Page 42 of His Verdict
I go into one of the stalls and do my business. As I’m washing my hands at the sink, the door to the stall at the far end of the room creaks open. I hadn’t even realized someone else was in here.
A woman steps out. She’s in her late forties, with a sharp, intelligent face, short brown hair, and the kind of plain, practical pantsuit that screams government employee. She doesn’t look like a lawyer. Her eyes are piercing, and they are fixed on me.
“Olivia Sutton,” she says. Her voice is low, calm, and utterly devoid of warmth. It’s not a question.
I’m instantly on high alert. My heart starts a slow, heavy thud. “Do I know you?” I ask, my own voice coming out cooler than I feel.
She takes a step closer, and I instinctively take a step back, my hand still damp from the sink. “My name is Special Agent Michelle Jennings,” she says, her gaze unwavering. “FBI.”
My blood turns to ice. FBI. The organization that has spent decades trying, and failing, to cage the Sinclairs.
“I have nothing to say to you,” I say, my voice tight. I make a move to walk past her, toward the door.
She doesn’t move to block me, but her words stop me dead in my tracks. “We know about Arthur Vance.”
I freeze, my back to her. My entire body is a rigid, screaming nerve.
“We know it wasn’t a car accident,” she continues, her voice a low, confidential murmur. “We know he was in a meeting at the Donovan & Creed offices less than an hour before his car supposedly went off the road. A meeting with Jasper Sinclair. A meeting you were also present for.”
I can’t breathe. They know. How could they possibly know? The cleanup was so perfect, the story so airtight.
I slowly turn to face her. “We can protect you, Olivia. We can offer you a way out.”
“A way out?” My laugh is a short, bitter, humorless bark. “You think you can protect me from him? From them? You’re insane. You have no idea what you’re up against. You’ve been trying to get his father for thirty years and you haven’t laid a glove on him. You think you can protect me?”
“We can get you into the Witness Protection Program,” she says, her voice still infuriatingly calm. “A new name, a new life, somewhere they will never find you. It’s your only chance. You have to know that. You are in over your head. He will use you until you are no longer useful, and then he will dispose of you. Just like he did with Arthur Vance.”
Her words are a poison dart, aimed directly at the deepest, most terrified part of my soul. Everything she’s saying is true. I know it is. But the idea of putting my faith, my life, in the hands of the same system that has proven itself utterly powerless against him is ludicrous. Witness protection. A life on the run, forever looking over my shoulder, waiting for the inevitable arrival of one of his men in a dark suit. It's not a life; it's a different kind of prison.
“He is a monster, Olivia,” Agent Jennings says, her voice softening slightly. “But you don’t have to be one of his victims.”
I just stare at her, my mind a maelstrom of terror and conflict. She is offering me a ghost of a chance, a sliver of the life I thought was gone forever. A life of freedom, however precarious. But the price is betraying him. The price is trying to run from a man who sees everything, who controls everything.
The door to the restroom swings open, and two chattering paralegals walk in. Agent Jennings gives me one last, meaningful look.
“Think about it,” she whispers. She pulls a small, plain white business card from her pocket and presses it into my numb hand. “When you’re ready to save your own life, call me.”
And just as quickly as she appeared, she is gone, walking past the two surprised paralegals and out the door, leaving me standing there, my world once again shattered. I look down at the card in my hand. It has only a name and a number. No agency seal, nothing to trace. A burner number.
The choice is impossible. Stay with the monster I know, the one who protects me even as he owns me, or run into the arms of a system that can offer me nothing but a prayer and a target on my back.
Chapter 20
My hand closes around the small, anonymous business card, the sharp corners digging into my palm. It feels like a live grenade. The restroom is suddenly too bright, the white tiles too clean. The cheerful chatter of the paralegals by the sink is a bizarre, alien sound from a world I no longer inhabit. All I can hear is the frantic, terrified drumming of my own blood in my ears.
I shove the card deep into my blazer pocket and walk out of the restroom on legs that feel like they’re made of glass. I move through the courthouse hallways on autopilot, nodding at faces I vaguely recognize, my face a carefully constructed mask of professional calm. Inside, I am screaming.
The walk to the street where the town car is waiting is the longest of my life. Every person I pass is a potential threat. Every glance in my direction feels like surveillance. Is Agent Jennings watching me right now? Are her people already tracking my movements? The paranoia is a physical thing, a prickling heat on the back of my neck.
I slide into the cool, dark sanctuary of the town car, the door closing with a heavy, finalthud, sealing me in. The driver doesn't speak. He just pulls smoothly away from the curb, merging into the traffic.
My mind is a maelstrom. Agent Jennings’s words echo on a loop.We know about Arthur Vance. We can protect you. He will dispose of you.
My first instinct, the gut reaction of the woman I used to be, is to believe her. To grab onto the lifeline she’s offered. The FBI. They are the good guys, the cavalry. This is my chance to escape, to reclaim my life, to see justice done for the murder I witnessed.
But the woman I am now, the woman who has seen the truth of how the world really works, crushes that instinct with a cold, brutal pragmatism.
Protect me? How? How do you protect someone from a ghost? The Sinclairs are not on the grid. They operate in the shadows, their power absolute and unseen. They don't just have money; they have influence that runs so deep it’s part of the city’s foundation. They own judges, they own cops, they own politicians. And they have an army of men in dark suits who can make a murder look like a car accident without breaking a sweat.