Mistress

Chapter 19

Night falls, and, as if on cue, as if the weather is being controlled by Edgar Allan Poe, the winds kick up and a healthy rainfall follows. The windows rattle and the cabin groans. Outside is nothingness, black as ink, interrupted only by dramatic strikes of lightning.

Dark thoughts invade my brain as I settle into bed on the second floor with my laptop and a bottle of Absolut, in pitch darkness save for the illumination of the computer screen. Someone tried to kill me but wanted it to look like an accident. And they followed me to Wisconsin, a place they couldn’t be sure I’d go-it was no foregone conclusion that I’d attend Diana’s wake-so they had to be watching me and be capable of moving fast. Which means they’re smart, and they’re sizable in both resources and numbers.

Which means money. And Jonathan Liu stands behind plenty of it. A reporter in DC knows how to access the lobbyist database, and that told me part of the story-the amount of money Jonathan Liu spread around, either through his own firm, Liu Strategies Group, or through his clients. Jonathan Liu represented BGP, Inc., the Chinese national petroleum company; Tongxin, Inc., an international telecommunications giant; Huò wù Global, a Chinese shipping company; and Jinshu Enterprises, one of the world’s largest producers of steel. The annual earnings of those four companies alone are larger than the GDP of most civilized nations.

When you talk about Chinese influence in Washington, you talk about Jonathan Liu. Each of the companies Jonathan Liu represented, plus Jonathan Liu’s lobbying firm and then Jonathan Liu himself, maxed out their donations to the political action committees of every major player in Congress, then tripled it in “soft” money to the noncandidate PACs. And that’s to say nothing of the gifts-

What was that?

I rifle forward in bed and hold my breath. There’s not much activity on Lake Anna this time of night, at least not in the remote area where I am now. On an ordinary evening, you could hear a car approach from a hundred yards away. But the swirling wind and the slapping rain would conceal that tonight.

It sounded like…a scraping sound. Metal on wood. The sound of a piece of patio furniture moving across the wooden deck a foot or two.

The rain and wind could have moved the chair a bit.

So could a person who accidentally bumped into it.

My bare feet land softly on the rug. I tiptoe across the bedroom and peer into the hallway. I’m at the far end. Between me and the staircase to the ground floor are three doors on the left-two bedrooms and a bathroom. To my right is a partial wall that ends about ten feet before the staircase, and then it’s just a railing and a view down to the ground floor. A partial loft, Father called it.

I move with caution, stopping and listening for anything unusual. The rain smacks the cabin with such ferocity, the wind whips so feverishly, that it’s hard to hear anything else. But there’s usually a muted quality to it, given the shelter enclosing me, and this is different. It sounds…closer. Not muted.

Then I remember the kitchen window and relief floods through me. After I broke into the cabin, I put a makeshift cardboard cover over the window, and that was probably it-it blew off in the storm, so now the outside sounds are streaming into the cabin. Sure. That must be it.

Still, I move on, inching along the wall until it ends. Now it’s just the railing, which will do just fine preventing you from falling to the ground floor, but it won’t conceal you.

I listen. Nothing but the storm, a loud crack of thunder, the wind crying out to me in a plaintive wail, and the urgent drumbeat of the raindrops overhead.

My heart in my throat, I steal a quick peek down below, then retreat to the safety of the wall. Not long enough for anyone to see me.

But long enough for me to see, very clearly, that the sliding glass door to the deck is wide open.