Stolen from the Hitman: A Bad Boy Mafia Romance(175)
“Leon!” I yell, panicking. I hate seeing him hauled off in cuffs like this. He’s a good guy! I want to turn and scream at the detective, tell her that we’re on the right side, beg her not to let the FBI take this over and cover the whole thing up.
The agent grabs my arm and I gasp at the tight grip. Leon goes ballistic, suddenly kicking and struggling to break away from the guy holding him. “Get your grimy paws off her, you piece of scum!” he shouts. “Leave her alone. Don’t touch her, Doyle!”
Agent Doyle lets me go hesitantly, leaning in to hiss at me, “Keep out of this. The FBI thanks you for your cooperation and input, but you’re no longer needed. Please leave before I’m forced to bring you in for questioning, as well.”
“They’re innocent! You’re arresting the wrong people!” I reply, my voice wavering.
“That is for the Bureau to decide, not you. Now get out of here or I will be forced to arrest you, too. Do not make me ask you again.”
We stare at each other for a long, tense moment.
Then some voice in the back of my head reminds me that I won’t be much help to the Club, to Leon, if I get locked up myself. So as much as it pains me, I walk away, storming off to my rental car with my heart pounding nearly out of my chest. I get into my car just as the black sedans are pulling away with the Club members in tow.
Starting my engine, I decide to follow them straight back to the precinct. I am not going to let them get away with this.
35
Leon
Agent Doyle paces back and forth in the interrogation room in the shadows cast by the fluorescent light that’s hanging over me as I sit handcuffed at the table. His steps are slow. Painfully slow.
The agent and I go way back. He’s been keeping tabs on the union Club since we first got started. I’ve had my suspicions that he had a hand in busting the union up in the first place, or at least that he saw some of the money that got spread around after the bust. Maybe it was planned from the start, or maybe some cash was pushed his way to make sure the bosses had the government’s support in the fallout, but whatever the case may be, Agent Charles Doyle seems to take special pleasure in putting the twist on all of us.
“You can keep quiet as long as you like, Mr. Volkov, that’s well within your rights, but that’s only going to make it look worse for you when I present our evidence in court, you know.”
I just stare him down, my face unmoving. I know he’s just trying to goad me into saying something stupid and incriminating. He’s got a file on me six inches thick back up in Washington, and he knows how to press my buttons.
More importantly, I know for a fact he’s got nothing on me. We didn’t leave a trace of our presence at the scene—Eva made sure of that. And there’s not a scrap of DNA they’ll be able to pick up on at the scene.
“Now, I don’t know what you’re doing to ‘inspire’ those supposedly loyal lackeys of yours running around on overpriced scooters, but that big bearded guy you call your Sergeant at Arms? We’ve already placed him at the scene, and when we showed him what we’ve got on him, he started spilling his guts for a deal. We can offer you the same, you know.”
A lie. Even as Doyle takes a seat on the table with one leg, peering at me with those still, eerie eyes of his, I can see the lie in them as plain as day. But Doyle isn’t the kind of guy to lie out of his ass, so I humor him a little.
“He’s not much of a talker on a good day.”
“No, but he didn’t need to. The mud caked on his bike pedals did most of the talking for him.”
I keep a stony face, pretending to be disconcerted, but it’s at best a circumstantial piece of evidence. Bayonne’s a muddy place.
“Big guy like Gennedy comes in handy moving people around quickly, I’d bet,” Doyle says, flipping through a few files in his hands with a smile. “Did he come in handy when you paid Mr. Mickey Lamar a visit and shot one of his immigrant workers, too?”
Doyle very badly wants me to defend myself by pointing out that it was Mickey’s gun that was fired; that would make it easy as cake to implicate me as having knowledge that one of the immigrants was going to get shot that day. But I’m not going to let him have that satisfaction.
Doyle looks at me for a long time, as if trying to pry into my mind and take the words from my mouth.
“Stare at me as long as you want, Chuckie, but I don’t think all that time behind a cushy desk in Washington is doing much for your psychic powers. Or are you trying to have an intimate moment with me?” I grin, but Doyle’s face is immobile. He just stares for another moment before standing up and walking away from me, flipping through those folders again.