Don't Let Go Read Online Free PDF Page B

where the drugs are going. A lot of them.” Fuentes slumped against the wall, defeated. “That’s all I can tell you.”
    Hennessey stepped back and straightened his suit. “Thank you.”
    Fuentes slid down to the floor, the orange fabric stretching grotesquely across his legs and belly. “The call?” he asked, sounding like a lost child. “You’ll make the call.”
    Hennessey nodded shortly. “I will.”
    Fuentes nodded, looking miserable. Guilt over ratting out Laguardia? Or fear for himself?
    When my legs would support me again, I pushed off the wall and followed Hennessey out of the room. We walked in silence, with only the accompaniment of metal bars clanging to mark the steps. Even when the sunlight blinded my eyes and the exhaust of the city burned my lungs, I stayed silent. Mute. Like he’d told me to be inside. Why hadn’t I listened?
    This will be our little secret, okay?
    That was what my father had told me, but I hadn’t listened to him either. I just couldn’t keep quiet, even when it was important. I was constantly searching, always reaching out, desperate for a connection that I had yet to find.
    My poise lasted until we reached his car in the parking garage. He went to the driver’s side door, but instead of getting inside, I went to stand by the wall, resting my forehead against the cool cement. Like the walls of the interview room and yet so different. Here we were free, with the sunlight streaming in through open-air spaces on the sides. Here we were safe. Tears streamed down my cheeks, as unstoppable as rain.
    I felt Hennessey behind me, and then he was turning me, pulling me close. I breathed in his scent and sank into the hardness of his embrace. I climbed inside him, standing still, while he held me, murmuring words I couldn’t understand. The cloth of his dress shirt became wet beneath my cheek, damp with tears, the transference of fear from me to him, because he was strong enough to carry the burden for both of us. Are you afraid? No. Not with him.
    “Sorry,” I mumbled. Sorry for crying on you. Sorry I spoke in the room when I wasn’t supposed to. Sorry I’m a weak, inexperienced rookie you’re stuck with.
    “I wanted to spare you that,” Hennessey said gruffly. Meaning a direct confrontation with the man. I’d brought it on myself, he meant.
    “It’s okay. I knew you wouldn’t really do it, what he asked for.”
    The statement hung in the air like a question. I wanted reassurance, after that one breathless moment when I’d thought he was seriously negotiating my rape.
    Hennessey didn’t have any reassurance for me. “Fuentes gave us what we needed.”
    “And you’re going to…to make the call, right? For witness protection?” I didn’t know why I cared about a criminal. He’d probably done lots of horrible things, and I had no desire to learn the details of the girls in Tijuana. Yet it felt important that we follow through on the promise we’d made. Because for a moment, it had seemed as though the threat Hennessey had made to Fuentes was real too, spreading the word that he had talked and thus ensuring his death. Hennessey had sounded so horribly sincere, and I wanted to believe it was the mark of a great interrogator.
    Hennessey stepped back, his hands lingering on my arms a second too long. He spoke softly, with something like regret in his eyes. “You have to understand. He’s already dead. From the moment we stepped into the room. Laguardia won’t care if he talked or not. He’s a liability. From the moment he did business with a man like that, this is how it had to be.”
    It was my first glimpse of how this game really worked, outside of the weird bubble my father had created, outside of the carefully manicured lectures in the academy. In the real crime world, everyone was a target. We were all going to die here; it was just a question of when and how gruesome it would be.
    Only as we pulled away did I realize what was strange about that room. I pictured