Alafair Burke - Dead Connection

And because Ellie had fallen for all of these tricks, she had sent Peter Morse directly into the hands of a man who would sacrifice two innocent women as pawns in a one-sided war.

There was no answer at Peter’s desk. She tried his cell. No answer. She called the general number for the Daily Post newsroom. A woman picked up.

“Hi, is this, um-” Ellie blanked out on the name of the intern Peter had mentioned.

“Justine Navarro. For whom are you calling?”

“Peter Morse. This is Detective Ellie Hatcher-”

“Oh, I know all about you.”

Ellie didn’t have time to pursue that one. “I really need to find Peter. Is he there?”

“No, he left about a half hour ago. He was meeting someone at his apartment.”

Ellie thanked Justine and hung up, wondering what to do next. A taxi ride to Peter’s apartment would take at least half an hour.

She called Peter’s cell phone again. “Listen very closely to me, Peter. Act like I’m not telling you anything special. Keep your gaze straight ahead and your expression neutral. Jason Upton is very dangerous. Don’t take any chances with him. Call me as soon as he leaves your apartment.”

She dialed another number and reached yet another voice-mail recording. “Jason, hi. This is Ellie Hatcher. I’ve got that laptop ready.” She worked to steady her voice. Cool and calm. “I’m not going to be able to keep it long, so whenever you can check it out, that’d be great. Talk to you soon.”

“I take it you couldn’t reach either of them?” Stern asked.

Ellie shook her head and dialed Peter’s cell number again. The call went directly to his outgoing message.

“I need to ask you one more question, Mark, and I need you to give me an honest answer. How flexible are you willing to be on the details of how we figured out what we think we know about Jason Upton?”

She watched as Stern’s mouth turned up slightly at one corner. “If flexibility means getting back at the motherfucker who did all of this, then consider me extremely flexible.”

Ellie had only one way to play this.

ELLIE KNEW the layout of Peter’s apartment. She knew he was there with Jason Upton. She was fairly confident that Upton would be unarmed. She had a good cover story for showing up – she needed Jason to check out Becker’s laptop and was told by Peter’s intern that the two of them were holed up here. The plan was to play it cool and walk Jason out of the apartment, leaving Peter safely behind.

Of course, she knew there was a chance Jason would be waiting for her. He could have realized something was up when she called. And it was at least conceivable he had a gun. But it was precisely in those circumstances that Peter would need her intervention most.

She had done everything she could to stack the deck in her favor, but now she had no choice but to accept the odds and go upstairs on her own. She punched in the electronic security code she’d seen Peter use the past few days.

Ellie never even checked her blind spot when she stepped inside the building and considered the dark, narrow staircase in front of her. By the time she heard a sound behind her and reached for her gun, it was too late. She felt cold, circular metal against the base of her skull and immediately realized her mistake. Zoya had claimed that Vitali Rostov was at work, but stopping Ellie was Rostov’s work. He’d been standing behind the door – not inside the apartment, but on the ground floor at the entrance.

“Uh, uh, uh. I’ll take that.” She felt a hand move across the back of her waistband to her holster, then felt the weight of her Glock leave her body. “Upstairs, Detective.”

As she climbed the stairs, Ellie considered her options. She could hear Rostov close behind her. She smelled his sweat and stale deodorant. She could almost feel the warmth of his body against hers. He was only one step behind her. A heavy rear push kick might send him falling. It might also get her shot, leaving Peter helpless. And even if she made it upstairs, it would still leave her unarmed, trapped above the bottleneck of a staircase, with an injured Rostov waiting for them below. She had to wait it out.

When she stopped at Peter’s closed apartment door, Rostov ordered her to open it. He nudged her with the gun to emphasize the point.

Ellie opened the door to find Jason Upton sitting at Peter’s dining room table. He slowly bobbed a tea bag up and down in a mug Ellie had drunk from the previous morning. Rostov pushed her through the apartment door.

“Good afternoon, Detective. Where’s that laptop you called me about? Funny, you don’t seem to have it with you.” Rostov shoved Ellie to the back corner of the room and stood next to Upton. She watched as he placed her service pistol on the table in front of him while he kept his own weapon fixed on her. “That was a stupid thing you did, calling me like that. I was planning to deal with you later, once you got that laptop. I’d tell you what you needed to hear to go away and, well, if that didn’t work, I’d find some other way.”

“Where’s Peter?” Ellie asked.

“You’re the one who dragged your boyfriend into this. He was in the bathroom the first time you called. I saw your name on the screen of his phone. Then you called him again. Then you left a message for me, and that’s when I turned his phone off. See, if you were so hot to have me examine that laptop of yours, why would you call Peter first?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Don’t insult me.” In his anger, the cultured affectation left his raised voice, and she picked up the hint of a husky southern drawl. “You told me this morning that getting that laptop would take a while, then you call me two hours later saying you’ve got it already? I’m not stupid. In fact, some would say you were the one who was stupid by making this all so easy for me. I took my time tutoring your boyfriend until Vitya arrived. I knew you’d be close behind. That’s what you do when your partners go missing, isn’t it? Go out and look for them?”

She pictured McIlroy again, sitting on the floor of Becker’s boat. Two bullet holes. So much blood.

“So you were on the boat. You got a new gun since you planted the. 38 on Becker.” She looked at the double-action pepper shot Derringer that Rostov pointed at her. It held only four shots, required a manual repeat between each one, and didn’t pack a ton of power. It could do some damage at close range, but still, she had caught a break when he’d opted for his own weapon over hers. “What did you do with Peter, you son of a bitch?”

“How sweet,” Upton mocked. “He’s tied up in the bathtub. Are you into that kind of thing?”

Ellie ignored his question. She knew he was trying to break her. “There’s no reason to bring him into this. He doesn’t know anything.”

“Oh, I know. We checked on that ourselves.” Ellie did not like the smile Upton gave Rostov.

“You’re very good at that, Ellie,” Upton continued. “Secrets. You’ve spent quite a bit of time with this man, and yet he knew nothing of the case that consumes you. Your own partner was murdered in front of you, and you hadn’t even told your lover why he was killed. The problem with having secrets, Ellie, is that they make you a very easy target. If you die, so do your secrets.”

Upton gave Rostov another look, and Rostov tensed his gun arm. Things were moving faster than she’d expected.

“Wait!” Ellie called out. “What about Peter? Use your head, Jason. You’re a smart man. So far a good defense attorney could get you out of this. But you can’t kill a news reporter for the Daily Post . The paper will put you on its front page every day to make sure a jury gives you the needle.”