Live No Lies (Lawson & Abernathy 2)

“For your sister, I can pretend I never got this file. I’ll leave it under the rug where it’s always been. You, on the other hand, get a reduced sentence.”

“What? Come on, man,” Greg protested.

“Greg, it’s either that, or a full sentence, and your sister goes to jail, too.”

“What do you want?”

“It’s more a question of who I want. Dimitri.”

“You’re going to get me and my sister killed. You’re going to get killed.”

“Hey, hey, hey,” Mack said, trying to allay Greg’s fears. “Why do you think I’m here? Huh? I’ve got powerful friends. I’d be able to arrange protection for you and your sister.”

Greg stared at him, and Mack stared back with confidence.

“All right,” Greg agreed hesitantly.

Mack t

urned the recorder back on and took Greg’s statement.

“That’s not enough,” he said, after Greg was done.

“What?’ Greg asked, his mouth hanging open in shock.

“You’ve got to go back in.”

“You think by now word of my arrest hasn’t gotten back to him?”

“Well, being the loyal dog that you are, you didn’t say anything, right?”

Greg blinked as he processed that.

“Right,” he agreed.

“Good. Remember, the deal is to get so much evidence against your boss it’ll make yours look like child’s play. Now, we’re going to pretend like I brought you in on false charges. Remember, I’ve got damning evidence on you. If you try to play smart, you and your sister are not going to go down well.”

“Okay, you’ve made that clear enough. Now, let me out of these chains, please.”

As Greg stood up from his chair and stared at his reflection in the two-mirror, now with more confidence that he knew nobody was there. However, he couldn’t be more wrong. Someone was on the other side, staring at him make a fool of himself. That’s one thing about two-way mirrors: they could be deceptive even to people familiar with how they work. The person watched in darkness as Mack and Greg walked out.

***

Mack felt a little light from excitement. It had been four days since he’d let Greg get back into Dimitri’s fold. They had a scheduled meeting in two hours. He walked into his garage to retrieve something from his trunk. He popped it open, and jumped back in horror. His heart pounded furiously.

He took slow steps forward and peeked into the trunk.

No, no, no, he thought as despair settled over him. How’d this get here?

Lying right there in his trunk was a headless corpse, hands and feet tied, with Mack’s Swiss Army knife lying bloody beside the body. Mack looked around to make sure that there was no intruder in the garage. His heart was a jackhammer in his chest.

He had obviously been framed, and he was in deep trouble. He scanned the corpse again and discovered a white piece of paper crumpled in the corpse’s hand. He couldn’t use his fingers to bring it out. Putting his prints on the body would just make the situation worse, if that was possible. He rushed to the glove compartment, pulled out two pens, and used them like chopsticks to retrieve the paper.

When Mack was done, he had a look of hopelessness in his face. The paper had wrinkles, but no amount of wrinkles could blur the words written in bold red:

Boo!

Now, run. It’s my turn to give chase.