Murphy's Law (19 page)

He sifted through another batch of papers.
Where does Stucky fit in
? There had to be a connection. Too many things had gone wrong for coincidence. He might be named Murphy, but he didn’t subscribe to the theory of Murphy’s Law.

Only Stucky knew his contact in Tangier. Jack’s instincts told him that he missed something crucial—something so obvious it was right in front of his nose. Stucky had to be working with another agent who double-crossed him.

Yousef had been dead before Jack received the coded message to meet him. Only another agent or trusted contact knew how to send a message like that and where it would have to be delivered.

“Did you happen to notice anyone who called Santana regularly? Especially right before he sent a shipment?”

Lilly shook her head. “I know he had one business associate he met regularly, but I can’t think of his name. I only saw him once and that was in passing last year.”

“Can you remember anything about him at all?”

“I don’t understand, Jack. If you have the evidence and the file, why are you looking for more? Isn’t it enough?”

“If all we wanted was Santana, we would have picked him up months ago. And you too, for that matter. But dirty agents are another thing all together.”

“What do you mean, ‘and you too, for that matter’?”

Lilly had been pacing the room for the last few minutes, but when he glanced up, he found her towering over him with her hands on her hips.

“Nothing. I didn’t mean anything. We weren’t sure if you were going to meet up with Santana somewhere. When you didn’t, we had to wait and see if someone else was coming after you.”

“We?” she snapped out. “Stop pluralizing it like you are somehow uninvolved. If I’m going to walk into an office with you and have a set of handcuffs slapped on my wrists, I’d like to know so I can arrange for a lawyer first.”

Lilly’s mood changed drastically. Although she had awakened cheerfully, when he took the file out she became nervous and jumpy. She seemed to be reading ulterior motives into his innocent questions.

He ran his hand across the stubble on his chin. “What are you afraid of, Lilly?” “Am I a suspect in the deaths of those two agents, Jack? The truth?”

“If you were, I would have blown this case royally.”

 
“Meaning?”

“If I sleep with the suspect, they can’t bring it to trial. Any first year law student could get the charges dismissed.”

“They could say I seduced you.”

She looked so serious, but he still laughed. “Only if I perjured myself in court, Lilly. I knew what I was doing.” And he knew just how stupid he’d been. Witness or suspect, didn’t matter. Nothing he learned from her would be admissible in court if she refused to testify on her own.

“Do we have to tell them that, Jack? I don’t want something like that to make the papers.”

He knew she was thinking about her family, and what those kinds of revelations would do to them. The press notoriously blew sexual details out of proportion to increase readership. “I don’t think the issue will come up. The only thing they’ll want to know is if you returned voluntarily.”

She stalked around the room again. “Is my family safe?”

“Sit down here a second. I have to talk to you about something.” He pushed the file to one side and made room on the bed for her to slip in. “Now. Your family is safe. Someone is watching them. Okay?”

He dipped his head to peek under her lowered lashes. She forced a half smile and shrugged. “Okay.”

“But….”

“I hate that word.”

“I know. I just want to warn you, so you’ll be prepared. There is no telling what Santana might say to save his hide. You might find yourself answering some serious and embarrassing accusations.”

“I expected that. He was trying to frame me after all.”

“More than that Lilly.”

“Like what?”

“He might say that you are a jilted lover looking to settle a score. If he’s going to go down because of you, he’s going to try to take you with him.”

She waved her hand as if the notion was inconceivable. “That’s ridiculous! He’s old enough to be my father.”

“Do you think that matters? They’ll try to paint you as a conniving woman who came to New York to land a rich man. It happens every day of the year.”

“Next you’ll say that I’m after your money too.” Her flippant comment held an underlying trace of doubt.

“Unfortunately, what I think doesn’t matter. I’m just trying to prepare you for what a lawyer might try to convince a jury if he can’t cut a deal for his client. They’ll try to make him look like a poor sap that got pushed into illegal dealing to support a sexy younger woman with expensive tastes.”

She buried her head in her knees and sighed. This couldn’t be happening. Her relationship with Edward Santana had been strictly professional. “He didn’t even give me a Christmas bonus. I never had a business lunch with him, let alone a date.”

“I’m not accusing you. I just want you to know what to expect. It might not happen. Santana might turn over on the agents, and the whole thing will remain quiet. The department hates airing dirty agents in public. Something like that makes all of us look bad.”

She turned her head to read his expression. “How much of a chance is there of that?”

“That depends on which scares him more. Jail or his partners.”

“Why didn’t you tell me this before we returned?”

“I’m sorry. But it wouldn’t have made a difference. I would have brought you back anyway.” He gently stroked her hair. “You can’t spend the rest of your life running away.”

She had believed that the choice to return had been her own. She never dreamed she would have to answer publicly to charges involving her private life, however unfounded they might be. If he had warned her what to expect, she might have had second thoughts.

That wasn’t true. She believed in the system—innocent until proven guilty beyond reasonable doubt. Jack said she wouldn’t be charged, and he must have had some authority to make that promise. “When are we going back to the city?”

“When do you want to go?”

“As soon as possible. I want it to be over. I’m tired.”

He slid her down alongside him. Her head landed against the flat pillow, lending little comfort. “Get some sleep. We’ll leave around two o’clock.”

“I can’t sleep now. I meant I was tired emotionally, not physically.”

“Do you want to take a ride into town?”

Making a trip to the drug store was the last thing on her mind. “I’m not up for that right now, Jack.”

He stared blankly and then began to laugh. “Not for that. I have to make some copies of the file before we head back. And then, I want to return it to the safe deposit box.”

“Why?”

“I wouldn’t want the originals to disappear under suspicious circumstances. I’m not sure who is involved yet. I’m hoping your ex-boss will lead us, either willingly or inadvertently.”

Suddenly, the thought of returning tied her up in knots. There in the mountains, for a few days, she was able to block the world out. She didn’t have to think about her problems. And she didn’t have to think about Jack’s work. Even if everything went as he planned, this signified the beginning of the end for them.

How long would it be before they sent Jack on another case a continent away? She asked him for no promises, and he gave her none.

Misreading the cause of her fears, Jack cuddled her against him like a child and rocked her in his arms. “Everything will be fine, baby.”

* * * *

That was only the first of many promises Jack broke to Lilly that day. Everything that could possibly go wrong happened in almost comic proportions. He called in to his supervisor, only to find that issuing a warrant for Santana wasn’t necessary. Santana surrendered himself to the authorities that morning, in the company of one of the best criminal lawyers in New York.

“Is that bad?” she asked, as he slammed the phone back into the cradle.

Jack noticed the salesgirl staring at them from behind the counter and pulled Lilly out the door into the humid morning air. “It’s not good. Santana named you as an accomplice.”

“But he’s lying.”

“I know. But now you’ll be going in on the defensive rather than making the charges yourself. I would have preferred to go in on the offensive, but we’ll have to work around it.”

He suggested that she call a lawyer before they returned to the city, but she declined. She believed nothing would happen to her. She trusted his word. He lacked her optimism, so he called his own lawyer to meet them at the federal building.

As soon as they entered the building, they were separated. An agent led Lilly towards an interrogation room to make a statement alone. She didn’t utter a sound, but she gazed at him with panic in her eyes.

“Stay with her,” he instructed Mr. Lassiter, his lawyer. The balding, middle-aged man nodded to him, and then followed the assigned agent, sputtering something about legal counsel during questioning.

His boss summoned him into a private office. He entered and slammed the door behind him. “What the hell is going on, Winston?”

Samuel Winston leaned back in the large chair and pointed to the empty seat across his desk. The remains of a cigar littered the ashtray and filled the room with a foul stench. “Calm down, Murphy.”

“Calm down?” He paced the room like a mad dog ready to attack. “You’re treating her like a criminal, for God’s sake.”

Winston pushed a finger into his bushy brow and frowned. “You’re losing your objectivity. You may make a good case for her innocence, but Santana made an equally good one for her complicity.”

“I’ve got the file of originals that says otherwise.”

“Santana claims you have a file that proves blackmail. We are just going to get a statement from her. Then we can decide how to proceed.”

Jack threw himself into a seat and sucked in deep calming breaths. Losing his temper would do more harm than good. “I gave her my word that if she returned to testify she wouldn’t be charged.”

“You had no authority to do that.”

“I had your authority,” he shot back, pointing an angry finger at his boss.

Winston shook his head. “That was before Aaron Stockton was killed. If you had called in after the explosion in Nice, I would have told you that. We don’t cut deals when federal agents are murdered.”

Jack sprung from the chair. “Come on, Winston. Stucky was as dirty as they come. A double-cross killed him.”

“Are you sure?”

“Damn sure. When my contacts started turning up dead, I knew it could only come from him. That’s why I didn’t call in.”

“We knew we had dirty agents, Jack. That doesn’t mean Ms. McGrath isn’t involved.”

“Give me a break. She’s about as green as a Christmas tree and naïve enough to still believe in Santa Claus.” Or at least trusting enough to believe in a sterling knight who would come riding to her rescue. Right then, he felt tarnished.

Winston laughed. “Are you going to tell me that a woman never had you fooled, Murphy?”

“Not this one.”

“If she’s as innocent as you say, then she has nothing to worry about.” Winston paused, staring pensively. “She is at least as innocent as when you found her, isn’t she?”

“Meaning?” Jack fumed.

“Let’s not beat around the proverbial bush, Murphy. Did she charm the pants off you or didn’t she?”

Jack grinned. Those were the same words Lilly herself had used one night back in Morocco. “And if she did?”

Winston blew off like a cork on New Year’s Eve. He pounded his fist against the desk, sending a spray of papers around the room. “You jackass.”

“Cut her loose before you blow your entire case against Santana,” Jack warned his boss. “And don’t think that isn’t what Santana is counting on. He’s got someone inside advising him every step of the way.”

“You better pray that she’s willing to testify against him, Murphy. If I find out you set this up, I’ll make an example out of you that will have generations of agents thinking twice before accepting a payoff.”

Jack clenched his hands into fists of rage. “I may have gone over the line, but I’m not dirty and you know it. Whoever he is, I’ll find him.” He stared out the window at the murky waters of the Hudson River. Lilly wouldn’t be charged, and for that he was thankful. When she found out why, she might want to kill him.

Do the right thing. Make Santana pay for his crimes. Work within the system and everything will turn out all right. If that were true, he wouldn’t have a job.

Lilly wanted her day in court, but she wasn’t hard enough to stand up to the grueling cross-examination. Santana’s lawyer would destroy her on the witness stand, and she wouldn’t receive one shred of help from the prosecuting attorney unless she was their own witness. She wouldn’t be charged, but she hadn’t been pronounced innocent either.

“You better find him, Murphy. Your job depends on it.”

Jack thought to tell Winston just where he could stick the job. His paycheck was the least of his worries. Until he brought down everyone involved, Lilly wouldn’t be safe. Someone would always be looking to silence her.