I had never felt this way with him before. I didn’t like it.
“Because I needed a safe place to talk about this,” Nathan said, tossing a small recording device onto the table. I recognized it immediately. It was a standard issue t22 short range video and audio transmitter. We used them to listen in on people during investigations. “There’s dozens of them all over the house,” he added.
“Of course there are. You were potentially connected to one of the biggest human smuggling rings we’ve ever taken down. Do you really think the police wouldn’t have ears on you?” I shouldn’t have been so open, but I also didn’t like lying to the man who had stolen my heart. I needed to look into his eyes and know one way or another if he was guilty.
“I’m pulling these things out of here. All of them. I’ll live in this goddamned safe room if I have to. The police offered me protection for my testimony, they gave me immunity,” Nathan replied.
I almost smirked. Immunity protected you from past crimes, not the present. The captain had to be hell-bent on taking Nathan down if he was investing this much of the budget into tracking and listening in on him. Any little misstep and the asshole billionaire would be behind bars. Just thinking about the women on that container ship made my blood boil. I wanted to be the one to slap the handcuffs on this asshole…
This asshole who made me love him.
“And there’s this,” he continued, tossing a small box next to the transmitter. This box was far more chilling. Photographs spilled out onto the table, dozens of shots from every single angle. My apartment, my car, the inside of my bedroom…
And one of me from just last night, asleep in my bed.
I stared at it for a moment, fear washing over me.
“What the hell is this?” I asked, trembling in place. I had to maintain my composure. Nathan was trying to put me off balance. He was trying to make me need him. I could see right through this game—he’d put someone in my bedroom and had them take pictures of me. He had to…
“Did someone hurt you?” he asked, his eyes suddenly alight with an angry, terrified fire. “So help me God, if someone hurt you…”
“I’m okay. Nobody hurt me. I didn’t even know they were there,” I whispered, sitting down on the cot next to him. He seemed sincere, and that set warning bells off in my mind. Was he playing me for a fool? Was this whole thing an act? Did Nathaniel Hale have me photographed in my own bed? And if he didn’t, who the hell did?
I couldn’t put it past him. Knowing what I knew, what the Captain had shown me, Nathan was capable of damn near anything. If he was half as cunning as Captain Pierce had made him out to be, there was no telling what plan he might concoct to keep me from seeing the truth.
Maybe he intended to keep me out of harm’s way. Or maybe he wanted me in here where I couldn’t interfere with his plans, where I couldn’t snoop around and ruin his schemes. Even if I’d quit the force, he might have suspected that I’d still be able to put my detective training to good use. Maybe this was intended to be my prison.
“We can stop this,” I said, trying to manufacture a reason to get us out of this room. “The police, the FBI…”
“No, Sandra. Don’t you see? Someone with a badge has been watching me this whole time. Things haven’t sat right with me since the courthouse transfer.”
The transfer… My mind flashed back to the men I’d shot. It played over the chase, and the way Officer Kimball had sped off ahead.
“There were two in uniform when they came to pick me up. Everything seemed normal. The lanky guy, the one with the scar, he gets me in the car and shoots his buddy in the head, point blank. A couple of the undercover cops tried to stop him, but it was too late.”
Kimball… It had never sat right with me. I trusted Officer Kimball, and he’d gotten in the car with scar-face like nothing was wrong. If he was in on it, why did he end up taking a bullet?
My mind went back to the day I shot O’Rourke. I could see Kimball and the way he greeted the man with the scar. It was as if they knew each other… Or… Maybe he was expecting someone.
Still, that didn’t explain why Kimball had sped off ahead. If he was killed during the pickup, that meant he thought everything was normal right up until the last minute… He never would have broken from protocol… Unless…
Captain’s orders… Kimball would have trusted the Captain. If he was ordered to hurry to the pickup, he would have done it. If the Captain had assigned someone to ride along with him, he wouldn’t have questioned it.