Page 27 of Baby Take Me Home
Samantha looked away from me. “TJ?”
My stomach twisted in my gut. TJ was listening after all.
She nodded. “Okay.” She turned back to me. “You’re right, Ms. Armand, your friend did not have a pre-existing condition. The autopsy proved there was no reason for him to have that heart attack.”
“Meaning?” I asked.
“Meaning,” a smooth, calming voice said, and I turned to see TJ filling the doorway, “Mr. Brooks was killed by the Carbonados.”
My breath caught in my throat. My friend’s death hadn’t been an accident. He’d been murdered.
TJ tilted his head, and Samantha and Cynthia stood and left the room, closing the door behind them. TJ pulled his comms unit out of his ear and tapped it.
“We’re alone, off the record for now.” He sat in the chair Cynthia had just vacated. “Ashlee, I need you to listen very carefully and answer as truthfully as possible. It’s the only way I can keep you and your family safe.”
The only way to do that would be to follow through on what we’d already agreed to do, although I knew there was an out and I had been seriously contemplating taking it. He held my hand. I wanted to pull away from him, but I wanted the comfort of his touch more.
“I need to know whether there’s any reason for the Carbonados to suspect you were working with Brooks on his story about them.”
I knew why he was asking. I’d interviewed whistle-blowers who needed protection, so I understood the broad strokes of how WitSec worked. TJ needed details about the threat the Carbonados posed to me to arrange my WitSec deal.
“I wasn’t working on that story,” I said. “Not then. You’ve probably read the email exchange between us when Aiden invited me to be his plus one because his husband was sick.”
“Not yet,” he said. “We’re waiting for the subpoena before we touch any of your emails or texts. But the Carbonados will have read them, probably months ago.”
I nodded. “That’s good, right?”
“Or they’ll think it was a cover story.” TJ squeezed my fingers. “And then there’s the story you’re working on now. Kovac’s no doubt suspicious. How, exactly, did you approach him about that?”
“It was dumb luck, actually.” I recounted how Jayne had met Sunnie Singleton, one of DC’s society mavens, at a luncheon. She’d recently been on a charity committee with several diplomats’ spouses, all of whom had interesting lives of their own. “She pitched the story to my lifestyle editor. When I saw Luka’s name on the list, I jumped at the chance to write a series. I tried not to appear too anxious. Luka’s my third subject in the series. The first two articles have already been published.”
TJ furrowed his brow. “Do you remember the date of the luncheon?”
“Yes. It was July 3rd, right before the holiday.”
He put his comms unit back in his ear and spoke. “Penn, Sparks, I need you to dig up everything you can about Sunnie Singleton over the past three months. Find any ties between her and the Kovacs, Slovenian embassy staff, and any known or suspected Carbonados members.”
It hadn’t been dumb luck or coincidence. It had been a set-up. How could I have been so stupid? “I should have seen it,” I muttered. “This was a test. They were baiting me.”
“Don’t do that to yourself,” TJ told me. “These guys are good at what they do.”
I shook my head. “I didn’t even make it challenging for them. I didn’t used to be so scattered and naïve and—” I sucked in a shaking breath to calm myself. Tears clouded my eyes. I blinked them away. I was already pathetic enough without devolving into a crying fit.
“You might have taken the bait, but you’ve been smart about this,” TJ said. “Not making him your first subject of the series. Not putting anything suspicious in writing. Not giving him any reason to doubt you.”
“Only because you saved me from getting caught in Izak Kovac’s office.”
Why had I thought I could get away with that? Where had my common sense gone? Luka had chummed the water with details about the embassy offices and the last-minute gala invitation. When I’d caught a whiff of the opportunity to dig up dirt on Kovac, I had shut down every survival instinct in pursuit of something, anything, that would help me avenge my trauma and Aiden’s death. I now saw all too clearly that I could have suffered the same fate.
“Thank you,” I said, barely holding it together. “Thank you for saving me from the Kovacs.”
TJ laid his second hand over mine. He gave his team a few more orders, then removed his comms unit again. He re-clasped my hand between his and spoke to me in his reassuring tone. “We’ll make him pay for his part in your ordeal and Aiden’s death, and a lot of other crimes as well..”
I believed him. “What can I do to help?”
“You’ll keep your meeting with him next Tuesday, just like we planned. We’ll have an agenda. Kessler will guide you. You’ll be wired with a small device that will lock in on Kovac’s phone signature, and then we’ll be able to monitor everything he does on it.”
“After that, do you really think I’ll still be in danger, or is there a chance I could go back to my old life?”