Page 23 of Out of Control

“You must be Athena Kane,” he said, holding a hand out to her. “I’m Detective Mark Rosenberg. I work in homicide.”

“Homicide?” she asked, taking his hand. “Nobody killed me. I don’t think we need your services just yet.”

“Oh, don’t worry, I’m qualified in other areas, too,” he said, taking a seat beside her. “I’m the FBI’s liaison with local law enforcement for Luke’s big case he’s working on. Something I’m told you know quite a bit about.”

She raised an eyebrow at me. I could practically hear her ask,Luke?

“I don’t actually know much about the case as a whole, just that someone tied to your Morellis doesn’t like me very much.”

“Do we like Lombardi for the sniper?” I asked. Mark said he’d check out that lead since it was the only one that made sense. CSI found the likely spot the sniper shot from and they were tearing it apart. It was only a matter of time until they came upwith some useful evidence. I was confident we’d have a warrant for his arrest in hand in the next few days.

“Oh yeah. He was a marksman in the military before being dishonorably discharged a couple decades ago. Been working for his cousins ever since.”

“I could have told you that if you asked me,” Athena cut in, rolling her eyes.

“Oh, now you want to contribute?” I asked. “How would you know that information in the first place?”

“Anyone can request basic information like discharges from the NPRC. You only need a badge to get access to a full Military Personnel File.”

“Why didn’t you say anything before?”

“You never asked me if I knew anything about Leo’s ability to fire a weapon with accuracy from far away.”

“Athena!” I paused to get my tone in line. “Ms. Kane. This is a real, active investigation. Real people are already dead and real people’s lives are on the line. You need to tell us everything you know.”

“I don’t know much else.”

God, she was frustrating! I stood and paced away from her. I didn’t even want to be in the same room as her at this point.

“Ms. Kane?” Mark’s voice was kind, polite even. “Can you tell us how you know that information about Leo Lombardi?”

“Of course, Detective.” I whipped my head back around, incredulous. She’d answer his questions but not mine? “Thank you for asking so nicely. I only met Leo once, for about fifteen minutes, and he had one of thoseSemper Fitattoos. He spent the entirety of three flights of stairs bragging about his militaryachievements to try and impress me. And as I said, I looked up his military record through the National Personnel Records Center. I submitted a request online, and received the results back a few days ago. I’m a curious woman by nature, so I wanted to know if anything he said was true.”

She continued to avoid my eyes as she answered Mark. Why was she helping him, but not me?

“And what was the nature of your time with Mr. Lombardi?”

She paused, sitting up straighter and crossed her legs a little tighter for half a second before relaxing. What did that mean?

“It was an attempt at a setup by a third-party, but the night ended quickly because I didn’t like him. As I said, I spent maybe fifteen minutes with him the whole night before we parted on less than friendly terms.”

My blood boiled. What was a beautiful, confident career woman like Athena doing going on a date with a scumbag like Leo Lombardi?

“Who set you up?”

“I don’t want to answer that question, Detective.”

I groaned and resisted the urge to slam my fist on the table. Now Mark would see how annoying and uncooperative she was.

“That’s fine. You don’t need to. Can you tell me why you don’t want to answer the question?”

“Because my personal life and what I do with my personal time isn’t relevant to your case. I don’t want my personal information involved in your paperwork as it could affect my career prospects if I was seen to be involved in an organized crime investigation.”

I paused. That made a lot of sense. She was a criminal defense attorney. She needed her clients to trust her, and the more she talked and cooperated with us—the more her name was in our records as a defense witness—the more potential clients might see any of this as a conflict of interest. Why didn’t she just say all that from the start? Why did she have to drive me crazy refusing to answer the most basic questions?

Why didn’t I just ask her why like Mark did? I was the asshole who didn’t think to ask her nicely. I wasn’t thinking properly about anything in this damn investigation.

I was beginning to think I needed to recuse myself from this case. It would probably mean losing out on the promotion and transfer to the Crimes Against Children and Human Trafficking Unit. Spots in the CACHTU didn’t come by very often, but it would happen again. Eventually.

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