Page 85 of Into the Fire

“Not yet. Her daughter’s still in the house with her—and fuck, ow, ow…”

“Sir. Sir! I need you to calm down.”

He shuddered and straightened up, leaning against the screen. The bandages shielded his eyes, which let him peer around her without seeming too obvious. He was hoping for an open record log or a whiteboard showing which cops were occupying which interrogation rooms. But there was nothing in plain sight. The information probably resided on her computer, and there’d be no getting in there.

Evan said, “I’m scared for her daughter, and before I go to the ER, I have to—”

“I understand. I’ll have someone speak to you immediately.”

“Thank you.” He let his shoulders tremble as if he were fighting off sobs. “Thank God.”

The desk officer called across into the bullpen, and a weary-looking detective rose, his rumpled shirt spotted with a coffee stain. He slapped down a file on his desk and blew out a breath that lifted his scraggly bangs. “Okay,” he said. “I’ll take it.”

A grating buzz sounded, and the security door clicked open. Evan placed his RoamZone in a red plastic basket and stepped through the metal detector.

It did not alert.

Gathering his phone, he entered the inner sanctum.

Max sat down at the table and folded his hands on the surface. Brust and Nuñez kept their feet. Nuñez crossed his arms and shouldered against the rear wall while Brust set his knuckles on the table and leaned in. The thumb drive rested between him and Max like an avant-garde centerpiece.

“We’re so glad you came in,” Brust said.

Nuñez chimed in from the back. “Really happy to see you.”

“You’re a solid citizen—”

“—who was put in a terrible position. We understand that.”

Max cleared his throat. “You were working with my cousin?”

“Yes,” Nuñez said. “Very smart guy. Very capable.” He scratched his cheek. His fingernail was polished, his cheeks shiny from a close shave. He grinned, but the skin around his eyes did not wrinkle in the least.

Max shifted in the chair. Cleared his throat. “Yeah, he was. Grant was good.”

Brust placed his forefinger on the thumb drive as if it were a poker chip he was considering adding to the pot. “Do you know what this is? I mean, have you looked at what’s on here?”

“Yeah.” Max’s unease grew, but he heard himself still talking. “They look like spreadsheets. Real and fake.” He suddenly felt detached from the situation, as if he were floating above the table looking down at himself answering the questions like a good little boy. “Some kind of money-laundering operation, from what I could tell.”

“Ah,” Brust said, the single note holding disappointment.

“That’s too bad,” Nuñez agreed.

“Has anyone else seen this?” Brust asked. “I mean, did you share your cousin’s work with anyone?”

“No,” Max said, shaking his head. “Just me. I went to Grant’s office, and some guy shot at me, so I got scared and I went into hiding.” Sweat trickled down his neck, burrowed beneath his collar. Something was wrong, but he couldn’t put his finger on it. And yet the conversation kept proceeding, and he felt bizarrely incapable of stopping it. “Look, is there…? I mean, is something wrong?”

Those automated smiles once more. “No,” Brust said. “Everything’s finally right. You did great. You did great bringing this here to us.”

He slid the thumb drive off the table and tossed it to his partner.

“Where did you say you went?” Nuñez asked, coming off the wall to pocket the drive. “When you were hiding?”

Max looked over at the bullet security camera wired into the corner of the ceiling. In the curved black lens, he caught a distorted fish-eye reflection of the room—Nuñez’s broad shoulders stretched to Olympian proportions; Brust looming over the desk, his torso swirled; and Max in the center, shrunken and diminutive.

His gaze caught on the sticker adhered to the camera’s side: IRONKLAD KAM. The same equipment had been installed in the hall outside Grant’s office, an unsettling coincidence. And something was different. When he noticed what, he felt the awareness as a chill tightening his flesh, making his scalp crawl.

No glowing red dot to show it was recording.