Two
SOMETHING WASN’T RIGHT.
Cameron had been trapped inside her hotel room for nearly two hours while the Chicago Police Department supposedly conducted their investigation. She knew enough about crime scenes and witness questioning to know that this was not standard protocol.
For starters, nobody was telling her anything. The police had arrived shortly after the hotel manager escorted her back into her room. A middle-aged, slightly balding and extremely cranky Detective Slonsky introduced himself to Cameron and took a seat in the armchair in the corner of the hotel room and began to take her statement about what she had heard that night. Although she had at least been given two seconds of privacy to throw on yoga pants and a bra, she still found it awkward to be questioned by the police while sitting on a hastily made hotel bed.
The first thing Detective Slonsky noticed was the half-empty glass of wine that she had ordered from room service still sitting on the desk where she’d left it hours before. That, of course, had prompted several preliminary questions regarding her alcohol consumption over the course of the evening. After she seemingly managed to convince Slonsky that, no, she was not a raging alcoholic and, yes, her statement at least had a modicum of reliability, they moved past the booze issue and she commented on the fact that Slonsky had introduced himself as “Detective” instead of “Officer.” She asked if that meant he was part of the homicide division. If for no other reason, she wanted to know what had happened to the girl in room 1308.
Slonsky’s sole response was a level stare and a curt, “I’m the one asking the questions here, Ms. Lynde.”
Cameron had just finished giving her statement when another plain-clothes detective stuck his head into the room. “Slonsky—you better get in here.” He nodded in the direction of the room next door.
Slonsky stood and gave Cameron yet another level stare. She wondered if he practiced the look in his bathroom mirror.
“I’d appreciate it if you would remain in this room until I get back,” he told her.
Cameron smiled. “Of course, Detective.” She was debating whether to pull rank in order to start getting some answers, but she wasn’t quite at that point. Yet. She’d been around cops and agents all her life and had a lot of respect for what they did. But the smile was to let Slonsky know that he wasn’t getting to her. “I’m happy to cooperate in any way I can.”
Slonsky eyed her suspiciously, probably trying to decide whether he heard a hint of sarcasm in her voice. She got that look a lot.
“Just stay in your room,” he said as he made his exit.
The next time Cameron saw Detective Slonsky was a half hour later, when he dropped by her room to let her know that, due to certain “unexpected developments,” she would not only have to remain in her room longer than anticipated, but that he was posting a guard at her door. He added that “it had been requested” that she not make any calls from either her cell phone or the hotel line until “they” had finished questioning her.
For the first time, Cameron wondered whether she personally was in trouble. “Am I considered a suspect in this investigation?” she asked Slonsky.
“I didn’t say that.”
She noticed that wasn’t officially a “no.”
As Slonsky turned to leave, she threw another question at him. “Who are ‘they’?”
He peered over his shoulder. “Excuse me?”
“You said I can’t make any calls until ‘they’ finish questioning me,” Cameron said. “Who were you referring to?”
The detective’s expression said that he had no intention of answering that question. “We appreciate your continued cooperation, Ms. Lynde. That’s all I can say for now.”
A few minutes after Slonsky left, Cameron looked out her peephole and—sure enough—was treated to the view of the back of some man’s head, presumably the guard he had stationed outside her door. She left the door and went back to sitting on the bed. Cameron glanced at the clock and saw that it was nearly 7:00 A.M. She turned on the television—Slonsky hadn’t said anything about not watching TV, after all—and hoped that maybe she would see something about whatever was happening on the news.
She was still pushing buttons on the remote, trying to figure out how to get past that damn hotel “Welcome” screen, when the door to her room flew open once more.
Slonsky stuck his head in. “Sorry—no television either.”
He shut the door.
“Stupid thin walls,” Cameron muttered under her breath. Not that anyone was listening. Then again . . .
“Can I at least read a book, Detective Slonsky?” she asked the empty room.
A pause.
Then a voice came through the door, from the hallway.
“Sure.”
And indeed the walls were so thin, Cameron could actually hear the faint trace of a smile in his answer.
“THIS IS GETTING ridiculous. I have rights, you know.”
Cameron faced off against the cop guarding the door to her hotel room, determined to get some answers.
The young police officer nodded sympathetically. “I know, ma’am, and I do apologize, but I’m just following orders.”
Maybe it was her frustration at being cooped up in her hotel room for what was now going on five—yes, five—hours, but Cameron was going to strangle the kid if he ma’am-ed her one more time. She was thirty-two years old, not sixty. Although she’d probably given up the right to be called “Miss” somewhere around the time she had started thinking of twenty-two-year-old man-boy police officers as kids.
Deciding that throttling a cop was probably not the best way to go when presumably dozens more stood right outside her door (she couldn’t say for sure; she hadn’t been permitted to even look out into the hallway, let alone step a toe out there), Cameron tried another tactic. The man-boy clearly responded to authority, maybe she could use that to her advantage.
“Look, I probably should’ve mentioned this earlier, but I’m an assistant U.S. attorney. I work out of the Chicago office—”
“If you live in Chicago, what are you doing spending the night in a hotel?” Officer Man-Boy interrupted.
“I’m redoing my hardwood floors. The point is—”
“Really?” He seemed very interested in this. “Because I’ve been trying to find somebody to update my bathroom. The people who owned the place before me put in this crazy black and white marble and gold fixtures and the place looks like something out of the Playboy Mansion. Mind if I ask how you found a contractor to take on a job that small?”
Cameron cocked her head. “Are you trying to sidetrack me with these questions, or do you just have some weird fascination with home improvement?”
“Possibly the former. I was under the distinct impression that you were about to become difficult.”
Cameron had to hide her smile. Officer Man-Boy may not have been as green as she’d thought.
“Here’s the thing,” she told him, “you can’t keep me here against my will, especially since I’ve already given my statement to Detective Slonsky. You know that, and more important, I know that. There’s clearly something unusual going on with this investigation, and while I’m willing to cooperate and give you guys a little leeway as a professional courtesy, I’m going to need some answers if you expect me to keep waiting here. And if you’re not the person who can give me those answers, that’s fine, but then I’d like it if you could go get Slonsky or whoever it is that I should be talking to.”
Officer Man-Boy was not unsympathetic. “Look—I know you’ve been stuck in this room for a long time, but the FBI guys said that they’re gonna talk to you as soon as they finish next door.”
“So it’s the FBI who’s running this, then?”
“I probably wasn’t supposed to say that.”
“Why do they have jurisdiction?” Cameron pressed. “This is a homicide case, right?”
Officer Man-Boy didn’t fall for the bait a second time. “I’m sorry, Ms. Lynde, but my hands are tied. The agent in charge of the investigation specifically said I’m not allowed to talk to you about this.”
“Then I think I should speak to the agent in charge. Who is it?” As a prosecutor for the Northern District of Illinois, she had worked with many of the FBI agents in Chicago.
“Some special agent—I didn’t catch his name,” Officer Man-Boy said. “Although I think he might know you. When he told me to guard this room, he said he felt bad for sticking me with you for this long.”
Cameron tried not to show any reaction, but that stung. True, she wasn’t exactly buddy-buddy with a lot of the FBI agents she worked with—many of them still blamed her for that incident three years ago—but with the exception of one particular agent who, fortunately, was miles away in Nevada or Nebraska or something, she hadn’t thought that anyone in the FBI disliked her enough to openly bad-mouth her.
Officer Man-Boy looked apologetic. “For what it’s worth, I don’t think you’re so bad.”
“Thanks. And did this unknown special agent who allegedly thinks he knows me have anything else to say?”
“Only that I should go get him if you start acting fussy.” He looked her over. “You’re going to start acting fussy now, aren’t you?”
Cameron folded her arms across her chest. “Yes, I think I am.” And it wouldn’t be an act. “You go find this agent, whoever he is, and tell him that the fussy woman in room 1307 is through being jerked around. And tell him that I would appreciate it very much if he could wrap up his little power trip and condescend to speak to me himself. Because I would like to know how long he expects me to sit here and wait.”
“For as long as I ask you to, Ms. Lynde.”
The voice came from the doorway.
Cameron had her back to the door, but she would’ve recognized that voice anywhere—low and as smooth as velvet.
It couldn’t be.
She turned around and took in the man standing across the room from her. He looked exactly the same as he did the last time she’d seen him three years ago: tall, dark, and scowling.
She didn’t bother to mask the animosity in her voice. “Agent Pallas . . . I didn’t realize you were back in town. How was Nevada?”
“Nebraska.”
From his icy look, Cameron knew that her day, which had already been off to a most inauspicious start, had just gotten about fifty times worse.
Three
CAMERON WATCHED WARILY as Jack, aka FBI Special Agent Pallas, looked over at Officer Man-Boy.
“Thank you, Officer, I can take it from here,” he said.
The police officer made a hasty retreat, leaving her alone in the hotel room with Jack. His gaze was stone cold.
“This is quite a mess you’ve gotten yourself involved in.”
Cameron straightened up. Three years had passed, and he still managed to put her immediately on the defensive. “I wouldn’t know. Thanks to you, I have no clue what I’m involved in.” She paused, hating being out of the loop on whatever was going on. “What happened to the woman next door?”
“She’s dead.”
Cameron nodded. The presence of CPD detectives had pretty much given that away, but the confirmation of the woman’s death shocked her nevertheless. She suddenly felt an overwhelming urge to get out of that hotel room. But she forced herself not to show any reaction in front of Jack.
“I’m sorry to hear that,” she said simply.
He gestured to the chair in front of the desk. “Why don’t you take a seat? I need to ask you some questions.”
“Do you intend to interrogate me, Agent Pallas?”
“Do you intend to be uncooperative, Ms. Lynde?”
She laughed hollowly. “Why? Are you going to get rough with me?”
His eyes remained steely and dark. Cameron swallowed and made a mental note to be careful when taunting a man who carried a gun and blamed her for nearly wrecking his career.
She remembered the day three years ago when they’d first met to discuss the Martino case. She’d never worked with Jack before; at that point she’d only been a prosecutor for a year and he had been working undercover that entire time. She had been surprised—but eagerly so—when her boss assigned her the Martino investigation, one of the most high-profile cases in the district. Rob Martin (aka Roberto Martino) was widely known by both the Bureau and the U.S. attorney’s office to be the head of one of the largest crime syndicates in Chicago. The problem had always been getting enough evidence to prove this.
Which is precisely where Special Agent Jack Pallas came in. Prior to their meeting, Cameron learned from her boss that Jack had worked undercover for two years to infiltrate Martino’s organization, until the FBI had been forced to pull him out when his cover was blown. Her boss had not told her much about the extraction other than that Jack had been cornered in a warehouse by ten of Martino’s men, had fought his way out, and had been shot in the process. She’d learned one other thing—by the time FBI backup arrived, Jack had already managed to kill eight of Martino’s men.
He made quite an impression on her the first time he and his partner walked into her office. Cameron suspected nearly everyone who met Jack Pallas had the same reaction: with predatory brown eyes, nearly black hair, and dark facial scruff, he looked like the kind of guy that women—and men—should avoid in dark alleys. He had a cast on his right forearm, presumably an injury inflicted by Martino’s men, and he wore a navy T-shirt and jeans instead of the standard-issue suit and tie most agents were expected to wear. From the look of him, she was not at all surprised the FBI had chosen him for undercover work.
And three years later—as he stood across from her in that hotel room that suddenly seemed far too small, with his eyes glittering with a low-simmering anger, and, yes, even despite the standard-issue suit and tie he wore this time—he looked not one bit less dangerous.
“I want to talk to a lawyer,” Cameron said.
“You are a lawyer,” he said. “And you’re not considered a suspect, so you’re not entitled to one, anyway.”
“What am I considered, then?”
“A person of interest.”
This was bullshit. “Here’s the deal: I’m tired and not in the mood to play games. So if you don’t start telling me what’s going on, I’m walking,” Cameron said.
Jack eyed her yoga sweats and Michigan T-shirt, looking unconcerned with her threats. Thank God she wasn’t still hanging out in her underpants.
“You’re not going anywhere.” He pulled the chair out and gestured. “Take a seat.”
“Thanks, but no. I think I’ll just stick with the plan where I walk out.” Before he could call her bluff, Cameron grabbed her purse and headed for the door. The hell with her stuff, she’d get it later. “It was nice catching up with you, Agent Pallas. I’m glad to see those three years in Nebraska didn’t make you any less of an asshole.”
She threw open the door and nearly ran into a man standing in the doorway. He wore a well-cut gray suit and tie, appeared younger than Jack, and was African American.
He flashed Cameron a knock-out smile while precariously balancing three Starbucks cups in his hands. “Thanks for getting the door. What’d I miss?”
“I’m storming out. And I just called Agent Pallas an asshole.”
“Sounds like good times. Coffee?” He held the Starbucks out to her. “I’m Agent Wilkins.”
Cameron threw a knowing glance over her shoulder. “Good cop, bad cop? Is that the best you’re capable of, Jack?”
He stalked across the room and stopped in the doorway, towering over her. “You have no idea what I’m capable of,” he said darkly.
As he reached over and took one of the coffee cups from Wilkins, Cameron made a mental note to be careful when taunting a man who carried a gun, blamed her for nearly wrecking his career, and who was over a head taller than she was. She internally said a few profanities for her earlier decision to put on gym shoes; she needed at least three-inch heels to face off against Jack Pallas. Although that still would have only put her at his chin level. Not to mention that she would’ve looked like a major jackass wearing Manolos and yoga pants.
Wilkins gestured with the coffee cups. “Do you two know each other?”
“Ms. Lynde and I almost had the pleasure of working on a case together,” Jack said.
“Almost? What does that mean?” Wilkins turned to Cameron with a look of realization. “Wait a second—Cameron Lynde? I knew that name sounded familiar. Of course, from the U.S. attorney’s office.” His light brown eyes lit up as he laughed. “You’re the one that Jack said had—”
“I think we all recall just fine what Agent Pallas said,” Cameron interrupted. Three years ago, his words infamously had been broadcast all over the national news for nearly a week. She didn’t need to hear them again, particularly not with him standing right beside her. The experience had been embarrassing enough the first time around.
Wilkins nodded. “Sure, no problem.” He looked between her and Jack. “So . . . this is awkward.”
Changing the subject, Cameron pointed to the coffee. “Is that regular or decaf?”
“Regular. I heard you had a long night.”
She took one of the cups from him. She’d been up for twenty-three hours and adrenaline wasn’t cutting it anymore. She took a sip, sighing gratefully. “Thank you.”
Wilkins took a sip of his coffee. “See, that’s all we are, just three people having coffee and talking. So what do you say—think you might want to stay and chat with us about what happened last night?”
That almost got a smile out of Cameron. Wilkins, at least, appeared to be a pleasant, reasonable man. Too bad he’d drawn the short stick in his partner assignment.
“That’s not half-bad,” she told him.
Wilkins grinned. “The coffee or the good-cop routine?”
“Both. If you would like to ask me some questions, Agent Wilkins, I’d be happy to cooperate.” Cameron brushed past Jack as she turned and headed back into the room. He and Wilkins followed her as she took a seat in front of the desk. She crossed her legs and faced the two FBI agents head-on.
“All right. Let’s talk.”