What Silas hadn’t known was that Cameron had a contact at the DOJ—an old friend from law school—and that she had worked behind the scenes, trying to get him to agree to transfer Jack instead of an outright dismissal. To help strengthen her case, she’d gone to Davis’s office early one morning a few days after Jack’s comments. It was a risk, she’d known, but she’d also known that Davis had been fighting for Jack and her instincts had told her she could trust him. She explained the situation, that Silas was angling for Jack’s dismissal, and passed along the name of her contact at the DOJ. Two people working behind the scenes were better than one, she’d told Davis, then asked that he never discuss with anyone the purpose of her visit.

“Why are you doing this?” Davis had asked as he walked her to his office door. “After what Jack said about you, I would’ve thought you’d be happy to see him dismissed.”

Cameron had asked herself this very question. The answer, simply, came down to her principles. No matter how angry she was with Jack for his comments, when it came to her job, she put personal differences aside. Even in this case.

She’d read the files. Silas hadn’t read them, and the higher-ups in the DOJ hadn’t, either, but she doubted anyone could know the things she knew about those two days Jack spent in the hands of Martino’s men and not have complete, utter respect for his dedication to his job. He may have had a lot of room for improvement in the personality department, but he was an incredible FBI agent.

“Do you want to see Jack get fired?” she’d asked Davis in response to his question.

“Of course not. He’s probably the best damn agent in the Bureau.”

“I agree.” With that being said, Cameron had opened the door and walked out of his office—

And spotted Jack standing across the hall, staring at her.

She’d had a moment of panic—no one was supposed to know she was there. But she kept her expression flat and emotionless, and walked out without a word.

She knew what Jack thought, the assumptions he’d made that day. He thought she’d been the one to get him transferred—probably assumed that she’d gone to Davis that morning to complain about him. Unfortunately, there wasn’t much she could do about that. She’d gone over Silas’s head to defend Jack, and in his book that was a major breach of loyalty. She had no doubt that Silas would fire her on the spot if he ever found out. So she’d bitten the bullet and let Jack go on believing the worst about her.

After all, he’d already despised her because of the Martino case. Adding another log to the fire wasn’t going to make much difference.


WHEN CAMERON GOT to Silas’s office she knocked on the door. He gestured for her to come in.

“Cameron—have a seat.”

She stepped into the office—a large one, by government standards, and richly decorated, too—and took a seat in one of the chairs in front of Silas’s desk. “Sorry that I’m going to have to keep this short. I have to be somewhere in less than an hour and I need to stop at home first.”

“I won’t keep you long,” Silas said. “I just wanted to make sure you’re doing okay. You know, with everything you went through last weekend.” Although his words were polite, there was a hint of annoyance in his eyes. Perhaps anger, even.

Cameron answered cautiously, unsure how much he knew. “I’m doing fine. Thanks for asking.”

“You can knock off the vague routine, Cameron—I know all about the Robards investigation. The FBI director called me from D.C. this afternoon to say how much he appreciated our office’s cooperation in the matter. Of course I had no idea what he was talking about. I guess he just assumed that I would be in the loop when one of my AUSAs is an eyewitness to a crime that involves a U.S. senator and is placed under protective surveillance. I guess I would’ve assumed that, too.”

Since the cat was out of the bag, Cameron tried to smooth things over. She could imagine how much Silas had disliked being caught unaware with the head of the FBI. “I’m sorry if you were caught in an awkward position with Godfrey,” she said. “The FBI agents in charge of the investigation said I wasn’t supposed to discuss the specifics of what happened with anyone.”

“I understand it’s a confidential matter, but I need to be aware when threats have been made against one of my attorneys.”

“And if I receive any actual threats, I’ll let you know. But so far this is just a precautionary measure.” Cameron couldn’t tell if he was appeased or not. She thought it might be best to distract him, get him off topic. “I don’t know if the director mentioned this, but Jack Pallas is running the case.”

Silas’s eyes widened with surprise. “Pallas is back? When did that happen?”

Cameron shrugged. “I think just recently.”

The point, in her mind anyway, was that he was back and—at least temporarily—tangled up in her life once again.


“SO WHAT ARE you thinking?”

Jack rubbed his hand over his face and looked across his desk at Wilkins. “I’m thinking that if I never see another lawyer again for the rest of my life, it’ll be too soon.”

As expected, the footage from the hotel’s video cameras hadn’t produced any leads, and they’d now turned their attention to questioning Senator Hodges and his staff. Of course, his team of attorneys had made things as difficult as possible. But at least they’d learned a few things: several members of Hodges’s team had admitted knowing about his various affairs with call girls, and a handful even acknowledged knowing about Mandy Robards specifically.

The first two people they had interviewed were Alex Driscoll, the senator’s chief of staff, and Grant Lombard, his personal security guard. When questioned, both Driscoll and Lombard claimed to have been at home sleeping at the time of Mandy Robards’s murder. For both men, there appeared to be no evidence to either contradict or confirm this. They both acknowledged that they were aware of Hodges’s affair with Mandy Robards; in fact both admitted knowing that Hodges planned to see her the night of her murder. Lombard had made the arrangements with the escort agency (which Hodges admitted was something he asked Lombard to do “from time to time”), and Driscoll had attended the charity dinner with the senator and claimed to have learned then of Hodges’s plans to see Robards later in the evening.

Neither Lombard nor Driscoll had been particularly forthcoming about Hodges’s affairs, but as the senator’s bodyguard and chief of staff, they weren’t expected to be. And though neither had an alibi, seeing how both men claimed to be home at the time of the murder, sleeping alone (Driscoll was divorced and Lombard had never married), this again was not unusual. However, both did fit the rough physical description Cameron had given of the man she had seen leaving room 1308.

It wasn’t a lot, Jack knew, but it was enough to look into both men further.

“Let’s get Driscoll and Lombard’s phone records and cross reference them with the numbers we have for Mandy Robards,” Jack told Wilkins. “And we should pull their credit card statements for the past two years—see if anything unusual turns up. In the meantime, we need to get started on that list Hodges gave us of people he believes might have a grudge against him.”

Wilkins nodded in agreement just as the phone rang. Jack saw the call was coming from the lobby security desk.

“Pallas,” he answered.

“Officers Kamin and Phelps from the Chicago Police Department are here to see you. They say they have something for you from a Detective Slonsky,” said the evening security guard.

“Thanks—send them up.”

Jack hung up the phone and looked at Wilkins. “Kamin and Phelps are on their way up.” He frowned. “Aren’t those the guys Slonsky put on Cameron’s surveillance?”

Wilkins glanced at his watch. “They’re the evening shift, I thought.”

“So what are they doing here?”

“You’ll have to ask them that.” Wilkins seemed to sense the dark cloud of displeasure that was quickly moving in. “Let’s try to play nice here, Jack—remember that we’re working with these guys.”

When Kamin and Phelps arrived at his office, Wilkins rose from his chair and greeted them with a cordial smile. “Hello, officers. What brings you by this evening?”

The older cop introduced himself and his younger partner. “I’m Bob Kamin, this is my partner, Danny Phelps.” He held out a large sealed envelope. “Detective Slonsky asked us to bring this to you. He says it’s the lab report you’ve been waiting for.”

Jack got up from his desk and took the envelope from Kamin. “Thanks.” He caught Wilkins’s sideways glance and shot him a look to let him know that everything was cool. “So . . . for some reason we thought you were the guys assigned to Ms. Lynde’s surveillance. Guess we were mistaken?”

“Nope, you got it right,” Kamin said. “We do the night shift. Nice girl. We talk a lot on the way to the gym.”

“Oh. Then I guess Agent Wilkins and I are just curious why you two are here instead of with her.”

Kamin waved this off. “It’s cool. We did a switcheroo with another cop, see?”

“A switcheroo . . . right. Remind me again how that works?” Jack asked.

“It’s because she’s got this big date tonight,” Kamin explained.

Jack cocked his head. “A date?”

Phelps chimed in. “Yeah, you know—with Max-the-investment-banker-she-met-on-the-Bloomingdales-escalator.”

“I must’ve missed that one.”

“Oh, it’s a great story,” Kamin assured him. “She crashed into him coming off the escalator and when her shopping bag spilled open, he told her he liked her shoes.”