Page 64 of I'll Be There
Kyle came back, his game face on. “You’re up.” He opened the cell door and led Conner down the hall, into the interrogation room. “Nobody gets hurt.”
We’ll see.
He slipped Danny Boy’s phone into Conner’s hand. “From Micah.”
Conner slid it into his pocket. Stood with his back to the door, arms folded, listening to Kyle’s footsteps in the hallway. Silence, then more footsteps.
The door opened.
Conner took a breath, tightened his jaw. Turned.
He didn’t know what he expected with this showdown. In his wildest hopes P.T. Blankenship came in so surprised that he simply, what...confessed?
Maybe. Still, Conner hardly expected Blankenship to be grinning at him like he might be an old friend.
“Conner, what did you do to get locked up?” Blankenship came over to the table, set his cell phone on it. Tall, clean cut, he had the rangy movements of a man who’d spent time in the field. He wore a dress shirt, slightly rumpled, and a pair of dress pants, nice shoes. Clean shaven, although maybe a few hours ago.
Conner frowned, nonplussed. “I, uh—”
“Killed a man in Canada.” Blankenship shook his head. “Listen, pal, I know all about it. That’s why I’m here. I figured you and I need to talk.”
Conner walked over to his chair, leaned two hands on it. “Yeah. Like why you’d send someone to kill me.”
“No one was trying to kill you, Conner,” Blankenship said. He sighed. “This is bigger than you. Bigger than me. And if we wanted you—or Harmony—dead, well, you would be.”
“Just like Justin?”
Blankenship gestured to a chair. “I’m going to sit now, because I’ve been driving for a couple days.”
“Yeah, ever since you heard your hired assassin, Donny or Danny or whatever his current alias was, ended up dead in a ditch.”
“No, Conner. Ever since I realized that someone was going to give you false information. Try and make you believe that something nefarious is going on here, when instead, the facts are easy. Blue is wanted in connection with Justin’s murder—”
“She didn’t even know he wasdead!”
“Probably because she left the killing to Kayle. She ratted him out as working for the NSA, then ran with the information he’d put together on the SOF as proof of his involvement.”
Conner frowned. “We called you. It was your voice on the phone asking, ‘Is it done?’” He finger quoted his last words.
Blankenship was playing with his phone, turning it like a card, over and over. “If we wanted Blue dead, she would be. My guys are already picking her up in Thunder Bay.” He looked up. “Our goal was to scare her. And frankly, you, from getting in too far with her.”
“Blue is innocent in all this.”
“Really? You need to ask yourself—why did she take your brother’s phone?”
“Because he gave it to her!”
“Or, because it had a list of all his calls on it—calls that she could use to prove to SOF that she wasn’t lying. She used it to incriminate him.”
“She called me—”
“I’ll bet she thought you were Justin.”
Conner stilled.
“Because if you were on the run, wouldn’t you want to know if the man you tried to kill would come after you?”
Conner was shaking his head.
