He turned on the television, but nothing caught his interest. He wasn’t hungry, and ordering something to eat just to have something to do was a terrible idea. Rather than lie in bed staring at the ceiling, he put on his workout clothes and went outside for a run. The jogging map on the hotel’s app came with a tourist guide’s audio. Jack listened through his earbuds.

  . . . concentric stone walls along the bank of the Thames River, the oldest of which date back almost a millennium.

  It was a cool night, perfect for a run along the river. Jack was feeling strong. Maybe too strong. Thirty minutes into his run, the audio descriptions no longer matched Jack’s surroundings. He was off the guided path, having hung a right when he should have gone left. Or was it the other way around? It was Jack’s firsthand introduction to the fact that London streets could change names three times in the span of three blocks. He was in a business district, but all of the shops were closed, and Jack was alone on the street. He was tired, and his run became a walk. He was headed somewhere in the general direction of his hotel, checking the street signs carefully, when he noticed the clap of footsteps behind him. They had the rhythm of his own footfalls, seeming to match his pace and direction. It suddenly occurred to him that Theo was landing in Miami at that very moment, and the words of the FBI attaché replayed in his mind:

  “Russian oligarchs don’t mess around.”

  Jack saw no one, but he walked a little faster. A car passed, then more silence. Uncomfortable urban silence. He passed the darkened storefront windows of a “chemist” and continued around the corner. Jack quickened his pace when, all of a sudden, it felt as though he’d been broadsided by a rugby player. The force knocked him off his feet and sent him tumbling into a narrow alley. He landed facedown on the pavement. The attacker was on him immediately.

  “What the—”

  Before Jack could finish his sentence, much less react, the man rolled him over and grabbed Jack by the throat.

  “Don’t move, just listen,” the man said.

  He had the fingers of a mountain climber, and the pressure around Jack’s neck made it difficult to focus on what he was saying. The thick, slurred speech didn’t make things any clearer.

  “Where is Theo Knight?”

  Where ish . . . It wasn’t that he was drunk. Something was in his mouth—a wad of cotton or some spy toy to make his voice unrecognizable.

  Jack could barely breathe, let alone talk. “I don’t know where Theo—”

  “If you lie, you die.”

  Jack was having trouble following even that simple line of logic. The pressure around his neck had his head pounding and lungs burning as he struggled to breathe. Jack couldn’t see the man’s face, couldn’t see much of anything. His attacker, like everything else, was a blur.

  “I got a message for you to deliver to your friend. You listening?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  The grip was atomic. The burning sensation in Jack’s lungs was unbearable. A hint of blood flavored his mouth, the pressure somehow having triggered it. Jack fought for air, but his attacker was in complete control.

  “If Sergei Kava is extradited to the States, your friend Theo is a dead man. Understand?”

  “Mmm-hmm.”

  It was the most audible response Jack could muster. The vise grip at Jack’s throat rose higher around Jack’s neck and closed even tighter. Jack had one final burst of resistance left in his body, and then nothing more. The pounding in his head seemed to explode into his ears, and then the night went from black to blacker. He was on the verge of unconsciousness when the vise grip released.

  Jack lay on his back, gasping for air, as the footfalls of his attacker faded into the night.

  Chapter 19

  Jack found his way back to the hotel. His first call was to the FBI’s legal attaché, Madeline Coffey. She’d already left the embassy for the evening, but it was a ten-minute drive across the river from her house to the hotel, where Jack met her in the lobby. They found a table in the lounge near the window.

  “Are you sure you don’t want to see a doctor?” she asked.

  “No. I thought about going to an emergency room, but once I caught my breath, I recovered pretty quickly.”

  “That’s definitely going to bruise,” she said, nodding at his neck.

  “I’m sure. But it was as if the guy knew how to shut off my air supply without serious injury to my throat or neck.”

  “Probably not his first rodeo,” said Coffey.

  “Which only makes this creepier—the fact that he’s developed such a well-honed skill with that level of control.”

  “Nobody has perfect control. Cemeteries hold plenty of teenagers who watched videos on the internet on how to strangle yourself until you pass out.”

  Jack sighed. One more thing for the parent of a curious seven-year-old to worry about.

  “The most important thing is to put Theo on notice,” said Jack. “That’s why I called you first. The threat was directed toward him.”

  “I put the message through as soon as you called,” she said.

  “Thank you. What’s the plan?”

  “Theo needs to lay low.”

  “Hopefully, only for a few weeks,” said Jack.

  “What do you mean?”

  “My attacker said Theo is a dead man if Sergei Kava is extradited. Extradition is a process. There has to be a hearing, and that won’t be for a few weeks.”

  “Correct.”

  “And there’s no guarantee Kava will be extradited. I presume Sergei’s lawyers are smart enough to argue that the extraction kidnapping was illegal and makes extradition improper. If the request for extradition is denied, Theo has nothing to worry about.”

  The legal attaché didn’t seem amused by the criminal defense lawyer’s suggestion that extradition might not occur. “We should operate under the assumption that Sergei Kava will be extradited. And you should take precautions to protect your own safety. Not to be an alarmist, but with Theo in hiding, they could come after you again.”

  “I appreciate your concern,” said Jack. “But when it comes to a situation like this, the best advice I got was from my mentor, Neil Goderich. Neil hired me right out of law school to work for the Freedom Institute.”

  “Yes, where you defended death row’s finest. I’m fully briefed on your background.”

  “My point is, threats came with the turf. I got plenty of them from cops, clients, witnesses, and some very creepy anonymous sources. Neil always said that any criminal defense lawyer who couldn’t handle a dose of intimidation needed to find a new career.”

  She smiled knowingly. “You didn’t have a family when you worked for this Neil Goderich, did you?”

  “No. My first marriage wasn’t until after I left the Freedom Institute. I was divorced and well into private practice by the time I met Andie.”

  “I thought so. Because it doesn’t sound like something a man with a wife and young daughter would say.”

  Jack didn’t have a quick response, and Coffey didn’t seem to expect one. She rose, Jack followed suit, and they shook hands.

  “Put some ice on that neck before you go to bed,” she said.

  “We haven’t talked about a police report,” said Jack.

  “I suppose we could do that,” she said.

  “Don’t we want to give the local police everything to find the guy who threatened me?”

  “If they find him, there will be another to replace him.”

  “You make it sound hopeless.”

  Coffey settled back into her chair and invited Jack to sit for a few more minutes. “Let me tell you about the Kava family,” she said.

  Over the next thirty minutes, Jack got the complete download, from the Wagner Group mercenaries to the superyachts. The legal attaché did most of the talking. Jack listened, all ears.

  Jack caught the morning flight from Heathrow. He slept the entire flight.

  Pointless as it might have been, he was at the station house until after midnight filling out a police report. By the time he’d finished with the Metro Police, his neck was so sore that he’d presented himself at the ER for pain medication. The physician had warned him not to take it until he was on the plane, or he would surely oversleep and miss his flight. The pain kept him awake until he was in his seat, then he popped two pills. The flight attendant had to wake him once to buckle his seat belt for landing, and then wake him again to deplane in Miami. He wanted to text Andie to let her know he’d landed, but his cellphone battery was completely dead, drained by hours of streaming inflight entertainment, even though Jack had slept through every minute of it. By the time he got through customs, it was late afternoon.

  A mob of reporters surrounded him the moment he left the restricted area and stepped through the sliding glass doors to the main terminal. An “Action News” television reporter pushed her way forward and thrust a microphone toward his face.

  “Mr. Swyteck, what is your reaction to the indictment?” she asked.

  Jack suddenly felt like Rip Van Winkle. “Indictment?”

  More questions followed, and Jack picked up bits and pieces of information.

  “Is it true that Tyler McCormick was Imani’s lover?”

  “Why is the charge second-degree murder and not first?”

  “Will you be defending both Imani and her husband at trial?”

  Both charged? Jack took Mark Twain’s advice—“Better to keep your mouth shut and appear ignorant than to open it and remove all doubt”—and forged ahead toward the exit. He spotted a limo driver holding a sign with his name on it. Jack hadn’t ordered a limo, but he quickly realized that someone had planned ahead for him. The driver handed him a handwritten note. It was from Imani.

  Why don’t you answer your fucking phone. I need you NOW!!!

  The flock of reporters followed him and the driver out of the terminal and all the way to the waiting car at the curb. Cameras rolled, and reporters continued to fire questions, as Jack climbed into the backseat and the driver pulled away.

  “Somebody really needs your help,” the driver said, clearly meaning Imani.

  Jack plugged his cell into the USB port in the center console. It slowly came back to life. “Yeah,” said Jack, thinking of Theo. “That makes two.”

  Chapter 20

  The bridge to Star Island is a stubby finger that projects north from the busy east-west causeway that connects Miami to Miami Beach. As Jack’s limo approached the guarded entrance to the island, about a dozen reporters were waiting right outside the gate. Jack looked straight ahead, not pandering to the barrage of cameras aimed at the passenger-side window, as one photographer after another snapped soon-to-go-viral images of Imani’s lawyer arriving at her waterfront estate. Jack was pretty sure he recognized Gloria and Emilio Estefan’s house on his way to Imani’s place. Nice, but not quite what Imani had. According to the media coverage, the house Imani had rented was a truly unique property on 1.4 acres at the tip of the island, offering unobstructed views of both sunrise and sunset, a ballroom-sized living room, and a wine cellar for a thousand bottles, all with enough dock space for a 250-foot superyacht.

  The wrought-iron gate at the end of the driveway swung open, and the limo driver dropped Jack at the front entrance. One of the servants brought Jack inside. Imani was in the kitchen, baking chocolate chip cookies. Over the years, Jack had seen clients invoke a variety of strategies to cope with an indictment, most of which landed on Jack’s list of “don’ts.” The smell of Toll House cookies was now officially at the top of the “do” list.

  “Thank God you’re here,” she said, and she hugged him, but not in the way that had made him uncomfortable in front of the cameras in the courtroom. This one simply felt like someone who needed a hug.

  “Where’s Theo?” she asked. “I thought he would come with you.” She removed a sheet of cookies from the oven and placed them on the countertop to cool. “I made cookies,” she said with a shrug.

  As if that would make up for the hell he was going through. “We won’t be hearing from Theo until he feels it’s safe.”

  She seemed to appreciate the import of his words. They sat on the barstools at the island, facing each other from opposite sides of the polished granite slab, as Jack gave her the two-minute version of the great adventures of Theo Knight.

  Imani held her head in her hands, elbows on the counter. “I should never have trusted Amongus. But how could I have known he was going to try to pull off something like that?”

  “The goal now is to make sure Theo doesn’t end up like Amongus.”

  “Do you think he’s dead?”

  “I don’t know. But I’ll deal with that and Theo’s situation. Let’s focus on you.”

  She breathed in and out, regaining her focus. And her anger. “First off, what kind of games is this prosecutor playing, announcing an indictment at three o’clock in the afternoon while my lawyer is on an airplane?”

  Jack had seen it before. “It’s a holdover strategy from the days when people used to catch up on the entire day by watching the evening news on one of the networks. Prosecutors would hold the press conference in the afternoon so the defense couldn’t get in a response in time for the evening news broadcast.”

  “So, where’s this prosecutor from, 1985?”

  “Fair point. There’s always time to respond in the modern world of social media and real-time news, twenty-four/seven.”

  “We need to get a response out ASAP,” said Imani.

  “I ginned up a draft on the ride over here,” said Jack.

  “Give it to my publicist. She’s in the living room with her team.” Imani called to the next room—“Carla!”—and a frazzled young woman hurried into the kitchen. Jack gave his notes to her, Imani told her to “make it work,” and Carla left pronto, leaving Jack and his client alone in the kitchen.

  “I assume you’ve read the indictment by now,” Imani said.

  “Online, in the limo,” said Jack. “It’s a two-count indictment. You and Shaky are charged with the same crimes. Count one is second-degree murder.”

  “Second degree sounds better than first, right?”

  “It’s still punishable by life in prison.”

  “Great. I can pick up my career when I’m as old as Madonna and a free woman.”

  Madonna as “old” didn’t make Jack feel any younger. He could remember when she was “striking a pose” and showing love to Bette Davis.

  “Count two is gross abuse of a dead human body,” said Jack. “Obviously, that relates to the depraved manner in which the body was displayed on the piling in the bay.”

  Imani grimaced at the thought. “Why would I do something so sick?”

  “Technically, it doesn’t matter why. It’s a common misunderstanding to think that if there’s no motive, there’s no crime. A prosecutor doesn’t have to prove motive to get a conviction. Not even for first-degree murder.”

  “Then why is the charge here second degree and not first?”

  “Good question. Let me just say this is a very strange indictment.”

  “I’ll say. Last week Shaky and I were suing the pants off each other. Now we’re going to be joint defendants in a criminal trial.”

  “It’s not just that. The technical legal distinction between first- and second-degree murder boils down to premeditation and deliberation. Did you have time to reflect before the murder of Tyler McCormick?”

  “I didn’t commit murder, let alone plan it.”

  “I get that,” said Jack. “But what I find strange is that the prosecutor probably could have asked the grand jury for a first-degree murder indictment and let second-degree murder be a fallback position for the jury, just in case the evidence on premeditation and deliberation doesn’t play out at trial.”

  “So he’s being kind to us?”

  “No. He’s being clever.”

  “In what way?”

  “If he had charged you with murder in the first degree, you would have no right to bail. You and Shaky would be locked in jail until trial.”

  Imani shook her head, confused. “Again, that sounds like he’s being kind to us for some reason.”

  “It’s part of his strategy.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “He doesn’t want the two of you sitting in separate jail cells awaiting trial. He wants you on your cellphones all day long, taking shots at each other on social media, blaming each other for the murder.”

  “It sounds like you want control of my posts.”

  “Everything you or your publicity team puts out needs my advance approval. Unless you want to help the prosecutor build his case.”

  “Exactly what is ‘his case’?”

  “The indictment is bare bones. Basically, it alleges that Shaky, ‘with the active aid and assistance of Imani Nichols,’ strangled Tyler McCormick.”

  “What is ‘active aid and assistance’ supposed to mean?”

  “The State Attorney’s Office will have to send us the grand jury materials soon, which will flesh that out. But based on what I can tell so far, the first piece in the prosecutor’s puzzle is that you were having an affair with Tyler McCormick.”

  “Which isn’t true.”

  “We’ll get to that,” said Jack. “The indictment charges that Shaky confronted Tyler and killed him. The way I read the rest of the indictment, you helped him cover up the crime.”

  “How is a cover-up second-degree murder?”

  “It’s not,” said Jack. “At most, it would make you an accessory after the fact, but the law says you can’t be charged as an accessory after the fact when your spouse is the killer. It’s called the related person exception. Instead, the prosecutor charged you with mutilation of a dead body.”

  “Why would he also charge me with second-degree murder if you’re saying he doesn’t have the evidence?”

  “He shouldn’t. But prosecutors usually have a strategic reason for everything they do.”

  “What’s the strategy here?”

  Imani’s publicist returned to the kitchen. “Are the cookies ready?” she asked. “Sorry, but that smell has my whole team salivating.”