Joe turned his head to the district attorney standing beside him, as well as the federal prosecutor observing the interrogation.
“I don’t think she knows, Mark,” he sighed wearily. “At least, not that she’s aware of.”
“Santiago and his uncle Jose will be out of jail before the day is out,” Mark Johnson murmured. “We couldn’t deny bail at this point because of the threats the judge has received. Our only chance is to trap them in this. If she walks out of this office without giving us the information, she’s dead.”
“We can’t protect her, Agent Merino,” Andrew Jordan, the federal prosecutor sent to oversee the interrogation spoke up. “She’s our only hope at this point.”
Joe breathed in, slow, deep. As he stared at Maggie he saw Grant, his face twisted with hatred as he prepared to kill Morganna Chavez when he couldn’t get her to the exit of the club and to Fuentes. The attempted kidnapping, the drugging of the women before her, the rapes, the death of Agent Lyons. It all lay at Grant’s feet, and now at his wife, Maggie’s.
“Are we certain she could have had access to the information?” Joe asked as he crossed his arms over his chest, ignoring the instinctive demand that he go to her, hold her, take the fear out of her eyes.
“We’re certain she lived with him for two years. She would have seen or heard something, even if she wasn’t involved. We’ve found too many lies in those damned journals to take his word for it,” Johnson grunted. “Word on the street is that the price is already on her head, though. And Grant would have tried to cover his ass. He had the evidence, I suspect; the question is where.”
“And if she doesn’t know anything, consciously or subconsciously?” Subconsciously, yeah, he was betting she knew something. Consciously? He couldn’t make it work in his own mind. Maggie would have never been able to live with the rapes and deaths of those women. It wasn’t possible.
“If she doesn’t, she’s dead anyway. We can’t do anything to protect her if she doesn’t cooperate,” Jordan answered.
“She trusts you, Joe. She asked for you when we brought her in this morning.”
There was a question in the district attorney’s voice, one Joe heard clearly. The DA was well aware of the fact that Joe and Maggie had been involved in an affair. Grant’s irrational journals had been filled with furious entries raging over the fact.
“What do you want me to do?” Joe steeled himself against the denial raging inside him. He couldn’t interrogate Maggie. It would destroy them both.
“We need that proof, Joe. Without it, the nephew and the brother will walk and the Navy will never find the mole responsible for the death of that Navy SEAL and the young women that drug destroyed.” Johnson sighed.
Joe wanted to trust her, he wanted to hold her, to take away her fear and promise her everything was going to be okay. She was his best friend’s wife… . His jaw clenched. No, Grant hadn’t been his friend—the illusion of friendship, of brotherhood, had been a game, nothing more.
In the days since Grant’s death, the depth of his treachery had slowly been revealed. He had been on the take for years. More years than Joe could have imagined.
“You know me, Matthew.” Joe heard Maggie’s whisper clearly through the glass. “I wouldn’t be involved in this.”
Joe would have never thought she would be involved in this, but then again, he would have never believed Grant would betray him. The evidence supported her involvement. For now he had no choice but to go with the evidence, the tangible proof rather than his emotions. Because his emotions couldn’t be trusted. Because Maggie’s life depended on her knowing something, whether she realized it or not.
“Maggie, we have evidence.” Matthew laid his arms on the table as he leaned forward. “Evidence that you were at the house during the meetings, that you know where the photos and recordings are hidden. Lying isn’t going to help you.”
“I’m not lying to you.” She smacked the palm of her hand on the table, that Irish temper finally coming to the fore.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Matthew, and I’m not telling you that again. I didn’t know what Grant was doing.”
Despite the temper, she was trembling. He could see the fine tremors racing over her body, echoing in her lips.
“I’ll take care of it.” It was a promise Joe made not just to the DA, but to Maggie.
He was a fool. No greater fool had ever been born than he was at that moment, and he knew it.
Johnson watched him silently. Joe could feel the other man’s gaze on him as he stared through the two-way mirror at Maggie.
“How?”
“Fuentes already put a price on her head. She’s as good as dead without protection, until we can get the evidence she’s hiding. I’ll take her to a safe house, see if I can wear her down.”
“If that doesn’t work?” Andrew Jordan’s eyes were narrowed as Joe stared over the district attorney’s shoulder at the older man. Andrew Jordan was a sparse, tall man, with hawklike eyes and a jutting, pugnacious chin. He was the terror of the capital and a bulldog when it came to the cases he prosecuted.
“What do you want, Jordan?” He fought the anger willing inside him. “Arresting Maggie and terrifying her isn’t going to help anyone at this point, and it won’t get the evidence against the Fuentes gang. According to Grant’s journal, his marriage to her was less than perfect. She wouldn’t protect him.”
“She wouldn’t be the first woman to follow the money, Merino. You know that,” Jordan pointed out, clearly referring to the rich bastard his first wife had died with.
It was well known that Joe refused to touch the money his parents made available to him. He used the inheritance his grandfather had left him, but his parents’ money he had never touched. Not because of any anger or animosity toward it or his parents. There was none. He loved them, as interfering and broody as they could be. But he didn’t want their money. With the inheritance he had, and his salary, he had more than he needed. More than Bettina would have needed if she hadn’t gotten hooked on the drugs.
“If Maggie wanted money, she wouldn’t help kill to get it,” he snarled. “Give me a week, maybe two. Let me see what I can learn.”