Page 117 of But For You

“The marshal from Vegas,” I clarified. “The dirty one.”

“Shut up.”

“We took him at the⁠—”

“What the fuck is this?” a guy asked, moving forward into the light.

“Mr. Turner,” I said because I recognized him from the photographs Sam had shown me that day at our house.

His eyes met mine. “Who are you, and why are you here?”

“I’m here, supposedly, as leverage to make Supervisory Deputy US Marshal Sam Kage back off, but I suspect what’s really going to happen is that I’m about to die and you’re about to die because I’ll bet you Salcedo’s dead,” I said, pretending I didn’t know who Salcedo was so the wire I was wearing would get it all, every confession, every truth. What was the point of everything that went on around me being recorded if it wasn’t incriminating?

“He’s not dead, you dumb prick!” He pointed at Dwyer. “He’s right there, and⁠—”

“Aha!” I yelled. “You, Kevin Dwyer, are Salcedo! How the hell did you do that?”

“Of course he’s Salcedo. What the hell is⁠—”

“You’re so dead,” I told Turner. “Salcedo is gonna die, and there will only be Dr. Dwyer, and so whatever you have or think you have on Salcedo—is it video? Snuff film? I never know if those actually exist.”

“Who are you?”

“Anyway, whatever it is, it won’t matter because he’ll be dead, and he gets to start a whole new life here, with my marshal, after you die and I die right now.”

Turner pivoted around to look at Dwyer/Salcedo. “Is that true? You’re going to disappear into the life of the doctor you created?”

“Are you actually a doctor?” I asked.

“Yes!” he yelled at me, and only then did I see that he had a gun.

“Did you have sex with Randall Erickson the other night?”

Why that was the most revolting part of it all, I had no idea, but, God, it so was.

“DEA!” came the first yell, and there were flashlights and lots of feet pounding across concrete. “Everybody down!”

I dropped to the floor.

“Hands behind your head!”

Doing as I had been told, I laced my fingers behind the back of my head and waited.

It occurred to me that Salcedo had been in Dane and Aja’s loft and that he had only gone with Randall so he could ask my brother if he knew where Sam was. I hated that he had used Dane to get to me and to Sam. Even worse, he had used Randall. That would be quite the ego blow.

“What the hell is going on?” I heard someone yell. “Why do I have US marshals and Chicago PD outside?”

It was confusing because there were too many people with too many agendas. I ended up in a small room, handcuffed, sitting on the floor across from Dwyer/Salcedo, who was sitting between the driver and Mr. Turner.

“So, what do you have on him?” I asked Turner. “All the documentation that he and Dwyer are the same person?”

He nodded. “Yeah. I have everything that proves he’s the same guy.”

I looked over at Dwyer. “And so, because you didn’t want to go to prison, you busted him out of WITSEC.”

He was just staring at me.

“But what I don’t get is, why didn’t you just go into witness protection too?”