Page 130 of I Know Your Secret
“Do you? Because last time we met, you didn’t seem to have a grasp on the gravity of me.”
“You’re a killer.”
“Mm. Too easy. Keep digging.”
“You’re a contract killer.”
I laugh, sitting back, at ease even though his hand’s on his service weapon.
He’d need a really good reason to fire it while off-duty, and he’d be investigated and lose his badge for a stint, he knows it.
“Not even close. I thought you said youknew?”
“I know you’ve been following me since you got released.”
“Correct. Look, you are smart. Maybe this little meeting of ours will change my opinion on the FBI. God knows our two agencies have been at war for far too long.” The breadcrumb drops onto the table, crawling into his gray matter like a pinworm of information.
“You’re government ops,” he realizes aloud, shifting in his seat.
As he should.
I say nothing in reply. Words aren’t necessary.
“But the way you display the murders… Oh, my God.”
The look in his eyes as he sits back against the Formica booth at his back is like the dawn of a fresh sunshine after a night fraught with storms.
“All the victims… they were hits. None of them were connected, or so we thought. But thinking about it now… they were all a means to an end. They all were some threat, or would be, to national security.”
“You know what they say about hindsight.”
“Fuck… Well, then, why have you been followingme?”
I give him a look of disbelief.
“Because you were ordered to. But why…” He trails off, his face losing all color as it occurs to him. “Because I was looking into Director Helms.”
“Ding, ding, ding,” I chime as he hits the nail on the proverbial head.
“He knows,” he mutters, scrubbing his hand over his face and forgetting all about his weapon perched on his lap.
“Seems he does. Your name was given to me right after my arrest, which was staged, but a smart fella like you would know that by now.”
Shaking his head, he sits forward and chugs from his coffee mug as if it holds the answers to the universe, as if it holds whiskey.
“You could’ve killed me already. Why haven’t you?” He narrows his eyes at me.
I sigh, drumming my fingertips along the table meditatively. “Because he went off script. Typically, there’s a protocol for how things are relayed to me, how business is handled. He broke it, and I wanted to know why, so I started digging.”
“And you’re here telling me this now, because?”
“Because he’s threatened something I hold dear in my life. Something I value more than my own neck.”
“They say love in this game is a weakness,” he says, lifting his brows in disbelief. “But sheisvery pretty.”
His comment has anger coiling through my veins like a venomous viper.
“I know what I’ve dug up on Helms, how his political motivations have bled into his work, but what were you specifically looking into?”
