Without a Net (30 page)

“If she’s smart, she’s halfway to Guinea-Bissau by now, but yes, there is some concern that she might go after you.”

“So I should stay out of sight and let you guys do the protection thing.” Ollie gave a rough bark of laughter. “It’s better than taking a protection detail from the department.”

“That was never an option,” Director Sewell said. “I got one of our lawyers to draft a material-witness warrant. I’m glad I don’t have to use it.”

Ollie felt a jolt of dismay that she’d been willing to legally strip his freedom from him. No way could he handle that, but he could admit it was wise to let the FBI run point on both the case and his protection detail. “No, it makes sense to let you guys do your thing. I can’t go back to work anyway. Not now.”

She studied him curiously. “Will you go back ever?”

Ollie frowned. “Maybe. I don’t know.”

“Okay, fair enough. To let you know, the Jackson shooting was caught on surveillance. You’re in the clear on that. It was a good shoot. You’re still going to have to talk to our staff psychologist.”

“I figured.” Ollie turned his attention back to the televisions. Someone had a reporter in front of the hospital now. The runner on the bottom of the screen stated that Greyson was in serious but stable condition, and that his wife was with him. His wife. Ollie felt ill as he realized that either the woman knew she was in bed with a fucking monster or she was about to get some devastating news. He wondered if she would believe the federal agents who came to talk to her.

Director Sewell stood.

“Will Travis be okay?” Ollie asked.

“In what way?” Sewell asked.

“Will he get in trouble? I could have signaled him to stop, but I wanted more information, and he seemed the easiest source.” Ollie carefully didn’t look at her. If this incident destroyed Travis’s career, Ollie was going to feel guilty for a long time. A hysterical voice in the back of his head pointed out that the chief of police needed to hire a whole bunch of new law-enforcement officers in the near future. Travis could get a job here. But that was hysteria whispering, and maybe…love. It wasn’t any sort of workable plan.

“He’ll be fine. Believe it or not, this isn’t even the craziest thing he’s done to close a case.” She rested her hands on the back of the chair. “It would help if your official statement included words to that effect.”

“It will,” Ollie said.

She stood there, but he kept his attention on the screens, watching her with his peripheral vision.

Sewell said, “I’m glad someone is looking out for his long-term interests. I’ll send an agent in so you can get that filed before Goode finishes with Crosica and comes back. He’s a solid agent, and he doesn’t deserve to get pilloried. That said, you’re the victim in all this. I have my agent’s back, but he made an error in judgment by having sex on the job. If you want him formally disciplined, I’m not against that. He might not be a rapist, but he sure as hell is a damn poor judge of what’s reasonable during an investigation. But think about that for a few days. Don’t give me an answer now. Right now, you need to make a formal statement and make arrangements for some of my agents to get you whatever personal effects you need out of your apartment, and I have to go deal with an irate mayor. Hopefully we’ll have time to talk later.”

Ollie nodded. “Thanks.” She appeared to be a good boss—someone who got the job done and understood what it was like in the trenches. Of course the last person he’d thought that about had tried to kill him and legally committed rape by ordering Travis to have oral sex with him. The courts were pretty clear about that definition of rape, and since Greyson was so militantly heterosexual, there was something darkly amusing about the fact he would be charged with raping a man. However, the humor might just be a symptom of Ollie’s twisted worldview. Ollie didn’t trust his judgment right now. He kept silent as she climbed down and out of the trailer and closed the door behind her.

Groaning, he tilted his head back and covered his eyes with the crook of his arm. In the movies, killing the bad guys fixed everything. Unfortunately, real life was so much messier.

Chapter Twenty-Six

Ollie followed Agent McGraw into the safe house. It was a small family home on a quiet street far, far from the city. If Sauvageot found him here, Ollie would be really impressed. And dead. There were twenty-seven dirty cops who wanted to put him six feet under. Ollie knew he wouldn’t need the protection detail forever, though. These cops might pay to save their own skins from prison, but by the time they started turning on one another for reduced sentences, no one would care about him anymore.

Hopefully.

The news kept showing his picture from that damn calendar, which made the public more interested than Ollie appreciated. He was considering putting blond highlights in his black hair and taking a stage name. On the good side, that calendar was so artistically manipulated with soft filters and added contrast that it only bore a passing resemblance to Ollie in real life. He was counting on that to save him. Another stroke of luck had all of them calling him Andrew Robertson rather than Oliver or Ollie—his middle name. Ollie had been named after his father, and having two Andrews in the house had been too confusing, but so far the reporters hadn’t picked up on that fact.

Overall, it could be worse. It could be a lot worse.

“Any word from Agent Goode?” Ollie asked McGraw.

Emily McGraw was the head of his protection detail, and if someone needed to get him a message, it had to come through her. She was a sweet woman, but she also had an edge to her that suggested anyone circumventing her authority risked getting shot in the ass. She might use a paint gun or Taser rather than her service weapon, but she would definitely hit her target.

She gave him a small smile. “Sorry. Nothing. We did pass on your message, and the director said Goode has clearance to know the location of the safe house, but…” She let her words trail off.

“But Travis is a prick sometimes,” Tach Kelleher, McGraw’s partner for the week, added as he came out from one of the bedrooms. “It has nothing to do with you. That’s his charm.”

“No joke,” McGraw said. “Any problems?”

“Nope. It’s all quiet,” Kelleher said. “Director wanted you to check in with her.” He dropped onto the living room couch while McGraw headed for the back bedroom where the surveillance equipment was set up. “Goode’s a great agent, but he’s not exactly personable. He runs through partners faster than underwear, and he has exactly zero patience for anyone who can’t live up to his standards. I partnered with him for one case. One. I was ready to file a mental-disability claim. Don’t take it personally that he’s ignoring you.”

Ollie grabbed the television remote and sat in the only recliner. “I’m not,” he said, and that was a lie. Travis had enjoyed their time together. Ollie knew it. No way had all that been a lie, but if he’d liked dominating Ollie, why had he made himself scarce? At first Ollie had blamed the case and the internal investigation Travis must have triggered when he filed a report calling himself a rapist. Ollie had argued with at least a half dozen lawyers over that one, but he maintained that Greyson had committed the only rape, and that had been rape by proxy. He and Travis had a great time with consensual sex.

Ollie poked the remote harder than he needed to.

“That man has unrealistic expectations. As far as he’s concerned, people should never let emotions interfere with work, and lack of perfect self-control is a sin. Hell, you were on that dirty-cop case for what? Three or four weeks? That puts you in the middle of the pack for surviving as Goode’s partner.” Kelleher grabbed a magazine off the side table and flipped through it.

That didn’t reassure Ollie. If anything, it suggested Travis was emotionally constipated on a level Ollie couldn’t fight.

“If that man had given me one more dirty look or one more suggestion about how to do my job, I was this close to shoving my boot up his ass,” Kelleher said, holding his finger and thumb an inch apart. “And the worst part was that a good eighty percent of the time, he was right. It rubbed me wrong that he was fucking right and I had to listen to his advice because he is this incredibly good agent. If he was some fuckup, at least I could have ignored him. But no. He has to be fucking amazing at reading people and spotting the right suspect, and then I’m forced to pay attention to him. People that arrogant shouldn’t be allowed to be that right.”

“Sounds annoying,” Ollie said, but honestly he preferred it when the people who knew what they were doing took charge. If the police chief had kept a strong hold over the department instead of backing off and giving Greyson more and more authority under some misguided belief that he was more effective as a leader, all of this could have been avoided. “I’m heading to bed.”

Kelleher’s head popped up. “This early?” He sounded concerned.

“I’m going to go read.”

“Oh. Okay.” Kelleher gave Ollie a strange look but didn’t comment as he retreated.

He tried to read a book. He tried to watch a porn vid. Instead he ended up watching the news. It was like poking at a scab, and Ollie was masochistic enough to enjoy that sort of pain. Several hours in, and the house was quiet. Ollie was sure someone was awake and watching the perimeter, but there was an illusion of privacy. He was considering heading to bed when the vid-chat window chimed at him. The federal e-mail address attached to the request left very little doubt about who was calling.

Ollie sat up and grabbed his robe before he accepted the linkup.

“Hey, are you okay?” Travis looked ragged. He hadn’t shaved this morning, and the first hint of a salt-and-pepper beard covered his face.

“Fine. Is this connection secure?”

Travis nodded. “FBI-issued equipment. Tell me one thing. Did you let Milan off the hook because you were protecting me?”

“What?” Ollie nearly dropped the pad.

“If you don’t press charges for kidnapping, it makes what I did seem more like consensual sex.”

“Because it was,” Ollie said firmly. “Trust me, I swore out a complaint against Greyson for rape, so it’s not like I’m trying to hide that bad shit happened.”

Travis looked to his right, and Ollie had the feeling someone was supervising this conversation. The FBI had to monitor communication between him and Travis, or the case would be compromised. Ollie’s life was so entwined with the FBI case against Greyson and his underlings that Ollie lived in a glass house, and everyone watched him. The case might not survive if the defense successfully challenged Ollie’s credibility. Ollie suspected it might even be Assistant Director Sewell there to make sure Travis didn’t go off the reservation and say something offensive.

“Are Milan and Reeves okay?” Ollie asked. That was a safer topic than anything else Travis might want to say. And of the million things Ollie wanted to talk about, he didn’t want to bring any of them up in front of Travis’s boss. He didn’t want to ask how much had been real or if Travis had ever felt the fire between them. He avoided asking if Travis lay in bed and remembered the touches they’d shared or mourned for the loss of their connection.

“Milan is pissed at me.” Travis rolled his eyes. “He seems to think his feelings for Reeves justified all of this.”

“I don’t disagree,” Ollie said. Milan was a man trying to defend the world he loved. As a cop that was kind of what Ollie did. Only, he protected all the civilians, and he wasn’t quite as quick to use people like pawns to make that possible.

“You’re too forgiving,” Travis said bluntly, and Ollie didn’t think Travis meant Milan.

“How’s Reeves?”

“Screwed up, but that was true before all this.” Travis moved his pad, and the background swayed out of focus for a moment before it adjusted. Now Ollie could see more of Travis and the cheap hotel decor behind him. The FBI had not been as kind with his safe house. “I hate what that bastard Dom did to Reeves. He’s a mess.”

“I’m not surprised.” Ollie had looked up some of the news reports from the incident, and it hadn’t been pretty. The asshole Reeves had killed deserved to die a dozen more times. Ollie couldn’t imagine a universe where that sort of imprisonment and abuse didn’t fuck with a person’s head. “I’m shocked he’s in another relationship so quickly.”

“They aren’t having sex. If Milan asked for sex, Reeves probably would have run for the hills. I suppose it also helps that Milan is not a very masculine person, so there’s not much there to physically remind Reeves of what happened.”

Milan was such a sexual creature by nature that the news surprised Ollie, but he could also see how Milan craved the submission and the adoration more than the sex.

“I need to talk to you officially, as the FBI agent in charge of the investigation.”

“Oh?” Ollie didn’t like the sound of that.

“The defense attorneys for these guys… They’re going to come after me. I’m the weak spot in this whole mess.”

Ollie nodded.

Travis had been looking around his room, but now he focused right on the camera, right on Ollie. “You have to let them. Don’t defend me or shade any truths.”

“I wouldn’t,” Ollie said. He understood the importance of protecting the legal cases.

“Good. If my career takes damage, it’s not like I haven’t brought that on myself.”

“And here comes the hair shirt,” Ollie said, cutting Travis off. Travis looked shocked, but Ollie was done with this. “If they go after you, I’ll let them because the prosecution comes first. But you didn’t bring this on yourself any more than I did. And if you keep talking like this, you’re inviting trouble. If these guys smell blood in the water, they’ll be after you like sharks. So you let me worry about my testimony, and you worry about yours.” Ollie was afraid he’d gone too far. Travis stared at him. Muttered voices whispered something outside the range of the microphone, and slowly Travis smiled.

“The director likes you, Robertson.”

“I like her more than my last boss, which isn’t saying much, but she does strike me as a fair woman.”

Travis looked to the right again before answering. “She is. And she’ll protect you as long as there’s a danger that these guys are going to go after you, which is why she said I won’t be able to contact you again until after the last trial.”