Her tone was so matter-of-fact that I knew: Someone—maybe multiple someones—hurt you. Tory knew what it was like to be seen as weak, and she knew what it was like to be overpowered. I could see why Camille had chosen to spend time with her. If she’d been fictional, Tory Howard was exactly the kind of character Camille Holt would have chosen to play.
“Did Camille ever say anything to you about Aaron Shaw?” Agent Briggs switched up the line of questioning again.
“Interesting,” Michael murmured, leaning closer to the screen—and closer to Tory.
“Camille and I met at a New Year’s party,” Tory replied. “We hit it off. We went out for drinks a couple of times. I wasn’t exactly her confidante.”
I glanced back at Lia. She’s pelting them with truth again, I thought.
“One more question,” Agent Sterling said. “You and Camille went to the Majesty last night.”
“The new sushi restaurant,” Tory supplied. More truth, easily verifiable.
“Who picked the restaurant?” Sterling asked.
Tory shrugged. “She did.”
Behind me, Lia swung her legs off the couch and stood. “And there we have it,” she told us. “That’s the lie.”
“I’ll text Sterling.” Dean reached for his phone. There was a good chance Sterling and Briggs might have picked up on the lie, but they’d want confirmation from Lia. “Anything to add?” Dean asked as he began typing.
By some miracle, Michael managed to stifle his long-held tendency to answer everything Dean said with a smart-mouthed barb. “Two things,” Michael said. “First, defensiveness isn’t an emotion. It’s a combination of emotions that plays out in different ways in different people at different times. In this case, we’ve got a tantalizing cocktail of anger and self-presentation and guilt.”
Tory feels guilty. I tried to reconcile that with what I knew about her. She struck me as pragmatic. Like Camille, she’d risen to the top of a male-dominated field. To have her own show in Vegas, she’d have to be ambitious.
She didn’t strike me as a person who would let herself feel bad about anything for long.
“And the second thing?” Dean asked.
“Her reaction to Aaron Shaw.” I beat Michael to the punch line.
Michael inclined his head slightly. “Temporary freezing of the facial muscles, brows fighting the urge to draw together, lips just barely stretching themselves back.” He shifted his flask rhythmically from one hand to the other and back again, then clarified. “Fear.”
What are you scared of, Tory? Why did you skirt the question when Briggs and Sterling asked you if Camille had said anything about Aaron Shaw?
My mind went to what I knew about Sloane’s half brother. He’d grown up in a family where wealth and power were givens. I was betting he’d been raised to follow in his father’s footsteps. It wouldn’t be hard for someone like that to get used to blurring moral lines. But there had also been something gentle about the way he’d interacted with Sloane, and that something gave me pause.
Is it you Tory’s scared of? I thought, picturing Aaron in my mind. Or is it your father?
Dean sent the text. A moment later, we heard Agent Sterling excuse herself from the interrogation. Dean got a text back less than a minute later. “Anything else?” he read out loud. “Cassie?”
The fact that Agent Sterling had directed that question to me told me that she was looking for something specific—a confirmation of her own hunch, or some aspect of Tory’s personality that I would be more likely to pick up on than Dean.
“I’m not sure,” I said quietly, “but we might be looking at a history of assault. Verbal, physical, sexual—or maybe just the ongoing threat thereof.”
Saying those words felt like violating a confidence. Michael must have heard that in my voice, because he leaned over Dean and passed me the flask. I raised an eyebrow at him. He shrugged.
“I can’t help you.” The increase in volume drew my attention back to the tablet. Clearly, Tory had reached a breaking point. “If you have any more questions, you can address them to my attorney.”
“Everything okay here?” Sterling reentered the conversation, stepping into the frame.
Briggs cleared his throat. “I was just asking Ms. Howard if anyone could verify her whereabouts after she parted ways with Ms. Holt.” And she asked for her attorney. Briggs let the second half of that statement go unsaid.
She doesn’t trust people in power, I told him silently. And she certainly doesn’t trust you.
“I can.” A male voice carried over the microphone several seconds before its owner appeared on-screen, stepping directly between the FBI agents and Tory. Male. Young. Early twenties at most. My brain started cataloging his demographics before my mind recognized his face.
“Beau Donovan,” Dean said. “One of our persons of interest. The twenty-one-year-old dishwasher who won the amateur spot at the poker tournament.”
“Tory was with me,” Beau was saying on-screen. “Last night, after she and Camille parted ways, Tory was with me.”
“Funny story,” Lia mock-whispered. “She totally wasn’t.”
You’re lying. That alone was enough for Beau to command my full attention. He was about the same height as Tory, but he stood slightly in front of her. Protective.
“You and Beau were together last night?” Agent Briggs pressed Tory.