Evening Storm by Anne Calhoun Page B

is going to run like a movie? We’ll get the scene where the main character explains everything and the sidekick nods along? Not going to happen. They’ve been investigated by the SEC too many times, and Don’s paranoid as fuck. Charles doesn’t do anything without asking his father first. They’ll talk on their own schedule, in a place he feels safe.” Jesus. Would they make him strip to prove he wasn’t wearing a wire? It almost made him laugh.
    â€œYou think this is fucking funny?” the Jock said.
    Ryan dug the travel pack of Tums out of his tuxedo pocket and chewed two. The agents and the guys running MacCarren weren’t all that different. Testosterone-driven, competitive, arrogant, all about winning, all about the thrill of the kill, not the chase. He used to love the chase, but somewhere, somehow, his soul had become about the kill. “No. I think this is a fucking tragedy for everyone involved. You included.”
    The Jock bristled. Without looking at him, Logan held up a hand, and his partner shut his mouth. “What do you think will happen next?”
    If he’d gotten anyone but Logan the day he’d walked into the FBI office, this would have gone nowhere. He would have quit MacCarren, found another job, and kept his mouth shut when the house of cards came tumbling down. But Logan somehow managed to frame telling the truth and seeking justice as this thing that mattered more than anything else in the world, all without saying a word. “I’m sorry about your wife’s grandmother,” Ryan said, rubbing his eyes with his thumb and forefinger. “How’s she doing?”
    â€œShe’s devastated,” Logan said in his low rumble. Despite his uninflected tone, Ryan got the impression Logan was just as devastated. Shared grief. He tried to remember the last time he’d been close enough to a woman to share her grief. “Thanks for asking. What happens next?”
    â€œAssuming some big scary guy from Jersey isn’t waiting for me in my apartment with a semiautomatic, they’ll think about what I said. What I know. They’ll talk to me somewhere else. Somewhere quiet they think they’re safe. Not the offices. Not a party like that one. Too many listening ears. The place was crawling with first- and second-year associates.”
    â€œThe MacCarrens are a flight risk,” the Jock said.
    Ryan replied even as Logan was shaking his head to disagree. “They’re not a flight risk. Charles has kids in private school, and his sister, Arden, runs the MacCarren Foundation. Charles coaches his son’s little league team. They’re not going anywhere because they don’t believe they’ll get caught.” He took a deep breath and shook the Tums bottle. His stomach was sloshing around in his chest. “Ever tried Zantac? These fucking things aren’t working.”
    â€œWhat about you?” the Jock said suspiciously. “On the tape you said you want in.”
    â€œThat’s how it works,” Ryan said, clinging to his patience. “Three choices: I go to you guys, I don’t say anything, or I want a piece of that action. What’s in character for me is that I want a piece of the action.”
    His brain spun up what he would have done if something, maybe the long-buried memory of the man his father wanted him to be, hadn’t made him go to the authorities. He would have gone in just long enough to set aside a few million in numbered accounts, and buy a place somewhere without an extradition treaty. Except . . . even then he would have had the time to face what he’d done.
    He’d found his limit. His stomach turned itself inside out, a combination of stress and the smell of gas, rubber, urine, and exhaust fumes steeped in a Manhattan parking garage in the middle of the summer, and this time there was no denying it. He bent over and threw up the Arctic char and a froth of