Chapter 4: Hold the Key

Joan Whitaker came at eight in the morning with a banker's box and a bag of bagels.

She was forty-four, with brown hair pinned up and black rectangular glasses, and she took in the apartment in one look.

"Two bedrooms would have been better," she said.

"This is what the agency had," Ray said.

"I'm sure." She set the box on the kitchen table. "Mr. Stavros, sit. You and I have forty-six days and a lot of questions."

Nico sat.

He had slept until noon the day before, fed and unbothered, with Ray's arm under his head, and he looked ten years younger.

Ray had slept zero hours.

He stood by the window and watched the street, and listened to Joan walk her witness through the stand.

"Date of hire?"

"March fourteenth, two thousand nineteen."

"First time you saw an invoice you couldn't match to a ship?"

"June of last year. A hull repair in Rotterdam for a vessel that was in dry dock in Savannah."

His voice was calm and exact.

It did something to Ray's chest to hear it.

This was the man who had trembled in the car, and now he laid out eighty million dollars.

"Good," Joan said. "Again, slower. The jury doesn't like math. They like a story."

"It is a story."

"Then tell it like one."

Ray moved to the kitchen doorway.

Joan glanced up and followed him out into the hall with a nod.

"A word."

They stood close, voices low.

"The clerk was paid by phone," she said. "I've got a number, a burner. I'll have a name in a week."

"A week is a long time."

"It is." Her eyes sharpened. "You said four people had the hotel room. I'm one. You're one. That leaves your dispatch and your boss."

Keep reading free with an account. Start Chained to My Bodyguard Until the Trial from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.