Chapter Twelve

 

He shouldn't have touched her. There were plenty of good reasons he shouldn't have. Plenty of reasons like professional standards, ethics, potential lawsuits. Conflicts of interest.

Things that could be the first big stain on a case that had, up til now, gone pretty well.

None of those things had stopped Detective Meadows up until now, and they hadn't stopped him this time, either.

He might feel bad about it, one day, but the one thing he didn't was hate himself for it. Because she needed it. And the second that she'd given a sign that she didn't want it, he'd backed off.

He ran through the whole logical strain in his head again before he turned the ignition and the car jumped to life. He'd done it because it was the right thing to do, and ethics and best practice be damned. It needed to be done.

That didn't make him feel as much better as he'd hoped, though. Didn't help much at all, to be perfectly honest.

Part of what was eating at him, though, was that he couldn't answer the one valid concern she'd had. Anna Witt was a woman who constantly seemed to be convinced that she'd done something wrong.

He didn't doubt for a moment where that little concern had come from, but as much as he wanted it to be, it wasn't Josh Meadows's job to fix that problem, and it was especially not his job to fix it after they've already split up.

He swallows his concerns about her relationships. That's her life, not his. He's not supposed to be worried about her. After all, for all he knows, she's a suspect. That could all have been, in some weird way, a confession.

It assumed a cunning on her part that she hadn't shown, and a wickedness that Josh didn't want to imagine could exist in this world.

Ten years on the force, climbing up to Detective, had taught him that there was a lot more wrong with the world than he'd like to imagine, so he'd better just as well get used to the idea. He hadn't yet, and the day that he did was the day he would quit. Become a construction worker or something.

Why her? Why not someone else? Was there some kind of concern that someone else might not go through with it? Why not have Al Queen himself walk the money out? They could even have tried to go for some kind of double-cross and pulled the old man into the van.

They could have gotten way more than a million for Al or Mitch Queen, if they'd been grabbed. And this would be a golden opportunity to grab one of them. But they didn't give themselves that opportunity.

Instead, they'd asked to have a woman that was, speaking for the wider world, nobody at all. They'd demanded she come alone. No police escort, nothing like that.

Well, hell. Meeting in a public park, you weren't exactly going to avoid the cops perfectly, but they'd stay at a distance. A big enough distance that they wouldn't be noticed even by keen and cautious eyes.

The problem, the thing that concerned Josh, was that there must have been some reason. A reason for choosing her.

It was easy enough to say, she's the mother, she's the least likely to screw something up. But that would be assuming that they didn't know anything about her.

They'd found a woman who'd been tied, previously, to Mitch Queen and her child, in spite of her name never appearing in full in any of the papers—Josh had checked.

They'd come in while she was asleep. They'd known that she wasn't awake, because if she was, then the whole thing would be in trouble. Hell, if she'd even woken up when they were inside…

Which means that they didn't pick her randomly out of a hat. They knew plenty about Anna Witt, and they knew full well that whether she was capable or not, she didn't think she was. She thought she was a real fuck-up.

Why would you pick someone like that to do your drop-off? Someone who would come right out and tell you that they'd probably just screw it up if you left it to them?

Why would you pick someone like that?

The idea occurs to him like a punch in the gut and it's hard to convince himself not to turn around and find someone else to tell it to. It's hard to keep fresh in his mind that he'll have plenty of time in the morning to tell someone.

Because the idea that they wanted someone who might screw it up, or wouldn't be confident that they hadn't screwed it up, isn't an idea that just goes away.

Because if that's what you wanted out of your drop person, there are only so many reasons. Almost all of them end up at the intersection of "take the money" and "run" before too long.

He eases his foot off the gas. No choice but to wait and see what happens. After all, they've got nothing to go on but a menacing—and distinctly male—voice on the other end of a telephone line.

They traced the number, of course. They weren't idiots. They found the phone in a trash-can right on Eight, ten miles east of Anna Witt's place. Right where they said it would be, when the call had ended.

The next call would be from a totally different phone. And, if a third had to be made—it wouldn't, they'd been very careful to assure—then they would be making it from yet another phone altogether.

These were some cautious fuckin' guys. These were guys who thought things through, who made decisions that wouldn't end up being big damn mistakes.

And more than that, they had chosen to do all of this in a way that Anna Witt would be in a solid position to take a big fall if things didn't come through.

Josh's stomach twists. Who would do something like that? He doesn't need to think long or hard about it. Someone who wanted to punish Anna, punish her in a way that wasn't ever going to go away?

The list of suspects was real short, and he'd best keep his suspicions to himself until he was real confident in them, because you don't go around accusing Congressmen's sons of things like that.

Not without solid proof.

That thought doesn't put him off the way that he thinks it probably should have. There's a little voice in the back of his mind, a voice that reminds him that he better be careful.

Josh Meadows ignores it. He's never been careful before in his life, and he's not planning to start now. Especially not when the stakes are as high as they are. But for all that he doesn't like being careful, he'll take his time.

Something like this, even if it all goes according to plan, doesn't make careers. It breaks them just fine if it goes wrong, but when you rat out a boy like that… all it makes you is right. It doesn't make you rich and it sure as hell doesn't help you out.

All you'll be, the rest of your career, is the guy who fucked over a Congressman. The guy who is never going to be promoted again, no matter how well he does.

That suits Josh just fine. Because he didn't get into this job to be promoted, to get a big fat paycheck, or even to get his name in the papers—though his name had been in the papers, and it would be a hell of a lot more if his hunch turned into anything.

He did it because he wasn't going to see people get hurt again, not if he could help it. And this time, he could help it.