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And he beamed.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
LINDSAY
Divide and conquer – that was the key to getting people to turn on each other. Lindsay was well versed in this technique, and it was perfect for today’s situation: a group of highly paranoid criminals with shady moral codes who would just as soon rat on someone as take a bullet for them. It was the law of averages. Eventually, one of them would turn on the rest.
Speaking of. In front of him sat Mariana Rodrig– no, it was Ross now, wasn’t it? Mariana Ross. Didn’t roll off the tongue as nicely as Rodriguez, but Lindsay suspected that she’d roll off his tongue nicely no matter what her name was. He tried not to think about how beautiful she was, though. It had already made him go softer on her than he should have, when he gave her the gun back in Vegas. It was a dumb move. He knew the second she got out of that car that she wasn’t going to testify for him.
He’d been questioning her for at least thirty minutes but the woman was like a vault. She wasn’t saying anything, and she looked bereft. Lindsay suspected he’d interrupted her escapeplans. Well, he had literally interrupted her shimmying down the fire escape in heels and a pencil skirt, but he suspected she’d planned to be on her way to some exotic locale by now, instead of sitting chained to an interrogation table inside the LAPD’s downtown station. As much as Lindsay loathed this place, the FBI headquarters simply couldn’t handle this volume of arrests at one time.
‘This is your last chance at getting immunity,’ he reminded her. ‘I mean it. Just because I feel sorry for you doesn’t mean I can make the murder charge go away.’ He slid a piece of paper over to her side of the table. ‘We know you killed Allie Baxter. You’re going away, for twenty-five to life. Not that you’ll survive that long. The cartels run the prisons. You’ll be dead before you get to dinner on your first day.’
It was only then that she started to communicate.
‘You’ll never get immunity approved for a cop killer,’ Mariana said to him. ‘Why would you offer such a thing?’
Lindsay smiled. ‘Killing a dirty cop isn’t quite the same as killing, say, a cop like me.’
Mariana raised one eyebrow. ‘A cop like you?’
‘Exemplary. Unblemished record. Solid cases. You definitely don’t want to get caught for killing a cop like me.’
She didn’t look convinced.
‘Your testimony could bring an entire cartel to its knees,’ Lindsay said. ‘It could dismantle their drug operations. Their arms deals. Their human trafficking.’ He saw her flinch. ‘You want to help the women and children Emilio is selling, don’t you? The babies? The babies he sells while they’re still in their mothers’ wombs? Mariana, don’t you want to stop those children from being sold to porn rings and paedophiles?’
‘Stop,’ she said, covering her ears. ‘Please stop.’
‘Do you think anyone stops when those children beg them to stop?’
Mariana glared at him. ‘John and I are a package deal,’ she said. ‘We both get immunity, then I testify.’
Lindsay laughed. ‘What? You’re kidding, right? Immunity for the president of the club who was running the trafficking in the first place? I don’t think so.’
‘He didn’t have anything to do with it,’ she said forcefully.
‘Guess you can tell that to your buddies in your prison cell.’
‘Do you really think I’m afraid of prison,’ she shot back, ‘after the life I’ve lived? Prison would be a walk in the park compared to that. You can either give us both immunity, or you can process me, because I’m not saying another word without John.’
Lindsay realised that she didn’t care what happened to her. She was in love with this guy, and she was never going to cooperate unless he was part of the deal.
Mariana sat back in her metal chair and smiled at Lindsay smugly. ‘You should see the things I could get for you,’ she teased. ‘I think the word “damning” ought to cover it.’
Lindsay was finding it harder to smile at her. She was asking him to do the impossible.
‘Wait here,’ he said.
***
Fifteen minutes later, Lindsay marched John Portland into Mariana’s interrogation room. Her eyes practically popped out of her skull, she looked so surprised. She covered her reactionquickly, though, with a smile. ‘See, that wasn’t so hard,’ she said to Lindsay.
He just made a noise at the back of his throat. He could technically lose his job for this, but if an entire cartel was taken down through his efforts, then all would be forgiven. Probably.
Lindsay left them alone for a moment under the pretence of getting John a chair, but when he peered at them through the one-way glass window, they remained silent. They were smart. They’d almost been smart enough to get out before Lindsay had scooped them up. Almost.
After a few moments of watching them exchange silent glances, he headed back in, a chair in one hand, coffee in the other. The coffee was for him. Criminals didn’t get coffee until they gave him something. If these two delivered, he’d buy them a lifetime supply of Starbucks to go with their immunity.
