Chương 13
His daughter stood near him, unbound.
Grant Hale sat on a folding chair twenty feet away.
Leo recognized him immediately: silver hair, expensive raincoat, broad shoulders softened by age. He looked less impressive without a podium.
Rebecca Sloan stood beside a steel table.
Ross Vey was behind her with a handgun.
Harold stopped.
Vey noticed him and smiled faintly.
“Mr. Bennett.”
“Where’s Darren?”
The smile disappeared.
Grant Hale looked at Leo’s tool bag.
“You came.”
Leo set the bag on the floor but kept one hand on the straps.
Cole looked toward Evelyn. “You sent copies.”
“Yes.”
“To whom?”
“Enough people.”
Hale sighed.
“That answer is usually supposed to sound stronger than it does.”
Rebecca looked at Leo.
“You have Thomas’s eyes,” she said.
“I have my mother’s.”
“That’s fortunate.”
Vey pressed the gun against her back.
“Enough.”
Leo looked at Cole. “The kidnapping?”
“My daughter agreed to help me get everyone here.”
Cole’s daughter folded her arms.
“My name is Maya.”
“Good to know.”
“She was never in danger from me,” Cole said.
“Only from the men you invited.”
Maya looked at her father. “I said that.”
Hale rested his hands on the top of a cane Leo had not noticed.
“Adrian promised Rebecca a trade. The memory card for the ledgers. He promised me the same card in exchange for leaving his family alone. He promised Vey that Thomas’s evidence would disappear. It has been an ambitious evening.”
Cole’s face remained still.
Leo understood then that Cole had not staged a meeting to solve the crisis. He had staged one because he had run out of separate lies.
Rebecca tapped two fingers against her thigh.
False.
Something Hale had said was false.
Leo looked at the steel table.
A black ledger lay on it.
Only one.
Thomas had said ledgers.
“Where are the originals?” Leo asked Rebecca.
Vey moved the gun higher against her spine.
“She doesn’t speak until we see the card.”
Harold stepped forward.
Vey pointed the gun at him.
“Stay there.”
Harold stopped, but his voice did not shake.
“Did you kill my son?”
Vey’s expression changed by less than a breath.
“He disappeared.”
“You told him to run.”
“I gave him an opportunity.”
“Did you kill him?”
“Hale’s people found his car near the state line.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“No,” Vey said. “It isn’t.”
Harold’s fingers curled at his sides.
Leo saw the old man preparing to move.
He spoke quickly.
“Darren left the card in storage.”
Vey looked at him.
“He expected something to happen,” Leo continued. “He recorded you because he knew you’d betray him.”
“He recorded everybody.”
“Did he record who killed Shawn Creel?”
Vey’s jaw tightened.
Grant Hale looked toward him.
There it was—a shift in power, small but visible.
Vey had not told Hale everything.
Leo continued.
“The recording was sent out tonight. Your voice is in it. Evidence time. Planted gun. My name.”
Vey aimed at Leo.
Evelyn said, “Ross, shooting him will not erase the files.”
Hale turned his head slightly.
“Is her phone active?”
Cole’s gaze dropped to Evelyn’s coat pocket.
Maya moved before anyone else.
She seized a metal rod from the table and struck Vey’s wrist.
The gun fired.
The shot tore into the ceiling.
Rebecca dropped to the floor.
Harold lunged at Vey.
Cole tackled Maya away from them. Hale rose too quickly, lost his balance, and fell against the chair.
Leo crossed the distance to Vey in three steps.
Vey struck Harold across the face with the gun. The old man went down.
Leo hit Vey in the ribs, drove him against the steel table, and grabbed his wrist. The gun fired again, the bullet breaking concrete near Leo’s boot.
Vey smelled of rain and aftershave.
He twisted free and brought the gun toward Leo’s chest.
Leo saw the muzzle.
He also saw the metal rod near his hand.
For one instant the world narrowed to the distance between his fingers and Vey’s skull.
He could pick it up.
He could strike once.
He had imagined killing men in prison. Not often, and never with pleasure. The fantasies arrived after phone calls, humiliations, news from home. In them, violence was clean. It ended confusion.
Harold, bleeding from the mouth, caught Leo’s jacket.
“Don’t.”
That small pull altered the angle.
Leo drove his shoulder into Vey instead.
They crashed onto the concrete. The gun skidded beneath the table.
Evelyn kicked it away.
Cole pinned Vey’s right arm. Leo held the left.
Vey thrashed beneath them.
“You think this clears you?” he shouted at Leo. “You drove the car. You were there.”
“I know.”
Vey stopped fighting for half a second.
The answer had denied him something.
Outside, sirens approached.
Grant Hale crawled toward the black ledger.
Rebecca stood and stepped on his hand.
He looked up at her.
“You’ll go to prison too,” he said.
“Probably.”
“You stole millions.”
“I moved money you ordered me to move.”
“You kept some.”
“Yes.”
No apology. No speech.
Rebecca picked up the ledger.
“The rest are already with an attorney.”
Two fingers had meant Hale’s claim was false. She had never brought all the originals.
State police entered through the loading bay with rifles raised. Commands filled the mill. Everyone raised their hands except Hale, who remained on the floor holding his injured fingers.
Vey began shouting that Leo had attacked him.
Evelyn repeated that her phone call had recorded the entire encounter.
A trooper handcuffed Leo anyway.
The metal closed around his wrists.
His body knew the position too well.
He looked toward Harold.
The old man sat against a column while a medic pressed gauze to his mouth. He gave Leo a small nod.
Leo sat in the back of a patrol vehicle for forty-seven minutes while officers separated witnesses and secured the scene. Rain streaked the window. No one explained whether he was under arrest.
He tried to slow his breathing.
May you like
The cuffs cut into his wrists each time he moved.
A young trooper finally opened the door.
