Couples

Chapter 99

"Beckett, are you messing with us?" Esposito demands.

Kate shakes her head. "I'm serious, Javi. I want you and Ryan to ask for a table, making it obvious that you want some private time together. I'm not asking you to kiss or anything. Just try to have that look."

"I'll imagine you're Jenny. Try to imagine I'm Trixie. Isn't she your latest?" Ryan asks his partner.

Esposito grimaces. "Ugh! Not after I saw her give a lap dance to Kingsley from the 54th. Just knowing where she'd been…" He gives a slight shudder. "I started seeing Bambi last weekend."

"Another stripper?" Ryan inquires.

"No, Man. She's a preschool teacher. My cousins asked me to check out the neighborhood where she teaches because they saw someone around looking at the kids on the playground. Turned out he was another cop checking on his niece. She'd had a scare at the park, and he wanted to make sure she was safe. But I met Bambi when I was sorting things out. She was glad someone was watching out for the kids, and we hit it off." Esposito's gaze flicks over Ryan. "But you don't look anything like her, Bro."

"You don't look anything like Jenny either," Ryan retorts. "That's why it's called imagination. Let's just go. I checked out the menu. It's not bad."

Esposito grunts. "Probably not a jalapeño on it."

Through his infra-red scope, Jack can easily watch maneuvers a mile away. It's early evening in Ukraine, and activity is beginning to die down, with soldiers retreating into mess tents for a meal and higher-ups gathering to discuss strategy. Jack notes motion at the edge of his field of vision and shifts his focus to get a better look. He's not close enough to use IR reflection. But the newest version of thermal technology without it still allows him to see that a woman is being dragged in from the periphery of the base.

Laying down his IR scope to replace it with green-hued enhanced imaging, he's able to make out her face. At least he thinks so. The monochromatic rendering won't allow him to be 100% sure, but he has a hard time believing what he's seeing. As far as he knows, the woman appearing in his scope is dead. He watched the building where Azra was undercover in Afghanistan explode in flames after it was hit by a U.S. rocket. That was in 2009.

Could Azra have gotten out before the hit? Jack doesn't see how, but lots of things happen in war that confound him. If the woman down there is Azra, he's got to get her out. The question is how. He can't call in support. As far as anyone but the director knows, his mission doesn't exist. He's on his own.

The upside, if there is one, is that the Russians are unlikely to kill Azra right away. They'll want to question her first. The Azra he knew was trained not to talk. That means that they'll try to employ torture, drugs, or both to get what they think they need out of her. Agents are conditioned to resist both drugs and pain, but everyone has a breaking point: talking or dying. Jack needs to get to her before either of those things happens – the sooner, the better.

Eli notes that the potential jurors look in a better mood. They usually do, after lunch. Or they get sleepy. Either way, they're more prone to giving straight answers. He's counting on that as he asks questions. More than anything, he's interested in their attitude toward the economy. Will they excuse underhanded or even deadly behavior if they think that somehow it will help the city in terms of jobs or growth?

In truth, the way Flatt ripped off his contractors and the city's tax base over the years, he was the only one experiencing economic advantages from his projects. But his P.R. told a different story. If members of the jury think they benefitted somehow from his behavior, they might be more inclined to give Flatt the benefit of the most unreasonable doubt. On the other hand, if they feel that they or people they care about were screwed over, they'll be more inclined to accept Eli's mountain of evidence that the developer conspired in a murder.

Eli can't ask those questions directly, of course. But he can ask how people are employed, a little bit about their history and how they feel about the taking of life in general. He'll particularly be looking for jurors who've suffered a personal loss and how they handled it. But he'll have to walk a tightrope because if Andrews hears too revealing a response, he'll strike the jurors Eli wants to keep. Their opening salvos against each other will begin long before they make statements or call witnesses. Eli already has a pretty good list of who he wants to keep and who he wants to challenge. He hopes he picked up on a few clues that Andrews missed.

"Bro, how could you eat that?" Esposito demands as he and Ryan argue their way to the unit where Beckett is waiting.

Kate rolls her eyes. "What's the problem?"

"The problem is there was raw egg in the soup this guy ordered. My trainer told me I had to give up raw eggs because they have salmonella in them. I don't want Ryan puking all over our unit."

Ryan shakes his head. "Beckett, it's just the Italian version of egg drop soup. The hot broth cooks the egg. Javi's just mad because the server flirted with me, not with him."

"I take it the server was a guy?" Beckett inquires.

"Mario," Ryan confirms. "And he was a little cute."

Esposito punches him in the arm. "Stop it, Man!"

"Both of you stop it," Kate commands. "You were in there to watch Gina Lorenzo and Walker Buck. What did you see?"

"They're lovey-dovey all right," Esposito reports. "They held hands the whole time."

"She picked up the check," Ryan adds. "A guy like Walker would have to be pretty secure to let her do that. And Buck would have to drive right by the dumpster where the body was found to see Gina. So he'd have a reason to be in the area, aside from trying to solicit business or dump a body."

"Which means that a Lorenzo frame theory fits." Kate's teeth worry her bottom lip. "But we'll need a lot more evidence than a romantic lunch. We'll need background on the Lorenzo family, a listing of their criminal enterprises. Then we'll need to find out about any legitimate ones, as Gina's Restorations appears. Once we have those, we'll have to go line by line to figure out where Calista Ford tried to extort the Lorenzos."

Ryan shuffles his feet against the asphalt. "Even to me, that sounds like a lot of grunt work, Beckett."

"I'll ask Rick if he can help. He reads faster than any of us, and he can attack it from home while Lily and Belle are doing their thing in the corral. We've already given him some great stuff for his next book. He owes us."

Esposito snorts. "Beckett, you're not going to tell him about Ryan and me putting on our act in Sophia's Sanctuary, are you?"

Kate gazes at him wide-eyed. "Do you have a problem with your counterparts being portrayed as doing first-class undercover work? I would think you'd be flattered."

"Yeah, I guess it would be all right as long as he makes us look good," Esposito concedes. "I mean it's bad enough that he calls Raley and Ochoa, 'Roach.'"

Kate smiles. "I'm sure he'll make you look terrific."