He also possessed an incredibly high IQ and aptitude for debate. A prodigy, he’d graduated at the top of his Harvard Law School class at the tender age of eighteen, and he’d been working in the field for five years now. I had faith that he’d know what to do.
Ricky entered the conference room. Everything about him shouted, “How dare you bring a Varasso into your dingy police station.” I liked it.
“I’m Rick Moretti, defense counsel for Mr. Varasso. What is my client being charged with?” he asked, haughty as hell.
“I’m Lieutenant Kay Stroud, and your client,” the lieutenant threw in some haughtiness of her own, “is being charged with aiding and abetting a fugitive from justice, forgery of documents for the purposes of providing a fake identity, criminal conspiracy, destruction of private property, and money laundering.”
“That’s quite a list,” Ricky said, raising an eyebrow.
“It is.”
“And your evidence includes?”
“An audio recording of a conversation between your client and Dante Bianchi, among other things.”
“I’ll require access to this recording and any other evidence you’ve accumulated,” Ricky told her, not looking impressed, but I couldn’t help noticing that his haughty demeanor had gone down a degree or two.
The lieutenant smiled, not at Ricky but at me. It was the smile of a woman who knew she had my balls in a sling. The second she’d mentioned who was on the recording, my lungs had refused to work. I didn’t know how such a recording could exist, but if it did, I was in some major trouble.
“Once I’ve reviewed the evidence, I’d like some privacy for attorney-client privilege.”
“No sweat,” Lieutenant Stroud said. “Follow me.”
They disappeared, and Ricky came back by himself a half hour later. I’d experienced longer half hours, but other than when I’d been burned, then treated for said burns, this one held top billing.
Ricky didn’t beat around the bush, something I appreciated. “They’ve got you, Marco. On the money laundering charge for sure, and the conspiracy charge, too, if I can’t get it tossed out. The money laundering alone is twenty years if they go for the max, and trust me, they will.”
Well, shit. “But you can get the conspiracy charge tossed out?”
“Maybe. The evidence may have been obtained illegally, so there’s some wiggle room on that one. Of course, some of those judges are our friends, so it still may go our way.”
“How’d they get that recording anyway? The only people in my office were Dante and me.” And since the conversation had taken place after midnight, there was no chance that I’d missed another employee hanging around within earshot.
“You’re not going to like this,” he told me, and I braced myself. “One of your employees bugged your office.”
“Who?” I demanded, taken aback.
“A manager named Kelly Carr.”
Kelly? I stared at him, my heart stopping in my chest. “That can’t be accurate.”
Ricky opened a file, flipping through it to check the name. “Kelly Carr is the one who bugged the office. She said so in her statement. Wait, that name sounds familiar. Isn’t there an officer by that surname here, too?”
“Her brother, David Carr,” I replied hollowly. Not only had my heart stopped, it’d turned into a hard lump of coal.
“Bet he put her up to it.”
Even if he had, why would she agree to spy on me?
Things had been so good between us. I’d been telling myself that keeping her out of that part of my life was necessary, was the responsible thing for me to do. I didn’t want any of that touching her, soiling her in any way. But if she’d heard the truth about me, about what I’d done, about who my family really was, maybe that’d been enough to change her feelings toward me.
But would she go as far as this? As far as a betrayal that would put me in prison?
If that was true, that meant she saw me as what I’d always been most afraid I was deep down anyway.
A monster.
But I wasn’t willing to give up that easily. I couldn’t.