Face of Betrayal (Triple Threat, #1)
Lis Wiehl
With love for Dani, Jacob, and Mickey,
LIS
With love for Sadie and Randy,
APRIL
NORTHWEST PORTLAND
December 13
Come on, Jalape?o!”
Katie Converse jerked the dog’s leash. Reluctantly, the black Lab mix lifted his nose and followed her. Katie wanted to hurry, but everything seemed to invite Jalape?o to stop, sniff, and lift his leg. And there was no time for that now. Not today.
She had grown up less than two miles from here, but this afternoon everything looked different. It was winter, for one thing, nearly Christmas. And she wasn’t the same person she had been the last time she was here, not a month earlier. Then she had been a little girl playing at being a grown-up. Now she was a woman.
Finally, she reached the agreed-upon spot. She was still shaking from what she had said less than two hours earlier. What she had demanded.
Now there was nothing to do but wait. Not an easy task for an impatient seventeen-year-old.
She heard the scuff of footsteps behind her. Unable to suppress a grin, Katie called his name as she turned around.
At the sight of the face, contorted with rage, Jalape?o growled.
MARK O. HATFIELD UNITED STATES COURTHOUSE
December 14
As she walked to the courtroom podium, federal prosecutor Allison Pierce touched the tiny silver cross she wore on a fine chain. The cross was hidden under her cream-colored silk blouse, but it was always there, close to Allison’s heart. Her father had given it to her for her sixteenth birthday.
Allison was dressed in what she thought of as her “court uniform,” a navy blue suit with a skirt that, even on her long legs, hit below the knee. This morning she had tamed her curly brown hair into a low bun and put on small silver hoops. She was thirty-three, but in court she wanted to make sure no one thought of her as young or unseasoned.
She took a deep breath and looked up at Judge Fitzpatrick. “Your Honor, I ask for the maximum sentence for Frank Archer. He coldly, calculatedly, and callously plotted his wife’s murder. If Mr. Archer had been dealing with a real hired killer instead of an FBI agent, Toni Archer would be dead today. Instead, she is in hiding and in fear for her life.”
A year earlier Frank Archer had had what he told friends was a five-foot-four problem. Toni. She wanted a divorce. Archer was an engineer, and he was good at math. A divorce meant splitting all their worldly goods and paying for child support. But if Toni were to die? Then not only would Archer avoid a divorce settlement, but he would benefit from Toni’s $300,000 life insurance policy.
Archer asked an old friend from high school—who also happened to be an ex-con—if he knew anyone who could help. The old friend found Rod Emerick, but Rod wasn’t a hired killer—he was an FBI agent. Archer agreed to meet Rod in a hotel room, which the FBI bugged. In a windowless van parked outside, Allison monitored the grainy black-and- white feed, all shadows and snow, waiting until they had enough to make an arrest before she gave the order. With gritted teeth, she had watched Archer hand over a snapshot of Toni, her license number, her work schedule, and $5,000 in fifties and hundreds. She sometimes understood those who killed from passion—but killers motivated by greed left her cold.
Given the strength of the evidence, Archer had had no choice but to plead guilty. Now, as Allison advocated for the maximum possible sentence, she didn’t look over at him once. He was a small man, with thinning blonde hair and glasses. He looked nothing like a killer. But after five years as a federal prosecutor, Allison had learned that few killers did.
After she finished, she rejoined Rod at the prosecutor’s table and listened to the defense attorney’s sad litany of excuses. Archer hadn’t known what he was doing, he was distraught, he was under a lot of stress, he wasn’t sleeping well, and he never intended to go through with it—lies that everyone in the crowded courtroom could see through.
“Do you have anything you would like to say to the court before sentencing?” Judge Fitzpatrick asked Archer.
Archer got to his feet, eyes brimming with crocodile tears. “I’m very, very sorry. Words cannot describe how I feel. It was all a huge mistake. I love Toni very much.”
Allison didn’t realize she was shaking her head until she felt Rod’s size 12 loafer squishing the toe of her sensible navy blue pump.
They all rose for the sentence.