very strong heart.
Faith Lockhart for Renee Adams, it said. There was a phone number to
call. They wanted Faith in exchange for his daughter.
CHAPTER 40
REYNOLDS SAT IN HER LIVING ROOM CRADLING A CUP of tea and staring into
a fire that was SloWly dying. The last time she could remember being
home at this time of the day was when she had been on maternity leave
with David. Her son had been as surprised to see her come through the
door as Rosemary. David was now napping, and Rosemary was busy doing
laundry. Just another normal day for them. Reynolds simply stared
into the embers of the fire, wishing that something, anything about her
life could be normal.
It had started to rain hard, which fit in perfectly with her deep
depression. Suspended. She felt naked without her gun and
credentials. All those years at the Bureau, never a blemish, and now
she was a step away from a ruined career. Then what would she do?
Where could she go? Without her job, would her husband try to take the
kids? Could she stop him if he did?
She put her cup down, kicked off her shoes and sank back on the couch.
The tears started to come fast and heavy, and she put an arm across her
face both to soak them up and muffle her sobs. The ringing doorbell
made her sit up, wipe at her face and head to the door. She looked
through the peephole and found herself staring at Howard
Constantinople.
Connie stood in front of the fire he had just stoked, warming his
hands. An embarrassed Reynolds quickly dabbed at her eyes with a
tissue. He could not have missed her red eyes and splotchy cheeks, she
knew, but he had tactfully said nothing.
“Did they talk to you?” she asked.
Connie turned and dropped into a chair, nodding as he did so. “And I
came damn close to being suspended myself. I was about two seconds
from punching out Fisher, that shit-faced excuse for an agent.”
“Don’t go and crater your career for me, Connie.”
“If I had slugged the guy, believe me, it would’ve been for me, not
you.” He popped a big knuckle, as though emphasizing the point, and
then looked across at her. “The thing that kills me is, they actually
believe you’re somehow involved in this. I told them the truth.
Something came up, we were working another case. You wanted to go with
Lockhart because you had the relationship with her, but we had this
potential whistleblower over at Agriculture we were committed to. I
told them you were fretting like all get-out because you didn’t know if
Ken going with Lockhart out there was the right thing to do.”
“And?”
“And they weren’t listening. They’ve already made up their minds.”
“Because of the money? Did they tell you about that?”
Connie nodded slowly and suddenly hunched forward. For a big man his
movements could be quick, agile. “I don’t like kicking you while
you’re down, but why in the hell did you go sniffing around Newman’s
accounts without telling somebody? Like me, for instance? You know
detectives go in pairs for lots of reasons, not the least of which is
to cover the other’s ass. Now you’ve got nobody to corroborate shit
for you, except Anne Newman. And as far as they’re concerned, she
doesn’t count.”
Reynolds threw up her hands. “I never in a million years thought this
would happen. I was trying to do right by Ken and his family.”
“Well, if he was being paid off, maybe Ken doesn’t deserve that sort of
consideration. And that’s coming from a good friend of his.”
“We don’t know that he was bad yet.”
“Cash in a safe-deposit box under a fake name? Yeah, I guess everybody
does that, don’t they?”
“Connie, how did they know I was investigating Ken’s finances? I can’t
believe Anne would have called the Bureau. She asked me for help.”
“I asked Massey, but he’s a clam. Figures I’m the enemy too. I nosed
around a bit, though, and I think they got a phone tip. Anonymous, of
course. Massey told me you were screaming frame-up. And you know