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She moved the phone from her ear and exhaled before putting it back into her purse. She kept telling herself that these were the kinds of decisions she had to make. The kinds of things she had to do. Val had to look out for Val.
When she stepped off the sidewalk at the head of the parking lot to walk toward her car, every street-smart sense Val had told her someone was watching her. She looked back over both shoulders and then just stopped walking altogether to survey her surroundings. There was nothing out of place or out of the ordinary: A mother walking toward the jail with a baby in a stroller. A bus loading passengers at the back of the parking lot. People getting in and out of cars. Val finally told herself it was nothing, but as soon as she took a new step a car sped to the front of the lot where she was and stopped behind her. It was one of those black Chargers police officers had started driving in the city years ago.
Val got angry quickly and was about to slap the hood of the car to let the officer know he’d almost run her over. But then the window came down and Leaf, the agent who’d worked undercover with Jamison, poked his head out.
“Leaf?”
“Get in the car. Get in right now,” Leaf said.
“Where have you been? I’ve been calling you.”
“Just get in the car,” Leaf ordered then, rushing and looking over his shoulders.
Val was never one to be rushed or to ignore her own suspicion. Seeing the worry in Leaf’s eyes, she pulled her purse in closer to her body and considered what he might be searching for over his shoulders.
“Trust me,” Leaf offered evenly, trying to steady the nervousness in his voice. “Just get in the car.”
“Fuck,” Val cursed, rushing to the passenger-side door.
When she got in, Leaf pressed his foot to the gas pedal with such force, Val looked out the back window to see if someone was chasing him.
“What are you doing? Where are we going?” Val asked as the car raced out of the parking lot and into traffic.
“Nowhere. I’m just trying to make sure no one’s tailing me.” Leaf effortlessly whipped the Charger between lanes of traffic.
“Why would anyone be tailing you?” Sitting upright and facing Leaf, Val ignored the blare of the signal in the car instructing her to put her seat belt on. The collar of his business shirt was up and open and the sides of an undone tie flanked his shoulders. His hair was wet with what was obviously sweat, as Val could see droplets trickling down the back of his right ear.
Leaf ignored Val’s questioning and zipped through lanes until he sped right through a red light at a busy intersection, where other drivers honked their horns in protest of the risky move.
“See anyone?” Leaf asked.
“No! No!” Val looked out the window, though she wasn’t really sure what she was looking for. “No!”
Leaf drove a mile at top speed and turned onto a one-lane, cobblestone side street.
“Look, I know this cops-and-robbers shit turns on some of the girls you date, but it’s not for me,” Val joked as the car slowed. “Besides, I thought you were the cops, Leaf. Are we looking for the robbers?” Val added, looking at Leaf who was still searching over his shoulder.
“I need to tell you something. And I need to know that what I’m saying will stay between us.” Leaf pulled into a space in front of a closed-down shoe store.
“What’s it about? Jamison?”
Leaf looked at Val and nodded. She’d changed so much since he’d met her when he started working undercover as Jamison’s assistant, just before Jamison married Val. Then, she was all fake nails and fake hair. Had an unapologetic bitterness about her and her ways that made him think she’d be nothing but trouble for Jamison. He was right. She was trouble. But she’d tried so hard not to be. He watched. She really did try. But she wasn’t the kind of person who could be successful at escaping drama. All the cases he’d worked in all his years at the Bureau, he knew her type; he knew her well. As such, Leaf had preferred not to bring his news to Val. But with Kerry, his old ally, behind bars, he didn’t have many other ears willing to listen and he wasn’t sure how much longer he could go poking his head around in places and files where it shouldn’t be without getting caught . . . or worse.
“Of course, you can tell me. Come on. You know where I’m from. You know how I get down. I won’t—”
“Just promise me. Just promise me you’ll at least keep things secret until the time is right to make a move.”
In Leaf’s panicked words, Val discovered the depth of the information he was prepared to share, and so she looked out the window again for an anonymous foe.
“I promise,” she said soberly.
“Kerry’s being framed.”
Halfway through a plate of pepper ribs at Daddy O’s with Delgado the other day, Leaf had heard himself “talking.” Leaf realized he was giving information to someone who wanted him to expose, to reveal said information—in the Bureau, they called that “talking.” In the Academy, he learned that there were three ways to get someone to talk: force, interview, talk. His lunch date had employed the latter tactic; Delgado was talking to Leaf to get Leaf to talk. But why? For what?
Leaf noticed the predicament when Delgado asked if he’d heard anything from Kerry. If she was making friends in jail. Talking to anyone about what happened. How she’d killed Jamison. These questions struck him, because while no one would suspect it, the other agents often indulged each other in the ongoings of
each other’s cases, almost as if they were soap opera narratives. However, Delgado seldom engaged. In fact, as Leaf spoke, he considered that he couldn’t ever remember Delgado chatting him up about one of his cases. He was always talking about his family or some new BBQ joint, his high blood pressure, and his many exploits cheating on his wife. He also noted that Delgado was just insisting that Kerry killed Jamison. No agent in the Bureau could or would look at the public information out about the case and make such a finite judgment call. That meant Delgado was on the inside and likely sharing and trying to push an idea those on the inside wanted those on the outside to believe: Kerry was guilty.
