Wild Justice

CHAPTER 47

“Koss was Aldrich’s partner,” I said as Jack peeled from the parking lot. “He had to be. Koss . . .” My stomach lurched. “Amy . . .”

“Don’t know that.”

Jack drove as fast as he dared. As urgent as the situation was, getting pulled over for speeding would consume any extra time we gained.

“I never even considered the possibility,” I murmured after a few minutes. “Why the hell didn’t I consider it?”

“Because it didn’t fit. We knew Koss was Contrapasso. That answer made sense. He killed Aldrich for them.”

Jack’s gaze was fixed on the road, his face expressionless. I knew that face. It said he was keeping it blank on purpose, so I didn’t read something in it.

“You did consider the possibility, didn’t you?” I asked.

No answer.

“Jack . . .”

“Considered. Only to be thorough.” He paused. “That PI we were meeting? Asked him to look into Koss. Any connection between Koss and Aldrich. Other than Amy’s trial. Honestly? Didn’t expect anything. Would have told you otherwise.”

“Does Evelyn know you suspected him?”

“Nah. Wasn’t really suspecting. Covering all bases.” He paused. “I mentioned it to Quinn.”

“Quinn?”

“Yeah. Before the fight. Wanted him to look into Koss. Said he doubted any connection. Koss is one of the good guys. Quinn didn’t even like me suggesting he might not be. So I called the PI.”

Another few minutes of silent driving. Then, “Maybe I should have told you. Didn’t think so. Not without proof.”

“Because I would have reacted just like Quinn did.”

“Nah. Not exactly.”

“But close enough. I know Koss’s reputation and I admire it. Even after meeting him and suspecting he could be the one trying to kill me, my opinion didn’t change. I’d have thought you suspected him because, in your world, guys like Koss are never as good as they seem.”

He shrugged. “Tough call. Long shot, too. Even now? Koss as Aldrich’s partner? Amy’s killer? Huge leap.”

“It is if I keep looking at him as Sebastian Koss, defender of justice, protector of women. But if I strip that away, and he’s just any other guy? I can imagine what happened.”

“Tell me.”

Did Jack really need me to lay it out? Probably not. He would have come up with his own theory when he considered Koss for the role of partner. But he wanted to hear mine, untainted by his own conjecture.

“Koss and Aldrich knew each other somehow, before Amy’s death. I don’t remember exactly how old Koss is, but if he’d just passed the bar before the trial, he’s within a year or two of Aldrich. So same rough age, same rough geographic area. I’d theorize that they knew each other. Aldrich was already preying on young girls. Koss . . . I couldn’t speculate how he got involved, because it’s not like having a friend who likes to race motocross and thinking that sounds like fun. Somehow, though, they hatched the plan. Aldrich gets me; Koss gets Amy. Maybe Aldrich convinced Koss that Amy would be into it.”

I paused, considering before I continued. “Yes, that fits. Koss thinks Amy will be a willing partner, except she isn’t, and he panics and kills her. Koss flees the scene and is spotted, but Aldrich is the one who’s caught. He doesn’t roll on his buddy because Koss has a plan. He’s just been hired by a big Toronto firm. He’ll convince them to take Aldrich’s case, and Aldrich will get off, because he wasn’t the killer anyway. It works. Aldrich is free. Koss helps set him up with a new identity and tries to wash his hands of the business. Driven by guilt, he makes crimes against women his life’s work. But he stays in touch with Aldrich. Or, more likely, Aldrich stays in touch with him—blackmailing him into helping him change identities, maybe hitting him up for cash. Koss goes along with it until Aldrich calls to say I’m following him, and Koss has had enough. He knows how to kill Aldrich from his work with Contrapasso, so he does. Then he sends a hitman to the lodge to kill me if I was there. I show up in Chicago . . .”

“And he knows he’s right. Aldrich’s photo was of you. Hitman’s missing. Middleman, too. Koss gets spooked. Sets a new pro on you.”

“That’s the theory, then. Now we need to test it by confronting Koss, and we need to do it fast, before Contrapasso gets hold of him.”

Silence.

After a couple of kilometers, Jack said, “You gonna suggest a way?”

“Nope.”

“You have an idea.”

“Yep, and it’s the same idea you have, which is the only way of doing this fast. I’m just not going to be the one to suggest it. That ball is in your court.”

“Fuck.”

“Uh-huh.”

The solution was, of course, the very one that set Jack off in a temper two days ago. I needed to meet with Koss.

I called and told him someone was trying to kill me. Hey, nothing works like the truth. Of course, if you are under threat of death, it’s probably best not to run to your probable assassin for help. That may have explained the awkward pause after I finished explaining the situation. Koss recovered quickly, though, and offered to help.

Okay, I didn’t actually say someone was trying to kill me. That would be crazy. I just said that I thought someone was following me and I knew it was silly, and it was probably only because he’d told me about getting that call warning him away from me, but I didn’t know where else to turn and . . .

He understood my predicament. He also feared that I had gotten unknowingly involved in something, and, while he wasn’t jumping to any conclusions, we really should speak, in person.

“While I don’t think you’re in any immediate danger, Nadia, I would suggest we not meet in a public place.”

Of course not. It would be so much harder to kill me in a public place.

I agreed and he continued, “I have an idea. I’ve been looking at alternate office space. My kids are teenagers now and some days I feel like I’m running a youth shelter here. A very loud youth shelter.” He laughed and I obligingly joined in.

“There’s a place I’ve been considering,” he said. “It’s an old building that a developer is remodeling. He’s given me access while I make my decision. It’s mostly vacant and at this hour, I suspect we won’t find anyone else there.”

Meet you in a vacant building at night? What an awesome idea. Apparently, Koss didn’t think much of my intelligence level. Which would be insulting if I wasn’t already plenty insulted over the fact he was trying to kill me.

After I hung up, I joked about it to Jack, but he knew I was actually hurt. Not about Koss’s assumptions regarding my intelligence. Not even so much that he was trying to kill me. I was hurt because, as Jack had said, I’d respected the man. A lot. Part of me had still hoped he’d do or say something to convince me he was innocent. Instead, he was inviting me to meet him in a vacant building.

Jack kept me from dwelling on that by keeping me planning. We discussed how I’d get Koss talking and the various contingencies if that failed. Meanwhile, Jack would take his place in the shadows.

I dropped Jack off a kilometer away. Then I took a circuitous route. The streets were almost empty, but even if Koss saw me driving around, it was easy enough to explain that I’d made some wrong turns looking for the place in the dark. Once Jack said he was at the building and had Koss in his sights, I parked. Koss had given me very specific instructions for that, citing concerns “in case” I was being followed. Or, you know, in case he decided to kill me and needed to find my car in order to move it . . . with my body in the trunk. As I expected, the spot he’d chosen was tucked away where it was unlikely to be noticed, lending further credence to the theory that Koss had no intention of letting me walk out of here alive.

I noticed Koss approaching, but I pretended I didn’t, getting out of the car and fussing with the lock as I watched his reflection in the car window, ready to pull my gun if he made any move toward a weapon of his own. He didn’t. Nor, however, did he make any noise on his approach. I turned and feigned jumping.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to startle you.” He looked around. “It’s quieter than I expected.” He smiled. “Which I will appreciate if I get an office here.”

“Are you sure this is an okay place to leave my car?” I asked. “It’s kind of . . . secluded.”

“It’s fine. There are better break-in pickings two blocks over. A very trendy nightclub. Or so my kids tell me, despite the fact neither of them is old enough to visit a nightclub.”

“Right, you said you had teens. How old?”

“Shane is eighteen and Meg is fif— No, she just turned sixteen. As you can tell, I’m trying to forget the fact that my baby is now old enough to drive.”

He steered me toward the back of the building, murmuring there was a door there. What he didn’t say was that going around the front would have taken us past a bank with a street-front ATM, complete with camera.

As we walked, he continued chatting about his kids. I wasn’t sure how to take that. Obviously, having children does not make you a good person. But this guy was trying to kill me and willing to talk about his kids to throw me off guard. It was a depth of disturbing that I couldn’t reconcile with what I thought I knew about Sebastian Koss.

Unless there was something else happening here. I tried to sneak looks at Koss. Did he seem nervous? Any sign that he was acting under duress? That there was someone else in the building, waiting for us?

I couldn’t tell. He just kept talking. Or maybe that was the tipoff. Nervous chatter.

I wanted to ask Jack for his take on it, but there was no way to do that. If he was concerned by Koss’s chattering, he gave no sign of it.

We reached the back door. Koss took out his keys and pretended to unlock it. I could tell he was faking. He’d opened it earlier. Broken in, I presumed. If I was right about what he planned to do here, he would have no actual connection with this building.

He swung the door open and waved me in. I obeyed, but now I was the one talking, asking about his son’s college plans, which gave me the excuse to be looking over my shoulder at him. Then I stopped inside and waited, facing him. He held the door open, as he reached for a wall switch. He flicked it. Or he pretended to. Nothing happened.

I managed a laugh, a little tight, as if I might be getting nervous. “That could be a problem.”

“No kidding. They must be working on the electrical. Luckily . . .” He lifted his keychain and flicked on a tiny flashlight.

“Handy.”

“It is. Some promotional gewgaw I got at a conference last month. Yet another gadget to make women feel safe in a deserted parking garage at night, when the truth is that the only thing that will make them truly safe is not going in that parking garage, as unpopular as that opinion is.”

“Because it shouldn’t be that way. We should be able to get to our cars at night, without lights and panic buttons and handguns, but the fact that we should be able to doesn’t mean we are. Unfortunately.”

“Exactly.”

As he ushered me down the hall, that feeling of unease congealed in my gut. First reminding me he was a dad. Now reminding me of his life’s work, fighting violence against women.

Was he trying to communicate a message? A plea even? Warning me that something was about to happen and it wasn’t his fault, and for me to remember that he was, at heart, a decent guy, a man with a family, a man with a reputation.

Jack, are you there? Damn it, I really hope you’re there.

Koss opened the door to the stairwell.

“No elevator, I guess,” I said with a short laugh.

“Not yet. But we’re only going to the third floor. There’s a model suite there we can talk in.”

“Got it,” Jack said through the earpiece, and I breathed a sigh of relief.

As we reached the second flight, Jack whispered that he was in the other stairwell. Koss took me down the hall and opened a door. When we walked in, I said, “Oh, this is nice,” even before I got a look around. Jack grunted a thanks, knowing my comment really meant “we’re in the room now and it’s clear.”

Light seeped in through the windows, making the flashlight unnecessary. I went over to the window and looked out . . . at the wall of the neighboring building.

“Well, I hope they aren’t charging you for the view,” I said.

I expected a laugh and a comment. But Koss said nothing. I turned to see him standing there, in a shard of light, watching me.

“Everything okay?” I asked after a moment of awkward silence.

“Oh, yes. I’m just trying to figure out what Drew saw in you.”

“Wh-what?”

“Drew Aldrich. I never understood why he wanted to fuck you so badly.”

My brain stopped. I swear it did. I couldn’t seem to process what he’d said. I stood there, gaping, certain that I’d heard him wrong. It wasn’t just what he said; it was how he said it. Completely calm, conversational even.

“Emotionally stunted,” Koss said. “That’s what I’m sure a psychiatrist would say. Drew liked little girls because he wanted them to like him back. He couldn’t face women his own age. He liked sweet little girls, and he was always hoping if he fucked them just right, they’d fall in love with him. Did you fall in love with him, Nadia?”

“Uh-uh,” he said, as soon as I made a move. “If you go for your gun, I’ll go for mine and this will not end well.”

“Not for you.”

A humorless smile. “I doubt that, but I also doubt you’re going to shoot me. Not until you have some answers. So we are going to raise our hands together, Nadia. Then we are going to sit down at that table, our hands on it where we can see them, and we’ll have a little talk.”