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“Say you’re right. Say she’d be willing to testify. Say you can keep her safe long enough to get her in front of a jury so she can testify. How are you going to find her before Vishenko does? You can’t match the bounty he placed on her. Not even close. Plus, he’s got a head start.”
“I’ll find her,” Alec said grimly. “I’ll find her. I’ve got two secret weapons—Keira and Angelina.” His face hardened and his eyes went cold. “And when I find her, I’ll keep her safe if it’s the last thing I do.”
Chapter 11
Angelina watched the handcuffed prisoner—whose name was Boris Tabor—through the two-way mirror looking into the interview room, trying to understand the mind of a would-be assassin and what approach would get him to talk. She glanced at Captain Zale standing by the two-way mirror next to her.
“We know a lot about him,” the captain said in his blunt way. “And yet we know next to nothing.”
“He really was a cameraman,” Angelina said, glancing at her notes. “He worked in the newsroom of ZTV here in Drago for twenty-one years, until he was replaced by a remotely controlled robotic camera. The other man—the one I captured, the one Sasha killed—was not. Apparently he was coached in what to do by Boris Tabor.”
She didn’t need to add that Tabor was deeply in debt and strapped for cash—or he had been until two weeks ago, when he’d deposited an unusually large sum of money in his bank account. Source unknown. So far.
Like her, Captain Zale knew Tabor had already been in debt before he’d lost his job—preliminary reports placed the blame for this squarely on his wife’s shoulders, a beautiful woman who wanted more of the finer things in life than her husband could afford. But he’d been desperate to keep her, so he’d gone into debt to buy her whatever her heart desired. And when he’d lost his job, he’d lost his home and lost his ability to borrow. Shortly thereafter—unusual for Zakhar—his wife had divorced him. Divorce was still a shameful thing to many Zakharians, and word was, Tabor had sworn to get his wife back—no one knew how.
“He has no children,” Angelina murmured to herself, trying to get a handle on Tabor’s mind-set. Again, this was unusual for Zakhar. Most couples had three or more children.
“He was willing to kill a child,” Captain Zale reminded her. “Even if he had children of his own, I doubt we could have appealed to him on those grounds.”
She shook her head with regret. “You are right. That appeal would not have worked. And he has no incentive to talk.” Tabor had to know the most likely sentence would be life in prison. Although unlike in the States, life in prison in Zakhar literally meant life. The actual sentence read, “life plus one day,” as if the meaning needed to be hammered home.
Captain Zale snorted. “His previous interrogators reminded him of the gruesome sentence still on the books regarding an assassination attempt on a member of Zakhar’s royal family, successful or not. Unfortunately he knows the king commuted that punishment in the case of Prince Nikolai and those who conspired with him eighteen months ago. So that threat was worthless.”
Angelina could tell by the captain’s tone he wished otherwise, but it wasn’t their call to make. She could see the king invoking the ancient punishment the law allowed—Tabor had tried to kill the king’s son, after all—but the queen had influenced the king to leniency before. Angelina knew it was likely the queen would again, no matter how tempted the king might be.
“Whoever orchestrated the assassination attempt must have dangled a carrot in front of Tabor he could not resist—”
“Money,” Angelina said quickly. “A lot of money. It is the only thing that makes sense. Enough to wipe out his debt. To win back his wife and regain his pride.” An idea was forming, but it was still nebulous. Still just a niggling in the back of her brain.
Instead of trying to force the idea to take shape—something she knew was unlikely to be successful—Angelina let her mind wander to the others involved in the assassination attempt. Since they hadn’t yet been able to identify the other cameraman, they hadn’t established a paper trail on him, and his motive remained unclear. Except for his fake identification badge, which rivaled the real thing, complete with his picture—not surprising, given Tcholek’s involvement in the conspiracy—no identification at all had been found on his body, and his fingerprints weren’t on file in Zakhar. A request had been submitted to Interpol through channels, but so far they hadn’t heard anything.
