Page 52 of Filthy Liar

“It’s complicated.”

“Un-fucking-complicate it, then.”

“You can’t get mad.”

That’s a guarantee that whatever it is will infuriate me. “Okay.”

“Jason.”

“I will contain my reaction. Because from where I stand, it looks like you’re the target in all of this. Someone used Jeff Mayfair to go to me, knowing that was your story, that we would be drawn together, and then they escalated shit fast. Your best friend got attacked. You got the ransom demand. It’s not random at all, Ellie. You are the common denominator.”

She drags in a ragged breath. “Yeah. I’ve come to the same conclusion this morning.”

“What happened?”

“I went to pick something up. Something of Caroline’s.”

“More secrets?”

“I don’t even know what it is. I just had a hunch that she might have stashed some computer files at her gym. I haven’t read them yet. I was followed from there. Two cars, a black sedan. An Audi.” She pauses, then rhymes off a license plate.

I voice text that to Wilson.

“And a truck, but honestly, I didn’t make out any details. The guys in the Audi looked like mercenaries. So yeah, it’s starting to click in… Because a few months ago, I got wind of a potential story. And keep in mind, a lot of what I’m about to say, I’m just figuring out now, in hindsight. I think maybe as soon as I started poking around, a misdirection campaign began. Of course, I didn’t know that at the time. The person responsible for it didn’t want me to know about those seeds they were sowing. They purposefully blackmailed people who would either pay out, or ignore it. Nobody who would go to the police. Really top-level profiling shit, that. Very impressive. But I’m getting ahead of myself. Your client is one of those targets, as you guessed. But I don’t know that he wanted you involved. I think that’s…I dunno. I’m not sure about that part. My own guess was that he assumed Mayfair would fall into theignore itcategory. He almost certainly did not expect him to go to you, and treat this as a real crisis that required a proper response.”

“Huh.” I take the next turn faster than the one before. “Yeah, that was bad luck. Mayfair has had all of his lovers sign NDAs, and he got spooked, but not enough to feel guilty.”

“Oh.” She chews on her lower lip, as if mentally adding that to the story file. “Fascinating.”

“I think I’m following. So you were on this story when you came here.”

“Caroline had alluded to it being good for me to spend some time in D.C. as things were going down. She’s deep into a case she can’t talk about, but…I might want to be here instead of on the west coast. I don’t need to be told twice when there’s a story about to break open. At that point, I thought they weren’t related.”

“And then Caroline was attacked.”

Ellie doesn’t take the prompt. She makes a thinking noise.

“Ellie.”

Still silence.

I punch my hand against the steering wheel. “You knew, didn’t you? You knew that you were the target, and you still went out alone.”

“I didn’t know for sure. I had my suspicion, sure, because what other tie could there be? Don’t you think I’mguttedthat she was assaulted? I will live with that for the rest of my fucking life.”

I grind my teeth. “Sorry.”

“Yeah, you should be.” She sighs. “I’m sorry I went out alone.”

“We both need to trust each other a touch more.” I whip the car into our parking garage, which has Cole and Tag outside it standing guard.

It doesn’t seem like we were followed, which is a minor victory, but the reprieve won’t last long.

I park close to the elevator, and just as I turn the car off, my phone lights up in its holder on my dashboard.

Beside me, Ellie’s phone goes off, too.

It’s a text message from Caroline’s burner phone.

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