Page 50 of The Night Of
I snorted.
“Our investigation would go a lot smoother if you helped us out, Sean.”
Oh, fuck me. Now I understood what this was. Now I understood why boy Friday was hanging outside my door and watching my every fucking move. Now I fucking got it. “Are you arresting me?”
“We have every right to. From where I’m sitting, there’s probable cause to hold you in connection with conspiracy to assassinate the president of the United States, as well as obstruction of justice. Tampering with evidence. Impeding an investigation.”
“Fuck you! I haven’t done any of that!”
“We can work out a deal,” Silva went on, as if I hadn’t spoken at all. “If you tell us everything you know about Sharp, we can make something happen for you.”
“You think I’ll turn on Jonathan—”
“Is there anything to turn on?”
That made me pause, stilled me all the way down to my heart. What was Jonathan hiding from me?
What did we have if we didn’t have truth between us? What was left if I couldn’t trust him? He’d said he wanted to trust me completely, wanted me to be the man he could give everything up to, but that had to go both ways. I needed to trust him just as completely. I needed to know there were no surprises between us. Nothing hidden.
Before this moment, I’d thought I could—did—trust him like that.
Was this just a misunderstanding? A miscommunication? We specialized in those. But how could Jonathan have misunderstood my question:Where did Baker get the gun?
“Look, we’re on the same side. There are things you don’t know.”
“That’s why we’ve come here, Sean, to try and work out a deal with you. You don’t need to go down for this if you were just doing what you were told. If you didn’t have any part in organizing this conspiracy. We aren’t even interested in you, really.”
“Goddamn it, that’s not what I meant! I mean about the murder, and about Jonathan. There’s more evidence that you guys don’t have.”
Silva blinked. “Go on.”
Damn it, Jonathan. Why did you put me in this position? To save him, I was going to have to break a promise. I exhaled. Squeezed my eyes closed. “President Baker left a note for Jonathan, taped to the underside of his desk.”
“In the vice president’s office?”
“Yeah. He put it there before going up to Camp David. Probably when he delayed Marine One, right before he left.”
“What did this note say?”
“That Baker was afraid something was going to happen to him, and if anything did, then Jonathan needed to call an old friend of theirs. Carl Rose.”
“Carl Rose? Who is that?”
“Well, he’s a cadaver in the DC metropolitan morgue. But he was a CIA officer, and he ran counterespionage strike teams. He was working with Baker on the Hardacre disappearance. You know, the CIA officer who vanished?”
“We’re familiar with Hardacre. But I’ve never met a Carl Rose.”
“I’m not surprised. Apparently he was pretty deep in the Secret Squirrel shit. Jonathan said he, Baker, and Carl Rose all met in Brussels twenty-five years ago, around the same time they met the First Lady and her sister. They stayed close. Baker turned to Rose when he needed someone he could trust on the Hardacre case. They had a meeting in the Oval Office two days before Baker died. After that meeting, Baker was suddenly afraid something was going to happen to him, so much so he left a hidden note for Jonathan in his office. The same night Baker was murdered, Rose was killed, too. A hit that was made to look like a carjacking in Anacostia.”
Silva’s brow furrowed.
“You know that gas explosion today? That was Rose’s townhome. I was there.”
Silva sighed, leaning back as he appraised me. “Interfering with an investigation again?”
“Chasing down leads. I didn’t blow the place. It was booby-trapped.”
“We found evidence of accelerant at the scene.”
