Chapter Nineteen #2
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” His hands curled into fists against his thighs. Sweat had broken out along his hairline.
Remi reached into his jacket and pulled out a printed photograph, holding it below the dim glow of the overhead light.
Brad’s own frightened face stared back at him, caught mid-glance in the rearview mirror of a car running a red light, four blocks from a hotel where a man had supposedly killed himself.
Brad stared at the photograph. His face changed.
“Oh, shit.”
Brad’s stomach heaved.
Remi recoiled so fast his shoulder hit the door. “Absolutely not.”
Brad slapped a hand over his mouth.
“Swallow it,” Remi ordered.
Brad glared at him over his fingers.
“I mean it. I just met you. We are not becoming that close.”
Brad’s Adam’s apple bobbed violently. After several horrible seconds, he lowered his hand.
Remi gave him another few inches of space for insurance.
“You were in Kansas City,” Leo prompted, “at 11:40 on the same night Vic died coincidentally, some four blocks from the hotel. You want to explain that, Brad, or should we?”
The Escalade’s tires hummed against the highway, headlights sweeping past in the opposite lanes. Brad sat frozen against the door, staring at his own face on the piece of paper as though it belonged to a stranger.
“You don’t understand what he was about to do.
” The words cracked around the edges. The bluster was gone.
“Vic was going to blow the whole thing up. Everything we’d built.
Years of work, and he was going to walk into some reporter’s office and hand it over because his conscience wouldn’t let him leave it alone. ”
“So you killed him.” Leo’s voice had gone cold.
“I didn’t have a choice.” Brad rubbed both hands over his face, missed one cheek, and gave up. “You think I wanted to? We paid him. He took the money. That was supposed to be the end of it.”
“Paid him for what?” Anja asked.
“To stop digging.” His breathing turned ragged, the words beginning to outrun whatever judgment the whiskey had left him.
“Some pitcher’s mother went crying to him about a gambling debt that disappeared.
Vic started asking questions, following money he had no business pursuing.
We offered him enough to forget what he found, and he took it. ”
“But he didn’t stop,” Leo said.
“No.” Brad gave a broken laugh. “Apparently, taking the money gave him a guilty conscience. He couldn’t sleep. Couldn’t live with himself. Whatever. So instead of enjoying the payday and leaving well enough alone, he kept digging.”
“And found the rest of it,” Anja finished.
“Enough of it.” Brad stared at his hands.
His eyes had gone glassy and unfocused, the whiskey and the confession loosening things he clearly never intended to say out loud.
“The whole thing runs on nobody talking. Athletes throw a game here, blow a call there, and money moves through channels nobody can trace. That’s how it was supposed to work.
Everybody gets rich, and nobody gets hurt.
That was the deal. That was always the deal. ”
“Vic wasn’t part of your deal,” Leo bit out.
“He took the money.”
“To stop investigating you.”
“Same difference.”
“No,” Leo snapped. “It sure as hell isn’t.”
Brad flinched.
“How did Vic end up in Kansas City?” Anja asked.
Brad clamped his lips shut.
“Brad?”
“We gave him something he couldn’t resist.” He swallowed. “A whistleblower. Somebody claiming to have proof of the entire operation and willing to turn it over.”
Leo stared at him. “There was no whistleblower.”
Brad shook his head.
“The hotel room was a setup.”
“I was supposed to get whatever he had.” Brad sighed.
“Find out how much he knew, where he put it, and who else he’d talked to.
I drugged his drink to keep things calm.
It wasn’t supposed to be that much.” Brad looked down again.
“I just needed him out long enough to search the room, find the burner phone we contacted him with, and figure out what he’d done with everything. ”
“You killed him,” Leo repeated.
“I made him shut up.” Brad swallowed. “Permanently, I guess.” His face crumpled for half a second before he dragged it back under control. “That part wasn’t the plan.”
Leo narrowed his eyes. “And then you made it look like suicide.”
Brad didn’t respond. He didn’t need to.
“And Danica?” Anja’s eyes found his in the mirror. “What was your plan for her?”
Brad flinched at the name. “She’s a blabbermouth.
She asked questions she had no business asking, about things she shouldn’t have known enough to ask about in the first place.
” He scowled toward the windshield. “I told her to shut up. She was fine with everything for years, and then suddenly she gets all chatty at a wake of all places and starts asking your girlfriend about break-ins.” His eyes cut to Anja.
“That’s on you, you know. If you hadn’t been standing there, she’d still be alive. ”
“Don’t,” Leo growled.
“It’s the truth.” Brad’s laugh came out ugly. “Everybody who talks becomes a problem. Danica talked. Vic talked. Tim—”
He stopped himself, but it was too late. Remi saw the instant Brad realized it too.
“What about Tim?” Leo forced the words through clenched teeth.
Brad closed his mouth and shook his head.
“What about Tim Hargrove, Brad?” Leo’s voice roughened. “He was healthy, and all of a sudden he drops dead of a heart attack a week before everything starts falling apart?”
“He wanted to take it over!” The words exploded out of Brad.
“He got greedy. Wanted a bigger piece.” His eyes drifted past all of them, staring at nothing.
“It was easier to manage a heart attack than a whistleblower. Hell, he was sixty years old with a stressful career. Nobody was going to question it.”
Three people were dead, and Brad had reduced every one of them to a logistical problem he’d solved on his way to a bigger payday.
“You’re done,” Leo gritted out. “You understand that, right? Whatever this was, it’s over.”
“No.” Brad lifted his head. His eyes were bloodshot and unfocused, but something feral had surfaced behind them. “No, it’s not.”
“It is.”
“I won’t let it be.”
“Is that a threat?” Remi asked.
“It’s a promise.”
Remi regarded him. “You might want to sober up before you start making those. Right now you can’t pronounce kidnapping.”
Brad’s hand moved fast, faster than his drunken stupor should have allowed, and steel flashed in the dim cabin light before Remi fully registered what it was.
The knife caught him in the side, a hot, tearing shock that stole the breath clean out of his lungs.
“Remi!” The Escalade lurched as Anja’s attention split between the road and the rearview mirror.
Brad lunged again, blade swinging toward the front seat. Remi threw his weight into him hard enough to drive them both against the door, his hand clamping around Brad’s wrist to keep the knife from finding Anja.
“Drive,” Remi bit out through gritted teeth, blood soaking hot through his shirt. “Anja, don’t stop, just drive.”