The Darker You Get

“Unique story mixed with crime and other-worldly things … a page turning adventure.”

Chapter 1

Their brief partnership broke up at the elevator. “They all shut down?” Yuri said, waving a hand at the row of elevator doors. “Cops taking stairs?” “No,” Lev said. “They’ll leave one working so we take it down. They’ll meet us with open arms. And loaded weapons.”
Yuri pushed a button. Three elevators over, the doors slid apart. “So we stop at a lower floor and hide.”
Lev grabbed his arm. “The cops know it’s a hostage situation. They’ll be amped up like crazy. Maybe a hundred on the way, the block sealed off, SWAT guys  every exit. Cops going room to room.”
Yuri brushed him aside, stepped into the elevator, gripping the two laptops like the best Christmas presents ever. Lev followed. Yuri punched the lobby button.
“You’re not serious?” Lev said. “The lobby?”
“Cops are slow. Won’t be there. If not, and they shoot, then I shoot too. We find out who’s best.” This wasn’t a plan. His killing of Rudin had triggered a madness Lev knew about. Guys began to act like they were invincible, God’s avengers, ready to dish out wrath at any provocation. 
Yuri’s only advantage tonight was darkness; his chances of escaping a police cordon with firepower were zero. As a recent arrival in the USA, a former FSB operator, he still assumed his new country operated as inefficiently as his old one. Lev, born and raised here, knew better.
Lev punched the tenth-floor button. “You’re on your own, show ’em how good you are.”
Yuri raised his Glock. “I might need covering fire.”
The fool stood too close. Lev snapped a back hand into Yuri’s wrist. The gun clattered across the elevator floor and spun to a stop.
Lev jammed his foot on it as the elevator stopped and doors opened. He edged his head out. Hallway empty.
He sensed movement behind him and whipped his elbow back, catching Yuri in the temple as the idiot bent for his gun. Yuri slumped on his butt, blinking. Lev dragged him to his feet and thrust him into the hall. He stopped the doors closing with his foot and threw Yuri’s gun down the hallway and dropped the laptops at his feet. One of them once held a million bucks in Bitcoin, until a bullet changed everything. Yuri still believed he could retrieving the Bitcoin keys and cash out. 
“Your best bet?” Lev said. “Walk out with your hands up and pray a life sentence saves you from Rudin’s family.” He stepped back and let the doors close. The elevator dropped two more floors before he remembered the lobby would be full of SWAT guys. He hit the button for the next floor. The elevator responded immediately, slowing to a halt.
If the cops were taking the stairs and waiting on this floor, he wouldn’t live another minute if he drew his gun. It’d be all over. He’d have to take his chances with lawyers and money.
The doors chimed and parted like gates to a fresh hell.
He tensed for a firestorm of bullets but none came. No cops. He sprinted along the hallway searching for a door opening into linen storage. Might contain cleaning supplies, a trolley, an outfit. Anything he could use to pass off as a hotel staff member.
He spotted something better: a man entering a room. He drew his Glock, reached the door and knocked. “Police! Open up.”
The door opened a crack; the security chain still hung loose. He kicked the door wide and stepped in. No other visible occupants.
“We’re searching for two male fugitives,” he said to the guy holding a plastic ice bucket to his chest like a shield. “They’re hiding in the hotel.”
The guy said nothing, blinking, cranking his brain into gear. He had a wolfish look, a face you could trust only in daylight.
“ID,” Lev said. The guy placed the ice bucket on a small table, pulled a wallet out of his back pocket, and extracted a driver’s license. The photo showed a man with a healthy beard. Same height as Lev. Name of Edward Arthur Conley.
“Eddie, is it?” The guy nodded. “Well, Eddie, don’t the police have an issue with this beard?” Lev asked. “You don’t much look like this guy.”
The guy found his voice. “I thought you were the police.”
“What do other police do when they see this photo?” “Mostly nothing. Sometimes they ask for more IDs.”
Lev put out a hand. “Wallet.”
Eddie hesitated. He’d figured Lev wasn’t the real deal, and was maybe thinking of making a move. Lev gave him something else to think about.  He lifted his gun until Eddie stared into the barrel of darkness.
He handed over the wallet. Lev tossed it on the dresser.
“Turn around. Lift your arms,” he said. “I have to search you.”
“Yeah right.” But Eddie obeyed. His left hand showed a wedding ring.
Lev stood to one side in case he tried to kick back, and patted him down. “Anybody else here?”
“A friend. In the bathroom.”
The bed was pristine; a leather briefcase lay there, an expensive looking female business suit also. A black burlap tote bag completed the picture. A man’s jacket, Eddie’s, he guessed, decorated an armchair back. The coffee table held champagne waiting for the ice bucket, and a couple of glasses. A friend, not a wife.
“Take a seat, Eddie,  I need to check this out.”
“She’s in the bath.”
How sweet. A girlfriend prepping for her married lover. “I won’t peek longer than necessary.”
“Look, can we sort this out somehow? I’m not the guy you’re looking for, and nor is my friend. She’s not a guy for a start.”
“I’ll be gentle. I’m very experienced at gender sorting.”
“You’re no cop.”
Lev lifted his gun and pointed at the bed. “Behave, I’ll be right back.”
Eddie sat on the edge, his hands back on his knees, fingers clasping and unclasping.
A volley of gunshots exploded somewhere far below, and Eddie jumped up. Lev swung the gun around to him.
“That,” he said, “is the sound of cops finding a suspect they’re allowed to shoot at.”
“I can—”
He pointed to the bed again, and Eddie sat. Lev moved to the bathroom and swung the door open.

CHAPTER 2

Lev wasn’t expecting an angel in the bathroom, but this woman came close. She reclined in a full, sudsy over-sized bath and gazed back at him with questioning brows. Tumbled blonde hair chopped to frame her face, sleepy green eyes, no shower cap. Gorgeous.
“Mrs. Conley, I presume?” he said.
“Yeah. Sure,” she replied. The suds were banked up around her to reveal nothing exciting. Schoolgirls flashed more on the streets.
“You alone in the bath?”
“Thinking of joining me?”
“No. I’m searching for a fugitive.”
She grinned. “If he’s underwater, dear stranger, he’s either very busy or very drowned.”
Her eyes flicked to his gun and back to his face. Lev glanced back at Eddie, still on the bed, fidgety as hell.
“Bend your knees,” Lev said. “Then straighten your legs again.”
She didn’t move. “I want to be sure you’re alone.” She moved her legs like he said, but with such elegance.
“Your name?”
“Carol.”
“Carol Conley. Nice Hollywood name.”
She tilted her head and beamed, fearless as anything.
“Where’s your phone?” he asked.
She lifted a lazy left hand, suds decorating her knuckles, no wedding ring, and pointed to the main room.
Lev found the phone in the tote bag. “I need yours, too,” he told to Eddie.
“You’re not a cop,” Eddie protested but produced a phone from his pants pocket. “How much do you need to settle this? I can go ten thousand.”
Water sloshed in the bathroom. Lev ignored Eddie and returned to the woman. She sat still, watching him.
“You wanna use your phone?” Lev asked.
“Gee, thanks.”
“Better not.” He dropped both phones into the bath. “Thanks even more.”
“Get out and join us.”
“I should, shouldn’t I? Such a terrible hostess.”
Lev came back to Eddie. “We got something in common.”
“Yeah?” Eddie sounding tougher than before.
“You need to keep quiet about the woman,” Lev said. “I need a believable story for being here.”
“I thought it was something like that.”
“I’ll take the ten for helping you out, of course.”
“Um, of course.”
From down the hallway came the sound of a door opening, male voices raised.
“Show me the money,” Lev said. The cops would be checking every room. He needed a Plan A and a Plan B.
Eddie rose reluctantly and flipped the briefcase latches. “The cash is in a white envelope,” he said. “Sit down,” Lev said, and pulled the briefcase around to face him. “The money’s in this one?” Four other white envelopes lay in the case.
“Yes.”
The envelope wasn’t sealed, and Lev pulled out a bundle of wrapped bills. All hundreds. The official yellow and white bill strap said so.
“This the whole ten large?”
“Yes.”
Lev left the bills halfway out, maneuvered his phone out of his back pocket and snapped a couple of pics. He pushed the bills back into the envelope and closed the briefcase. More than ten in there.
“Here’s the story, Eddie.”
Carol walked out of the bathroom, wrapped in a towel neatly tucked in above her breasts. It was amazing how some women could look so distant and so desirable at the same time. Stray drops glistened on her upper arms. She held the two dripping phones in one hand and set them on the coffee table.
“Sit next to Eddie and listen,” Lev said to her. “You and Eddie started yakking to me in a nearby bar this afternoon, and after a few rounds of shots and chasers we thought why not come up here and keep enjoying ourselves.”
“The name of the bar?” Carol asked.
A door closed loudly in the hallway. They heard voices and another door opening, right across the hall.
“You can’t remember after all those drinks,” Lev said. “A few blocks away, is all you know.”
Carol reached over to the champagne and popped the cork. She poured two glasses; there wasn’t a third.
“I think I drank too much at that bar,” she said. “I’ll have water for now.” She returned to the bathroom, not bothering to clutch her towel, not needing to, and brought back a full glass of water. She pulled a couple of ice cubes out of the bucket and dropped them in her water. “Cheers,” she said, proffering her glass for clinking.
Lev and Eddie clinked like old pals wishing for good times. Eddie drank half the glass; Lev didn’t touch his. Warm champagne wasn’t his thing. “
And if things go wrong?” Carol asked brightly. “Assuming we’re all alive after the shootout,” Lev said, “and as they take me away, I’ll complain that I paid Eddie ten thousand to cover for me, and he agreed. The cops will find my fingerprints on that money in Eddie’s briefcase.”
“Shit,” Eddie said. “Not to mention that you two here together will be part of the front-page story.”
“Shit,” Eddie said again.
“If I can’t be your friend now,” Lev said, “I’ll be your enemy forever.”
“How deliciously ironic,” Carol murmured, sipping water.
“So,” Eddie said, “I’m covering for you, and you’re covering for us.”
“You must have been top of your class,” Lev said. “No money changes hands?”
Outside, a door slammed. Lev shrugged his leather jacket off and threw it on the armchair, half-covering Eddie’s suit jacket. He slipped his Glock behind the armchair cushion. Eddie could now get to it if he picked his moment, but Lev didn’t believe he had the balls. He’d only make the cops jumpy and get himself blasted full of lead.
His eyes dropped to his jeans, and he saw blood spatters across his left knee. Shit. They weren’t big and obvious, but cops were used to seeing blood, and they might ask questions. A pass card snicked in the lock. Two cops pushed in, guns drawn, a hotel staffer trailing behind.
“Stay where you are,” the first cop ordered “we’re inspecting all rooms for fugitives. How many in here?”
“Ah, we thought we heard shots,” Lev said. “Please, come in and search. We’re just starting a party.”
The first cop paused at the sight of Carol in her bath towel. The other cop moved onto the bathroom. Carol must have left the bath full. Water splashed and gurgled down the drain.
The first cop opened cupboards, pulled back curtains, and stuck his face under the bed. He straightened. “IDs please?”
Carol found hers in the tote bag, rummaging with both hands while the cops stopped and watched. Lev showed his, which took two seconds. The cops couldn’t yet have a good description of him and Yuri. “Mine’s on the dresser,” Eddie said, with a touch of irritation, as if he were trying to hurry things up. “Why would it be on a dresser?” the first cop asked. Lev said, “Eddie was showing me his old beard.”
The cop squinted at the ID. “You should’ve have kept it; you looked better then.”
The cop holstered his gun and spread out all three IDs on the dresser top. He photographed the IDs with his phone camera. One at a time. He turned and snapped Lev close up. “What’s that on your jeans?” he asked.
Lev made a show of peering at the blood stains. “Damn burgers, the shit that falls out when you eat them.”
“Don’t I know it,” the cop said, turning Eddie. “Can you stand, please?”
“What are you going to do with these pictures?” Eddie asked, complying with the request.
“They’re tagged by room number and uploaded to the investigating detectives,” the cop said.
Lev figured he had about ten minutes to get out of the hotel before a detective showed his photo to the witnesses upstairs.
“We don’t give you permission to release them to the press,” Eddie said. “They’re for police business only, right?”
“We’d have no reason to, would we?” The cop caught sight of the wet phones. “What happened here?”
“Accident,” Carol said. “Dropped them in the ice bucket.”
“You should be more careful.”
She said, “You know something, gentlemen? I’ve completely lost the mood for partying tonight. Do I need an official pass to get out of here?”
“Just show your ID to the police at the front desk,” the cops said. “They ‘ll match it with what I’m uploading now. “
“Fine. I’m going to get dressed.” She took her suit and bag into the bathroom and closed the door softly.
“I feel the same,” Lev said. “Have you guys finished in here?”
“We’re done,” the cop said, raising an eyebrow at his partner who nodded. “Another hundred rooms to go.”
“A hundred and twenty, actually,” the staff guy said. Lev collected Eddie’s jacket from the bed and put it on. He lifted the briefcase without looking at Eddie, pocketed his ID from the dresser, and strode to the door. His gun, he left behind. He had no choice. The cops followed him into the hall.
“You were sharing your girl with the other guy?” the first cop said to Lev. “She’s attached to Eddie.” “Looks like a very loose attachment to me.” Both cops laughed.
The elevator doors opened to two SWAT guys, rifles leveled at his chest. A third guy held out a hand for his ID. His ID matched on the tablet, and less than a minute later Lev got the jerked thumb toward the door. He was free to go.
Outside the hotel, the doorman pushed past a clutch of more uniforms and whistled down a cab. Lev handed him a twenty.
“Head north, buddy,” he told the driver. As the cab pulled away, Lev opened the briefcase and inspected the envelopes more thoroughly. Damn hard to see in the dark without turning on the dome light, but he didn’t want the driver to spot the cash. Each envelope held ten grand. Fifty total. He shifted the paperwork around, scanned a few pages.
Not Eddie’s briefcase.
Carol’s.
A  realtor, judging by the letters. Carol Long. With a shitload of cash—the cash Eddie had offered him. He pocketed the envelopes and snapped the briefcase shut.
His Airbnb app showed an apartment room available in Highland Park, instant booking, late arrivals welcome. He took it for a week. The confirmation message pinged back with an address. The place only ten blocks away.
“Stop here, buddy,” he said to the cabbie.
Lev climbed out of the rear and opened the cab’s front passenger door. He tossed the briefcase on the seat. “Take this back to the hotel. It’s for Carol Long on the seventh floor. She’s expecting it.” He lay a hundred on the case. “This should cover it, yeah?” A hundred bucks absolutely covered it, and when the cab drove off, Lev started walking. All the way to the Airbnb he thought of Carol Long. So sure of herself, her casual beauty, and how she wasn’t afraid of him. Didn’t seem worried about her boyfriend ,either. He couldn’t be a real boyfriend; he didn’t have the class. He was something else—a patsy.
She was playing him.

Chapter 3

Sometimes the world won’t let you sleep in, because you don’t deserve it. Zach drifted in and out of sleep and, after the week he’d endured, hoped to stay that way all day. But the front-gate buzzer in the hallway tugged him awake. He untangled himself from bed sheets and golden slumbers and crossed to the bedroom window. 
A police squad car idled at the gates. A slim figure, probably female, reached through the driver’s window to hit the buzzer again. He nudged Keera awake. “Cops are outside. Look sharp. Act indignant and impatient.”
She threw aside the quilt and stood, naked and angry. “I won’t be acting.” Zach shuffled down the stairs and pressed the intercom button in the hallway. “Yeah?”
“Police,” replied a girlish voice. “We need to talk to you.”
Cops loved to say that; we need to check the facts, they would add.  But what they meant was they wanted to get answers that fit their suspicions.
Zach knew something they didn’t—the two million bucks in his possession that belonged to a Russian mob. The kind of information best kept secret.  It was time to rise and spin moonshine. He activated the gates and returned upstairs to dress. By the time he got back down, the door-knocking had started.
The cop at the door was a small woman, mid-twenties, wrapped against the needling cold by a thigh-length black down jacket. She stepped aside. The other cop, a thickset older man waiting a few paces behind, asked, “Are you Zachary Bones of the Chicago Post?” “Yep,”
Zach replied. “And you are…?”
“Detective Sean Malloy,” the cop said, flipping open a leather wallet and closing it just as fast. “And this is Detective Bridie Greedy.”
The woman showed her badge. Never in the history of names had a name been so mismatched. Detective Greedy made a starving waif look overfed, while Malloy sported waist room for several reunion dinners. The kind of guy who only had to dream of donuts to wake up an inch wider. He wore a North Face jacket, black like his partner’s. The two of them looked like they were about to attend a lunch at a designer igloo.
“We have questions about your connection with this Russian data-theft mob,” Malloy said. “Is Miz Keera Miles here with you?”
“We gave a shitload of statements to the police yesterday. What more is left to say?”
“Why don’t we get more comfortable inside and talk?”
“Why don’t we chat right here?”
Malloy grinned like he’d found fresh prey in his trap. “Either we talk inside, in domestic comfort, or we go to the precinct, all day.”
Zach led them into the kitchen area and gestured to the chairs. “I can’t think clearly without my morning coffee.” He pulled out a stovetop espresso maker and filled it with water.
Malloy tapped his pen on a notebook. “Are you wasting police time? Sit down, or I’ll take you to the station where the coffee tastes like somebody else already drank it.”
Zach found a cup, ignored its matching saucer. He settled himself opposite Malloy and eyed the cop over the rim of his cup. Greedy scoped the area as if to place herself at the scene of the shooting. Be glad you weren’t here, lady.
Malloy waited, probably expecting Zach to fill in the space. Zach didn’t. “Let me run through your story again,” Malloy said. “Yesterday, police hit a hotel emergency to find you and Ms. Keera Miles scared as hell and a dead Russian on the floor.”
“You’d be jittery, too, if you were inches away from the killing.” “
I’m paraphrasing from the file you understand, the wording there might be different.” Malloy continued. “Two of the Russians, including the guy who had killed his boss, escaped. This one, known as Yuri Maksim Buteyko, got cornered in the basement car park area and died in, how should I put it, a hail of bullets.”
“Why wouldn’t he? Isn’t that how the Chicago police operate? Unleash fire and fury, then ask questions of a smoking corpse?”
“You running for office anytime soon?”
“No.” “
Then shut your cake-hole and let me finish. Three other bodies were discovered here on this property. One, a girl, early twenties, and two Russians nationals outside.”
“The girl Olga shot dead two of our abductors outside, yes. Lev shot her in here.” Zach pointed to the space between the table they sat at and the door. “This is all in my statement.”
“And a gripping read it is,” Malloy said. “May I continue?”
“If you like.”
“I like. The other Russian in the hotel, this Lev, has escaped.”
“What? How the hell?” Zach sat back. “Tell me how he pulled that off.”
“I don’t want to bore you with the details,” Malloy said with relish, “but in brief, he masqueraded as a member of a wild sex party in another room in the same hotel, convinced the local police, brought in as reinforcements, that he was only a sex-crazed guy looking for fun, and they let him walked.”
“Is this for real, or are you writing a blurb for a pulp-fiction paperback? Can I quote you?”
What you can say,” Malloy said, “is that the fugitive posed as a party-goer in another room, but my name is ‘sources’.” “What’s wrong with characterizing him as sex-crazed?”
“Given the way things are in this city it might paint him in a favorable light with the public. We don’t want that.”
“You sure know how to remove all interest from a story.”
Malloy ignored him. “Your phone,” he continued. “Detective Kolacz told me he found it wrapped in a blanket in the trunk of your car. Funny place to leave it.”
“Detective Kolacz? Why isn’t he here? He’s such a nice fellow.”
“He’s taking a well-earned vacation. I’ve taken over.” “You must relish this opportunity to shine. I can recall the headlines as if they were yesterday. They almost are. Let’s see, Data Theft Boss Slain by Henchman, Three More Dead in Ritzy Suburb, Fugitive Sought in 50 States. Which one lit your passion for justice? And any progress in locating the one that got away?”
“The person we know only as Lev,” Malloy said heavily, “is still free and dangerous.”
“And you are here because it’s your task to locate this fugitive from justice?”
“Pretty much, but there are a few loose ends, and I’m a loose ends specialist.” “
Okay, right.” Zach said. “The phone. Look, I shouldn’t have joked about it. The truth of it? I got nervous about being bugged  so I muffled it under the blanket in the trunk.”
“Bugged by who?” It’s ‘whom’, you idiot. Doesn’t the CPD offer an English language course for those required to speak it? “The Russians that I was investigating for data theft.”
Malloy rested his arms on the table. “Don’t you think it’s weird that the city body count exploded because a weedy reporter sniffed a story? You have any proof at that stage?”
“I had all the proof I needed once Dmitri Rudin and his boys came after me.”
“But you didn’t blow the story wide open, did you? The Post only ran flimsy conjecture to beef up the data-theft story at City Hall. Nothing solid, only a little tickling of the tiger’s tummy to see what would happen.”
Malloy was right. The linking of Dmitri Rudin to the City Hall job was designed to give Zach protection while he ferreted out the rest of the story. It hadn’t worked like planned—not much in his life ever did. “You know what I think?” Malloy said. “This was all about money.”
“Oh really? Of course it was. You think people steal for the acclaim? For peer approval?”
Malloy’s voice rose. “Don’t mock me, you little shit. You had something they wanted. If the possibility of an embarrassing story bothered them, they would have disappeared you. But they didn’t. They grabbed you, grilled you, and you were about to be dead meat until your bug guy tipped us off. You owe us a better story than the one you’re handing out.” Zach set his cup down. “I’ve told you what I could. I dealt with an informer, Mr. Yolkov, but the Russians had bugged us, which left the poor guy only hours to live. When I found out, I tried to convince him to run and hide, but he refused. He had this heroic idea he ought to stand up to these people.”
Malloy leaned over, sniffed Zach’s coffee. “Smells like camel-shit. Like the stuff you’re spinning me.” “That so? I only chose it because it was marked down. My mistake. Thanks for the review anyway.” “What I think,” Malloy said, “is that you knew this Yolkov would be eliminated, and you drove him to his killer.”
“Very dramatic Detective, but not true.”
“And the other Russians held you responsible because in the gunfight Yolkov killed one of them. Very sloppy work.”
Jesus, this guy could create crazy scenarios. The more he expounded them, the more he believed them. 
Zach caught Greedy’s eye. She wasn’t giving him the hard cop stare, more like she scrutinizing him. He scrutinized her right back. Individually, her facial features were all too big. Big blue eyes and slightly misaligned teeth, an aquiline nose and a wide mouth. But wrapped up together, damned mesmerizing. He forced himself to turn his attention back to Malloy.
“You saw my phone muffled up to block the bug,” he said to Malloy. “Why would I do that if I was in on this plot?”
“How do we know it was what you said? It could have been another phone, a device to trigger a bomb under your car.”
“What?”
“A backup. If the assassination attempt failed, you would have driven Yolkov away, left him in your precious car while you fetched him vodka from a liquor store. Safely out of range you send a signal to the trunk phone and boom, Yolkov disappears into fire and soap flakes.”
“You’re insane.”
“Nobody would expect you to sacrifice your car, a vintage car like that. They’d assume you got lucky at the right time.”
“You’re so insane you’re beyond certifiable.”
Malloy leaned back like a satisfied cat. “You’re a smart guy. Every time you open your mouth I see it. But here I am just a mid-level cop waiting for retirement so I don’t have to talk to people I don’t believe anymore. People who know where the money is and want it for themselves.”
“You’re crazy.” He understood what was driving Malloy. The guy buzzed with resentment at his life, and that made him a meaner cop than usual. He saw many little things and built them into a vast conspiracy.
But he couldn’t see the remaining two million bucks sitting in Zach’s offshore account; the cause of these deaths. It had been three million once, but Rudin had pried one million off him in Bitcoin only to lose it when his laptop copped a bullet.
Malloy said, “You know a lot more than you’re saying and you’re not saying it because you’re as guilty as hell. Of something.”
“Charge me,” Zach said. “You’ve got nothing but grains of sand, and you’re trying to build a castle.” “I’m a tidy person. I have a few details I need to clarify before a warrant. But I will, I will.”
Keera descended the stairs and stopped when she saw Malloy and Greedy. “What the hell are you doing in here without my permission?”
Malloy said, “Here’s another citizen who got out of bed on the wrong side today. Ms. Keera Miles, I presume?”
Keera marched up to the table like she wanted to dispatch him with blunt cutlery. “I gave you no leave to enter this house.”
“It’s a crime scene, lady, I come and go how I please.”
Keera waved a hand around the room. “I see no police tape. I see no uniforms. Your crimes scene people have come and gone. Why don’t you join them?”
“I have questions for you and your boyfriend. I can ask them here, or downtown.”
“And you can comply with police regulations.” “Which ones? The ones that allow me to question anybody of interest, or the ones that allow me to arrest you and Mr. Phone Muffler here on suspicion of conspiracy?”
“If you’re on the verge of arresting us then why would we answer questions without a lawyer present?”
That Keera. While he swapped insults and ducked questions, she’d zeroed in on the one point to get Malloy and his skinny sidekick instantly out of their hair. Once a lawyer is requested the cops are supposed to stop asking questions. Zach should have invoked this rule earlier. Instead, he had fenced with Malloy, and made a bigger enemy than necessary.
Malloy rose out of his chair, pocketed his notebook and pen, nodded to Greedy, and they left, closing the front door softly behind them.
Zach pulled Keera to him in a hug. “Who needs a lawyer when I have you?”
“My fees are low,” she murmured, “but my emotional needs are stratospheric.”
“I thought you Anthropology Professors were the cool, clinical types.”
“Assistant Professor. We’re more needy.”
“And worth every moment of it. You were listening?” “Yes.”
“And?”
“We have to give away the money,” she said. “All of it?”
“All of it.”
“The whole two million?”
“That money,” Keera said, “has already taken seven lives. Let’s not add us to that total.”
Zach released her and refreshed his coffee.
“Every time we talk about it,” she continued, “your aura darkens. The more we talk, the darker it gets. The money is draining your energy.” He didn’t respond. “And there’s something else,” she said to his back.
“What?”
“Malloy knows we have it.”