Page 89 of Stone
“Then he asked me to see what I could do to push it through. When I said no, he reminded me of Iraq,” Lowery continued.
“That’s when it really started, isn’t it? The favors and the votes and your efforts to sway commissioners. He probably pushed for inside information, too, didn’t he?” Juliana said, her voice gentle. Lowery nodded, his gaze distant. “Then he started paying you. And you figured you were down the rabbit hole already, you may as well take the money,” Juliana concluded.
Lowery didn’t respond, but he didn’t need to. His face said it all.
Pulling her gaze from the supervisor, she looked at him, silently asking if they had enough for Agent Parks to pursue the case and bring charges. Stone nodded.
“So what now?” Juliana asked. The file contained everything they knew as of that morning, but not the new information from Griswold. A detail none of the men, particularly Gregor, would forget.
Polinsky and Gregor shared a look that had the hairs on Stone’s neck standing on end. They had an agreement that Lowery wasn’t a part of. Griswold seemed to sense the same, and his shoulders tensed.
Lowery raised his weapon. Instantly, Polinsky and Gregor followed. Stone’s muscles went taut, but he resisted reaching for his own. He had no wish to call attention to either himself or Juliana. Especially not, when at the moment, the three men had their weapons pointed at each other.
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Juliana drew back, but Simon’s grip on her hand tightened, keeping her from moving. Her gaze darted among the three men. Gregor’s weapon pointed at Polinsky, Lowery’s at Gregor, and Polinsky’s at Lowery—like a scene from a Tarantino film. She had no love for any of the men, but she didn’t want anyone to die. And shereallydidn’t want to witness anyone get killed. She’d never seen a dead body in her life and wanted to keep that streak up as long as possible.
“What the hell, Dean,” Lowery snapped. “We agreed on a plan. Gregor is the one who started all this. We need to get rid of him, then clean up the rest of this mess.” There was no mistaking his intent. They’d agreed to kill her and Simon.
Not a surprise, but still Simon set an arm across her belly and nudged her behind him. Her instinct had her resisting, but Griswold fixed her with a hard stare. She stepped quietly behind Simon rather than risk drawing attention to them. It felt a bit demure to acquiesce to the men in the room, but it wasn’t as if she had any expertise in this kind of situation. Not like they did. She didn’t think the thrillers she read counted.
“Plans change,” Gregor said. A beat passed, then he shifted and his aim landed on Lowery, too.
“What the fuck, Brian?” Lowery demanded.
Simon’s body stiffened as the tension crept up in the room. He held very still, but she had the good fortune of being mostly hidden from view. Slowly, she pulled the gun tucked into his waistband out. His skin jumped when her fingers glided over his back, but by the time she lowered the weapon, his hand waited for it. He eased it gently from her fingers but didn’t otherwise move.
“Dean and I decided that your services are no longer needed and he likes the money,” Gregor said.
Lowery’s eyes grew wild as they darted between his two former accomplices. Fear, anger, hatred, and finally, resignation flashed across his face. He could get one shot off, but not two. Not in the time it would take the others to fire back. Lowery was looking death in the face and he knew it.
He smiled. Then an eerie laugh filled the empty space. “If I kill Brian, your revenue source dries up, Dean. Not to mention, you don’t have it in you to kill everyone else in this room. If I’m going out, I’m taking the head of the snake with me and leaving you to blow untethered in the wind.”
Juliana didn’t know what instincts had Simon turning, but in the next second, his body covered hers as the cold concrete floor pressed against her side.
Four shots rang out, and Juliana flinched at each, pulling herself into as small a space as possible. Simon’s hold on her tightened with each small explosion.
The gunfire echoed in the cavernous space, then faded away. A deathly and final silence followed.
“Griswold, clear Polinsky,” an unfamiliar voice said from somewhere above them.
Simon shifted but didn’t let her go as the sound of something—presumably Polinsky’s weapon—sliding across the concrete traveled through the air. She wondered if that meant the man was still alive. And if so, did the lack of a similar command regarding Gregor and Lowery mean they weren’t?
“He’s clear,” Griswold said as a single moan rose from the floor.
Simon lifted enough to look around, then rose. “You don’t want to see it,” he said, turning her away from the scene as he helped her stand.
He wasn’t wrong, but when the room flooded with the sound of the HICC operatives banging down a set of metal stairs that she couldn’t see and five FBI agents burst through the open door, she startled and spun. And saw it all.
Lowery and Gregor were most definitely dead. A hole in the head for one and a hole in the chest for the other left no doubts. Polinsky, on the other hand, lay twitching on the ground, his left hand holding his right shoulder, a pool of blood underneath him. The hatred in his eyes chilled her, as did his silent pain.
Her curiosity about the operatives entering the room and what they’d do next kept her from turning entirely away from the gruesome scene. Although she steadfastly pretended that two dead bodies weren’t lying within thirty feet of her.
“Well, that’s one way to handle it,” Agent Parks said, holstering her weapon. She and the other agents fanned out in a sea of bulletproof vests.
“We could have prevented this,” one of the HICC operatives said.
“I know they’re HICC, but do you know who they are?” She stood so close to Simon, practically plastered to his body, that she only needed to whisper the question.
