The Monuments Men Murders (The Art of Murder 4)

“I’m calling my lawyer. Which is what you should be doing.”

“Right. Well, when you finish phoning your lawyer—”

J.J.’s head jerked up. He glared at Jason. “Do you not get it, West? Our careers are over. I shot a kid. I killed a kid.”

Jason closed the office door. “I was there. You also saved lives. Maybe mine included. He was armed with an assault weapon.”

“He was a kid.”

Jason was silent. Was J.J. really fearing for his career, or was this something else? Or was it both? Jason had a feeling it was all of the above. Whatever it was, and cold-blooded though it might be, they—he—didn’t have time to deal with it. The clock was ticking—and this clock was attached to a time bomb.

“Do you think there’s something you should have—could have—done differently? You couldn’t talk to him. We’re not trained to shoot the guns out of people’s hands. I can’t see that we had any other choice.”

“It’s not we, West. You didn’t kill anyone.”

“That’s the luck of the draw. Literally, the luck of the draw. It could just as easily have been me.”

“Yeah, but it wasn’t.” J.J. put his phone down, put his head in his hands. “Why did he have to be a fucking kid?”

“I don’t know.” Jason sighed and pulled out the chair facing J.J.’s. “I wish it hadn’t gone down the way it did. But I’m not sorry that we’re alive.”

J.J. groaned. “When I saw how fucking young he was…” He squeezed his head tighter. “I almost threw up.”

“I know.” He had been shocked to see how young Duane Jones was, but that had braced him for the worst when he’d looked at Brody Stevens’s body. “And I know this doesn’t make it better, but it’s because of your actions that more people weren’t injured or killed.” He reached over and gave J.J.’s shoulder a hard, comforting squeeze. Straight out of the Sam Kennedy playbook.

J.J. sat up, dragged the heels of his hands against the corners of his eyes. “Yeah.” He gave Jason a quick, awkward look. “If you’re going to spend the day going through microfilm or whatever, you ought to get going.”

“Right.” He hesitated.

“Will you go?” J.J. said impatiently.

“Going.”

“Hey, West—”

Jason glanced back.

J.J. grimaced.

Jason rolled his eyes and opened the door—and nearly walked into Sam.

Sam was looking dapper—if grim—in his second favorite suit, a gray sharkskin.

“Can I talk to you a minute?” he said.

His expression, his tone… Not good. Jason’s nerves yanked tight. He made sure his voice sounded calm when he replied, “Of course.”

Did this have to do with the lawsuit? Or was it something else? Could Sam have—had he possibly found out that Emerson Harley was a suspect in Jason’s stolen art case?

Sam turned and led the way down the hall to an empty office. Well, not empty, because his phone and briefcase lay on the desk. That was Sam’s version of making himself at home.

Jason stepped inside the office, and Sam closed the door.

Jason’s unease mounted. “What is it? What’s going on?”

Sam let out a long, quiet breath. “I just got word from the RCMP. It looks like—” He stopped and corrected himself. “There is a strong possibility that Dr. Jeremy Kyser is dead.”

Chapter Twelve