Where the Shadows Lie Read Free

But if you live to testify,Lenahan does a deal with the FBI, and Soto and his boys will have to close down business and head home to the Dominican Republic. If we don’t get to them first.’
    Williams looked Magnus right in the eye. ‘Which is why we have to figure out what to do with you.’
    Magnus saw Williams’s point. But full witness protection would mean starting up a new life with a new identity on the other side of the country. He didn’t want that. ‘Got any ideas?’ he asked Williams.
    ‘Matter of fact, I do.’ Williams smiled. ‘You’re an Icelandic citizen, right?’
    ‘Yes. As well as US. I have dual.’
    ‘Do you speak the language?’
    ‘Some. I spoke it as a child. I moved here with my dad when I was twelve. But I haven’t spoken it since he died.’
    ‘Which was when?’
    ‘When I was twenty.’
    Williams allowed a brief pause to express his sympathy. ‘Well, I guess you speak it better than most of the rest of us, then.’
    Magnus smiled. ‘I guess so. Why?’
    ‘An old buddy in the NYPD called me a couple months ago. Said he’d heard I had someone who spoke Icelandic in my unit. He’d just had a visit from the National Police Commissioner of Iceland. He was looking for the NYPD to loan him a detective as an advisor. He didn’t necessarily want someone senior, just someone experienced in the many and varied crimes that our great country has to offer. Apparently, they don’t get many homicides in Iceland, or at least they didn’t until recently. Obviously, if that detective happened to speak Icelandic, that would be a bonus.’
    ‘I don’t remember anybody telling me about this,’ Magnus said.
    Williams smiled. ‘They didn’t.’
    ‘Why not?’
    ‘Same reason I’m telling you now. You’re one of my best detectives and I don’t want to lose you. Except now I would rather have you alive in an igloo in Iceland than dead on a sidewalk in Boston.’
    Magnus had given up long ago telling people that there were no igloos in Iceland. Nor were there any Eskimos, and only very rarely polar bears. He hadn’t been to Iceland since just after his father’s death. He had his doubts about going back, severe doubts, but at that moment it seemed like the least bad option.
    ‘I called the Icelandic Police Commissioner an hour ago. He’s still looking for an advisor. He sounded very excited by the idea of a detective who speaks the language. So, what do you think?’
    There really was no choice.
    ‘I’ll do it,’ Magnus said. ‘On one condition.’
    Williams frowned. ‘Which is?’
    ‘I take my girlfriend with me.’
    Magnus had seen Colby angry before, but never this angry.
    ‘What do you think you are doing, getting your goons to kidnap me? Is this some kind of joke? Some kind of weird romantic gesture where you think I’m going to take you back? Because if it is, I can tell you right now it’s not going to work. So tell these men to take me back to the office!’
    They were sitting in the back seat of an FBI van in the parking lot of a Friendly’s restaurant. Two agents had cruised by the offices of the medical-equipment company where Colby was in-house counsel and whisked her away. They were gathered around their car fifty feet away, with the two agents who had driven Magnus.
    ‘They tried to kill me again,’ Magnus said. ‘Almost succeeded this time.’
    He still couldn’t believe how stupid he had been, how he had let himself be led off the main street down an alley. Since the shooting he had been interviewed at great length by two detectives from the Firearm Discharge Investigative team. They had been told they would only have one chance to talk to him, so they had been very thorough, focusing especially on his decision to pull the trigger when there was an innocent civilian in the line of fire.
    Magnus didn’t regret that decision. He had traded the nearcertainty of his own death for a small probability that the woman would be harmed. But he had a better answer for