Page 47 of The Guilty Trial

Allie nodded. “He’s also scared, even if he doesn’t want to show it.”

“Can’t blame him for that. I’d be nervous too if my coworkers were getting picked off.” Jason crossed his arms. “His whole career was built on holding people accountable, and now someone’s coming after the people who did exactly that.”

The elevator arrived with a soft chime, and they stepped inside. Allie watched the doors close, the polished metal reflecting a distorted image of the two of them standing side by side. Halloway’s story about his uncle lingered in her thoughts, the image of a man who lost everything to someone who vanished without consequence. She understood how it felt.

As the elevator descended, she turned the interview over in her mind. Halloway had been forthcoming, cooperative, and convincing. She hadn’t detected any red flags, no hesitations, no carefully worded deflections. His account matched what they already knew about the financial side of the prosecution, and his personal investment in the case gave him every reason to have paid close attention to the details.

Halloway stood behind the Torrino case without flinching. That should have reassured Allie, but for some reason, she found that it didn't.

Chapter Twenty-Six

The Pacific Grand Hotel

Tacoma, Washington

Halloway buttoned his shirt and tucked it into his pants, smoothing the fabric with the flat of his palm. The hotel suite was quiet, insulated from the city by thick walls and heavy curtains drawn across floor-to-ceiling windows. The Pacific Grand had been Jennifer’s suggestion, and he had to admit she had taste. The room was decorated with muted grays and soft lighting, and linens that probably cost more per thread count than his first car draped the king bed. A minibar glowed softly in the corner, and the faint scent of her perfume still lingered, mixing with a musky scent.

He could hear the faucet running behind the bathroom door. Jennifer hummed something he couldn’t quite place. He had enjoyed his rendezvous with her over the last several months, stolen hours carved out of otherwise ordinary weeks, and each time felt a little more necessary than the last. Not because he was unhappy at home, exactly, but because he was restless.

The Torrino trial had been the peak, the thing that made his career feel like it mattered, and everything since had been a slow, steady descent into paperwork and plea bargains and the grinding monotony of federal prosecution. Jennifer reminded him that he was still the man who could command a courtroom, still someone worth wanting.

Planning to get together this week had taken a little extra caution, though, with the U.S. marshals parked in his driveway. Two agents in a black Suburban, sitting there like a permanent fixture and checking in every few hours, making his neighbors whisper behind their curtains. His wife had been unsettled by the whole arrangement, but she accepted it the way she accepted most inconveniences in their marriage: with a glass of wine and an early bedtime.

Tonight, he had waited until after eleven before slipping out the back. He walked two streets over and hailed an Uber. That was three hours ago. His wife slept like the dead. She wouldn’t even notice him slipping back in.

The bathroom door opened, and Jennifer emerged, fully dressed now, her dark hair pulled back and her coat already buttoned. She glided across the room and kissed him warmly.

“I’ve got an early meeting,” she said, gathering her purse from the armchair. “I need to get home and get at least a few hours of sleep.”

She paused near the door and turned back to him. Her expression was a little tighter now. “Be safe, okay? Those murders are creeping me out.”

“I’ll be fine,” he assured her. He’d spent his career reassuring people, judges and juries and witnesses, and the habit carried effortlessly into everything else. He managed what he hoped was a reassuring smile. “I’ll text you tomorrow.”

She studied him for a beat, as if she wanted to say something else, but instead she just nodded and gave him a small, careful smile before disappearing into the suite’s outer room. A moment later, he heard the door click shut behind her. The silence that followed was immediate and total, a sealed hush that only hotel rooms high above the city could achieve, as if the rest of the world had been shut out entirely.

Halloway didn’t feel like going home just yet. The events of the last couple of weeks had made sleep elusive, and when it did come, it was shallow and punctuated by dreams he couldn’t quite remember but that left him with a vague sense of dread every morning. He’d worked alongside Thomas Sterling for years, and now he was dead. So was Judge Vance. Both murdered, and now the FBI was asking questions about specific exhibits from a trial that had ended five years ago.

He hadn’t told them everything.

He pushed that thought away and lay back on the bed with his feet crossed at the ankles. He picked up the remote from the nightstand and flipped on the television, the screen casting a blue wash across the darkened room. Late-night cable offered little worth watching at this hour. He scrolled past infomercials, a rerun of some police procedural he had seen before, a cooking competition filmed in a garish color. He settled on a news channel running coverage of Halloween events around the country and let the low drone of the anchor’s voice fill the space around him, but his mind kept returning to that afternoon and the FBI agents. He turned up the volume on the television and tried to focus on the screen.

A few minutes later, the room door opened and clicked shut.

Jennifer must have forgotten something. It wouldn't be the first time she came back for her phone charger or her scarf. He kept his eyes on the screen, where the anchor was now describing a haunted house in some midwestern city that was drawing record crowds.

“You leave something?” he called out toward the front of the suite.

No answer.

He waited, listening. The only sound was the low murmur of the television and his own breathing. He muted the TV and turned his head toward the doorway that separated the bedroom from the suite’s sitting area.

“Jen?”

There was nothing. No movement, no sound, just, nothing.

He sat up on the bed as his pulse began to climb. He told himself it was nothing, that the door had probably just latched on its own or that he’d imagined the sound entirely.

Then the man stepped into the doorway.