She slips through the curtain.Cole watches her go and then looks back at me.“You’re not okay,” he says.
“No,” I agree.“But I will be.”
He watches me for a moment and then looks down at his hands.He’s been doing that—cycling between keeping an eye on me like I might disappear and looking away like he doesn’t trust what’s on his face when he looks at me too long.
“Are you okay?”I ask.
His smile is sour.“Not by a long shot.”
The curtain parts again and this time it’s not a nurse but a man who steps in, dressed in black slacks and a white button-down shirt.Mid-fifties, well-lined face, a leather notebook in his hand.He takes in the hospital bed, the dressings on my arms, and spares a brief nod at Cole.Then his attention is back on me.
“Ms.Ward,” he says.“I’m Dennis Hara, FBI.I apologize for the timing.I know this isn’t ideal, but I need to get a statement.”
“Yeah… sure,” I say, propping myself up higher in the bed and forcing myself not to grimace at the pain in my shoulders.
He glances at Cole.“Good to see you again, Cole.If you could maybe give us a few minutes—”
“He stays,” I cut in.
Hara nods with a short smile.“Sure.Of course.May I sit down?”
I nod and he takes the other visitor’s chair in the corner.“Why don’t you take me through start to finish what happened today and I’ll ask questions as needed.”
I take a breath.“Okay… let’s see.It started with an email from Adrian Schwartz, RainVest’s COO.He reached out directly to my personal account and said he wanted to talk.He led me to believe he had information that would make the case airtight.”
Hara writes but with no follow-up question imminent, I continue.
“I took a rideshare to a restaurant in Capitol Hill and he was already there when I arrived.”I can still see the way Schwartz looked at me as I approached.I didn’t see it then, but now I recognize what was probably a glimmer of triumph in his eyes.“It didn’t take long for him to reveal to me that he had no intention of helping me.”
“He somehow induced you to go with him?”
I nod.“There was a photograph of Cole taken earlier that day and Schwartz made it clear that if I didn’t come willingly, Cole would be killed when he stepped outside of the federal building where he was meeting with you.”
“Son of a—” Cole stops himself.His jaw is tight and he’s looking at me with an expression I haven’t seen on him before.Not anger.Hotter than fury.
I glance at him, a small smile of apology.“I know… I guess I should have assumed you could take care of yourself, but… I couldn’t risk it.”
He looks away and a muscle works in his jaw.
Hara glances between us and gives it a beat before redirecting.“So you went willingly to protect him.”
“I went because I didn’t have a choice,” I say.“Or I didn’t see one.”
“They took your phone at that point?”
“Yes, and all my jewelry.”I glance at my bare wrist without meaning to.“My bracelet had a GPS tracker, but Schwartz threw it out the window.”My voice is flat as I recollect the moment I realized I was never going to return home.“I knew what that meant.”
Hara looks up from his notebook briefly, then back down, continuing to scrawl notes.“Schwartz,” Hara says, pen moving.“Was he present at the cabin?”
“No.He handed me over to Pelham and left.”
Hara nods, jots another note.“And Pelham ran the interrogation himself.”
“Yes.”I pause.“At first it was almost civilized.He sat across from me, asked his questions.What was on the flash drive, who else had seen the evidence, whether my editor had been given copies.”I glance down at the burns on my wrists.“He wanted to know the full scope of what we had so he could figure out how to contain it.”
“What did you tell him?”
“As little as I could.I confirmed the article was with my editor but that he didn’t have the evidence.”I pause.“That part was true.I wasn’t going to give him anything that cost us the case.”
