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No, darling, I love you more than you can possibly imagine.
He took a few moments to think about Marie and home, about what he could do to make up for this time apart. Perhaps an extended trip to New Zealand, where he had a home outside Queenstown. Marie hadn’t been there since she was a toddler; she would enjoy exploring.
He would need to disappear for a few months when this job was over, and no better place than halfway across the world.
Conrad didn’t allow himself to think too much about the upcoming trip. Violet Halliday was in hiding. The good news was the police hadn’t found her and Detective Quinn didn’t know her value. The bad news? He couldn’t leave until she was dead and he’d destroyed the evidence she had uncovered.
With one last look at the view, he turned and went inside to get back to work.
15
Bryce Thornton worked late Monday night because someone had to prove that Kara Quinn was a danger to others and a disgrace to LAPD.
The cop was a menace and should never have had a badge. She arrived in town this morning and now David Chen was dead. Kara must have had something to do with it—she’d almost killed Chen during the raid in February, and she did kill his bodyguard. All she got was a slap on the wrist.
It physically pained him that the LAPD had so many bad cops who acted as if they were in the Wild West doing whatever the hell they wanted, damn be the rules. And he was still furious about the OPR investigation. It had been unnecessary and embarrassing. He was a twenty-year veteran of the FBI, had spent his entire career here in Los Angeles, and they should have taken him at his word.
He also blamed her for Craig Dyson’s murder. She may not have held the knife that killed him, but something she was involved with had led to his death. Where Kara Quinn went, people died.
Rebecca walked into his office. “It’s after nine,” she said. “Go home.”
“I will. Just reviewing the reports from LAPD on the two homicides.”
“This isn’t our case.”
“Chen should have been our case.”
She sat down. In a calm, maternal voice she said, “I agree, Bryce. We’ve been through this a dozen times. You need to stand down.”
“Is that an order?” he asked.
“Nooo,” she said slowly. “As your friend, not your colleague, I’m concerned that your obsession with Detective Quinn is clouding your judgment.”
“You know she’s behind this. She tried to kill Chen before on the roof. Just because we couldn’t prove she pushed him doesn’t mean she didn’t.”
“It was a he said, she said, and without evidence, LAPD rallied around their own. You need to let it go.”
He couldn’t. “That woman should be in prison, not walking around with a badge, and definitely not walking around with a badge working for the FBI.”
“I quietly looked into that,” Rebecca said, “and Greer is happy with her contributions. We need to be careful about how we investigate Quinn.”
Bryce picked up the file he’d recently downloaded from New Orleans. “I read all of her assignments with Costa’s team. This one—she went after a suspect and he was eaten by alligators. Alligators! And...and...” He sorted through files. “This case in Arizona? An innocent civilian was shot because of her, two suspects were killed, and another paralyzed. All the details are sketchy and vague. The woman is a loose cannon.”
“Bryce, you know I agree with you,” Rebecca said, “but you have to stay away from Quinn. Not everything with Quinn and the FBI is wine and roses.”
“What does that mean?”
She hesitated, then answered, “Like I said, I’ve been doing my own quiet investigation and I learned through a friend of mine that while Matt Costa has put two commendations into her file, a forensic psychiatrist has also submitted a letter that was less than glowing.”
He leaned forward, excited. “Do you have it?”
“No, I couldn’t access it without raising flags, but this tells me that she’s already caused friction. She won’t last.”
“That’s not good enough.”
“Give it time.”
That’s what Bryce had always been told, that Quinn would dig her own grave, that she wouldn’t last. But she’d been a cop for twelve years and Bryce had to be proactive and prove beyond all doubts that she was rotten to the core. “I’m going to dig into both the Chen case and the Dyson case. There’s something there I can nail her with.”
