Page 83 of Hush

Winters didn’t look convinced. Granted, he never looked convinced of anything, but Mike was gambling everything here.

“Judge Brewer and I have developed a solid working relationship, sir. He trusts me. And I respect him. I want to do this for him.”

Silence filled the command office. He wanted to babble more, fill the air with reasons and justifications for why he had to be the one to protect Tom. He had to be the man. But sometimes silence was the best choice. He kept his lips sealed and held Winters’s gaze.

Winters leaned back in his leather chair and laced his hands together. “I transferred your trial schedule to Villegas to detail to the backup marshals coming over from headquarters. Confirm your security procedures for each high-risk trial you have scheduled for the next eight weeks. Sign off on the plans and then forward them to Villegas. He will assign each trial to a backup marshal.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“I want your security procedures for Judge Brewer’s personal protection written out and documented. And, you will provide me with daily reports, Lucciano. I want to know everything you’re doing.” Winters pointed one finger at him, his eyes narrowing. “If there’s anything you need to tell me, you need to hurry up and spit it out. Before your professionalism and your judgment are called into question, and you find yourself before a review board.”

He closed his eyes. What the hell did he do? Say something? Reveal what he and Tom had become? No, he’d be ripped away from Tom’s side, removed from protection, possibly removed from the Judicial Security branch of the Marshals. He couldn’t leave Tom now, not like this.

And… what if they didn’t make it? Was he going to end his career because he jumped the gun on their relationship? His career, his life, deserved just as much consideration as anything else. He couldn’t throw everything away on a gamble.

He’d march into Winters’s office and tell him he and Tom were dating, were serious, were going all the way—hell, he’d tell Winters they were engaged, if it came to that—but he had to be sure. Certain.

Three days into a brand-new relationship wasnotcertainty.

And, if he said anything, anything at all, right now… Tom would be in someone else’s hands. Probably Villegas’s. That asshole had no business being a JSI, and if Mike had his way, he’d keep Villegas far, far away from Tom.

“There’s nothing I have to tell you at this time, sir.”

“Atthistime?”

“At this time.”

Winters stood. Peered at him. “I expect your first daily report today, Lucciano. Give me a sitrep on what we’re facing and what we’re likely to face as the trial progresses.”

A full situation report, and a prediction. No small task. He nodded. “Yes sir.”

“Get out of here. As of now, you’re providing personal protection to Judge Brewer and are the lead for his security during trial. Anything you need, come directly tome. Don’t go around me to headquarters.”

He nodded again. “I won’t, sir. And… thank you.”

“Don’t make me regret this.”

Chapter 20

Bulat Desheriyev sat beneath a humming fluorescent light in a stainless steel and concrete cinderblock room. His ankles and wrists were shackled, and a heavy chain looped around his waist. He was secured to the steel table before him and the concrete floor, thick padlocks holding him in place.

He hadn’t moved for hours. He stared straight ahead, looking just to the right of his reflection in the mirror he knew was actually a spies’ window. On the other side of the glass, men hovered, watching him.

How had it come to this? His mission had been perfect, his plans airtight. Absolute. He had an egress route set in stone. He’d rehearsed the mission. The shots, the breakdown, the escape. He had it down to ninety seconds. Ninety seconds to freedom.

Instead, he’d been hemmed in, and after almost twelve hours, had been taken down by a massive force of American police and federal agents.

Why had his escape failed? What had gone wrong? How had police been on the scene so quickly?

Why was the fire escape door locked? It had never been locked in all the weeks he practiced the shooting, rehearsed his ingress and egress until he could do it in his sleep.

With the door locked, he’d been forced to improvise, reroute, go into public spaces. Carrying a case large enough to hide a sniper rifle, in front of police officers looking for a shooter, tipped off by a phone call. Or so he’d been told. The blueprints of his arrest.

It all pointed in one direction. To one inevitable truth. An unavoidable reality.

He’d been set up. He’d been set up by the one person who knew he was there, who knew his mission.

After his arrest, he’d been taken to the hospital. A few broken fingers, a busted lip, fractured cheekbone. Cracked ribs. Bruises. His arrest hadn’t been gentle. In Russia, he wouldn’t have survived the arrest, and the love taps he got from the American police would have been laughed at. They were so gentle with him, in comparison.