The silence grew thick and potent. “He doesn’t like the cold?”
I shifted uncomfortably. “He avoids it. His headquarters have always been in warm locations. Mexico. South America. The one in North Africa.”
“The Algerian compound was never confirmed. And Mexico… South America… It didn’t occur to you that those are the major centers of drug and weapons trafficking?” He looked incredulous.
“And Russia,” I said quietly. My chest felt tight. I wished I’d never started this. “Russia is another major center of drug and weapon trafficking, but he never goes there.” Because it’s cold.
He stared at me as if I’d lost my mind. And maybe I had. Maybe that had happened years ago and neither the court-appointed psychiatrist nor the FBI staff who’d cleared me for duty had ever noticed.
Hennessey barked a laugh. “Jesus. You know, the Russians prefer human trafficking these days, having more people than drugs or weapons. And maybe Laguardia just doesn’t like the Gulag. But I take your point.” He laughed again, as if in disbelief. “It’s a fair theory, and a new one, I’ll give you that much.”
The knot loosened inside me, letting me breathe again. He might suspect I was crazy, but at least he knew I paid attention. I could be an asset to him.
A new, grudging respect lightened his eyes, turning them silver. “Okay, rookie, you can come. But I’m driving.”
I didn’t bother hiding my smile. I didn’t care who drove, and besides, that was to be expected. I doubted this man ever gave up much control. I bet his commands extended into the bedroom. The thought filled me with unexpected, unwelcome heat.
CHAPTER TWO
What do you remember? Such an open-ended question.
I remembered going to prison exactly three times.
A few months back, when I had just started, Brody had brought me along to take notes on an interview in a half-hearted attempt at mentorship. The subject had been a long-term inmate in a low security prison who received cigarettes in exchange for intel—or more accurately, prison gossip. The exchange had been concise and boring. My notes, when I had submitted them for the case file, had been the same.
That was the third time I’d been to prison.
Before that, I’d gone on something like a field trip at Quantico. Each of us had been assigned a convict. We studied their crimes beforehand, the evidence and the trials. Then we visited them and added in-person assessments to our reports. My inmate had been a bank fraud expert, a real nice guy with age spots and two grandkids in Detroit. He showed me pictures and asked me to pass along a letter. I reported his illegal request to the board. If assholes like that wanted to fuck around with the law, then they didn’t deserve the children or grandchildren they’d been given. I was doing those kids a favor.
That was two.
But the first time I’d ever been to prison, I was ten years old. By then, my father had been inside for two months with good behavior, no violent incidents. He’d placed a request for visitation of his only child, and the court had somehow agreed. My foster mother at the time had put me in a dress with pink and orange flowers and white patent leather shoes. I remembered how shiny they looked compared to the dark concrete floor. I remembered how they looked covered in blood.
My father tried to kill me that day. Prison security was different back then, less high tech and more dependent on a guard with a baton. My father had come at me with his fists like a bludgeon, wrists and ankles still handcuffed together. The guard stepped in quickly, beating my father half to death. I’d huddled in the corner, staring at the red ink splatter on my shoes and feeling an odd sense of triumph. He’d broken my arm and given me a black eye, but I got to walk out of there. He didn’t.
He had already been serving twenty years, a plea bargain combining all his crimes, but the assault on me had tipped him over into a lifer. He’d never draw a free breath again, and most days, I didn’t care at all.
These three visits played over in my head, like forlorn notes to an old remembered song. Just as well, because Hennessey didn’t turn on the radio. The jail in question was ten miles from FBI headquarters, but in downtown Houston near lunch hour, the drive would take twenty minutes, easy.
Hennessey’s fingers drummed on the steering wheel as the car rolled forward at ten miles per hour in heavy traffic.
“So,” I began quietly, “why the big push for Laguardia in Houston?” At his questioning look, I continued, “I know you’ve been stationed in New York. The Di Mariano family. The Mencia heist. They’re both up there. And the New York office is pretty big. I figure you would have worked the case from there, unless you think he’s in the area.”