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“Whatever,” Luster said. “It doesn’t matter what it was because Fit Guy closed his eyes then. His right hand went to his pants pocket and came out with a pistol so small, I wasn’t sure if I was seeing things. Then the lights went out and everyone around me was groaning and laughing, even Brad, and I was thinking I was wrong about the gun. But then I saw this, like, green cyclops eye hovering near Paula and Ari, and the shooting and the screaming started.”

CHAPTER 51

Washington, DC

MY FLIGHT FROM CHARLESTON landed at Reagan National around midnight. I felt wrung out as I walked through the largely empty terminal, still trying to decide if there was enough evidence to warrant further investigation into Suzanne Liu’s allegations against Thomas Tull.

Then I heard and saw CNN broadcasting on an overhead TV at one of the gates.

Footage showed cruisers with their lights flashing and crying people coming out of a huge brownstone; the banner read: deadly attack at fashion exec’s manhattan home. The words fashion exec stopped me in my tracks.

Bree’s case is about some fashion bigwig, isn’t it?

It was only then that I realized I’d been so tired, I had not turned on my phone after landing. I turned it on, half listening to a reporter saying that as many as eleven people might have died inside a home belonging to Paula Watkins, number two at fashion giant Duchaine.

My phone began to blow up with texts from Bree.

I needed to read only one: Call ASAP. All hell has broken loose and I may need an attorney.

Bree answered on the second ring. “Alex?”

“Right here, baby,” I said. “Are you okay? Where are you?”

“I’m fine and I just got back to my hotel.”

“Were you at the party that was attacked?”

“Outside it,” she said and told me everything that had occurred that evening from her perspective as well as necessary background about the sex-trafficking and slavery allegations she’d been investigating along with NYPD detective Salazar.

“Is she keeping you in the loop?”

“As much as she can,” Bree said. “Her superiors were not happy to hear she was listening in on a questionable wiretap with a private detective who was thrown out of Frances Duchaine’s house by Paula Watkins a few days before.”

I started toward the airport exit again. “Which is why you need an attorney?”

“Just being cautious. Elena’s working on retaining one for me as we speak. NYPD wants me in for questioning first thing in the morning.”

“What’s Elena saying?”

“She’s as stunned as I am. But given the sex-trafficking allegations, the mobsters, and the sheikh, she also thinks it’s not wildly out of the blue for there to have been an attack like this.”

I exited the airport and got in a short line for a cab. “I kind of agree with her.”

“Right?”

“Okay, what has Salazar told you?”

She said the detective told her there were indeed eleven dead, including the two bodyguards who had escorted Bree out of Duchaine’s mansion, a man named Victor Roby, and a woman named Katherine Wise. Roby and Wise were believed to have been the main recruiters for the sex ring.

Salazar said the shooters appeared to have slipped into and out of the house through an old coal chute in the basement that was supposed to have been welded shut. The killers mingled with the guests, started shooting with night-vision monoculars once the lights died, and left quickly.

“How many wounded?”

“None.”

“No wounded?” I said in surprise. “Hold on a sec.” I climbed into a cab and gave the driver our home address. As we pulled away, I said, “So, eleven specific targets?”

“That’s how we read it. Whoever the shooters were, they were disciplined assassins.”

“Assassins with a tight, targeted agenda. What about Duchaine?”

“Evidently in shock but safe and under Greenwich Police protection. Why?”

“The intimate knowledge of the party. The layout of Watkins’s home. The coal chute. The specific targets. The whole thing reeks of an inside job.”

“It does, doesn’t it,” Bree said thoughtfully. “And there’s no one more inside this stinking mess than Frances Duchaine herself.”

“That’s what it sounds like to me,” I said and yawned. “Why don’t you get some sleep and we’ll talk in the morning?”

“First thing. I want my head on straight when I go in to make a statement.”

“You always have your head on straight.”

“Love you.”

“Love you too, and I’m happy you’re safe.”

“Me too. Sleep well.”

I ended the call as the cab was crossing the Fourteenth Street Bridge. I returned to my queue of unread texts. I was going to look at the others from Bree but then saw an area code and a phone number I did not recognize, and I thumbed the message open.

Dear Dr. Cross,