I couldn’t see his eyes beneath the aviator sunglasses he wore, but the side of his lip quirked up. “Well, yeah, you know how he feels about the cold. He’s probably sunbathing in Galveston right now.”
Even though he was mocking me, a small laugh bubbled up. I tamped it down, ruthless, shrugging instead. “Fine, don’t tell me.”
There was a pause, as if he were debating how much to say. I suspected he usually operated this way, portioning out his words, measuring how much information to give and how much to keep hidden. What would it be like to be in this man’s confidence? It seemed like an impossible dream. This man gathered information; he didn’t give it away.
A brief nod said he’d found his answer. “He’s planning a big shipment. Drugs. Probably in through the Gulf.”
“How do you know?”
“There’s been chatter,” he said vaguely.
I didn’t push. Partly because I suspected he wouldn’t tell me. And partly because I’d learned that the FBI’s methods of intel weren’t always that impressive. An image of the reedy informant Brody had interviewed flashed through my mind. I hadn’t gotten the impression he was lying, but how much were a few packs of cigarettes worth anyway? We relied on the integrity of men who had none, but it was the only way. Without their false promises, we had nothing at all.
“This guy we’re going to see. He knows about the shipment?”
“He knows that it’s happening. It remains to be seen how many details he has.”
“What makes you think he’s going to share? That’s got to be worth more than cigarettes or booze. Laguardia may kill him if he finds out this guy talked.”
“Sure, I may not get much, but I have to follow the leads. Shake the trees and see what falls out.”
Ah, the scientific method of law enforcement. I narrowed my eyes in suspicion. “And I’m going to participate in this tree-shaking, right?”
“You’ll watch,” he corrected, and for unknown reasons, I blushed. Thankfully, he was staring at the road from behind tinted glasses, so my inappropriate reaction went unnoticed.
“Inside the room.” I had no plans to sit behind a one-way mirror.
“Fine. But you stay quiet. No matter what happens. Got it, rookie?”
“Got it.” I wasn’t scared. The security nowadays was ten thousand times better than ten years ago. I was an adult now, a trained agent. Dark red liquid splattered on shiny white leather. “You don’t expect anything to happen, though. He’s not violent, right?”
Hennessey turned and stared, his gaze intense even blocked by his glasses. I could sense him peeling back the layers that I’d thought were impenetrable. He was a damn good investigator, obviously, and his ability to discern the truth wasn’t restricted to the criminals we interrogated.
Without speaking, he turned into a parking garage and flashed his badge to the guard. We circled the levels, climbing higher to find a free space. By the time he parked and shut off the ignition, I’d resigned myself to not getting an answer. Maybe we’d let the question, and my moment of cowardice, pass like a rhetorical question—a random discordant note in the flow of conversation.
He didn’t step out of the car, and when I reached for the door, he put his hand on my arm to stop me. I faced him, shocked anew by the silver eyes he revealed as he took off his sunglasses. They were striated with darker lines that varied with his thoughts, mercurial and completely opaque, like studying the sky for clues only to be caught in the storm.
“Every criminal, every man, every woman can be dangerous,” he said, “if their back’s against the wall. If you’re standing between them and something they want, you’re the enemy. Pretending otherwise, pretending you can be safe, is just a way to get yourself killed.”
“Okay,” I breathed, wondering how much he was revealing about himself, about how he’d been hurt with this advice meant for me.
“But nothing’s going to happen inside, because we’re not going to let it. We have the power. We have control of the situation. You’re going to sit quietly and not draw his attention. I’m going to ask questions. We’ll be back in this car in twenty minutes. Got it?”
Relief swept through my veins. “Got it.”
I exited the car and followed him with a lightness in my step…and a new curiosity about the man in front of me. He both alarmed and comforted me. I didn’t understand it, but I felt safe when he was near.