Something About You (FBI/US Attorney #1)(60)

Davis rocked back in his chair. “So we’ve got CPD to focus on, and, as an outside chance, the women who were with Cameron on Saturday night. By the way, Jack, I don’t recall seeing anything in your last report about you and Agent Wilkins attending a bachelorette party over the weekend. Strange how that got left out.”

“It was a last-minute determination made based upon the security parameters of the nightclub Ms. Lynde planned to attend.”

“Nice answer,” Davis said.

“No kidding,” Wilkins agreed, looking impressed.

“As long as we’re listing everyone who is aware of my involvement in the Robards’s investigation, I should mention that Silas knows. He found out through Godfrey,” Cameron said, referring to the FBI director. “Apparently, he called Silas last week to thank me for my cooperation in the investigation.”

Davis paused at the mention of Silas’s name. “Do you think it’s possible Silas told someone about your involvement in the case?”

“As the U.S. attorney, he certainly should know better,” Cameron said.

“I would hope so,” Davis agreed.

The conversation turned to the subject of Jack and Wilkins’s recent trip to New York. As Cameron listened while Jack filled in Davis, her eyes couldn’t help but be drawn to the cut above his cheek. In the emergency room, after she’d gotten five stitches for her “point two”-level gunshot wound, the doctor had offered to have a nurse take care of the scrapes on Jack’s cheek and hands. He’d waved this off, not budging from Cameron’s side.

So much had transpired between them over the last few days—first The Thing That Never Happened on her front doorstep, and then Those Things She’d Never Admit on Saturday night. Cameron had no idea what was going on with her and Jack lately, but as she looked at the cut on his face, she did know one thing.

She trusted him.

And since he now would be the one covering her twenty-four /seven, she knew that trust had to go both ways. Which meant she needed to tell him about everything that had happened three years ago.

Tonight.

WHEN GRANT LET himself into his apartment that night, he paused in the doorway, bracing himself to be shoved up against the wall and handcuffed.

It didn’t happen.

He exhaled, finding comfort in the fact that, at a minimum, Pallas hadn’t yet identified him as the masked man. How long that fact would remain undiscovered, however, was less certain.

To say that the afternoon had not gone as planned would be an understatement.

Grant crept through his apartment with the lights off, checking the view from every window. From his third-story perch, he looked down onto the street below for anything remotely suspicious—strange cars parked out front, a dog walker who just “happened” to be out at that time of night, a homeless person conveniently passed out in the alley behind his building.

He saw nothing.

For the second time in the two weeks since Mandy Robards had tried to blackmail him, he was furious. And now paranoid, too. Not a good combination.

Cameron Lynde wasn’t supposed to have come home from work so early. She also wasn’t supposed to have brought a friend home with her—not that he’d had any trouble getting him out of the picture.

He could’ve handled the police officers in the car out front. He had not, however, been ready for a standoff with Jack Pallas. The rage he’d seen in the federal agent’s eyes as he burst through the glass door was not something he’d expected. Nor had he been expecting the woman—who’d been relatively well-behaved up until that point—to try grabbing the gun out of his hand.

He’d been lucky, he knew, to have escaped when everything had gone so far awry from his plans. Thankfully, however, he didn’t need to count on luck in the future.

Satisfied that his apartment wasn’t under surveillance, Grant headed back to his bedroom and undressed. As he’d done a hundred times already that evening, he ran through the events of the attack and after, looking for the areas where he was most vulnerable.

No one had seen his face. Nor had anyone heard his voice, since he hadn’t so much as coughed during the entire attack. No prints left behind, thanks to the gloves. His getaway had been clean enough—he’d had to outrun those two worthless cops, one of whom had seen leaner days and the other of whom looked barely old enough to drive a squad car. Chicago’s finest. He’d lost them in an alley three blocks from the woman’s house and then high-tailed it a half mile in the opposite direction to the parking lot where he’d stashed his car. He’d swooped up the backpack he had left in a garbage bin along the way. By the time he got to the parking lot he’d shed the mask, the gloves, and the jacket, and was simply a man wearing black nylon pants and a long sleeve T-shirt while carrying his gym bag after a late-afternoon workout. Once he’d gotten back to his car and driven off, he’d pulled into another alley a couple miles away and changed into the suit he’d left in the car. The backpack, with the remainder of the black clothes and with the addition of a couple heavy bricks, was now sitting on the bottom of the Chicago River.

Grant walked naked into his bathroom and turned on the water to the shower. He studied himself in the mirror as steam filled the air.

There was one weakness.

He had no alibi. He wasn’t supposed to have needed one.

Sure, as soon as he’d dumped the backpack in the river he’d driven straight to his evening appointment—he’d met an old friend who worked at the Tribune at a bar in River West. Word had gotten out that a high-priced call girl had been murdered in one of the city’s most luxurious hotels and the unconfirmed rumor was that Senator Hodges’s name had shown up on her client list. The friend, who owed Grant several favors for all the times he’d given him early access to many of the senator’s political dealings, called to give him a heads-up and had asked to meet for drinks. Grant had been curious to know whether the senator’s name was being tossed around as a potential suspect, and how much his friend knew about the FBI’s investigation. As it turned out, his friend knew very little, and Grant got the feeling he was the one being pumped for information.