Beg for Mercy (36 page)

Talia licked her bare lips. “Amazing.”

“You know, it doesn’t sound like you have the best home environment to raise a teenager. Working all these late hours, possible involvement in prostitution and who knows what else?”

“I’m not involved in prostitution,” Talia said.

“I find that hard to believe, but even if you’re not, you know what’s going on here, and you know why those women were killed. You may have friends who helped you get custody, but your caseworker is a pretty good friend of mine. It wouldn’t take more than a phone call for me to make life a lot more difficult for you and Rosario.”

“Don’t.” Talia’s impervious facade cracked wide open. “You can’t take her away from me.”

“Then talk to us,” Cole said. “Talk to the police.”

Talia sank down on the couch across from her desk. A sound ripped out of her chest, a combination of a laugh and a sob. “If they find out I’m talking to the cops, what they do to me, and what they do to Rosario, will be way worse than her going back into foster care.”

“We can put you both in protective custody,” Cole said, “even get you into witness protection if that’s what it takes.”

“Don’t you get it?” Talia said. “They have eyes everywhere.” She looked up at the ceiling of her office and gestured with her hands. “They have people on the police force, in the court system. They will know, and they will find me, no matter what you can promise. How do you think they’ve gone this long with no one catching on?”

“Who is
they
?” Megan demanded. “And what exactly are they involved in?”

Talia snapped her lips closed and shook her head. “I’m sorry. Use whatever pull you have in Social Services. Do whatever you’re going to do.”

Megan swallowed back a scream of rage. Talia was closed up like a vault, and if the investigation continued, she’d have to give up something to the cops. But not in time for Sean.

Cole knelt on the floor in front of Talia. “Sean Flynn is going to die, and you might have information that could save his life. Can you really live with that on your conscience?”

Talia lifted her desolate gaze to his. “I was already damned a long time ago, Detective. But I’ll do whatever it takes to keep my sister safe.”

On another occasion Megan would have admired Talia’s devotion. Right now, however, she was darting her gaze around Talia’s office, looking for bamboo shoots to shove under the other woman’s fingernails to get her to talk before it was too late.

“I can help get Rosario somewhere safe.” Jack stepped forward from where he’d been standing sentry by the door.

“How?” Talia said, her voice dripping with skepticism.

“A good friend of mine, my former commanding officer, has a security firm outside of San Francisco. One of the best in the country. It will be handled outside of the system, completely under the radar.”

“Why the hell should I trust you?” Talia said. “What’s your angle?”

Jack shook his head and ran a hand through his short, dark hair. “I don’t have an angle.”

Talia gave a sharp laugh. “Everyone has an angle.”

Jack shook his head. “I came to work here because the money is good, and if I kept my head down and did my job, there would be bigger opportunities down the line. I
figured it was none of my business if girls wanted to set up meets here to go make a little extra cash. But what’s happening here… I can’t stand by and do nothing.”

“So, what, you suddenly grew a conscience and want to play hero?”

Jack shrugged. “You need help, and I’m offering.”

Talia eyed him suspiciously, as though she couldn’t imagine anyone offering help without an ulterior motive. “Maybe this is all a big trap. You’re probably lying about the cameras, aren’t you, and this is all some fucked-up test to see if I’ll talk or not. I’m not talking,” she yelled up at the ceiling. “I’m not saying anything and I better get credit for that.”

Cole and Jack exchanged raised-eyebrow glances that speculated on Talia’s mental state.

“You don’t have a choice, and you know it,” Jack said. “You’re getting in deeper by the second, and no matter how much you say you’re already damned, it’s eating you alive to stand by and do nothing for girls like Bianca and Stephanie.” Jack pulled Talia to standing and bent so his face was mere inches from hers. “And you know they’re never, ever going to let you—or Rosario—go free.” His low, menacing whisper sent a chill down Megan’s spine and had Talia swallowing convulsively. “This is your best opportunity. Take it.”

Cole jumped in. “I can set up a meeting for you, away from the police headquarters, with someone I can guarantee is clean. You can give your statement and we’ll make sure you’re protected.”

Talia snorted at that.

Cole held up a hand. “If, as you say, there are people on the inside, then you’re right—it won’t be completely
without risk to you. But we’ll do everything we can to make sure you’re safe.”

Talia shook her head, and Megan’s stomach sank. Then Talia shocked her with her next words. “When I know that Rosario is safe”—she slanted a wary look up at Jack before looking to Cole—“I’ll tell you whatever you want to know.”

Sean did another slow turn around the yard, then stopped, closed his eyes, and tilted his face to the sky. Drizzle fell on his cheeks, and he took a deep inhale of cold, wet air. Alone in his cell, he kept in almost constant motion, the frenzy of activity the only thing that could keep him from hitting the wall going ninety.

He couldn’t fuck this up. He had to keep it together till the end, not let on how close he was to the breaking point.

God forbid the state of Washington killed a crazy guy.

This single hour a day was the closest he got to stillness. Air. Rain. Sky. He drank it in, filled himself with it. The only sensations he let himself feel anymore, the only things that could quiet his racing mind.

The hours were dwindling. Part of him was sad at the thought of never feeling rain on his face again.

Most of him was eager for the day he wouldn’t need this pitiful hour in the yard to survive the other twenty-three hours a day. Soon he wouldn’t need anything.

The thought made him smile.

“Yard in.”

Sean’s stomach sank at the signal that time was up.

“Maybe you didn’t hear me? I said yard in!”

His shoulders tensed at the guard’s voice. He stood stock still, willing himself to relax, scrambling for the peace that had filled him just seconds ago.

Another guard might have cut Sean a little slack, had a little sympathy. But Riley was a mean cocksucker who got off on throwing his weight around.

“Give me a minute.”

“Get your ass over here.”

Black rage welled up, thick like tar, choking him. Sean struggled to block it down with each deliberately slow step across the yard. He was so sick of fat little turds like Riley directing every detail of his life. When he showered. When he ate the slop from the kitchens. When he could replace the dog-eared books and magazines he’d already memorized.

Not too much longer now.
One last deep breath of fresh air before he stepped inside. His stomach revolted at the stink of bodies covered by a thin veil of Lysol. He started to shake. Couldn’t make his feet move.

Oh shit, he had to pull it together.

“Move!” The shove barely budged him.

A blow to his ribs with a baton made him gasp for air. He looked up and saw Riley’s smug face before the baton came down again, cracking against Sean’s forearm. Riley, with his fat, smirking face and beady rat’s eyes was getting off on beating him down.

Something snapped. Sean knew he shouldn’t fight back but couldn’t stop his fist from crashing into Riley’s face. Flesh tore and teeth crunched. He grabbed Riley by the shoulders and flung him against the wall. The satisfaction was so great at first he didn’t hear the thundering of
footsteps down the corridor or feel the blows on his back, arms, legs.

He registered a baton swinging toward his face, too late to duck.
Crack!
Pain like a lightning bolt shot from his cheekbone into his skull. Another baton hit his head with a hollow thunk, and Sean fell to his knees. He tried to guard his face with his hands, but three guards shoved his face into the concrete, wrenched his arms behind his back, and cuffed him.

Even then Sean didn’t stop struggling. He was like a wolf in a trap, the primitive beast taking over even when he knew it was useless to fight.

W
here are we going?” Megan asked as Cole pulled away from the curb.

“I told you, we’re going to talk to someone we can trust with Talia’s information. If what she says is true, I can’t be a hundred percent sure about anyone.”

“Who is it?” Megan asked for the hundredth time since Cole had gotten off the phone. “Why won’t you tell me who we’re going to talk to?”

Cole’s hands tightened around the steering wheel as he guided the Jeep onto the freeway on-ramp heading north. He hadn’t told Megan because he knew her reaction wouldn’t be good. The animosity Megan had toward Talia Vega was nothing compared to the white-hot hatred she felt for Deputy Prosecuting Attorney Krista Slater. The woman had been relentless in her quest to get Sean convicted, vocal in her determination to settle for nothing less than the death penalty.

Though the case had been led by District Attorney Benson, Slater had been the driving force in painting Sean Flynn as a conscienceless monster who had murdered Evangeline Gordon in a drug-fueled rage. The case had made Slater’s career and cemented her reputation as a hard-nosed, pull-no-punches prosecutor.

Though he didn’t know her well socially—no one did, considering the woman practically lived at her desk—he liked working with her. She was ambitious but shared his appetite for justice. When others played politics, grew cynical, or compromised heavily in order to keep a high conviction rate, Slater maintained the same dedication she’d had when she’d first joined the PA’s office. Cole knew that when she was assigned to his cases, as long as his evidence was solid and clean, she’d do her damnedest to make sure the perp wasn’t able to plea down to a sentence that amounted to a slap on the wrist.

She was also fanatical about making sure she had every shred of information relevant to the case and the suspect. He knew she wouldn’t shy away from truth, no matter how damaging it might prove.

Though he trusted his partner, he knew Petersen would feel obligated to go to Lieutenant Chin and Agent Tasso with any information relevant to the Slasher case. And until he knew for sure who this mysterious “they” Talia was referring to and what their reach was, he didn’t want to risk the information getting into the wrong hands.

“I still don’t understand why you couldn’t set this up over the phone,” Megan said. She was shifting in her seat, a ball of nervous energy. “We’re wasting time with this. We shouldn’t have let Talia out of our sight, and I still don’t trust Jack. They’re playing us—”

Cole reached over and gave her thigh a warning squeeze. “They’re not playing us.”

“How do you know?”

Cole brushed his thumb over the top of her tight quad, as much to savor the feel of her under his hand as to soothe the tension radiating from the muscle. “I’ve been
at this for a long time, and I joinotten pretty good about knowing when someone is lying. Brooks is solid, and he’ll make sure Talia plays along.”

She shook her head. “There’s something going on with him. He knows something about what’s happening there and he’s not willing to talk.”

“He’s worked there only a few months,” Cole said. “He may suspect something, but only Talia knows how Evangeline Gordon’s murder plays into this. We need to make sure she cooperates.”

“By leaving before she tells us anything?”

“Trust me on this. She’s scared, and she needs time to get her shit sorted out. She’s not going to talk to anyone until her sister is secure, and that’s going to take some time. And in the meantime, I need to handle this meeting in person.”

Megan emitted an exasperated sound and turned her face toward the window. She was in constant motion, fidgeting, jiggling her leg, but she didn’t remove his hand from her thigh. He let it rest there, pretending for a few seconds that they were like any other normal couple cruising down the highway, on their way home, on their way out to dinner, on their way out of town. Anywhere but on some desperate bid to see if there was any way to stop a man’s execution when he had no desire to stop it himself.