Chapter Thirty-One

“Fucking hell,” Sam said as he emerged from the construction site. The gate struck the protective fence with a crash and then wobbled halfway back.

But he was too late. Lew was gone.

Sam took a deep breath and glanced around. Dusk was deepening into dark, and above them, lights hung like mothballs, but the city was in motion again—whatever disturbance the chase and the gunshots had produced, the street outside the Javits was already subsiding into its ordinary rhythm. A few passersby startled at his sudden emergence from the construction site and circled around him, but others only gave him cursory looks, and many didn’t even seem to notice. Back toward the convention center’s main entrance, a couple of squad cars were parked with their lights on, and uniformed officers appeared to be taking statements.

It was harder than Sam would have liked to let go of thoughts of running out into the street, trying to spot the cab Lew had taken. He forced himself to say, “We need to get out of here.”

He turned away from the squad cars and started uptown. A moment later, Rufus fell in beside him. At first, Sam walked fast—in part to get away from the police, and in part because he needed to move. The ache built in his hip, though—a reminder of his encounter with the trust fund baby in the Audi—and after the first block, he slowed. The adrenaline started to ebb; in its wake came exhaustion and a distancing numbness. They passed a litter-choked bus depot, and then the massive concrete shell of a parking garage, and then a glass tower of luxury suites. He was vaguely aware that the juxtaposition had ceased to shock him. And then he realized he’d thought of it as walking uptown , and not north or northeast. It was like someone turned a little valve, and the pressure went down, and he laughed, even though it didn’t really feel like a laugh.

“He’s full of shit,” he said.

“About choking on it,” Rufus said by way of agreement.

“Did you see his face when you asked him about Colonel Bridges?”

Rufus was nodding. “I thought military guys were supposed to have great poker faces.”

That made Sam snort. They walked a few yards before he said, “He killed him. And he didn’t plant those emails to blow Stonefish open. He left them because he didn’t know the colonel had them, the dumbass.”

Rufus blew a raspberry. “What’re we gonna do, Sam?”

“Do you think he killed Went?” A beat of silence passed between them, and Sam struggled to break it. “He lied about the colonel. Do you think he lied about Went?”

Rufus kicked a Coke can into a pile of black-crusted snow alongside the edge of the road. He said, voice low, “I don’t think my opinion means all that much. But maybe. Yeah. I’ve dealt with enough bad people to know when they’ve committed the ultimate act. It’s a kind of… deadness in their eyes. Lew has dead eyes.”

There was so much to say to that. So much to—to think. Instead, Sam nodded. His body carried him forward on autopilot, and they kept walking.

The cold, which he’d barely felt at first, began to settle into him. The wind picked up, gusting down the street, whipping his hair, catching up discarded flyers and empty foam cups and a flattened pack of Marlboro Reds and shoveling them down the street. Went had liked winter. He’d had a little Christmas tree, and he wasn’t supposed to have that. He’d played Etta James’s 12 Songs of Christmas on his phone and let Sam listen to one of the earbuds. It hadn’t been love; he loved Rufus. But he remembered the way Went’s cheeks turned red in the cold.

“He didn’t know about Jen,” Sam said. His voice rasped, and he cleared his throat. “When you asked, it took him by surprise.”

“You think so?”

“I mean, he knew who she was, but he didn’t react the same way he did when you asked about the colonel.” Sam checked Rufus in the pale wash of the streetlights. “What did you think?”

“Well….” Rufus let out a long, slow breath, and it was like smoke on the night. “He knows she’s involved now. We said her name. But Lew was the one to suggest she’d been ‘dragged into this.’”

“Right. Shit.” Ahead of them, the light at the intersection changed—some jackhole in a Mercedes blazed through the red, while a guy in an old red beater tried to make the turn. They missed an accident by millimeters. Sam said, “I guess we fucked that up. But why didn’t he know about Jen? I mean, she’s up to her nose in this shit, right? You heard her talking to Del—she had him by the balls.”

“Lew might not have known about her, but what if Jen knew about Lew?” Rufus asked. “Del is the common denominator, isn’t he? Lew got directions from someone. Maybe it was Del—who got them from the Congresswoman.” Rufus was making a face when Sam caught his look. “Does that sound like I need to be wearing a tinfoil hat?”

“Maybe we both need tinfoil hats. Jen was definitely giving Del orders, but—I don’t know. At this point, I honestly just don’t know. Would she have cared about the colonel leaving Conasauga? Would she have tried to get rid of Evangeline? I mean, I just don’t fucking know. But she’s got something on Del—remember how he put his tail between his legs? And she didn’t like that we knew something about Stonefish.” Sam blew on his hands and then, in a different tone, said, “She’s got something on Del, Rufus.”

Rufus stopped walking. “People kill each other for a lot of stupid reasons, but mostly it’s either romantic disputes or money. Sometimes that money might be twelve dollars and an old Blockbuster membership card, and other times, it might be your lobbyist husband losing millions when a competing developer takes the stage against Conasauga. But if all the biggest and brightest stars are suddenly dead….” Rufus raised his eyebrows. “No Shareed to blow a whistle on past projects gone wrong. No Evangeline to take company secrets. No colonel to take business connections.”

“Kind of what I was thinking,” Sam said. “Fuck. I wish we’d held on to Lew.”

“Fuck Lew. I hope he’s hit by a bus,” Rufus replied harshly. “We don’t need him. I think we should take it upon ourselves to look into Jennifer Nasta.”