Read Don't Let Go for Free Online Page B

eyes were grave as he nodded, and I appreciated that he took my question seriously. “It’s true, but crime is random. The nature of detective work is to always be one step behind. We have to wait until they commit a crime or make a mistake, and then we can follow them.”
    One step behind. How accurate. How depressing. I stared at him, realizing how difficult that might be for a man with pride. With initiative. How much easier it’d be as a criminal, how freeing.
    He continued, “And then one day, we catch up. We get some commendations, and we move on to the next case.”
    “If crime is random, I take it you don’t believe in trying to understand the criminals, the way their mind works, why they do what they do.”
    “Nah, I leave that to the doctors. And the lawyers. My job is to put them in handcuffs. That’s all I allow myself to care about, because as often as not, they end up back on the streets with a plea bargain or whatever the fuck.”
    “You paint a bleak picture, Hennessey.”
    “Just being honest, rookie.”
    I warmed at the return of his endearment. That was what it had become now, an expression of kindness. He had grieved for the other rookie who had died. It meant something to him, to be young and new here. He wanted me to live, to succeed, and that elevated my junior status to a place of honor.
    “Are we going to do what Fuentes said and interview Laguardia’s woman?” The word fell awkwardly from my lips, but I didn’t want to call her a puta or a whore. I wasn’t really sure who she’d been to Laguardia except that she’d fucked him. There’d been a few pages about her in the files, but they’d been mostly blacked out, unreadable. Classified. Since she’d gotten away, I assumed she’d flipped on Laguardia. Except that didn’t explain why she was still alive. Carlos wouldn’t let a betrayal go unpunished…but he had, with her.
    Hennessy shook his head. “That was years ago. She won’t have any information on this deal going down or his current whereabouts.”
    She knew something . The blacked-out pages proved that.
    “We can ask her general questions. Like what Laguardia looks like. She slept with him. She should at least know that much.”
    A grainy black-and-white image flashed through my mind, of a man standing still in a crowd, looking up. He wore a large jacket—was it required to cover him or was it part of the disguise?
    Hennessey looked bored. “Five-foot-ten. A hundred and eighty pounds. Black hair, strong build. Like a million other criminals.”
    “She might know the way he works. His quirks. Whether he usually attends important shipments like this one and what role he might play.”
    Hennessey gave me a faintly pitying look, and his voice, when he spoke, was gentler. “These kinds of guys don’t let their women participate in business. They don’t treat them as equals.”
    Like we do, was the subtext. But even there, it wasn’t true. Women didn’t advance at the same rate as men in the FBI. They weren’t, on average, paid as much. Even my position on this case was an unexplained thing with an ulterior motive lurking somewhere out of reach. Equality was a pipe dream on either side of the law, and it made me defensive.
    “That’s exactly my point. They wouldn’t have believed her capable of anything, so they wouldn’t have guarded themselves around her. She could have overheard things. She could be a gold mine of information.”
    I was breathing hard, somehow. Sweating, as if this had become a fight. Hennessey stared at me in the same way he had at Fuentes, like looking down at ants, like wondering at the strange behavior of lesser mortals. Suddenly this diner table was metal to match his eyes, the retro décor around us turned to concrete walls. The dim sound of voices evened out into the buzz of fluorescent lights, no other people here, no cameras, no witnesses.
    He spoke in the same even voice he’d used in that room, low and seductive. “You want to know