Page 71 of The Guilty Trial

“Come in.” Thorne told his current chief of security, and the door closed behind him.

Allie followed Marze and Jason to the elevator. Inside, Jason pressed the lobby button.

“We're going to assume Pym will return to the Brick Works,” Marze said as he swiped through his messages. “Rourke's setting up two-person rotations in four-hour shifts.”

“I want in on the rotation,” Allie said.

“I'll set it up this afternoon,” he said. “You, too, I'm assuming?”

Jason nodded. “Of course.”

None of them said what they were all thinking. If Pym didn't come back to the Brick Works, they were back to square one.

Chapter Forty-One

U.S. Attorney's Office

Seattle, Washington

Elias Thorne stood behind his desk as Reeves shut the door and crossed the room. The man was infuriatingly calm, and Thorne felt nearly ready to wipe that smug look off his face. He pressed the intercom on his desk. When the receptionist picked up, he confirmed the agents had left, then told her to hold all his calls. “No visitors and no interruptions.”

“Yes, sir.”

He turned on Reeves.

“You promised me,” he growled, barely keeping his voice under control, “that this would never come back on us.”

Reeves met his eyes. “Elias, I understand you're upset.”

“Upset?” Thorne straightened, a vein rising along his temple. “Four people are dead, Jake. Sterling. Vance. Halloway. Park. Four members of the prosecution team I supervised, and the FBI is crawling through every corner of the Torrino case like ants on a carcass. Yeah, you know? I’m a little upset.”

Reeves dropped into a chair. “What was I supposed to do, anticipate Arthur Pym having a complete mental breakdown and deciding to murder everyone five years after the fact? Nobody could have predicted that.”

Thorne slammed his open hand against the desk. The sound cracked through the office like a gunshot, and a silver pen rolled off the edge and thudded onto the plush carpet.

“The point,” Thorne said, “is that we fabricated evidence to convict Sal Torrino. We planted a gun. We backdated financial records. We authorized illegal wiretaps. We coerced witnesses into lying under oath. And now it’s all coming to light because a man we broke is somewhere out there burning exhibit numbers into people's skin. If the FBI examines those documents too closely, if they pull the original chain of custody logs and compare them against what was presented at trial, the entire case collapses. The Torrino verdict will be overturned.”

Reeves rubbed both hands along his thighs, a gesture Thorne had seen him make before when he was calculating. “The FBI is focused on catching Pym. That's their priority. They're not conducting an independent review of a five-year-old conviction. They're running a homicide investigation.”

“For now.” Thorne paced the room, his polished shoes marking a tight circuit on the rug. “Bishop is sharp, they all are, and they’re getting closer every day. They’re already asking about exhibit irregularities. She interviewed Carmichael, who practically drew her a map to the corruption. It's only a matter of time before someone pulls a thread that unravels the whole thing.”

Reeves leaned back and crossed his arms. “What about you? You were the one overseeing the entire prosecution.”

“I was the U.S. Attorney who trusted his team to build a clean case. That's my story, and that's what the record reflects. My name isn't on a single piece of fabricated evidence.” Thorne stopped pacing and fixed his gaze on Reeves. “But what about you, Jake? You were the one who strongarmed Pym into accepting the tampered evidence in the first place. You stood over that man in the evidence vault and told him to log items he knew were fabricated. His signature is on those custody forms because you put him in a position where he had no choice.”

The room went quiet except for the muted hum of traffic far below. Reeves uncrossed his arms, dropping his shoulders. The lines around his mouth had deepened. Whatever composure he'd walked in with was gone. When he spoke again, his voice was lower.

“I know I'm exposed. That's why I'm sitting in your office instead of mine.” He leaned forward and placed his elbows on his knees. “I need to know if you're going to protect me, Elias. Because if the FBI comes at me, I need to know where I stand.”

Thorne stared at him. In all the years they had worked together, through the Torrino prosecution and everything that followed, Reeves had never asked for help. He was a man who calculated every angle before he entered a room and didn’t leave until he had the outcome he wanted. The fact that he was sitting here, asking where he stood, told Thorne more about how far things had deteriorated than any FBI briefing could.

He walked to the window. A container ship inched north toward the port, and gulls circled above the ferry terminal. He had spent most of his career in this city. He'd tried his first federal case at the courthouse a few blocks south, had argued motions in front of judges who were now retired or dead. Everything he had built was tied to this office.

“Five years ago,” he said without turning around, “we made a decision. Sal Torrino was a cancer in this region. He'd been running racketeering, extortion, and murder operations for three decades, and the people of this city suffered for it. Businesses were bled dry. Witnesses were terrorized into silence. Families were destroyed.”

“You did something about it.”

He turned to face Reeves. “I—we—had no choice. You know why the previous prosecution failed.”