Chapter 18
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Jack was already in the shower when my alarm went off at six thirty. I lay there for a moment, listening to the water run and the house settle around me.
I’d showered as soon as we’d walked into the house a few hours before, deciding it was best to get the grime of the day and the police station off of me before I got into bed.
So I was downstairs and dressed, pouring coffee into mugs, when he came into the kitchen.
He was dressed in dark jeans, boots, a white button-down with the KGSO logo stitched over the breast, and the shoulder holster he wore the way other men wore a suit jacket.
His badge was already on his belt. He’d shaved, and he somehow managed to look like a man who was well rested and ready to make one of the biggest arrests of his career.
“Surveillance check-in was five minutes ago,” he said, scrolling his phone. “Stavros is still home. He’s up and moving. Hops said he’s currently in his home gym doing a workout.”
The plan was clean. Units had been staged since seven at the King George Yacht Club.
He normally arrived just before nine according to the manager of the yacht club, and reserved the private terrace overlooking the grounds.
While Stavros was enjoying his last civilized breakfast, a secondary team would be executing the warrant on his home and other vehicles.
We drank our coffee standing at the counter and didn’t talk about what was coming because there was nothing left to talk about. The work was done. The evidence was locked. All that remained was the walk through the door and the words that would end Nikolai Stavros’s life as a free man.
His phone buzzed. He looked at the screen.
“He’s moving. Heading toward the yacht club right on schedule.” A pause while he read. “Time to roll out.”
“Creature of habit,” I said.
“Everyone is, even if they don’t want to be.” He set his mug in the sink. “Let’s go.”
The drive took twenty minutes. Jack called Martinez. Unmarked units were already in position around the yacht club. Plainclothes at the entrance. Marked cruisers on the access road, out of sight from the building.
The morning was cool and gray, the sky the color of old pewter, the fields dark with dew.
It was a Virginia morning that hadn’t decided what it was going to be yet.
The river appeared between the trees as we got closer to the waterfront, flat and silver, and the road wound through a corridor of oaks that were so old their branches met overhead and turned the asphalt into a tunnel of green and shadow.
The King George Yacht Club sat at the end of a private road on a bluff above the Potomac.
It was white clapboard with dark shutters, and it had a deep covered porch with rocking chairs overlooking the river.
The grounds were immaculate, every hedge trimmed, every flower bed edged, the gravel drive raked smooth.
The parking lot was already filling up—golf carts lined up near the pro shop, couples in tennis whites heading for the courts, families drifting toward the main entrance for the Sunday brunch that had been a King George institution for decades.
Stavros’s Mercedes sat in the designated valet lot beside the building.
Jack pulled up to the front entrance. Martinez’s unmarked sedan was already there.
The marked cruisers sat back on the access road.
Containment was the goal, not assault. If Stavros decided to run, he’d find every direction closed.
But Jack didn’t expect him to run. Men like Stavros didn’t run.
They sat in leather chairs and called their lawyers and believed that money could make anything go away.
We walked through the front entrance together. The lobby was bright and busy. The Sunday brunch crowd filled the main room, the clink of mimosa glasses, the low hum of conversation and laughter. A hostess looked up from her stand and Jack showed her his badge without breaking stride.
“Private terrace,” he said. “Which way?”
She pointed.
Jack walked through the main room and I was beside him.
Heads turned as we passed, not because anyone knew what was happening, but because Jack moved through a room the way weather moved through a valley, and people noticed.
Martinez stayed near the entrance, positioned between the terrace and the front door.
Not because he expected trouble, but because Jack didn’t leave gaps.
The private terrace was separated from the main dining area by a set of glass doors and a century’s worth of exclusivity.
It was wide and stone-floored, open to the river on three sides, the railing running along the edge of the bluff.
Below it the Potomac stretched wide and flat, the far shore soft with haze.
The morning air was cool and damp and smelled like mud and salt and the green tangle of the riverbank.
Rocking chairs lined the railing. A single table with a white cloth was set near the water.
Stavros was at the table. He had his back to the building and his face to the river, and he was reading the newspaper with unhurried focus.
An espresso sat at his right hand, still steaming.
A plate held the remains of toast and fruit.
He was wearing a white linen shirt with the collar open, and the morning light caught the silver in his hair.
From where I stood he looked exactly like what he’d spent decades constructing himself to be, a man of wealth and taste and absolute immunity from consequence.
Jack’s boots sounded on the stone. Stavros heard them and turned his head, not quickly, but with a measured pause.
He saw Jack. He saw the badge. He saw me standing three steps behind Jack’s shoulder.
And something moved behind his eyes, fast and calculating, the machinery of a powerful mind processing an unexpected variable.
But it wasn’t fear. It wasn’t even surprise.
It was irritation. The look of a man who’d found a stain on his shirt at a dinner party. A minor problem. Manageable.
“Sheriff Lawson,” Stavros said. He picked up his espresso and took a sip. Deliberately. Making us wait while he drank. “I have to say, you’re persistent. But this is a private club and you’re interrupting my morning.”
“Nikolai Stavros, you’re under arrest,” Jack said. “Stand up and put your hands behind your back.”
Stavros set the cup down and smiled. It was a real smile, wide and warm, reaching his eyes. “On what charges?”
“Conspiracy to commit murder. First-degree murder. Racketeering and criminal enterprise under the RICO Act.”
“Murder.” He said the word the way you’d say a mildly interesting piece of gossip.
He folded his newspaper and set it on the table with care.
“I assume you’re referring to those unfortunate events in the dock district.
Sheriff, I’m a businessman. I own property.
What tenants do with that property is not my concern or my liability.
My attorneys will have this dismissed by this afternoon. ”
“Your attorneys can try. Stand up.”
“You’re making an enormous mistake.” Stavros looked at Jack with patient condescension.
“I have resources you haven’t begun to imagine.
Legal resources, political resources, financial resources.
The people who matter in this county. The people who fund campaigns and sit on boards and decide who keeps their jobs.
” He leaned back in his chair. “Are you sure this is a hill you want to die on?”
“Mr. Stavros,” Jack said, his smile genuine. “My people would eat yours for lunch. I promise you don’t want to start a power war with me or mine. You’ll lose. And you know that, just like I know you’ve already looked into my entire background.”
“You’re making a powerful enemy.”
“I’ll add you to my list,” Jack said. “I’ve got video of you putting a knife into Joaquin Melendez’s neck. Remember him? One of the boxers who made you money.” He took another step closer. “Stand up. I’m not going to ask again.”
Stavros’ smile stayed and the composure held. But underneath it, in the place where the real man lived behind the construction, was a tremor in the foundation. The first crack in the certainty.
He stood. He took his time about it, smoothing his shirt and adjusting his cuffs. He was taller standing than sitting, and broader, and he held himself with the erect posture of a man who had never in his life allowed anyone to see him diminished.
Jack cuffed him. The steel clicked against his wrists. The sound carried across terrace and out over the water, and a bird startled from the railing and flew out over the river.
“You have the right to remain silent,” Jack said. “Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to an attorney. If you cannot afford one, one will be appointed for you.”
“I can afford plenty,” Stavros said. The smile was still there but it had gone thin and hard, like a blade turned sideways. “And I promise you, Sheriff, every one of them will be very interested in how this case was built. The methods. The sources. The corners that were cut.”
“No corners,” Jack said. “Clean warrants. Clean evidence.” He leaned closer and whispered. “A clean judge and district attorney. I found your payroll. Looks like this county needs to clean house.”
He took Stavros’s arm and turned him toward the doors. Stavros walked without resistance.
As he passed me he slowed. Not enough to stop. Jack’s hand on his arm kept him moving. But he found my eyes.
“Dr. Graves,” he said. “I heard you had some trouble at the funeral home. It’s a shame when we can’t feel safe in our own city. You should talk to the police about that.”
Jack walked him through the doors and into the club. I followed.
* * *
Martinez handled the transport. Jack watched them load Stavros into the back of the cruiser and close the door, and then he stood in the parking lot for a long moment with his hands on his hips, looking at nothing.
The morning light was strengthening, burning through the haze, and I could see the exhaustion in his face.
“I want to swing by the hospital later,” he said. “Cole should hear about the arrest from us, not the news.”
I was silent.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
“I don’t know.” I wanted to shrug it off, but my gut instinct had always been strong. “Just something bothering me about Stavros.”
“The fact that he’s a psychopath?”
I looked at Jack. “That’s twice now he’s mentioned the funeral home. Why?”
“I would say because that’s what psychopaths do, but I know that won’t be enough to ease your mind. Do you want to go by and check it out? You still have T-Bone’s and Dre’s bodies down in the lab?”
“Yeah, they’re ready to be released to family.”
“I tell you what,” he said, squeezing my shoulder and leading me toward the Tahoe. “Let’s swing by the funeral home and check on your residents. Then I’ll take you to breakfast. Someplace nice. With pancakes.”
I almost laughed. It felt strange in my chest, rusty and unexpected, like a door opening in a room that had been closed all week. “Are you asking me on a date?”
“I’m asking the most beautiful woman in the world to sit across the table from me and talk about anything but murder, dead bodies or police work.”
“Hmm,” I said. “That sounds like a challenge. You’ve got a deal.”
We drove with the windows cracked. The morning was warming, the clouds dissolving, and the air coming through the truck smelled like cut grass and honeysuckle.
I leaned my head against the window and closed my eyes.
Not sleeping. Just resting in the silence.
The week was over. The case was closed. Stavros was in cuffs, Kallas was in a cell, Vic was talking, and dozens of others were being questioned and processed into the system.
We’d dismantled Stavros and his organization. It was done.
Jack’s hand found my knee. I covered it with mine.
We turned onto Catherine of Aragon and the funeral home came into view at the end of the block.
Four generations of my family in that building—the three-story Colonial in dark red brick, the white columns flanking the front door, the two massive elm trees shading the yard with roots so old they’d cracked the sidewalk.
It looked the way it always looked. Peaceful.
Still. The windows dark. The parking lot empty.
Home. Not the house on the cliffs where Jack and I slept, but the other home—the one where I did the work that mattered, the one where the dead came to me and I translated what they had to say into a language the living could use.
My great-grandmother’s building. My grandmother’s building. My mother’s building. Mine.
Jack pulled the Tahoe into the lot and killed the engine.
“Everything looks okay from here,” Jack said. “Don’t let him get in your head.”
“You’re right,” I said. “Let me run in and check downstairs, and then pancakes.”
I unbuckled my seat belt and reached for the door handle.
The morning shattered.
The blast came from inside the building—a deep, concussive roar that hit the Tahoe like a wall of moving concrete and turned the morning into noise and heat and a blinding white flash that erased everything.
The shockwave caught the vehicle broadside and lifted it off its wheels.
Glass shattered inward and metal shrieked against concrete so loud it blotted out everything else, even thought, even fear, even my own voice screaming Jack’s name.
The Tahoe came to rest on its passenger side. My side.
I was hanging in my seat belt, glass in my hair, blood on my hands from cuts I couldn’t feel yet. The airbag had deployed and deflated, leaving a chemical smell that mixed with something worse—smoke, thick and acrid, pouring through the shattered windshield.
“Jaye,” Jack said. “Jaye, talk to me.”
“I’m here. I’m okay.”
“Can you move?”
Arms. Legs. Fingers. Everything responded. There were cuts on my hands. But nothing structural. Nothing broken.
“I can move,” I said. “I’m okay.”
Jack kicked out the windshield with his boots, the safety glass crumbling outward in a cascade of green-white fragments. He reached back for me, and I unclipped my seat belt and fell into his arms and he pulled me through the opening.
The heat hit me first. Then the light. Then the sound—the deep, roaring breath of a fire consuming everything in its path.
The funeral home was burning.