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“Can you believe that nonsense?” Salazar asked Bree.
“Actually, I can,” Bree said.
“What?” Ellis said.
“Maestro exists,” Bree said quietly. “It’s a vigilante group run by someone who calls himself M.”
“C’mon,” Thompson said.
“It’s real,” Bree insisted. “M sent men in helicopters to kill my husband and his partner last year deep in the Montana wilderness. They’d gotten too close to Maestro operators who were assassinating corrupt federal and local law enforcement agents and destroying the Alejandro drug cartel.”
Ellis said, “I remember reading about those killings and the cartel, but I don’t recall any reference to an M or Maestro.”
“The government wanted to keep it quiet,” Bree said. “They didn’t want to glorify a vigilante group, figuring it would bring out the crazies.”
“Especially when they’re killing law enforcement,” Salazar said. “Corrupt or not.”
“Exactly.”
“Well,” Ellis said. “Even if M and Maestro exist, I certainly don’t have enough to give Mr. Volkov the slightest leniency. And I do have other things to do. We’ll let him stew, see if he remembers more in a few days.”
“C’mon,” Salazar said to Bree. “We’ll go find you a ride to Penn Station and me a ride home to my baby.”
Bree was about to agree when she remembered something Alex had asked her to do while she was in New York.
“Can I go ask Volkov a question for my husband first? It’s about the Family Man murders in DC.”
Ellis shrugged. “Fine by me. If he’ll talk.”
CHAPTER 103
Alexandria, Virginia
ON THE SIDEWALK OUTSIDEthe federal detention facility, I kneaded the knotted muscles in my neck with one hand and held my phone tight to my ear with the other. “You’re sure that’s what Volkov said?”
“Hundred percent,” Bree replied. “I recorded it.”
“Volkov know you were recording?”
“He did.”
“Send me a copy?”
“Of course. Guess who Volkov said hired him to kill Duchaine.”
“No clue.”
“M.”
“What?”
“I’m serious. M offered him twenty million in Bitcoin to do it.”
“Does Volkov know who M is?”
“No. He was always contacted through Tor encrypted messages, just like you. And he said M tried to hire him to kill the people at Paula Watkins’s place, but he refused.”
M was behind the Duchaine killings. How had that happened?
