Mike followed him to the trooper’s car. She flashed her creds. “Good job on the intercept. We’re ready to speak with her now.” The trooper nodded and stepped to the side. Mike leaned into the car.
“Step out here a moment, ma’am.”
The woman got out of the backseat awkwardly, her hands cuffed behind her back. She had long, dark hair, and looked a bit like Victoria, especially dressed in the same clothes. Enough to fool them all.
She was shaking, crying, and hiccupping, all at the same time. One look at Mike and her sobs gained new volume, and words spilled out, but all Nicholas could make out was paid me.
Mike spoke calmly and slowly. “You’re not under arrest, you’ll be okay. Stop crying, we need your help. I’m Special Agent Caine, FBI. Tell me your name?”
The woman hiccupped again and took several deep breaths. “I’m Tanya. Tanya Hill.”
Mike motioned for an officer to remove the cuffs. They watched Tanya Hill shake her hands, rub her wrists, hiccup a couple more times, then say, “I didn’t do anything.”
“What are you doing in this cab, coming to Tweed tonight?”
“I’m flying to Dallas. There was this call for actresses, and I answered. The lady hired me to put on these clothes, walk out of the Met. She told me to get a cab, ask to go to Tweed, and get on a plane to Dallas. She paid me fifteen hundred dollars, gave me an ID, an invitation to the gala, these really nice boots, everything.”
“Is the ID in your purse?”
“Yes, ma’am, Agent ma’am.”
A tactical team member handed Mike the purse. “It’s clear.”
Mike pulled out a black wallet from the green faux-crocodile clutch. Inside was an ID with the woman’s face on it, with the name and home address of Victoria Browning. Mike handed it to Nicholas.
Tanya Hill stared between the two of them, and another sob escaped. “I didn’t do anything wrong, I didn’t, and fifteen hundred dollars is a lot of money—I mean, I paid my rent from this one job. I won’t be able to keep the money, will I? Oh, man, I already gave it to my landlord. He’ll kick me out if I try to get it back.”
Nicholas said, “The money’s yours if you tell us all about the woman who hired you.”
Realizing the gulag wasn’t in her future, the tears dried up and Tanya became positively chatty.
“Like I said, there was a casting call for a reality TV show on Backonstage.com. It looked totally legit, I swear. I answered it last week, sent my book over, and she called me in and hired me on the spot. Said I was perfect. There’s no reality show, is there? She lied?”
“Yes, Miss Hill, she lied to you. Did she tell you why she wanted you to fly to Dallas?”
“No.”
“What were you supposed to do when you got there?”
“Stay overnight at a hotel near the airport, then fly home whenever I felt like it tomorrow. It was a no-brainer job.”
Mike looked at Nicholas, jerked her head toward the helicopter. They stepped away and she said in a low voice, “I’m thinking even if we take her back to the city, put her through another more thorough interrogation, she’s not going to have anything that will help us.”
“Agreed.”
Her cell phone rang, and she sighed. “It’s Zachery. I better tell him the bad news.” As she spoke to Zachery, Nicholas watched her face change from defeated to triumphant.
She hung up the phone and high-fived him. “They have an active trace on the call Victoria made to you after you defused the bomb. It pinged off a cell tower in Manhattan. Now they know the signal, and they’ll be able to trace it. And even better news. Louisa was treated and released, and Paulie’s awake.”
35