Tough Justice: Twisted (Part 5 Of 8). Gail Barrett

felt for her.

      “I decided to help him find his buddy’s sister. I figured that even if I was going to bust him, even if I was going to put him in prison, at least I could help him save that girl.”

      “You wanted to make amends.”

      “Yes—which was idiotic, considering how badly he’d lied to me.”

      “But you didn’t know that then. You were making decisions based on the information you had.”

      True enough. But it still galled her that she’d let her emotions blind her to the truth.

      “So, what happened next?” Dr. Oliviero asked.

      She knotted her hands, forcing herself to return to that awful night. “I’d learned that some girls were being moved, transported out of Chicago for a special event, a play-off game that would attract a lot of johns. I had information that his friend’s sister might be involved, so I went to the warehouse to find out.”

      “Was she there?”

      “Not that I could tell. But Andrew showed up. I figured he was doing the same thing I was, looking for that missing girl. But I couldn’t get close enough to him to ask.

      “After the trucks left, I tried to find him. I had to stay quiet in case Moretti’s people were still around. I was on the point of giving up when I heard a voice—a man’s voice. It sounded like Andrew’s, but the voice was deeper, and it had a different cadence, like the rhythm was slightly off.”

      She inhaled. This was the hard part. The moment when her world had fallen apart, when she’d learned that everything she’d once believed was wrong.

      “I got as close as I could and hid. I didn’t want to barge in on whatever Andrew had going on. I thought he’d arranged a meeting. Then I worried that someone had surprised him, that he might be in trouble and need my help. But when I peeked around the corner, I saw that he was alone. He was talking on the phone. But I still didn’t understand.”

      She closed her eyes, the lengths to which she’d gone to deny the obvious sickening her even now. “I thought he’d put the phone on speaker, that the voice belonged to whoever else was on the line. But then I heard him giving orders to move some cargo from a south side warehouse to headquarters later that afternoon. And I realized the voice was his.”

      She met Dr. Oliviero’s eyes. “I still didn’t get it. I knew Andrew was sharp, probably the smartest man I’d ever met. I figured he had a reason to change his voice.”

      “Did he?”

      She let out a bitter laugh. “Oh, yeah. He had a reason, all right.”

      “And what was that?”

      Andrew Moore—the wounded ex-soldier, the arms commander she’d come to admire and respect, the tortured man she’d confided in, made wild and passionate love to—was a total myth. Instead, the man she loved was a monster.

      “Andrew Moore was Moretti.”

       Chapter Two

      As mistakes went, it was colossal one. Falling in love with a man like Moretti had to be the most revolting thing she’d ever done.

      “You hadn’t suspected the truth? That they were actually the same person?” Dr. Oliviero asked her.

      “No. I was shocked. I just stood there, reeling at the discovery. All this time, I’d been searching for Moretti, and he was the man I was sleeping with.” The head of a brutal empire. The man who’d single-handedly ruined thousands of lives. The monster who’d condemned innocent children to a hellish existence, who’d tortured and killed without conscience.

      How could she have been so blind?

      Lara covered her face, filled with loathing and self-disgust. “I didn’t want to believe it. Even then I was trying to make excuses, to justify what he’d done.”

      “Your reaction was perfectly normal. You loved him. You’d formed a set of beliefs about him. When a view like that gets altered that drastically, it takes time for it to sink in. And denial is a typical first response.”

      She’d denied it, all right. The truth was simply too horrific to accept. “I couldn’t believe how thoroughly he’d conned me, how effortlessly he’d lied.” That all this time, he’d been putting on an act, hiding his identity and true nature from everyone—especially her. Then again, she had been doing the same thing to him.

      “So what did you do?” Dr. Oliviero asked, his voice gentle now.

      “I knew I had to act fast, to get out of the warehouse before he spotted me. And I had to get word to my boss that I’d found Moretti. So I left right away.” She’d been terrified that he would see her, that he’d discover that she’d learned the truth. But she’d managed to escape undetected and get the information to her handler.

      “I’d heard him arrange a meeting with his top commanders for later that night. We knew it would be our best chance to take him down, so we scrambled to make the bust. We had surprise on our side, but we didn’t have much time. And we knew if we didn’t catch him, we might never have another chance.”

      “Were you the one who arrested him?”

      “No, I stayed away. I couldn’t afford to blow my cover in case something went wrong and I had to resurrect my part. My boss took him down instead.” It had been a major coup. They’d captured all the syndicate’s major players, along with various, low-level operatives—not to mention Moretti himself.

      “How did you feel during all this?” the psychiatrist asked.

      “Numb. Honestly, I didn’t feel anything.” She’d gone into zombie mode—writing reports, attending meetings, analyzing the data and mopping up all the loose ends.

      “And later?”

      “I collapsed.” Physically, mentally, emotionally. She’d gone to ground in her apartment, overwhelmed by the horror of what she’d done. Hating Moretti. Despising herself. Unable to believe how foolish she’d been. Afraid there was something wrong inside her, really wrong, that maybe she’d secretly sensed the truth—and hadn’t cared.

      “I went over everything he’d said, every moment we’d spent together, trying to figure out what I’d missed. How I could have possibly been so clueless.”

      “And what did you decide?”

      She shook her head. “I don’t think I missed anything. I think Moretti was just that good.”

      That elicited a nod. “He’s a sociopath. He doesn’t have a conscience. He doesn’t care how people feel. That makes it easy for him to lie. But you do have a conscience. That isn’t a flaw, Lara; it’s a normal, healthy thing. That’s how you discern right from wrong.”

      “It didn’t stop me from having an affair with a criminal.” And not just an ordinary criminal, either. The boss of a major syndicate. A man who was evil incarnate.

      “All of us make mistakes,” Dr. Oliviero reminded her.

      “I know.” And she’d paid for hers. In the past year, she’d been through hell and back. She’d been emotionally beaten and battered, her confidence shattered. But she’d come out stronger. And wiser. Definitely more cynical. And far less trusting, especially when it came to men.

      She’d suffered in other ways, too. But she was not going to talk about those. There were some things so private that even Dr. Oliviero didn’t need to know.

      “I thought it was finally over,” she continued. “I thought I could move past it and get on with my life. That’s why I took this job with the Crisis Management Unit. It was something new, something I knew I’d be good at. I was ready to begin again.”

      “But it’s not over.”

      “No.