Page 55 of No Reason to Trust

Nelson stared at her for a long moment, swallowing several times. “I didn’t order anything.”

“Do you really think I’ll buy that load of crap? Both of them had close calls with Bratva groups thatyousent them to. You might want to rethink your position on that. It might make me look more favorably at your treatment in prison.”

Wow, Jake thought, watching the way Diana was playing Nelson. She was cool. In charge. Nelson? He was falling apart. Trying to hide it but not succeeding.

He could learn alotfrom watching Diana interrogate Nelson. Windsor, too, because he was sure she had tricks he hadn’t seen yet.

She slid out of her chair and left the room without looking back, leaving Nelson staring after her, terrified and angry.

In a few minutes, Diana was back in the observation room with Jake. “What do you think?” she asked. “He gonna cave?”

“I suspect so,” Jake said, watching the sweat drip down Nelson’s face. “Nelson was always a coward.”

“Most traitors are,” Diana murmured, watching Nelson. Finally she turned to Jake. “You want a week of leave to get your head on straight?”

Jake shook his head. “Thanks, but I’d rather be working,” he said. “Keeping busy. A week’s too much time to think. And I want to make sure that we find whoever Nelson’s reporting to.”

Diana put her hand on Jake’s arm. “I’m sorry this assignment ended badly for you.”

Jake shrugged one shoulder. “Not your fault.” He sucked in a breath. “Don’t think it’s mine, either. This is Livvy’s problem, and she has to figure it out for herself. If she doesn’t?” He shrugged. “It wasn’t meant to be.”

“Okay,” Diana slapped her hands on the table. “You don’t want the leave, but you want to help figure out who the other traitor is?”

“Yeah,” he said, nodding his head. “Absolutely.”

“You have any thoughts?” Diana asked.

He stared at Nelson, now being shackled and guided into the hallway beyond the interrogation room. “Whoever it is, they’re higher up in the ranks than Nelson. Nelson’s an ambitious guy. He wouldn’t risk his career for some low-level mole. He’s hooked his wagon to someone higher up. Someone who can move him to a position that he thinks he deserves.”

Diana tilted her head to study him. “Interesting,” she finally said. “How do you know that?”

“I’ve reported to Nelson for a while.” He scowled as he watched Nelson stumble out of the interrogation room. “You get a sense of a person when you report to them. And Nelson is all about status. Rank. Power. I don’t think he’d hook his wagon to someone near his level. He wants to be one of the big boys. One of the people who bosses around other people. He wants that status.”

Diana nodded slowly. “Yeah, I think you’re right. I never saw that before he became a suspect in the leaks we’ve had. But he’s exactly the kind of person who’d want power. And he’s not picky about how he gets it.”

She stood up and opened the door. “Let’s get out of here. Prisons always make me jumpy. You know that every inmate in here would love to have the FBI director as his hostage. I’d be an extremely valuable bargaining chip.”

“God, I never thought of it that way.” Jake swung his head around. “What’s the fastest way out of here?”

Diana jerked her chin at a nearby elevator. “Down that elevator. It’s close to the door we came in through.”

Ten minutes later, they were out of the prison and walking toward the parking lot. Diana looked over at him. “Do you want to stay on this job -- finding the other moles in the agency? Or would you rather dig into something completely different?”

Jake shrugged. He’d assumed that he and Livvy would work on digging out the moles together. Now? It would be a daily, painful reminder of his loss. “Unless you need me on this job, because of my experience in Brooklyn, I’d rather be moved to something else.”

“I’m happy to do that for you.” She smiled. “I might contact you for your thoughts as we investigate Russian influence in the Bureau, but I’ll find another supervisor for you. You’re a damn good agent and I want you to enjoy what you’re doing.”

“Thank you, ma’am. I appreciate that.”

“If you change your mind, let me know,” she said. “At this point, I’d pretty much give you any assignment you wanted.”

“Thanks for your support, ma’am.”

Diana rolled her eyes. “How many times do I have to tell you to call me Diana?”

“Yes, ma’am, I mean Diana.” Time to change the subject. “Do you have any idea who Nelson’s contact in the Bureau is?”

“I have a strong suspicion,” she said. “And it doesn’t make me happy. It’s a woman I trusted, someone who’s been with the Bureau for a long time.”

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