Page 67 of Dead Man's List

Connor smiled. “Will he back you up? You’re going down for felony passport fraud and, if you can’t explain where all that money came from, extortion as well. He’s just in trouble for being your pilot at this point. He claims that he wasn’t the person you called this morning when you said ‘They know,’ and ‘We have to get out of here.’ ”

Her eyes widened and she opened her mouth, then shut it when Laura hissed her name.

“Yeah,” Connor said, “we were listening. I wish you hadn’t thrown up, though. I’m a sympathetic puker.”

“He’s not,” Kit said in the observation room. “I think Sam is, though.”

“He totally is,” Joel agreed.

On the other side of the glass, Veronica glared at Connor.

Laura sighed. “Are you going somewhere with this, Detective?”

“Of course.” He turned to Veronica. “We’ll check into the flights you took with your Viola passport. I’m thinking you did the trip in two legs—San Diego to Mexico City and then to Grand Cayman. We’ll find the flight records. Steven Neal doesn’t strike me as the kind of guy who’d stay quiet to save you.”

“Did Connor meet the pilot?” Navarro asked.

“Nope,” Kit said. “He’s really improving his interview technique. Veronica bought that line.”

“If he knew anything about what you were doing,” Connor continued, “and I suspect he did because you were bullying him into flying you today—then we’ll offer him a deal to tell us everything he knows about you. We’re especially interested in your partner. The one who wasn’t gutted like a pig.”

He said that like he was discussing a sunny day.

Veronica flinched and held herself very still as Connor changed the subject from Munro’s body back to her flights.

“They were generally long weekends, your trips to Grand Cayman. That’s a hell of a long flight for a short visit.”

“So?” Veronica asked belligerently.

“So, we plan to start with the supposition that you boarded each of those flights with a backpack full of cash, like you had today. And that you deposited it, then turned around and came back. We’re also assuming that Munro didn’t keep the cash. You did. You bore the entire responsibility should you have been caught. He doesn’t seem very nice to me.”

“He didn’t have to be nice,” she said with rigid dignity. “He was my employer.”

“And your lover,” Connor said in a tone just short of singsong.

Veronica maintained her composure, but it was a close thing. If Connor played her right, he could break her walls down.

“You can’t prove that,” Veronica said.

“Ah, but we can. Right after we hauled you into booking, we had CSU go over your apartment with a fine-toothed comb. Tested the hell out of those sheets. Hell of a thing, rapid DNA testing. Cuts the wait time down to two hours. Results are in, and guess whose DNA we found?”

Veronica’s face slowly grew a waxy shade of green. But, to her credit, she said nothing.

“Oh, come on,” Connor coaxed. “Not even a guess? Well, I suppose you already know. You were having…carnal relations with him. Good old Brooks Munro. Does your other partner know about the two of you? I think you two were the brains of the operation, not Munro. If his killer figures that out…well, I wouldn’t want to be either of you.”

Veronica drew a breath and let it out. She opened her mouth, but no words emerged.

There was a tension in the interview room that Kit could feel on the other side of the glass. She realized she’d leaned forward—as had Navarro and Joel.

“Who’s the PI, Veronica?” Connor asked.

Veronica flinched, her eyes registering shock.

“Very nice, Connor,” Kit murmured. “Very nice indeed.”

“Did you know there was a PI?” Joel asked.

“No,” Kit said. “It makes sense, though. If Brooks Munro had a list of secrets, someone had to have dug them up. I can’t see random people confiding in Munro.”

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