An Offer You Can't Refuse by Sal Bianchi (best beach reads .txt) 📕

doors and windows were locked, and worrying if I’d suddenly see Carl somewhere. The thought of making it all stop sounded so good.”

“So you got in touch with him,” I surmised.

“Yeah,” she replied. “He made me pay him five grand, and then he told me that I would…”

She trailed off before finishing her sentence. Her breath was shallow, and she was clenching her fists again.

“He told you to kill someone, right?” I asked.

Her head snapped up to look at me so fast it wouldn’t have surprised me if she’d given herself whiplash.

“How did you know?” she whimpered.

“So you admit that you did?” I asked coldly.

She looked down at the ground and nodded slowly. I felt bad for her. She didn’t deserve what happened to her, and she must have felt extremely desperate to do what she did. Still, she’d just admitted not only to taking a hit out on someone but to actually murdering someone herself.

“I slipped some drugs into this girl’s drink at a bar,” she admitted quietly. “I don’t even know who she was. The guy just sent me a photo of her and an address.”

“What kind of drugs?” I asked. “And where did you get them?”

“That same website.” She shrugged. “My friend got drugs there all the time. I waited until she was already drunk so she wouldn’t notice the taste, then I slipped a bunch of coke and molly into her drink. It only took about ten minutes for her to fall over.”

Any sympathy I still felt for her evaporated as I listened to what she’d done.

“Agent Duncan.” I addressed Theo for the first time since we’d gotten here. “Please place Ms. Martin under arrest. I’m going to step out and call the office.”

As Theo got up to apprehend Angela, I turned on my heel and swiftly walked out of the apartment. Once I was outside and out of sight, I allowed myself to relax.

I leaned against the wall beside the front door and went over the interrogation in my head. I hadn’t made any mistakes, and even though I felt a little bad about how brutal I’d been, I didn’t regret having acted that way. It got me the result I needed, after all, and I couldn’t show weakness in front of a suspect, regardless of how sympathetic I felt toward her plight. I’d learned a long time ago that I wouldn’t get anywhere in life unless I shut away my emotions and learned to dominate others. I couldn’t afford to make an exception for some pathetic woman like her.

27

Nick

Jase headed back to the office after we left the police station, and I decided to head back to my apartment. It was still early enough that I might be able to look more into that infidelity case, and after not having any luck on the SDCT case, I really needed some kind of distraction.

I settled in at my desk and went over the details of the case again. The client was a woman named Christine Thompson. Her husband, Anthony Thompson, had been behaving oddly for the past couple of months, coming home late, hiding his phone from her, all the typical signs of unfaithful behavior. Honestly, his actions were so suspicious that I could have told her without even investigating that he was definitely cheating on her, but obviously, people wanted solid proof when it came to those sorts of things.

I’d last seen Thompson in a small cafe in Northern Miami, meeting up with a woman. However, as suspicious as that seemed, they hadn’t said or done anything explicit enough at the time for me to say conclusively that he was cheating on his wife. Flint had called me right after that, and I’d been unable to follow him and the woman after they’d left the restaurant.

According to the schedule the wife had given me, he would usually leave work at around six. If I left now, I might be able to get to his workplace with a few minutes to spare.

I quickly got up and double-checked that I had my gun on me before I left the office. After making sure the doors were locked securely, I headed over to my car. The sky was getting darker, but there was still light enough out that I could see without using my headlights.

The drive over to Thompson’s office took longer than I thought it would. I hadn’t accounted for the evening rush hour traffic, and it was fifteen minutes past six by the time I made it to the building. I cursed silently to myself as I pulled into an empty spot at the end of the parking lot. There were barely any cars left, and I knew that I had most likely missed my chance to follow him.

I leaned back in my seat and took a glance around the parking lot as I tried my best to remember what Thompson’s car looked like. If I recalled correctly, he’d been driving a large minivan the last time I’d followed him. I couldn’t remember the exact color, but I knew it was either black or dark blue. There was a car parked near the other end of the parking lot that looked similar, but it was too far away for me to be sure, and I was worried that I would arouse suspicion if I started circling the parking lot.

I turned back to the entrance with a sigh. I resolved to put the case off for another day. When I leaned forward to put the car back in drive, I froze when I caught movement out of the corner of my eye. I looked back up and, to my surprise, saw Thompson walking casually through the front doors of the office building, heading straight for a cherry red car parked near the entrance.

I put my car back in park and scrambled to turn around and grab my camera from where it was stashed in the footwell of the backseat. I brought it up to