive today,” I remarked. “I think I can allow myself a vodka tonic.”
She looked ready to explode any moment now, but was only too happy to correct the error in my thinking.
“How did he get to you? What did he offer you to lie for him? I thought you had a shred of dignity left inside of you, but considering the bull you tried to sell those detectives, I see that I was wrong.”
So much for confirming my guess that she’d listened in on the interview from behind the two-way mirror.
“Everything I said was the truth,” I stated, keeping perfect eye contact with her so she couldn’t even think of calling me a liar—even though I was. A little. “And no one offered me anything. You are the one who keeps having unrealistic expectations and shoddy plans, and then you keep going off in my face when they fall apart.”
“You got that girl killed—“
“I did nothing of the sort!” I protested, probably a little too vehemently, but not showing emotions now would likely have looked way more condemning. “Just because you said I had to protect her doesn’t mean I ever could! It was your job, and you failed. And now you’re crucifying me for that? Great job. No wonder they demoted you, agent. If this is how you handle all your operations, it’s better you don’t get to lead any more in the future.”
Maybe not the best tactic, attacking her like that, but if she completely lost it, at least then I had a good reason for wanting to break with her. It was only then that I realized that sometime during the night I’d made that decision—Adam be damned. That thought made my heart sink, but really, what was I supposed to do? If she knew that I was the one who’d bashed Daliah’s head in, she would deliver me to the authorities, I had no doubt about that. Maybe I’d get manslaughter rather than murder, but, either way, I would end up in prison. As much as I hated it, Darren was my best option—he and his contingency plan. I would have felt a lot better about this if it hadn’t made me feel like a raving lunatic.
Rather than go off in my face, Agent Smith reined in her ire, making me think just a little better of her—a smidgeon, maybe.
“Have you forgotten what he did to you? And to all those other girls?”
I held her gaze as my jaws locked and my spine became ramrod straight, and my silence clearly spoke for itself. Of course I hadn’t forgotten. That was part of the problem.
“He didn’t kill the girl,” I finally bit out between gritted teeth. “What do you want me to do? Fabricate false evidence? I doubt that I could pull that off, let alone live to tell the tale.”
She huffed, but then taxed me with a calculating gaze.
“If he didn’t do it, then who did?”
That was not a question I wanted to answer, and I didn’t just imagine the hint of suspicion on her voice. Oh, just great.
Exhaling forcefully, I shook my head to indicate that I had no clue. “The man has way more enemies than allies, and you know how well-connected he is.” I paused, wondering just how much I was ready to doom myself, but then decided that if I actually wanted to throw my lot in with Darren—and Darren only—I would have to do it the whole way. “I had an interesting conversation with Alison Moss a couple of weeks ago.”
“And you didn’t tell me that?” she raged, but immediately got a grip on herself again. It was kind of freaky to see her manage that.
“I mentioned it, but not the details. I didn’t think it was important at the time. She mostly wanted to talk about me providing entertainment of a certain kind to her clients. Not me personally, but the girls.”
“No need to explain,” she grunted. “We’re all well aware of what you do for a living.” Oh, great. Now I got even more scorn for whoring someone else out than when I’d just done it to myself.
“That’s not the part you might be interested in. She also offered me money to make sure that Darren would drop Daliah.”
Agent Smith gave me a humorless smile. “Another task that you failed at, clearly.”
I didn’t let her taunt get to me.
“She also told me that I should let her know if I couldn’t do it because Darren was a lost cause. You see, she complained that he wasn’t quite ahead of his game since his untimely injury, and she chalked it up to Daliah being a bad influence.”
“And what you’re saying with this is…?” she questioned, but I already saw the answer in her shrewd gaze.
“What I’m saying is that Alison Moss insinuated that if Hunter was a lost cause, she would get rid of him. Maybe she got impatient and took matters into her own hands? Maybe she sent someone to do away with the girl. Or maybe just intimidate her, and some accident or other happened. Maybe she had her killed as a warning to him. I don’t know. I also didn’t get a chance to talk to him today since her death was discovered. I just saw him as we passed each other on the precinct steps. You had a much better chance studying him if you lurked behind that screen during his interrogation.”
Agent Smith considered my words, but I knew that I wasn’t off the hook yet when she narrowed her eyes at me.
“Why didn’t you mention that in your talk with the police?”
I shrugged. “I honestly only just remembered it now.”
“That you got paid to steal a man away from his fiancée?”
Grunting, I let her know plainly how stupid that statement was. “No one steals away a man of Hunter’s c
alibre. And if you couldn’t tell, I tried not to underline with each and every sentence that they could probably build a case against me for solicitation and prostitution. I didn’t really take Alison’s offer serious at the time, mostly because it already coincided with my goals. Shit, I think Hunter himself never took his relationship to that git serious. At best, I thought it was her way of saying that she was sorry that whatever happened to me happened, and now she tried to make up for it. I don’t know. What I do know is that this woman is way more ruthless than she pretends to be. You’re the one who can probably look up all the many suspicious things in her file. I can only build my opinion of her based on the few times that we met. She likes me, for whatever reason, and she thinks that I should be with her Darren darling. Those are the facts.”
She accepted that with a cool nod—and then dropped the bomb.
“Did you kill Daliah?”
Of course I had tried to steel myself for the possibility that someone, somewhere along the road would ask me that very question. It still hit me like a freight train.
“Excuse me?”
The bland expression on her face gave me the creeps. Had she actually seen right through me?
“It’s a simple question, isn’t it? Did you kill the girl? Just a hint—if you didn’t, you should already have answered with an outraged ‘hell no!’”
“Hell no!” I spit out emphatically. “How dare you even ask me something like that?”
Whatever Agent Smith had intended to answer was cut short by the “ding” of the elevator arriving in the outer foyer, making me look up, even more alarmed. I knew that my entourage, as Darren had coined them, had the code, but besides that, only the staff was allowed in here.
A moment later, a harassed-looking Philip the concierge came in—followed by none other than Ray Moss. If POTUS had walked in, I would have been less disturbed.
“Ms. Thompson?” Philip asked, honest-to-God wringing his hands. “Mr. Moss said he was your legal representative and that I was obliged to bring him right up?”
I hesitated only as long as it took me to blink. Ray was, for once, not doing that sleazy grinning, which meant that he was here on business. That could only mean one thing—Darren had sent him. Or Alison, but right now I wasn’t quite sure if there was a difference in that.
“Thank you, Philip,” I told him with a nod. “You may go.”
Ray took that as the invitation that it was, walking into the room as if he owned it. I was starting to see where his claim that he hadn’t just gotten his law degree for being quite the looker was true. His eyes quickly skimmed over the people scattered across the room, lingering on Agent Smith a moment longer.
“Eva, right? May I call you Eva?” he asked.
“You certainly may not!” she protested, her previous veneer of calm cracking. As much as I disliked Ray with a vengeance, I could see why he was the perfect man to stand at my side at the moment. It just irritated me to no end that Darren hadn’t warned me. He was well aware of just how deep my animosity ran. Then again, he had used Ray—repeatedly—in the past to help further his sick cause, so maybe I should have expected that.
While the agent was still fuming, Ray stepped up to me, and from the corner of his mouth murmured, “You still need to verbally accept that I’m your legal representative.”
I gave him the nastiest stare I could manage before wiping my expression clean with a jerky nod.
“I accept. Just tell me where I need to sign.”
“Verbal contract is binding enough for the moment,” he whispered back, before whipping around to confront the fuming fury in front of me again. “As I was saying, I will henceforth coordinate all communication that happens between the authorities and my client here. It’s about time that someone put an end to your constant bullying and intimidation.”
A few looks were exchanged between the other team members, and Adam seemed ready to get up and bitch Ray out, but they all held their tongues in favor of letting their boss do the talking.
“Mr. Moss—“
“Please call me Ray,” he interrupted.
“Mr. Moss,” the agent insisted, “are you aware that your client, as you call her now, just claimed that your wife is possibly to blame for Daliah Jones’s death?”
That did not only not faze Ray, but actually got a smile out of him.
“At best, she would have insinuated it, but I doubt that she is stupid enough to do that. Voicing possible options that you force out of her are non-admissible in court. So far, nothing that you have produced is, so you might as well stop with this charade.” He winked at Agent Smith, which just angered her more—something I could sympathize with, but if it got me off the hot seat, I wasn’t going to protest.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about—“
Once more Ray cut her off.
“You can cut the bullshit, as the kids say, Agent Smith. You were present when the police interrogated my dear friend and fellow law firm partner, Darren Hunter. You should also know that my wife is his legal representative, as it would be inane for him to represent himself. That, in turn, should also tell you that anything, and I mean absolutely everything that gets mentioned in that interrogation room lands at our desks the moment some underpaid paralegal has typed it up. You tried building a case against Hunter, and you failed. Now you’re resorting to actions that are awfully close to blackmail and intimidation. With that outburst of yours about Ms. Thompson here being responsible for Ms. Jones’s untimely demise—in front of eighteen very supportive witnesses no less—you have hung yourself quite eloquently. Whatever your game plan was, it failed. Now pack up your beauty case and go.”
“You think you’re so smart?” she chuffed at him, venom dripping from every word.
“I don’t just think so, I know so,” he informed her.
“Well, do you also know that we have this signed statement from your client concerning the past actions of one Darren Hunter here? You should read it. It makes for great bedtime perusing.”
My eyes went wide when she whipped out what I presumed was a transcript of that damn video she’d buggered out of me. I’d known that it was a mistake to let her tape that—no, scratch that, to even tell her—but it had seemed insignificant at the time. Now, not so much.
Ray accepted the stack of papers from her and took his time reading it. I watched his features carefully, but not a single muscle moved in his face. He also didn’t tense, or show any other form of distress. I myself was a lot more stressed about it than he. I was sure that it was all news to him, but he took it calmly—and when he was done, he looked at Agent Smith as if she’d handed him a groceries shopping list.
“Was there anyone present to represent my client? Did you inform her of her rights, and the possible ramifications of giving a statement without legal representation present?”
“No, but—“
“You do realize that it will take me less than twenty-four hours to attain statements from the three leading psychiatrists in the city, if not the country, that at the time of giving the statement, my client was suffering from a mental breakdown, and said statement cannot in any way or form be used against anyone mentioned, let alone to pressure her into any actions?” He gave Agent Smith a moment to reply—which she didn’t as she continued to gnash her teeth—before he turned to me. “Wouldn’t you say that is an accurate depiction of your then mental state?”
I knew that this, more so than taking Ray’s offer of representation, would cement that I had switched sides. Brigitte’s words echoed through my mind again—I had to look out for myself.
“Definitely.”
“Perfect,” he agreed, making the transcript disappear in his case. He got out a few more papers, a slow smile spreading on his face as he turned back to the gathered crowd. “These are not signed yet but I can remedy that within the hour.” He handed the stack to Agent Smith, whose eyes went wide as she scanned them. “These are restraining orders,” Ray explained for the rest. “You are t
o vacate the premises immediately, and that includes any observation gear you have still planted on the premises, or in my client’s electronics. If you don’t cease and desist with your ill-fated operation right now, you won’t be allowed to get any closer than two hundred yards to my client, on the threat of immediate prosecution. I would also like to inform you that we will take legal actions if you plan or execute any other, let’s say compromising acts toward my client. She is, of course, free to approach you herself, but if you even hint at pressuring her into anything ever again, I will have your asses. Now, if you have nothing else to say, I wish you good riddance.”
I could see in the slight slump of Agent Smith’s shoulders that she knew that she’d lost, but she had to try one more time.
“This is preposterous! If you think you can do that—“
“I have done that, many times before,” Ray informed her. “But I don’t have to, if you remember those oaths that you swore when they first let you into the service. I don’t remember badgering the innocent being part of it. It’s your choice. I don’t think my client will do anything if you just leave her alone. I get the certain feeling that this has been her only wish since returning to the city. To put what happened behind her and move on. You should take a page from her book, Agent Smith. Find yourself a new target that is actually obtainable, and move on. I’m sure that your career will recover from the hit it took. It won’t if you stay on the course you’re on right now.”
Her curt nod was so minute that I already missed it, but before leaving, she stopped in front of me, her eyes boring into mine.
“You never answered that question.”
I knew that she was referring to whether I’d killed Daliah or not. Apparently, that “hell no” hadn’t been enough. Before I could answer, Ray did.
“And she won’t. Leave, Agent Smith. This is your last reminder.”
For the second time that day, she was forced to retreat, and I could almost smell the lingering scent of her anger and frustration in the air. Adam once more pleaded with his eyes, but, again, I ignored him. I hated having to do this to him, but really, what other option did I have? They’d forced my hand—as had I, with my own stupidity. I’d made my bed—and I fully intended to sleep in it, too.
