Page 88 of State of Retribution

When they saw only her and the two agents, they waved them through.

At the entrance, Vernon opened the back door for her.

Sam got out, went inside, bypassed George and went up the stairs, not stopping until she was inside their suite with the door closed.She slid down the door and into a sobbing mess on the floor, head in her hands as the horror of it fully registered with her.

People had been attacked, assaulted,shotbecause of her?The incident at the Easter Egg Roll might’ve been about takingherout, not Nick?

Every cell in her body was rocked by this realization.

And then he was there, wrapping his arms around her, bringing the scent of home, and the warmth of his love infusing the parts of her that’d gone ice-cold.

“What happened?”he asked.

She tried to form the words, but none came.

He held her until she was somewhat calmer, until she found the ability to speak again, to say something that, once conveyed to him, could never be unsaid.

She wiped the tears from her face.“Did you talk to Aubrey?”

“I did.We had a nice chat, and I think she feels better than she did.”

“I should go in there and see her.”

“They were tired, so they wanted to go to sleep.It can keep until the morning.Talk to me, Samantha.”

She took a deep, shuddering breath, wishing more than anything that she didn’t have to tell him what’d upset her.

“It’s possible… that all of this—the drones, the murders, the shooting of Jimmy, the kidnapping and assault of Archie’s friend…”

“What about it?”

“Vernon suggested it might be someone coming for me because they know if something happens to me, you’d never stay in office.In another possible scenario, someone is trying to drive me out of the MPD.”

“What?” he asked on a long exhale.

“Th-think about it.Vernon said, and it’s true, my movements in new cases are predictable.I do the same things every time.If someone wanted to find me, it wouldn’t take much effort to know where I’d turn up.Kill an innocent person and then watch me go through the steps.They knew I’d be on the lawn with the kids at the egg roll.What if they weren’t after you but were gunning forme?”

“I… I can’t… My God, Sam.”

“I came home because I can’t risk someone else I care about being hurt, or worse, because of me.”

“This is unbelievable.”

“But it’s true… If someone killed me, that would drive you right out of public life, or if they kill someone on my detail or a member of my team, they’ll run me out of the MPD.I’m not sure which of those things these sick fucks want.Maybe they want both of them.”

“What’re we going to do?”

“We’re going to figure who’s behind this, and we’re going to take them down.”

Sam was up all night,making lists of people to investigate, beginning with former Sergeant Ramsey, who had a stick up his ass a mile long for her.He blamed her for his son being killed in a shootout when Shane Ramsey was holding a naked woman hostage.The disgraced former sergeant blamed her for everything that’d gone wrong in his life and career without taking any responsibility for his own actions.She wouldn’t put it past him to be participating in something like this.

First on her to-do list for the morning was getting a warrant to dump his phone for the months leading up to his most recent arrest, for disrupting the funeral of U.S.Attorney Tom Forrester.He’d hated Forrester for declining to prosecute her after an altercation between them had left Ramsey at the bottom of a flight of stairs with a concussion and broken arm.He’d started it by telling her she’d gotten what she deserved from Stahl and his razor wire.

Freddie had reported in that their new victim was a twenty-four-year-old male graduate student at American University.He’d been walking home from an all-night gym when he was attacked from behind and killed with one strike to the back of his head.

As she processed that new information, she combed through the lists of people she’d helped to put away in recent years, everyone from former Lieutenant Stahl to Marquis Johnson, who’d lost his son in a shootout after Sam had been embedded with his crime organization for months.

And then she made a list of the people who had it out for Nick:

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