The King of Fear: A Garrett Reilly Thriller by Drew Chapman

press—the official word was that Bachev was an unhinged stalker. But perhaps Chaudry needed to change tactics. If Reilly was as smart as he appeared, then she would have to use every bit of leverage to bring him out of the shadows.
    Garrett Reilly needed to become a celebrity in his own right.

A LEXANDRIA , V IRGINIA , J UNE 15, 7:45 A.M.
    A lexis Truffant filled her to-go coffee mug and headed out the door of her suburban DC condo. Mentally, she was already bracing herself for the day, which promised to be difficult. Yesterday had been a string of disasters, starting with the shooting of the New York Fed president, and ending with a grilling by a pair of humorless FBI agents. Alexis had answered the FBI as best she could, sticking to the truth mostly, and carefully talking her way around her involvement in tipping off Garrett Reilly. The agents hadn’t seemed to know about the NSA recording of her phone call, and General Kline never mentioned it, so she found she could answer almost entirely truthfully. Almost.
    The agents wanted background on Garrett and his involvement with the DIA. Kline parried those questions in the usual DIA way—national security this, and national security that—but Garrett was clearly in their sights. They wanted him badly.
    But she’d be damned if she would help the FBI get him. Garrett could not be involved in the shooting of a federal banker. Garrett might yell and scream, be difficult and subversive, even punch someone in the face in a bar brawl, but assassination was not in his character. She knew him well enough to know that. In truth, she still had feelings for Garrett, no matter what she’d told Kline earlier. She might not love him—perhaps she never had—but the two of them were connected. Emotionally connected. And she could not ignore that. Not yet, at least.
    She walked downstairs and through a hallway to the parking garage. Thedrive to DIA headquarters was ten minutes, and barring traffic, she’d be there at eight sharp, as she always was. Alexis liked order and predictability. She punched the unlock button on her car key fob and smiled at the reassuring chirp of her Honda Accord. She was halfway to her driver’s-side door when a voice rang out.
    “Alexis.”
    She practically jumped out of her skin.
    Garrett Reilly stepped out from behind a concrete support beam. He was wearing a gray I ♥ DAYTONA BEACH sweatshirt and jeans, but he had on black wing-tip shoes, as if he’d changed out of most of his clothing from the previous business day, but not all of it. He looked strung out, exhausted, as if he’d aged years since she’d last seen him, not months. She felt a pang of guilt: Had she done that to Garrett? She had recruited him. She had seduced him. Maybe she had broken him as well.
    “Jesus Christ,” Alexis hissed. “You cannot be here, Garrett. It’s not safe. And how the hell did you get here in the first place?”
    “There’s an attack coming.” He moved closer to her, talking quietly, his eyes dancing back and forth, scanning the empty garage.
    “I’d say the attack’s already happened.”
    “That’s just the beginning. Tip of the spear.”
    “ What? ”
    “You heard me,” Garrett said much too loudly for Alexis’s comfort. “It’s part of a pattern.”
    “Okay, okay,” she said, trying to stay calm. Her eyes flashed across the garage as well. She guessed that the FBI had not put her under surveillance, but that was just a guess. “Tell me about it. But quietly. And fast.”
    “I’ve found an investment pool that’s tied to illegal activity.”
    “Explain.”
    “A fund. A secret fund. Pretty big—a couple of billion dollars. It only trades in dark pools—”
    “Dark pools?”
    “Invisible exchanges where investors buy and sell stock out of the mainstream. So no one knows they are doing it. Thirty percent of the stocks traded in the US right now are done outside of the major exchanges.”
    “That’s legal?”
    “It’s finance. Legal