Free Dead to the Last Drop by Cleo Coyle Page A

lips and looked beyond me. “Well, Michael didn’t deem that information significant enough to share. Where is he?”
    “Changing. We have dinner reservations.”
    “I see.” She looked me up and down, and smirked—as if my simple little black dress and the classic pearls my daughter had gifted me were some kind of joke. “I suppose the work can wait. Over lunch on Monday. That’s when Michael and I will, you know”—she raised an eyebrow—“ do it.”
    *   *   *
    “T HAT piece of work!”
    Quinn was on his feet and pacing, a dangerous look in his eyes.
    “She knew you were moving to DC. I never stopped talking about it! And she knew about our Friday dinner plans. I remember turning her down for some invitation and informing her why. I can’t believe you didn’t tell me about that!”
    “I didn’t want to ruin our evening. And that’s obviously what Katerina wanted—the two of us fighting all night about whether you two were having an affair. And, Mike, I knew you weren’t. I never saw a man so happy as when I told you I was moving here to be closer to you.”
    He exhaled hard and took a breath. “Well, I appreciate your finally telling me that story. But face it, she said, she said isn’t much stronger than he said, she said . And if you examine the words she actually said, it could all be explained away as a misunderstanding.”
    “Fine, I get it. The woman knows how to cover her bony ass. But if that’s how she operates, it makes me sick. So how about quitting? I know you wanted those generous paychecks for your kids’ college funds, but you’ve put plenty away by now. And you know the OD Squad is waiting for you back in New York.”
    “It’s not about the money, Clare. Not anymore.”

T wenty
    “I F it’s not about the money, then why stay?”
    “Because I don’t like the way things are going, and maybe I can do something about it.”
    “Well, I don’t like her hitting on you.”
    Quinn grunted. “Her passes I can ignore or evade. What I won’t tolerate any longer are her methods.”
    “I don’t understand.”
    He sat down. “When I was a cop our stings caught bad people doing bad things. We knew they were doing bad things, all we had to do was catch them doing it and show the evidence to a grand jury.”
    Quinn rubbed his forehead. “Under my first boss at the DOJ it was the same, only we were catching bigger bad guys doing worse things. But when he died and Katerina took over, things got ugly. She expanded the operation exponentially, a wider net to catch bigger fish. Now she’s practically pushing entrapment. Her tactics are too aggressive, not to mention legally dubious. She has to be stopped.”
    “What about the other people on your task force? Don’t they want to stop her, too?”
    “No. Some are as ambitious as Katerina. Catch a big fish, and you’re on the fast track.”
    “And the others?”
    “They’re scared of her. Reading between the lines, she has some kind of hold on them.”
    “So Katerina wants to use your years of experience running drugstings to help her advance her career with high-profile entrapment cases? And she keeps her team in line with promises of advancement or threats? Is that what you’re telling me?”
    Quinn nodded. “And it gets worse. I’m sure she’s breaking the law to obtain confidential information.”
    “What makes you think that?”
    “Entrapping good people, which is what we’re doing, isn’t as easy as catching bad guys. You have to find their weaknesses and exploit them. You have to use their needs and desires, their fears and phobias against them.”
    “But to know all that, you’d have to get really close to them.”
    “Yes, you would. And yet Katerina seems to know—for every case. She’s constantly providing shadowy intelligence from ‘unnamed sources’ and ‘confidential informants’ who are never revealed and never come forward to testify.”
    “So is Katerina making this evidence up?”
    “I wish.