Page 48 of The Guilty Trial

Halloway’s breath left him in a rush. The figure was thin, almost gaunt, dressed in dark clothing that seemed to absorb the light from the television screen. He wore latex gloves, and his pale blue eyes stared at Halloway without blinking. His entire expression was fixed and unreadable.

Halloway’s heart lurched so violently he felt it in his throat. He scrambled backward on the bed, the sheets bunching beneath him.

“What in the hell?” His voice came out strangled, cracking on the last word.

And then the recognition hit him. He knew that face. He’d seen it before, years ago, in a different context and under different circumstances. The pieces connected in rapid succession: the thin frame, the pale eyes, the meticulous nature.

“You?” Halloway’s voice dropped to barely a whisper. “It’s been you?”

The man didn’t answer immediately. He stood in the doorway, studying Halloway. His expression betrayed nothing: no anger, no satisfaction, no urgency. Just clinical observation.

“You weren’t honest with those agents today, were you?”

Halloway’s throat constricted. He sat up straighter and pressed his palms into the mattress. “What agents? I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

The man took a step closer. The carpet absorbed his footfall completely.

“You didn’t tell them what you did.”

Ice flooded Halloway’s veins. Everything he’d tried not to think about for the last five years rushed to the surface at once, and in that moment, he understood with terrible clarity that this man already knew the answers to the questions the FBI had been asking.

He lunged frantically for his phone on the nightstand. His fingers found the edge of the device and closed around it, and in that same instant, he thought of the marshals sitting in the Suburban, oblivious, watching over his wife and son while the man they were supposed to be protecting sat in a hotel room he should never have been in.

The man’s hand moved with a speed that didn’t match his stillness. Halloway saw the glint of steel catching the television’s glow, a flash of silver in the darkness, and then the blade was in him.

The knife entered his abdomen with a punching sensation that was more pressure than pain at first, as if someone had driven a small fist into his midsection. Then the pain arrived. It exploded white-hot through his guts, and Halloway gasped as his body pitched backward onto the bed. His hand instinctively went to the wound, his fingers wrapping around the handle of the blade before sliding off, slick with the blood that was already soaking through his shirt in a widening stain.

He tried to scream, but the air had been driven from his lungs and all that came out was a wet, ragged sound. He rolled sideways and slid off the edge of the mattress, his knees hitting the carpet with a muffled thud before the rest of him followed. The phone clattered from his hand and skittered beneath the bed, out of reach.

The man stood over him, watching with cold detachment. There was no emotion in those eyes, no hatred, no glee, and certainly no remorse.

Halloway pressed his hands against his stomach and felt the blood rushing out between his fingers in warm and steady pulses. The ceiling above him wavered and blurred. The television flickered its light across the walls, and the anchor’s muted face moved in patterns that no longer made any sense.

He thought of his wife, asleep in their house with the marshals outside. He thought of the interview that afternoon, of Bishop’s sharp eyes and the questions she asked and the lies he’d offered so easily. He thought about the Torrino case, about how it had all led in a straight and unbroken line to this hotel room, this carpet beneath his back, and this man who was kneeling beside him.

The man opened a black nylon bag and reached inside with gloved hands. The last thing Halloway saw was the shape of something metallic emerging from the bag, catching the cold blue light of the television screen.

Then everything went dark.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Union Station Federal Courthouse

Tacoma, Washington

The Pacific Grand Hotel was crawling with law enforcement by the time Allie and Jason arrived. Halloway’s body was discovered by housekeeping a little after nine, and she and Jason spent the morning there at the crime scene and speaking with Halloway’s sidepiece.

The room was pristine except for the dead man and the number seared into his back, the bold digits till raw and raised against the skin, marking him with the number twenty-two.

They located Jennifer White through the hotel’s security system. The footage showed her entering the hotel roughly three hours before the estimated time of death. Allie and Jason tracked her down at the legal office where she worked.

The interview produced nothing useful. White got to the hotel earlier in the evening and had left a little before one in the morning. She hadn’t noticed anyone in the hallway or the lobby and hadn’t seen anything unusual.

In the car afterward, Jason gripped the steering wheel and shook his head. “A man whose associates are being murdered slips his security detail to meet some woman in a hotel room? I can’t wrap my head around it.”

Allie adjusted her seatbelt and watched the traffic crawl. “He wouldn’t be the first.”

“No. I guess not.” Jason exhaled through his nose. “He made it seem like he had a good marriage.”