"Yes of course." He ran his finger over the rim of his glass. "Your key is lovely."
Absently I touched it. "Thank you."
"I don't remember seeing that before."
"It's usually hidden under my clothes but I broke the chain."
"Ah. So can you tell me where you've been?"
How much could I share with him without impacting the sting on Guy? "The case Cam just closed on the dirty cops was originally Dad's case. There was a little trouble here for me connected to that case, enough that the men in my life wanted to ensconced me away somewhere safe."
"Smart men."
"Yeah. I'm proud of Cam. It wasn't easy what he did, but it was the right thing. I just know that Dad is smiling down on him."
"I've no doubt." He put his glass down. "I'm going to need your necklace."
So thrown from his odd request I said a bit bewildered. "What?"
"For almost three years I've been waiting, wondering. It's nerve racking."
The first pang of dread moved through me "Waited for what?"
"For my past to come back and haunt me."
Ice formed in my blood, but as the pieces started falling into place ice turned to red-hot rage. I all but snarled at him. "You?"
"It's hard defending criminals and sometimes it is even unethical, but to make a difference, to stand out, sometimes you have to do the unethical. Your dad never understood that."
It was Uncle Tim, not Uncle Guy. My dad's childhood friend was the one behind his death. I wanted to hurt him, rake my fingers down his face, but I held myself immobile. "Why did you do it?"
"It was his damn Boy Scout ways. He was digging and I encouraged him to stop, that no good could come from investigating his own. That it was career suicide, but he didn't listen. So black and white your father."
"Why did you really encourage him to back off?"
"Because if he dug deep enough he would have learned it wasn't just cops on the take."
The investigation into evidence tampering at the station, it had been Uncle Tim behind that. He didn't have a magical acquittal rating. He had been cheating. And then a thought turned me cold. Mrs. Cooke's attack. At my apartment that day, he had made a comment about my mail. I hadn't thought anything of it at the time, seeing him flip through my mail, but he wanted access to my mail at her place. "You had Dobbs doing your dirty work … Mrs. Cooke's attack and screwing with evidence. Did he also intimidate jurors at your command?"
"Cop logic runs in the family. Miguel is just a pawn. He is so hungry for money and power, he makes it all too easy for someone to pull his strings. Salvatore Federico realized that too, so he scratched my back and when I'm elected into the Senate, he will have a friend in Washington."
"So you had Dad killed?"
"He should have left it alone. I think he suspected at the end, I could tell when we talked there was a remoteness to him."
"And this?" I asked as I palmed my key.
"There's that lovely little box in your dad's study. You remember it."
His special box, I couldn't believe I hadn't made the connection. I'd seen him open it enough times through the years. "What's he got on you?"
"I wasn't sure he had anything on me, but when the case on Dobbs started heating up I didn't want to take the chance. You were the executor of his will. If he left something, you would have found it."
Which was why he had been interested in my mail and when that didn't pan out. "You hired someone to come at me?"
"He would have been gentle unless you were uncooperative."
Gentle? The man put a knife to my back.
"The cops never showed up at my door. I actually thought it was all over until I saw that key just now around your neck-a key to the box that he kept all his important things in. I'm guessing he sent that to you right before he died. I thought he was getting wise to me, now I'm sure of it."
"You're an unimaginable bastard."
"And I'll be the next Senator for the state of New York."
Guy took us to the IA base operations located a few blocks from where we picked him up. Anton was going to flip the fuck out when he learned Federico had played him.
"How long have you been working in Internal Affairs?"
"Since Edward shared his suspicions with me. He hadn't told me how deep into it he was, but after the shooting I contacted IA."
"So you played dirty?"
"And left a few breadcrumbs for Cam to find. I needed an in to get closer to Dobbs, but Dobbs is too stupid to pull this off on his own. He's motivated by greed, pure and simple, but he is not a logistical thinker, just the hired muscle. There's another player and recently I got some insight from the most unlikely source."
"We thought that player was you."
"I know."
"So who is this source?"
"Follow me."
There was a room at the end of a short hall and sitting at the table was an older man who looked tired and scared. Chris McKay.
"So you pulled him in."
"Yeah. He was getting reckless."
"So what's he got?"
"Timothy Gallagher."
Apprehension twisted in my gut and my body went cold. "Come again."
"McKay had been stalking him, following his every move."
"And you were following him while he followed Gallagher. What did you get?"
"Late night meetings."
"With who?"
"Salvatore Federico."
Cold turned into numb. "He knows Federico?"
Guy was barely holding on to his rage. "Yeah. We know Federico is linked to the dirty cops at the precinct, we know the dirty cops are linked to Edward's murder, and that fucking asshole Timothy Gallagher is the point where all the parts intersect … Miguel Dobbs was being played by two puppet masters."
That explained why Salvatore cut ties with Dobbs because evidence tampering was one thing, the murder of a cop was something else altogether. "Shit." I yanked out my phone. I called Thea, but her phone went to voice mail. I called Mic.
"Where is she?"
"Her apartment, her uncle arrived about a half an hour ago."
"Gallagher?"
"Yeah."
I had walked into firefights where I'd been outnumbered ten to one, dodged IEDs, been tortured even, but never had I felt the fear that crippled me in that moment knowing that Thea was even now with a killer, a man she trusted and loved.
"It's him."
Mic hissed over the line, "Fucking hell."
"I'm on my way. I want ears on her apartment now."
"Thea?" Guy grabbed his coat. "I'm coming with you."
"I've got Cam on the line," Razor said as we hauled ass out of the building, my discipline holding on by a thread as bloodlust consumed me. If he hurt her, even just one hair on her head, I'd kill him. Tear him apart, piece by piece … I would embrace the monster I had been called my whole life.
"Tell him we had the wrong fucking uncle."
Hold on, baby. I'm coming.
"What am I going to do with you? Getting whatever your father hid won't be enough. You're a loose end." Uncle Tim was pacing my apartment and I thought to make a break for it, but the callous, almost disinterested act he was putting on was just that, an act. He was alert and on edge and I didn't stand a chance at outrunning him.
Maybe if I could appeal to the man who I had looked up to my whole life, to my beloved uncle, it might snap him out of his homicidal ideas. "You've been such a huge part of my life. I have to believe we can find a way through this that doesn't end in more violence."
"Oh Thea, you're so idealistic. It's sweet and completely impractical. The good guy never finishes first. I love you, but we have to think of the greater good. When I become Senator I will have an impact on millions and millions of lives. I can't allow sentimentality to cloud my purpose."
I knew he was arrogant, had always believed he had a reason to be, I hadn't realized he was a narcissist. Sentimentality, the greater good … if we weren't talking about me I'd actually be laughing right now.
"You're my godfather."
"Yes and it will make me an even more likable candidate when I'm there to help your family through their grief."
The man was certifiable. How had we never known this? And I thought I was good at reading people. "You're crazy."
True fear gripped me in that moment because I was dealing with someone who had long ago gone off the reservation. There would be no talking down or reasoning with him. My only play was to make an escape, but he was a man who had killed once already to keep the dream alive. Crazy and determined … a dangerous combination.
He reached for his phone. I should have known. He wouldn't do it himself; he'd bring someone in to do the dirty work. I couldn't believe I was actually listening to him make the call to place a hit on me. Where the hell was the goddamn cavalry? But no one was watching for Uncle Tim.
"He's calling for a hit," Mic said. We'd just stepped into the surveillance van outside of Thea's building.
Anton was pacing, the man was barely keeping his shit together. "Son of a bitch. That motherfucker Federico lied to me." He reached for his phone.
It was smart of Federico to give up Hartnett to keep Gallagher protected because there was just enough truth in his lie to make it believable. On paper, Hartnett and Gallagher were very similar and with Hartnett playing dirty … yeah sending us in that direction was definitely smart.