Chapter 37
THIRTY-SEVEN
They were separated for the statements.
Dante was taken to a mobile command vehicle parked on Wharton Street. It was the same van, he realized, that Cole's team had been staging from. There was a dry-cleaning logo on the side and inside it smelled like cold coffee and electronics.
Cole was there. Dante hadn't known his name until the agent introduced himself. He was a compact man in his forties, tired around the eyes.
“You're Dante Cruz,” Cole said.
“Yeah.”
“Sofia briefed me on your involvement.” Cole sat down across from him at the narrow counter that served as a desk. “I need your statement. Everything from tonight, starting with when you arrived at the building.”
Dante gave it to him. The arrival, the front door, Sonny, the booth. Borya's questions. The twenty minutes. Jessica's arrival, the pat-down, the Ruger. Borya's description of what he'd planned for the basement. The lights going out. The escape through the kitchen.
Cole wrote it down without interrupting, his pen moving steadily, his expression giving nothing away.
“The woman who was brought to your table,” Cole said. “Jessica Meeks. She arrived independently?”
“She wasn't part of the plan.”
“No,” Cole said. “She wasn't.” He looked at Dante for a moment. “Sofia didn't mention her.”
“Sofia didn't know she was coming. Nobody did.”
Cole absorbed that. He made a note. Then he set the pen down and leaned back.
“We found Sofia,” he said.
The way he said it told Dante everything. The slight shift in Cole's voice from procedural to something more hesitant.
“Where?” Dante said.
“Mezzanine level. Security room.” Cole held his gaze. “She was shot during an altercation with one of Sokolov's security personnel.” A pause. “She didn't make it.”
Dante didn’t give any reaction; he just looked at the counter.
Cole was quiet for a moment. Then: “She was the bravest CI I've ever worked with. And I've worked with a lot of them.”
Dante nodded. He didn't trust himself to say anything else about it. Not here, not in the back of a van that smelled like dry cleaning, and not to a man he'd met ten minutes ago. He'd deal with it later.
“Is there anything else?” Dante asked.
Cole studied him. “Not tonight. We'll need you again, both of you, for the formal depositions. But that can wait.”
Dante stood up. Then he stopped.
The USB drive.
It was still in his jeans pocket.
If I'm not able to deliver the drive myself, she's at the Inquirer building on North Broad Street. She knows the name Sofia. She'll be waiting.
Sofia wasn't able to deliver it herself.
“One more thing,” Dante said. “I need to make a stop before the night's over.”
Cole frowned. “It's past midnight. Whatever it is…”
“It can't wait,” Dante said. “There's a journalist. Claire Okafor, at the Inquirer. Sofia set it up—the financial records, the network, the people connected to Sokolov who aren't in this building. The raid gets him. What I'm carrying gets the rest of them.”
Cole looked at him for a long moment. Dante could see the calculation happening, the agent weighing procedure against what he was asking.
“The drive is evidence,” Cole said carefully. “Technically, it should be—”
“Technically, three of the people on that drive are American law enforcement,” Dante said.
“Sofia told me that. She also told me the reason she went to a journalist instead of the Bureau is because she didn't know how far up it went.” He held Cole's gaze.
“You want to run it through official channels, you take that risk. Or you let me walk ten blocks and hand it to the woman Sofia trusted to do it right.”
Cole stared at him. Then he rubbed his face with both hands. “I'm going to step outside for some air,” he said. “I'm going to be outside for about twenty minutes. When I come back, I expect you to be here for the rest of your statement.”
“I'll be here,” Dante said.
Cole opened the van door and stepped out into the night without looking back.
Dante found Jessica where he'd left her, on the curb, the shock blanket back around her shoulders, a cup of something hot in her hands. The female agent was gone. Jessica was alone, watching the building, watching the lights.
“I need to do something,” he said. “It won't take long.”
She looked up at him. “What is it?”
He pulled the USB drive from his pocket and held it up. “Sofia gave me this. It's everything—financial records, the recordings, the people Sokolov is connected to. There's a journalist waiting for it.” He paused. “Sofia wanted her to have it.”
Jessica looked at the drive, then at him. “I'll come with you.”
“You don't have to.”
“I know I don't have to.” She stood up, letting the blanket fall again. “But I'm done sitting on curbs.”
They walked north on Broad Street. The city was quiet at this hour, just a few cabs, a few stragglers, the distant sound of a siren. The Inquirer building was ten blocks up, a glass tower that caught the glints of the streetlights.
They didn't talk much. Jessica's hand found his after the first block, and they walked the rest of the way like that.
The lobby was locked but lit. Dante could see a security desk inside, a guard reading something on his phone. He knocked on the glass.
The guard looked up, assessed them: a man with tattoos and a woman with pink hair, both of them looking like they'd been through something. He came to the door.
“We're here for Claire Okafor,” Dante said. “She's expecting us. Tell her it's from Sofia.”
The guard made a call. Two minutes later, a woman appeared from the elevator bank. She was Black, mid-thirties, clutching a reuseable cup.
She looked at Dante, then at Jessica, then at the drive in Dante's hand.
“You're from Sofia,” she said.
“Yeah.”
“Is she—” Claire stopped. She read something in his face and the question seemed to answer itself in her mind.
Dante held out the drive. “She wanted you to have this. She said you'd know what to do with it.”
Claire took the drive. She held it in both hands, looking at it, and Dante saw her fingers tighten around it.
“I've been waiting six years for this,” she said quietly.
“Sofia waited longer,” Jessica said.
Claire looked at her and nodded. “I'll do right by it. By her.”
They left the building and stepped back onto Broad Street. The sky was starting to lighten in the east, a thin grey line separating the buildings from the dark. Dawn was coming. Dante couldn't remember the last time he'd slept.
Jessica leaned into him as they walked south, her head against his shoulder, her hand still in his.
“Where do we go?” she asked.
“I don't know,” he said. “But we'll figure it out.”
She squeezed his hand, and they kept walking, south on Broad Street, toward the grey light, toward whatever came next.