Abandon - Carla Neggers [12]
Outside, car tires screeched, but it was silent in the small, rented room. Harris had stayed here before. It was his refuge—his hiding place. He’d been so sure no one would think to look for him here.
“How did you find me?” he asked.
“You’re a creature of habits.”
“The bar…you followed me. Did you see me having coffee with Cal? Why didn’t you follow him?”
“He’s not the one who went to the FBI. Don’t try to pretend you’re the innocent here. Cal couldn’t have betrayed me without your help.”
Harris thought of his foyer at home, with its antique mirror and half-moon table. Once it had been filled with the sounds of running children and his wife’s welcome when he came home. He’d lost them all.
One beat, two beats passed. Harris absorbed the reality of just how much trouble he was in.
Finally, Jesse went on. “How much do you and Cal know about me?”
Harris didn’t hesitate. “Everything.”
He should have laid it all out for the FBI from the start and let the chips fall where they may. Instead, he had tried to play Andrew Rook the same way he’d played everyone else in his life who’d wanted to help him, to trust and believe in him. Subterfuge and betrayal were his art. His entertainment. He’d thought, why not practice what he was good at on the FBI? Rook was investigating, but he had little to go on. Harris had seen to that. He’d kept his revelations vague, promising specifics in future visits—keeping Rook’s interest without giving him anything concrete. Rook was in fish-or-cut-bait mode now. At their next meeting, he’d want details.
But Cal was right, Harris thought. He didn’t care about helping the FBI. He cared about saving his own skin.
The devil had come for his due, indeed.
“If you knew everything about me, Harris, you and Cal wouldn’t dare try to double-cross me.”
As if to further drive home his point, Jesse pressed his thumb onto the tip of his knife, drawing a pearl of his own blood.
“You’re a violent man, Jesse.” Harris felt some of his former presence on the bench come back to him. He’d never flinched in the face of what he had to hear and see in the courtroom. “You don’t use violence as a tool to get what you want. Violence is what you want.”
“That’s my secret, is it?”
“It’s your secret and it’s your weakness. Your obsession.”
Jesse smirked as he licked the pea of blood off his thumb. “You Princeton types. You’ve read too many Greek tragedies. I want my money. I want everything you and Cal have on me. I want to know what you know.”
“I’d never use what I know against you, and Cal won’t, either. It’s his insurance policy—to keep you out of his life. Jesse…” Harris gulped in air. Did he dare hope he could negotiate a deal with this man? “Jesse, you can trust me not to talk.”
“Seeing how you’ve been meeting with an FBI agent, no, you lying son of a bitch, I can’t trust you not to talk.” Jesse sprang forward and placed the knife blade at the side of Mayer’s throat. “I want my money.”
“I can’t—”
“You can, Harris. You can get my money.” He lowered his knife and stepped back, the split second of explosive anger dissipated. “We’ll find a way. Together.”
Through violence, Harris thought.
Through death.
“In the meantime,” Jesse said calmly, with a smile so cold it could only be the devil’s, “tell me something. Just between us.”
“What?”
“Who was the redhead with Judge Peacham last night?”
Four
On Friday morning, Rook awoke early to catch a flight to New Hampshire. His head pounded, and he was in a foul mood. He’d anticipated a very different weekend for himself. He’d expected to show Mackenzie the small Cape Cod house he’d inherited when his grandmother died a year ago. After seven years working in south Florida, he’d been offered an assignment in Washington, his home turf. Leaving him the house was his grandmother’s way of getting him to stay.
It was on a quiet, tree-lined street in Arlington. His two older brothers lived within walking distance. His younger brother