The Darker Side by Cody McFadyen Read Free Book Online

does. I had been loyal to my Marlboros and in return they had always been there for me. They gave me comfort, I gave them years off my life. It was an equitable arrangement until it wasn’t.
    “Listen, Smoky, I need to talk to you about something.” He sucks in smoke, holds it, blows out a cloud. I watch and wait and envy. “I want you to keep me in the loop. Daily. This is a different playing field than you’re used to. Rathbun is decent enough for a Director, but in the end, he’ll cover himself and feed you to the lions if it will help him.” His gaze is penetrating. “Don’t be fooled. You’re expendable to him.”
    “I can take care of myself, sir.”
    “I know. Keep your eyes open anyway.”
    “Aye, aye.” I click my heels and give him an exaggerated salute.
    He’s unamused. “This isn’t a joke, Smoky. People at the DC level make a career out of hanging each other out to dry. You’re a gifted agent, and God knows you’re tough enough, but you’re inexperienced on that playing field.”
    “Okay, okay. I understand.”
    “The area where he can really help you out is with the media. Do exactly what he says—don’t answer any of their questions and refer them all to the Director. You’ve dealt with the media before, I know, but if this leaks it will be huge. The FBI has people that live for that shit, let them handle it.”
    “Scout’s honor.”
    “Keep a gag on Callie.”
    “I can control her.”
    The look he gives me is doubtful. He flicks his cigarette into the night.
    “Plane’s done taxiing. Let’s go.”
     
    “GOOD GOD, HONEY-LOVE, IT’S TOO cold here,” Callie complains the moment her high-heeled feet hit the tarmac. “Why are we here and not back in a place with civilized weather planning for my upcoming wedding?”
    I smile, as always. I’m never immune to Callie. I don’t think many people are.
    Callie is a tall, skinny, leggy redhead, with model looks that only seem to deepen with age. She just turned forty, and if anything, she’s more attractive now than she was five years ago.
    Callie is aware of her beauty, and she’s not above using it to her advantage, but appearance is unimportant to her in the larger scheme of life; it’s her mind she’s honed the sharpest. She holds a master’s degree in forensics with a minor in criminology and has been hunting killers with me for the last decade-plus.
    Callie has a sense of humor that not everyone appreciates or understands. Her use of “honey-love,” for example, a favored phrase, is a total affectation. It comes from the South; Callie comes from Connecticut. I imagine she adopted it to poke fun at herself and annoy others, emphasis on the latter. Local legend says that she has a reprimand on file for calling the Director of the FBI, Mr. Rathbun himself, honey-love. It wouldn’t surprise me in the slightest.
    Callie’s humor isn’t mean-spirited. It simply says: If you take yourself too seriously, you’ll have a hard time around me, so lighten up— honey-love.
    Then there is the other side of Callie, a darker part, the side the criminals get. She is ruthless in her search for truth, because truth is everything to her. If I were to commit a criminal act, Callie, who loves me, would hunt me. She might grieve as she did it, but she’d take me down. To do otherwise would be to deny her basic self and that’s one thing Callie is not about.
    She’s set to marry Samuel “Sam” Brady, the head of the LA FBI SWAT. It’s a move that’s caught everyone by surprise. Callie has been chasing men for years and enjoying them to their fullest for the pleasure they could give her, a kind of female Lothario. Emotional longevity has never been a part of the picture.
    Callie is intensely private about the serious goings-on inside her, but I know some of her secrets. Like her current addiction to Vicodin, the legacy of a spinal injury she got two years ago that nearly crippled her. Like the fact that she hadn’t allowed herself to