Page 94 of Bourbon and Lies

Grant takes a small step closer to me, filling the silence. “What I still can’t figure out is why here? Why bring her here, Bea?” He looks down at me and kisses the hand he’s been holding. “I’m happy for it, but I don’t get it. You would never get clearance on this if it was a legitimate WITSEC placement.”

She lights her clove, pulling in deep, and taps her finger to her mouth.

“I’m waiting,” Grant pushes.

Only once she’s blown out a big plume of smoke that seems to linger in the midday humidity does she answer. “Because I needed a place where she would be safe.”

Grant grits his teeth. “But why here? There are plenty of places you could have gone. Why Fiasco?” He points to the ground. “Why here?”

She barely lets him finish when she shouts at him, “Because I owe her!”

I look around her face for what she could mean.Owe her. Owe me?

Lincoln chimes in, “What do you me?—”

Her hand flies up, then drops to her side. “Because she stopped the person who killed Fiona.”

My heart just about stops, and Grant tenses beside me.

That can’t be right.

“Because she came face to face with a goddamn monster. The monster who took my daughter's life.”

My mind reels at what she’s saying. It takes me a minute to really understand it. It’s the same reaction coming from the men.

“She saved a victim. Ran right toward danger, pulled a damn fire alarm, and then gave a closed testimony that would have put him away.”

Grant asks, “What do you mean, would have?”

I let go of his hand, feeling antsy as I work all of this out. “You’re Fiona’s mom?”

Grant mumbles, “Barely.”

“Oh, fuck you, Grant. Don’t pretend like you have any clue about what kind of relationship I had with my daughter,” she says, stomping out her clove.

“Had more than clues, Bea,” he barks back at her.

She closes her eyes for a second, trying to keep this from turning into an argument. “I listened to my gut. I’d been profiling Fiona’s killer for years. I knew, just like you, Grant, that it wasn’t some meth head in the wrong place, at the wrong time. Not with that kind of knife precision. And that piece of her that had been shredded from her back...” She shakes her head. “There wasnothingshe would have crawled through that would have caused that.”

None of us say a word, all listening intently, knowing she has more to say.

“When I caught wind of a serial up in New York who had kept women and then saved parts, something in my gut said to look. Dig.” She swallows. “So I did.” She tips her chin up, attempting to keep any emotions from escaping. “There were souvenirs he kept. And he’d had a piece of skin that DNA-matched Fiona.” She pulls in another breath of smoke. “She’s here because he didn’t have a name. No fingerprints? Fine. There are plenty of psychopaths that burn or cut them off.” She pinches the bridge of her nose. “But there was no history. No digital footprint. No family or next of kin that NYPD or FBI could figure out. They didn’t see it, but I did. I’ve been a U.S. Marshall for longer than I’ve been anything else. I knew in my gut, he was WITSEC.”

Grant rubs the back of his neck, head shaking in disbelief. “You’re telling me that the guy Laney had to enter witness protection for is an asset in fucking witness protection?”

Bea shifts her eyes around at the audience she’s got, but she must realize even if she asked for this to be private, it would end up being discussed between these four men. “There have been a limited number of assets that have gone missing in the program over the years. Most of the time, it’s folks that want to go back to their old lives and then end up disappearing—whatever they had been running from most likely caught up to them. But when I knew where to look, it wasn’t too hard to start connecting the pieces.”

Griz sits in one of the rocking chairs while Lincoln takes a seat on the stairs that lead to this stretch of patio. But both Grant and Ace stand, squared off and arms crossed now, waiting to hear the rest of it.

“He was placed in Montgomery, originally. About twenty miles from here. That was before I was leading any teams or a main point of contact. This one was smart. He knew what he was doing when he turned into state’s evidence. He was the bookkeeper for crime families in both New York and Chicago. He was calculated. But I don’t think they knew about his”—she clears her throat—“extracurriculars. So he snitched and made himself invincible for it. He helped put away a lot of people. Testified about what funds were being used for, where they went, and from whom they came. It was one of the largest series of organized crime arrests in decades. Long story short, when the Attorney General has that kind of history-making arrests that would collapse crime families, there’s not going to be loose ends to reverse it. When he was arrested in that storage facility and there were witnesses to put him away, it gave those connected crime families ammunition to appeal, and potentially overturn.”

“Attorney General wasn’t going to let that happen, were they?” Griz asks.

“No.” She stares at Grant for a beat, trying to hold in all the emotion this must be digging up. “We protected him. And they’re still doing it too.”

With a heavy exhale, Ace asks, “Now what, Bea?”

“Does Del know?” Grant interrupts.

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