Tail Spin

FIFTY-ONE

Rachael was restless, and yes, she admitted it, scared out of her mind—a feeling she hated because it was so debilitating, a feeling that had been a part of her for more than a week now, ever since she’d been dropped into Black Rock Lake to drown. She remembered the coarse wet texture, the strength and stiffness of the rope as her fingers worked it. She closed her eyes for a moment. What was worse was that she was becoming used to the fear, a sort of vacant humming in her head that made her muscles clench. It should make a difference that she survived, but it didn’t seem to. She drew in a deep breath and looked around. At least she hadn’t been sitting lock-kneed on the sofa, her brain paralyzed. No, she’d cleaned Jack’s large corner apartment thoroughly, although, she had to admit, it hadn’t needed it.

Before Jack waltzed out the door, he’d had the nerve to tell her to take it easy, check out his music, and eat, she was getting too thin, maybe take a nap, and he’d held her face between his hands and kissed her fast and hard, and left without another word, the jerk.

She turned on his flat-screen TV and listened to the local newscaster while she watered plants—five azaleas and one ivy. She stopped when she heard the guy segue into a report on Senator John James Abbott’s memorial dinner at the Jefferson Club tomorrow evening. She stared at the TV while he listed some of the senators who would be there, mentioned Jimmy’s family, and at the very end, he finished by saying, “There’s an interesting aside here. Rachael Janes Abbott, Senator Abbott’s recently discovered daughter, will be one of the speakers.”

The local channel skipped to the weather. Summer rain, nothing new there. Rachael turned off the TV and began pacing Jack’s very nice living room. No antiques, but lots of big, overstuffed pieces in rich browns and golds, touches of turquoise. He needed a couple of bright throw pillows, the designer thought, a focal point, and the room would be perfect. He had good taste, she’d say that for him, and that special “knack” most people didn’t have. He was also, she noted, an extremely good kisser.

She wandered into Jack’s good-sized kitchen, all modern, appliances sparkling, and so they should because she’d shined them with a soft cloth for a good five minutes while she was off in never-never land. The walls were painted a pale yellow, the wooden cabinets the same yellow, the result bright and warm. She walked into the hallway, this time pausing to look at all the black-and-white photographs he himself had taken, photos of southwestern national parks, stark and wild, and a close-up of two mammoth elks fighting. And there were the pictures of people—diaper sized to ancient, faces lined and smooth, bodies twisted and straight. Her favorites were a teenage girl laughing hugely, her head thrown back, long hair blowing in a stiff breeze, white iPod wires in her ears, and an old man in baggy tweeds, his head bald as an egg, sitting on a bench, a meatball hoagie in his hand, smiling up into the bright sunlight, a drop of tomato sauce on his mouth.

Jack’s world was eclectic, but entirely his. Here was a big-time FBI agent who was also an excellent photographer, an artist, and owned a house he was fixing up. What were the odds? She was struck, as she had been several times before, how you thought you knew someone, but many times you really didn’t have a clue. Take that gambling son-of-a-bitch former fiancé of hers, for example. She sneered at herself for being an idiot. Jerol Springer. She shuddered.

She wandered back into the living room to one of the two big bay windows. His building was vintage 1930s, well maintained, as were the grounds, an amazing example of art deco, with oodles of atmosphere and style. But it was the magnificent views that made it prime, she thought, as she looked toward the Lincoln Monument. There were several photographs of the monument on the wall beside the window, one taken in the winter with snow piled everywhere, two determined, bundled-up tourists trudging up the monument steps, heads down, fighting a strong headwind. She wondered if he took the shots with a zoom lens from his living room window.

Where was he?

Rachael wandered into the guest bedroom, a room she’d only dusted lightly because it had indeed been pristine. It was small, tidy, spare, with a double bed covered with a sleeping bag spread on top, not a spread. She roamed back to Jack’s bedroom with its high ceilings and beautiful art deco moldings. She studied the Diane Arbus and Ansel Adams photographs on the white walls, obviously two artists he admired.

The bed was nicely done, a big king with a navy blue and white quilt, two bright red pillows covered with red sequins tossed against the navy blue shams. Hmmm. The pillows added a nice punch. Who had added the bling? A former girlfriend? Why hadn’t this same person added bling to the living room? Hadn’t she been around long enough?

Don’t go there. Maybe whoever she is, she’ll hook up with my loser of an ex-fiance.

Rachael sat down on the side of the bed and twitched. She was driving herself nuts, she couldn’t help it. Her mind took her right back to her near drowning, that black water closing over her head as the concrete block dragged her down, then skipped to the very close call at Roy Bob’s garage, that man standing in the bay opening, shooting at her and Roy Bob, Sheetrock raining down on them. And Slipper Hollow, so many bullets, death, raw and ugly in their faces. If not for Jack being such a useful guy, things might not have ended so well. But at Roy Bob’s garage she survived because of her own skill, and she planned to keep reminding herself she wasn’t a helpless victim. She’d survived all three attempts. She supposed the incident at the house the night before didn’t really count because it hadn’t terrified her like being thrown into Black Rock Lake or being shot at. But now she was safe; whoever wanted her dead had no idea where she was. She knew that, knew it—but somehow it didn’t quite reach to her center, where all her doubts and fears crashed about endlessly.

Rachael’s eyes went to a photo sitting on his dresser, obviously his parents, four siblings, and a slew of kids. She said aloud to the empty room, “No one knows where I am. No one. Not even you guys.”

She repeated it. Finally, she accepted it enough to allow her built-up fatigue to get a toehold in her manic brain.

Rachael lifted the blue patterned quilt to find beneath it a blue-and-white striped duvet cover. It was sharp, elegant. This was very serious, very cool coordination. A former girlfriend? His mother?

Where was he?

She lay down and closed her eyes. She’d called Uncle Gillette and told him the plan, about which he was markedly silent, then her mother, lying cleanly yet again. She’d listened to her half brother, Ben, tell her about how buff he was getting for the upcoming football season. She hadn’t known there were grade school football teams. Life didn’t just continue, she thought, marveling, it galloped forward. She remembered Ben at eight years old, tossing a Frisbee to her, rolling on the ground with his dog. The last time she’d seen him, he was fishing with his dad at Lark Creek Lake.

Her own life wasn’t galloping. She was lying in a strange bed with nothing happening, nothing resolved, and no Jack. She closed her eyes and her brain sped up again and she remembered:

“It wouldn’t do you any good to announce to all of them that you’ve decided not to tell the world about what your father did, Rachael,” Dillon said, Jack nodding in agreement. “You wouldn’t be believed because there’d always be the chance you would change your mind. It no longer seems to be about that, anyway. We have no choice but to go forward.”

Forward it was, she thought. No other direction, really. She was very grateful it might all end tomorrow night at the Jefferson Club. She prayed it would.

Where was Jack? For that matter, where was his house?

Then Greg Nichols had called her cell.

“Hello, Rachael, where are you? I went by the senator’s house, but no one was there. Well, there were some FBI guys wandering around in the backyard, but they wouldn’t tell me anything. What’s going on? I can’t find you. Where are you? I’m worried.”

“I’m preparing my speech for tomorrow night at the Jefferson Club. I hope you’ll be there, Greg. I know it would mean a lot to my father.”

“What about Jacqueline and your sisters?”

“They sent their regrets.”

She was deeply asleep when Jack found her an hour later in his bed, a small smile playing on her mouth, her head turned slightly to the side. Her braid was lying against her cheek.

He eased down beside her and kissed her.

She didn’t jerk away, only turned her head toward him and slowly opened her eyes. She looked up to see him leaning into her, not an inch from her nose. “I’m sure glad you’re not the bad guy,” she said, and raised her hand to smooth his hair, “or I’d be in big trouble.”

“When I was a little kid,” he said, stroking her hair, “I always wanted to be the robber, wanted to be the major badass when we played, but my big brother said I couldn’t snarl and talk jive well enough, so I had to suck it up and be the cop. I guess I got used to it.” He kissed her again. “So that means you’re not in big trouble.”

“Where have you been?”

“I was doing that old-fashioned police work I told you about, and I talked to some people. I stopped off at Feng Nian, brought us some Chinese.”

He saw the spark of panic in her eyes.

“Absolutely no one knows you’re here with me. No one followed me, believe me, I checked often enough. You’re safe. Tomorrow night, this will be over.”

Will it? she wondered, and let him help her up. It was all too simple, too straightforward, too planned. She knew Laurel wasn’t simple. She didn’t know about Quincy and Stefanos.

Rachael smiled when he turned to smooth down the covers. Her mom would pronounce him a good man.

“You’ve got a lovely apartment.”

“Thank you. My mom was my interior decorator.”

A mom supplying bling was okay.

“But the photographs are yours.”

“Yes,” he said, “they are.”

“You might not snarl and growl enough for a badass, but you’re an excellent photo artist.”

“Ah, well, not really ... well, anyway, thank you. You should see Savich’s pieces. He whittles.”

She ate the entire carton of kung pao chicken but didn’t read him her speech. “I’m still thinking, and rewriting,” she said.

“As you should. It’s quite an honor.”

She sighed. “Yes, I realize that.”

Jack’s cell rang.

FIFTY-TWO

The Jefferson Club Washington, D.C.

Monday evening

When it came down to it, you placed good people around you and trusted them to do their jobs. If you couldn’t, it was time to hang it up. The six undercover FBI agents working the big room were the best—smart and focused.

Savich spotted Director Mueller standing with Rachael. Jack, he didn’t see. He was checking out the catering staff imported for the event. He’d already arranged checks on the extra waitstaff the club had brought in for tonight’s shindig, and the permanent staff for that matter.

Savich smelled a mellow, woodsy perfume and turned to see Laurel Abbott Kostas coming toward him, a flute of champagne in her hand, dressed in an undoubtedly very expensive black dress that did nothing for her. Odd how well he thought he knew her, yet this was the first time he’d ever seen her in the flesh.

She wasn’t wearing a long gown, like most of the women. Instead she wore potentially sexy black fishnet stockings on her heavy legs, but her feet were in low-heeled pumps, a real clash in message. Her coarse graying hail was pulled back and clipped at the nape. She wore a tore a touch of lipstick, nothing else. But the diamonds—she was wearing mounds of them everywhere, her ears, throat, wrist, fingers. She looked like she’d cleaned out a display case. De Beers had to love her.

Her husband, Stefanos, another player whose character Savich thought he understood fairly well, was at her side, dressed in an expensive tuxedo, his black hair slicked back from his swarthy heavy face, a handsome dissipated face Savich didn’t like or trust. He watched Kostas’s eyes roam and assess. He looked bored and restless, and on edge. He held a whiskey in his hand and used it as an excuse not to shake hands when Savich introduced himself.

“Mr. Kostas,” Savich said, and nothing more, very aware that Laurel was giving him the once-over. When he turned back to her he saw a spark of interest in her flat cold eyes. What was that about?

Laurel said in a smooth, dismissive voice, “I know who you are. I saw you on TV, running that ridiculous FBI press conference.”

He smiled at her. “I’m Agent Dillon Savich. And you are Mrs. Laurel Kostas?”

She nodded. “I see you’re wearing a tuxedo, Agent Savich, and it is expensive. A surprise, I suppose, given you’re a policeman.”

Stefanos was looking at a woman’s cleavage. His eyes slid past Savich to his wife, and he said with world-weary contempt, “The whiskey is watered down.” Then he turned on his heel and made his way through the crowd toward the bar, where the woman and her cleavage were standing.

Laurel said, “I suppose you’re here because Rachael is. She isn’t actually going to tell everyone what the senator did, on an occasion like this, is she?”

“You will have to ask her, Mrs. Kostas. I really don’t know.”

He motioned to the waiter carrying a silver tray of champagne flutes. At her nod, he handed her one, took the empty one and put it on the tray.

“Where is Quincy Abbott, ma’am?”

“I left him speaking to the vice president about the current power struggle between the French and the Germans, nothing new there. Actually, no one seems to get along with either of them. In business, as in war, I’ve learned it’s always best to pit them against each other. Where is Rachael? I don’t see her. Perhaps she’s decided not to make a spectacle of herself, not to make us all the butt of malicious gossip?”

He smiled his vicious smile that Sherlock told him could freeze your heart, but it didn’t seem to work on Laurel. He said, “If you look to your left, you’ll see her speaking to Senator Mark Evans. There was a break-in at her house Saturday night. The intruder was careless and left us some evidence.”

She went stiff, her cold eyes suddenly needle sharp on his face, and he’d swear he could see her thinking. He knew she had a formidable mind, and wasn’t easily rattled. She said in a bored voice, “Evidence? Well, it’s about time you found something, isn’t it? What did you find?”

“Sorry, ma’am, I can’t tell you.”

“Why not? Who cares, after all?” He heard it then, fear in her voice, a thick undercoat of it. She moved closer, the movement making her diamonds dance and glitter madly.

He leaned close, as well, and went with his gut. “Do you know who shimmied up the oak tree to climb in through a second-floor window, Mrs. Kostas? Did her scream scare him away? Or was it the alarm going off?”

She took a quick step back from him and looked toward her husband, who was speaking now to a senator from Arizona. She turned, said to him over her shoulder, “Can you really see one of us climbing a tree, Agent Savich? I think not. But it seems to me Rachael has to run out of luck sometime.”

“Everyone eventually does,” Savich said. “You included, ma’am. Ah, here are Agent Sherlock and your niece.”

“She’s not—” Laurel shut her mouth, something, Sherlock imagined, she did neither often nor easily. But she was smart enough to get the lay of the land before she charged into battle.

Savich introduced Sherlock to Laurel, who ignored her to land squarely on Rachael.

“So,” Laurel said, looking Rachael up and down, “you have to have an agent sticking to you now?”

Rachael said, “Yes. I’ve found I prefer it.”

Quincy and Stefanos joined them, probably, Savich thought, because they believed Laurel needed reinforcements. Laurel made begrudging introductions.

Sherlock shook the men’s hands. Stefanos held her hand a bit longer than he should have. She cocked her head at him. “You have such lovely hair, Agent Sherlock,” he said, that accent meant to warm and seduce. “There is no red hair like yours in my country. It is glorious.”

Boy, you lay it on with a trowel, don’t you? She smiled at him.

Quincy Abbott looked like he wanted to bolt, but inbred civility won out and he shook Savich’s hand. He gave only a mildly displeased nod to Jack, who was standing at Rachael’s shoulder. When he took Sherlock’s hand, his eyes went hot. Now that was interesting. It wasn’t lust, not at all like the message Stefanos had broadcast to her. What was it? Was it anger? Did his look mean he hated female cops? She’d heard Rachael say he was a misogynist. She looked at Dillon. He was stone-faced.

Stefanos said, “You look magnificent, like a cabaret singer from the thirties, Agent Sherlock.”

“Thank you,” Sherlock said.

Savich agreed with Stefanos. Sherlock was wearing a long black skirt, a black top that bared her shoulders, and her hair was loose, a sunset of curls around her head, pulled back from her face with two black clips. She looked good, that was Savich’s remark when he saw her, and she’d known he wanted to haul her back upstairs. Even Sean, standing at his father’s side, had stared at her. “I wouldn’t know it was you if it wasn’t for your hair, Mama.”

She’d laughed and kissed him soundly. But Savich bet she had no plans to kiss Stefanos Kostas.

Stefanos said, “You’re really an FBI agent? You?”

“You were thinking I was perhaps a runway model?”

“Maybe that’s not too much of a stretch.”

Rachael said, “Agent Savich and Agent Sherlock are married. They have a little boy.”

“What?” Stefanos asked. “You’re actually married to him? But, I—”

Laurel rolled over her husband. “Married? I’ve never heard of FBI agents being married to each other before, but I suppose our government allows just about anything.”

“Not really,” Sherlock said.

“I have two boys,” Laurel continued. “The elder is nearly grown up now. He met a girl in New York City and is convinced he’s going to marry her.”

“How old is he?” Jack asked, though he knew very well.

“Damian is sixteen.”

Quincy said, “Stefanos isn’t happy about this, even though it’s only a young boy’s crush, isn’t that right?”

Stefanos shrugged. “He can have his fun. I only hope he doesn’t contract some disease from her.”

Quincy said, “You’re an expatriate xenophobe, Stefanos—you want both your sons to marry into old Creek families.”

Stefanos smiled at his brother-in-law, sipped at his whiskey like an elegant sloth.

Jack asked Laurel, “What did you think of the FBI press conference?”

Her heavy face froze. “I already told Agent Savich it was ridiculous. To me it smacked of conspiracy theories, which are generally nonsense. It is like saying the Warren Commission lied. How can you disprove a negative? I suppose the FBI will continue prodding and poking about, annoying us until we have our lawyers manage to cut you off at the knees.”

Savich said pleasantly, “I certainly agree with you about conspiracy theories. However, do you really believe, Mrs. Kostas, that your brother took up drinking again, that he got into a car after not driving for eighteen months?”

“Perhaps the senator considered cutting back on his drinking, even spent some time not driving, but in the end, he seems to have been doing both. There seems no doubt about that. Stefanos, Quincy, do you agree?”

Stefanos looked bored. Quincy, in a very discreet one-finger move, adjusted his toupee.

Laurel said, “No matter what the senator said, he would not have called a press conference and made a grand announcement of his guilt. He knew if he spoke up, he would lose everything—the prestige and power of being a senator, all the privileges of being wealthy and sought after, of being endlessly feted and admired.”

Jack said, “And last but not least, he would probably have gone to jail for vehicular homicide.”

“That is not possible. The senator had excellent lawyers,” Stefanos said. “He would never have spent a day in jail.”

That might be the truth, Sherlock thought.

“No matter,” Laurel said. “The senator lived for those things. He did not like to lose. What happened the night he died was an accident. All these theories—and that’s all they are—they sound like those ridiculous conspiracy theory blogs.”

“Jimmy told me he was going to do it,” Rachael said. “There was no reason for him to tell you if he hadn’t made up his mind.” Was that the truth? To say it, flat-out, it sounded so simple and straightforward. She said, “Besides the three of you, he also told Greg Nichols. Yet you still doubt it, even after Jimmy told you the misery he’d been living with for eighteen months?”

Quincy said, his voice dismissive, “I will say this one more time: it was a phase, nothing more. The senator was self-indulgent. He liked to analyze things to death—business, politics, a specific piece of legislation, how he was going to get back at another senator or congressman or staffer who got on the wrong side of him.

“Look, I’m sure he felt very sorry about what happened to the little girl, he had a conscience, after all.”

There was a malignant look on Laurel’s face, a look filled with cold rage, and it was aimed at Rachael. “If you have convinced these three FBI agents that we murdered our own brother, you have done the senator and our entire family, Jacqueline and her daughters included—not to mention the entire country—a grave disservice. You are contemptible, Miss Janes. And no, I will not call you an Abbott; you will never be an Abbott to us.”

Laurel turned on her low-heeled pumps and walked away, Quincy and Stefanos, after one last caressing look at Sherlock, following in her wake.

“I hadn’t expected them to speak so freely,” Savich said thoughtfully, watching them begin to work the room, the tall well-built man whose ego was bigger than his brain, and the dowdy woman covered in diamonds, with her powerful, vicious eyes. And Quincy, looking like a beautifully dressed royal adjunct.

Sherlock said, “Do you know, the three of them have one thing in common. They all radiate clout. Look, there’s the senator from New Hampshire going over to them.”

“They’re a big deal,” Rachael said. “They’re American royalty, rich—oozing confidence, used to getting what they want.”

Savich said to his wife as he touched his fingertips to her ear, “I really like the jet-black earrings.”

“You should, you bought them for me.”

He could feel the tightly coiled energy rolling off her. “Yes,” he said slowly, “I did.”

Sherlock said to Rachael, “You look perfect. You’ve struck the right note—classic outfit with a hint of pizzazz.”

She did indeed, Jack thought. Rachael was wearing a long black gown, as were many woman in the room. Unlike them, Rachael wasn’t showing very much skin, but what showed was potent. She looked beautiful and pale and dignified. Jack imagined she was wound tighter than his grandfather’s watch, a ritual Jack had watched countless times when he was a little kid.

Champagne flowed along with the stronger stuff. He saw Laurel and Stefanos speaking with the vice president. As each of them spoke, the vice president nodded solemnly. Several times, he leaned in to say something.

Savich spotted Greg Nichols entering the room, three women and two men with him, former Abbott staffers all. He was wearing a tux, and should have looked buff and competent, but he didn’t. Something was wrong, something was off with him. He was moving slowly and awkwardly. Nichols looked up and met Savich’s eyes across the room. He caught Jack’s eye and nodded slowly. Then, strangely, he rubbed his stomach. What was going on?

Greg Nichols felt sick to his stomach. He thumbed another Tums from the bottle and discreetly slipped it into his mouth. How many was that so far? Six? Seven? He hoped it was nerves. Nerves he could deal with, he’d had a lot of practice. No, he was going to have to face it, this was for real, probably the cioppino he’d had for a late lunch— a mistake, his secretary Lindsay had told him, what with the hullabaloo happening tonight with the movers and shakers, and he with his nervous stomach. All right, so the cioppino had been off, he’d known it after a few bites and stopped eating it. Curse Lindsay, she was right.

He’d already had massive diarrhea and vomited twice. He thought there’d been a bit of blood, prayed he was mistaken, because that was scary.

But maybe he was feeling a little better now. No, he felt like crap. For a moment, he watched the FBI agent Dillon Savich, the one who’d led the FBI press conference, and chewed faster on the Turns. And that damned agent Jack Crowne, who was sticking to Rachael like glue. Nichols knew he’d been checking on him, and if he didn’t know everything about him already, he would soon enough. He’d know everything about all of them. It wasn’t fair, just wasn’t.

He looked around at the sea of powerful people, spouses hanging onto senators’ arms, staking claim to power. So much power concentrated in this one room—it was a terrorist’s wet dream. He easily spotted Secret Service agents from long practice. They were everywhere. There had to be FBI there, as well; they were better at fading into the woodwork.

He realized he no longer cared if Rachael spoke out or not. He was a lawyer, he knew how things worked. He’d roll over on Senator Abbott, no problem with that, since he was dead. Then he’d take the bar exam, and set up his practice in Boise.

He didn’t need this aggravation that was going to escalate into a shit storm. It was time to cut his losses. It was time to get out of Dodge.

He saw Laurel Kostas speaking to the ancient senator from Kansas, and at her elbow, nodding occasionally at something his sister said, stood Quincy, that good-for-nothing whiner the senator had tolerated only because he’d felt sorry for him.

His stomach was roiling, but the cramps had lessened a bit. He nabbed a glass of carbonated water from a waiter’s tray and sipped it. Maybe it would help settle his stomach, that’s what his mother had always preached. He saw his boss, Senator Jankel, all earnest, bending to eye another congressman’s wife, the old fool.

Dammit, he couldn’t think, his belly was on fire.

FIFTY-THREE

Savich saw a man out of the corner of his eye, a small man, dressed in a waiter’s uniform, duck behind a grouping of black-gowned women and tuxedoed men.

Savich moved quickly and, he hoped, discreetly. But he wasn’t as fast as Jack, who already had the man’s arm and was pulling him toward the kitchen.

Good. Jack would get it sorted out.

The evening rolled on. A distinguished man Savich recognized but couldn’t place, wearing a black bespoke tux that disguised his paunch, stepped onto the dais to stand behind the podium. He adjusted the microphone and greeted the guests, and announced dinner. Everyone migrated to their tables, and for three minutes Savich couldn’t see anyone clearly in the crowd. Ah, there was Director Mueller. He had Rachael’s arm and was leading her to a table at the front of the room where he sat on her right. Jack was to be seated on her left, only he wasn’t there.

What was happening in the kitchen?

Savich was at the point of heading back there when Jack came through the swinging dark paneled doors, straightening his tux as he made his way to his table. He spoke briefly to Director Mueller and eased in beside Rachael.

Savich and Sherlock stood for a moment by the doors to the large, dark-paneled nineteenth-century gentlemen’s club, which turned coed in the late fifties. Interesting how it still retained the original smell of countless cigars puffed inside its walls over the decades, sort of sweet and old, like lace in an antique trunk.

Savich sat at one of the front tables with Laurel, Quincy, and Stefanos, four couples separating them, Sherlock at one of the back tables with Greg Nichols. Jimmy Maitland, to cover all the bases, sat with Brady Cullifer.

Savich listened to the rock-hard political conversations going on around him and wondered when the rubber chicken would make its appearance. He wondered how they would rubberize his vegetarian dish.

To his surprise, he was served spinach lasagna, a tossed salad, and green beans dotted with pearl onions, all delicious. For the predators, they brought out what looked like a Thanksgiving dinner with all the fixings.

A gentleman at the microphone announced that Thanksgiving was Senator Abbott’s favorite meal of the year. There was appreciative laughter. And more laughter when he announced there would be gelato for dessert, because pear tartlets prepared for more than two hundred people never made it to the table tasting quite like fruit.

Forty-five minutes later, the vice president walked to the podium and adjusted the microphone upward. He spoke of his long friendship with John James Abbott, of his major legislation and his ability to work with both sides of the aisle, no matter the party in power. There was a low buzz of conversation about that statement until the vice president managed to get off a couple of old golf jokes, then turned it over to a senator from Missouri. It went on from there, each speaker with an amusing or touching anecdote about Senator Abbott.

When the crowd was feeling no pain at all, what with the wait-staff serving the hard stuff as well as rivers of wine, the vice president said, “I would like to introduce all of you to Jimmy’s daughter. As you know, he didn’t know she existed until she knocked on his door. In the last six weeks of his life, his happiness shone like a beacon. He once said to me she was the daughter of his heart. Many of you have had the opportunity to speak to Rachael this evening, to experience her kindness, her sense of humor, and her charm, doubtless inherited from her father. I give you Ms. Rachael Abbott.” He stepped forward to hug her when she gained the dais.

I’m still alive. The turkey was good, the cranberry sauce homemade and delicious, better yet, no one has tried to get near me with a knife. No one has tried to lure me to the men’s room.

She looked out over the room at the men and women who ruled the world. She knew her mascara had smudged a bit because she’d cried at some of the stories told by her father’s colleagues.

She looked at older faces, lived-in faces, faces that held both knowledge and secrets, and at that moment held a good deal of benevolence. And she saw clearly their sense of self-satisfaction; it was tangible, seemed to fill the air.

The lights were dim, the scents of discreet perfume mixed with the rich smells of the Thanksgiving dinner.

She caught Greg Nichols’s eye, cocked her head at him, gave him a tentative smile. Strange, he looked frozen, and more than that—he didn’t look right.

She said into the microphone, “I only knew my father for six weeks before he was killed. As you know, his death was originally ruled an accident. Now there are very real questions about that. However, tonight we are here to talk about the senator’s life.” There was a faint stirring in the group until she continued.

Greg Nichols took another sip of sparkling water, eyed the nearly empty bottle of Tums. All his staffers were looking at him like he was going to explode. Agent Sherlock had spoken to him during the long dinner, asked him repeatedly if he was all right. Upset stomach, he’d told her, nothing more, just an upset stomach from something he ate. And he’d give her a weak smile, say he was feeling better.

It had to get better, didn’t it? Food poisoning lasted just a few hours, didn’t it? He remembered the potato salad he’d eaten once as a teenager that had left him moaning on the bathroom floor, puking up his guts for eight hours. Then it was over. Would this be over soon? Dammit, he hadn’t eaten that much of the damned cioppino. A violent cramp slashed through him again, doubled him up. He gasped with the force of it. It kept getting worse until he thought he was going to die. There was no hiding anything now. He heard voices but didn’t recognize any words, he was too deep in the pain. He wasn’t about to puke in front of United States senators. He lurched to his feet, groaning, holding himself, and ran toward the door.

“Mr. Nichols, wait!”

It was Agent Sherlock, but he didn’t acknowledge her, he couldn’t, everything in him was focused on the god-awful pain ripping and tearing through his belly.

He heard Rachael say in a loud voice, sounding strangely far away and deep, like from the bottom of a well, “Senator Robertson spoke about his ability to nudge opposing sides into compromise, his ability to persuade without backroom bloodshed ...”

People were coming at him, men in dark suits, FBI, Secret Service, his friends, but it didn’t matter. He was going to vomit, he was going to—

The lights seemed to go out around him, turning the huge room black as a pit.

He stumbled and went down.

He knew men were leaning over him, touching him, speaking to him, but he was caught in the agony and couldn’t say anything, could only groan, tears running down his face, and he knew there was blood flowing out of his body, and it was dark, so very dark. Was the dark on the inside or the outside? Why was someone yelling?

He lurched up as blood gushed out of his twisting mouth, the tears streaming from his eyes tinted red, two snakes of blood running out of his nose.

Sherlock yelled, “Dillon! Come here!”

Savich saw Secret Service agents surround the vice president and chivy him back against a wall. Four FBI agents converged on Rachael at the podium. There were more agents and a dozen other people knotted together. Something was very wrong.

He shoved his way through and looked down to see Greg Nichols lying on his side on the floor, blood trickling from his open mouth. There was blood everywhere. He was soaked with it. Sherlock was on her knees beside him.

“The EMTs should be here soon. He’s very bad, Dillon. All this blood. I knew something was wrong with him, I knew it.”

“We thought he was up to no good,” a Secret Service agent said, straightening over Nichols. “But no, this guy’s very sick.”

“I’m guessing poison,” Savich said. “He’s drenched in blood. What else would it be?”

A Secret Service agent said, “Yeah, you’re right, sounds like coumarin, rat poison.”

“Yeah, probably,” Savich said, and felt for Nichols’s pulse.

Sherlock rose to look at Lindsay Culley, Nichols’s secretary.

She was wringing her hands, her face as white as Savich’s shirt. “I told him not to eat the cioppino, because there’d be a big meal tonight, but he did, only a few bites. It must have been bad. Really, he didn’t eat all that much. I thought he was better, he kept saying he was fine.”

She burst into tears. Sherlock patted her shoulder and nodded to Grace Garvey, Senator Abbott’s former secretary, who told her, “I didn’t know he was ill. We spoke about tonight, and I told him how nice it would be, how pleased we all were they were doing this for Senator Abbott. He and Senator Abbott were so very close.” She put her arms around Lindsay.

Savich said, “His pulse is thready, nearly nonexistent.” He sat back on his heels. “I don’t think he’s going to make it.”

A Secret Service agent opened the doors and paramedics rushed in carrying medical bags and a gurney. Savich listened to Sherlock tell them his symptoms as they worked over him. He heard an older man say abruptly, “Would you look at all that blood!”

They had him on the gurney quickly, white cloths draped over all the bloody clothes.

Two FBI agents accompanied the group. “Keep me informed,” Savich said, then turned back, saw the vice president looking over the heads of the crowd at him, and nodded.

Another three minutes and all the senators had turned to face Rachael once again at the podium.

The vice president nodded to Rachael. “As you all know by now, ladies and gentlemen, someone has fallen ill. I’m told it was Greg Nichols, the former senior staffer for Senator Abbott. He is being seen to, and we certainly hope he will be all right. Ms. Abbott, after all this excitement, do you feel like continuing?”

She nodded, stepped again to the podium, adjusted the microphone. Greg, what happened?

FIFTY-FOUR

She looked out over the group, met Laurel’s cold, malicious eyes, and nearly recoiled. Then Laurel smirked, no other way to describe that small, self-satisfied smile. Her father’s sister—how could that be possible?

She looked around at the group, cleared her throat, and said, “I’m very sorry my father’s chief of staff, Greg Nichols, has taken ill. I hope he will be all right. I will keep this brief.

“My father loved our nation’s capital, and it disturbed him that alongside the beautiful granite buildings, the stretches of perfectly maintained parklands, just beside the towering monuments, there is squalor and poverty, their roots dug deep for more years than anyone can remember. It both angered and embarrassed him.

“Therefore, in his honor, I will be creating and endowing the John James Abbott Foundation, which will address first and foremost our local citizens’ problems. You are our nation’s lawmakers, our movers and shakers. I would appreciate any and all expertise you can throw my way. Together, we can make a difference in his name, I’m sure we can.”

She picked up her glass of water, raised it high. “I would like to toast Senator John James Abbott, a compassionate man, and an excellent father.” She raised her glass, and the rest of the room quickly followed suit. “To making a difference!”

There was a moment of silence while people drank, then, slowly, the members of the Senate stood, clapping, their eyes on her, nodding.

When she returned to the table, Jack said, “I didn’t know what you were going to say, but a foundation—that’s an excellent idea, Rachael.”

She took his hand and said, in a low voice, “I couldn’t do it. I thought hard about it, Jack. I argued with myself, taking one side, then the other. I finally decided you were right. What my father would or would not have done became moot the moment he died. It was his decision and only his, no one else’s. It would be wrong of me to change how history will judge him. I don’t have that right or that responsibility Only he did.”

FIFTY-FIVE

Washington Memorial Hospital

Monday night

One of the emergency room doctors, Frederick Bentley, turned tired eyes to the clock on the waiting room wall. His green shirt was still covered with blood. He said, more to himself than to the people standing around him, “Isn’t that strange? It’s ten o’clock, straight up. It always seems to be ten o’clock straight up when the freight train hits. You’d think midnight, the witching hour, would bring that choo-choo, but no. All right, I can tell you Greg Nichols is still alive, but I doubt he will be for long.

“We poured blood, plasma, and fluids into him to resuscitate him. His PT—that means prothrombin time—measured off the charts, meaning his blood wasn’t clotting, and his hematocrit just wasn’t compatible with life.

“He has remained unconscious. We’ve intubated him, meaning we put a tube into his trachea through his nose to allow him to be hooked up to a respirator. We’ll be moving him to the ICU in a minute.

“We’re not yet certain why his blood isn’t clotting, but I’m thinking poison or an overdose. Most commonly it’s coumarin, or something chemically related to it like a superwarfarin, which is used as rat poison. It must have been a massive dose.

“We took stomach and blood samples, which will show us what was in his system, and maybe how long ago he ingested it. It will take a while for the results, though.

“To be blunt, I’m surprised he’s still alive. Even if he regains consciousness, he may not be able to talk. I strongly doubt his brain survived the anoxia, the lack of oxygen. Would one of you like to see him?”

Savich followed Dr. Bentley into a screened-off section of the emergency room.

“You’re the boss, right?”

“Yeah, I get all the perks.”

“Good luck.”

Nichols lay alone and still, his face white as a plaster saint’s. Dried blood and vomit caked the side of his mouth. His eyes were closed; his lids looked bruised, like someone had punched him. There were two IV lines tethered to his wrists. The obscene wheezing of the respirator was the only sound in the room.

Savich leaned close. “Mr. Nichols.”

Savich heard Dr. Bentley suck in a breath behind him when Nichols opened his eyes. Savich saw the death film beginning to creep into them. No, Greg Nichols wasn’t going to live through this.

“Do you know who poisoned you, Mr. Nichols?”

Savich was losing him. His eyes were darkening, the film creeping slowly over them, like a veil. His voice was urgent. “Who, Mr. Nichols?”

He was struggling for breath to speak but couldn’t.

His eyes froze. He was gone.

Nichols was dead and Savich wanted to howl. There were alarms, the heart machine flatlined.

Two nurses joined Dr. Bentley in the cubicle. Savich stepped out and returned to the small waiting room. There was an older black couple there now, their faces blank with shock, holding each other.

“Come with me,” Savich said to Jack and Rachael. He took Sherlock’s hand and led them into a long empty hallway, away from the emergency room and the soul-deadening silence of that waiting room.

“He’s dead. He regained consciousness, but it was only for a moment.”

“They killed him, Dillon.”

“Yes, Rachael, I think they did. And they did it dramatically, something I think pleased their vanity.”

“But why?”

Savich was quiet for a moment. Sherlock sighed. “I’m sorry, Rachael, but I think Greg Nichols was involved with them. After you and Jack met with him, maybe he spoke to them. Whatever he said must have made them realize he was a weak link, that he’d break, and so they killed him. I’ll bet you we’ll find out from Greg’s staff how they got to him.”

Savich’s cell sang out “Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head.” He checked to see who it was, frowned. “Savich here.”

He was shaking his head as he said, “No, no, that can’t be, it just can’t be. Yes, we’ll be right there. We’re in the ER right now.”

He closed down, looked blankly at them. “That was Agent Tomlin. We’ve got to go to Dr. MacLean’s room.”

His voice was flat, but his eyes were dilated with shock. It scared Sherlock to her toes. She shook his arm. “Dillon! What in heaven’s name has happened now? Did someone try for Dr. MacLean again?”

He looked beyond her and said, “Timothy MacLean is dead, two floors up.”

FIFTY-SIX

It was chaos—medical staff walking about, seemingly without purpose, the hallway jammed with hospital security and above it all the fury of Agent Tomlin’s deep voice, trying to establish some order. He looked up, nearly yelled in relief at the sight of Savich.

Sherlock grabbed his arm. “What happened, Tom?”

“It appears Dr. MacLean had a gun. He put it to his temple and pulled the trigger. Chief Hayward’s inside with the medical staff, trying to figure out how this could have happened.” Tomlin swallowed. “Mrs. MacLean had just left when it happened. She came back up again, I don’t know why.”

Jack said, “Rachael, you stay put. Don’t come in, you hear me?”

She nodded, looked toward Molly MacLean, who was leaning against the wall opposite the nurses’ station, her hands over her face, weeping.

“Molly?”

Molly looked up, saw Rachael through a curtain of tears, recognized her.

“I’m so very sorry,” Rachael said, and pulled her into her arms. Molly’s pain swamped Rachael, drew her into the well of familiar grief she’d lived with since her father’s death. It was the hardest thing a human had to bear, she thought. She’d only known her father such a short period of time, a moment really in the long skein of a normal life, but the pain was constant and still throbbed inside her, like a beating heart. She couldn’t imagine Molly’s pain. She’d lived with her husband for more than twenty-five years. She’d lost someone stitched into the very fabric of her life.

Jack was walking toward them, and Rachael realized he was struggling to put his own grief away. She admired him greatly in that instant as she watched him get it together and the cop in him took over. He nodded to Rachael. Then he gently touched Molly’s shoulder. “Molly? It’s Jack. I’m so very sorry.” When Rachael’s arms dropped, Molly turned to collapse against him. She wrapped her arms around his back, held on hard, and wept against his neck. He held her, murmuring meaningless words, really, hoped it was comfort, but he doubted it. Nothing could make this mortal wound magically better. He said against her hair, “Molly, let’s go to the waiting room.”

The waiting room was empty, as he knew it would be. All the excitement was down the hall. It was relatively quiet in there. He closed the door, motioned Rachael to sit as he led Molly to a small sofa. He eased down beside her, continued to hold her, rubbing her back, and spoke quietly to her.

When she hiccupped, Jack gave her another squeeze and a Kleenex from a box on a side table. Rachael handed her a cup of water from the cooler in the corner. They waited in silence while she collected herself.

Molly raised her face, looked straight at Jack. “I know you’ve got to know what happened.” She squeezed her eyes closed for a moment and another tear slid down her cheek. She opened her eyes, wiped a hand over her cheeks again. She drew in a big breath, held it. “All right. This afternoon, first thing when I walked into his room, Tim asked me to bring him his gun. He’s kept it for years in the bedside table; thankfully he’s never had to use it. I stared at him, terrified of what he was going to say, but when I asked him why, he looked at me like I was nuts. He said some guy had just tried to murder him and if it hadn’t been for Nurse Louise, what was left of him would be sitting in a lovely silver urn. He said he wanted to be able to protect himself, and if I really cared about him, I would bring him the gun. When I continued to resist, he shrugged, looked away from me, and said maybe it would be better if the guy came back and gave it a second try. After all, he was going to end up a vegetable, why not spare himself the indignity and welcome the guy back, maybe point to a good spot on his head where he should shoot him. It didn’t matter, nothing was going to change for him.

“I smacked him on the arm, called him an idiot. You never knew, I told him, simply never knew when medical science would come up with a new drug to help him. He listened to me, at least I thought he was listening.

“Then he looked up at me and said, ‘Bring me a gun, Molly, let me take care of myself. I don’t want to feel helpless.’

“I finally agreed. I went home and came back about an hour ago. I watched him check out his gun, then he slid it under his pillow and smiled at me. ‘Thank you, kiddo, I feel better now,’ he said. He was quiet for a while. Then he spoke of our family, his parents, our kids, and his patients—many other things, as well, bad things, painful things, but when I left I thought he seemed more centered, more like the old Tim, bright and funny.”

She viciously wiped away the tears. “Oh, Jack, no one managed to get to him, no one murdered him. He did it himself, and I brought him the gun so he could do it.”

Her words hung heavily in the room.

Finally, Jack said, “Molly, we’ll get back to that. You told me he was himself again, the old Tim. Can you think of anything specific that could have been the catalyst for his killing himself?”

She raised her white face, tears scoring her cheeks. “Yes, I realize now that it was me. I pushed him to it, Jack,” she said. Her eyes blurred and she choked. “I pushed him to do it.”

Jack said, “Tell me.”

Jack was aware that Savich and Sherlock had come into the room. They didn’t say anything, stood back against a wall. Molly said, “Tim started talking about his patients, the same three he’d spoken about so freely to Arthur Dolan, his friend and tennis mate, you know, the poor man who was murdered by that maniac up in New Jersey?”

“Yes, I know.”

“Tim said, ‘Molly, I didn’t even realize what I was saying was wrong. It all tripped happily out of my mouth, all of it, every confidential filthy detail, and I sang it all out, happy as a lark. I broke every ethical code I’ve lived by all my professional life. I accepted my patients’ trust and crushed them with it.

“‘Look at what happened to Jean David—Pierre loved his son, Molly, both he and Estelle adored Jean David. He was their only child, they would have freely given their lives for him, and here I actually enjoyed telling Arthur—with that bartender listening in— what Jean David had done.

“And now Jean David has drowned, and Pierre is wild with pain and grief and hatred for me. If Pierre is the one who’s been trying to kill me, then I hope he succeeds. I pushed him to it.

“‘I am responsible for this tragedy, Molly, no one else.’

“He stopped talking, just stared off at nothing in particular, like he was alone, like he no longer cared about anything.”

Molly looked down at her twisting hands and clasped them tightly together. Jack laid his hand over hers. She continued after a moment. “I told Tim he was not the one who chose to betray his country. He only shook his head, and his voice was so ... accepting. He said to me, Yes, Molly, that’s true, but not to the point. This disease—it’s only going to get worse, you know that as well as I do, but I’ll probably escape the worst of it myself because I’ll be oblivious to what is real, to what it feels like to be real, to be connected. I won’t know my kids, I won’t know you and that you’re my wife of forever, and all my love, all my experiences, the pains, the joys—even the meaning of it will be gone for me.

“‘I can’t bear knowing I’ll go through that, Molly, now that I can still see clearly. I can’t bear knowing I won’t have any balance in my mind, that I won’t even recognize that what spills out of my mouth might destroy someone.’

“I recognized the look on his face. He said, ‘Do you know, I told one of the doctors here about your affair with Arthur all those years ago? I didn’t remember saying anything about that, but the doctor told me what I’d said.

“‘I thank God that He’s left me some moments of lucidity so I can remember all the hurt I’ve already caused, and decide what I want to do about it.’”

Molly choked on a laugh, said to Jack, “Fact is, I did sleep with Arthur a couple of times, years ago. I didn’t even think Tim knew about it. I never told him. Funny thing was, both Arthur and I realized it was dumb, realized the truth of it was that all three of us were friends, very good friends, and had been for more than twenty years.

“But Tim saw his speaking of it as the final betrayal, spilling out secrets about our own personal life to strangers.

“All I could do was think about that gun under his pillow. I asked him what he wanted to do and I was terrified of his answer. But he gave me one of his old Tim smiles, said he was going to think, really think about where all this was leading and the consequences of it. He was going to think until the ability escaped him, probably in the next thirty minutes, he said, who knew but God?

“Before I left him a few minutes ago, one of the nurses brought him a pint of pistachio ice cream, his favorite. He grinned at me as he spooned it down. He looked calm. He told me he loved me, then smiled and offered me a bite of ice cream. I took a very small bite, but he teased me and told me I could even have one more small bite. We laughed, and I squeezed his arm and told him we were going to be together for a long time, it didn’t matter what came down the road and he’d best accept that. And he said, yes, he liked the sound of that.”

Molly raised her face to Jack. “He kissed me, Jack, the sweetest kiss you can imagine. I can still taste the pistachio ice cream on his lips.” She fell silent for a moment, looking down at her twisting hands.

Then she nodded toward Savich and Sherlock, smiled at Rachael, and said, “I got all the way downstairs when I remembered I’d forgotten to tell him it was Kelly’s birthday tomorrow. I wanted to tell him what we were giving her. Perhaps he’d remember when she came to visit him.

“I heard the shouts when I stepped off the elevator.” She stopped, stared at a Monet water lily print on the wall. “I knew, Jack, I knew instantly what he’d done, what I’d enabled him to do.” She lowered her face into her hands and wept. The room was quiet, the only sound Molly’s ugly, raw tears. She raised her face. “Do you know I signed the birthday card from both of us, as always? It’s a funny card—it says she needs a new bedmate, her teddy bear is all used up.”

Jack touched his fingers to her face. He wanted to tell her maybe it was better this way, but his heart couldn’t accept that.

She said, “Whoever was trying to kill Timothy—he doesn’t have to bother now.”

Jack said, “If he killed Arthur, he has to pay for it, Molly. He tried to kill Tim—what is it now?—four times? He’s got to pay for that, too.”

Molly said clearly, “And what about me, Jack? I wanted to believe him, you see, he knew I wanted to believe the gun was for his protection. He gave me a way out.” She paused, and Jack could feel her grief and her awful guilt. She placed her palm over her chest. “But in my heart, I knew he was going to kill himself. I knew it. I am the one responsible for his death, not this maniac.”

Savich walked to her and sat down beside her. He took her hands in his. “Molly, listen to me. What you know in your heart, it must stay in your heart. It would do no good to burden your family with this.”

Savich rose. “You couldn’t have known, not for sure. What Timothy did, it was his own decision. You made it easier for him, that’s all.

“When I walk out this door, Molly, the investigation into Dr. Timothy MacLean’s death is closed.”

FIFTY-SEVEN

Tuesday afternoon

Rachael walked into Jimmy’s study and stood in the middle of the room. The rich brown draperies were partially drawn, framing only a bit of afternoon sunlight. She smelled him still, the aroma of his rich Turkish cigarettes. She sank down onto the burgundy leather sofa, leaned her head back, and stared at the bookshelf behind his desk. She could see the dust beginning to gather on the bindings. Books could be dusted, she thought, but you had to live at close quarters with them to keep them fresh, keep their pages alive.

She looked down at her watch. Nearly four o’clock. Jack would be back by six, he’d said, and she knew he hated leaving her alone, even in the middle of the hot, sunlit afternoon.

She looked again at Jimmy’s desk, the few papers on top in neat piles, the computer screen dark and silent. She drew in a deep breath and forced herself to sit in the wonderfully comfortable high-backed burgundy leather desk chair. She straightened in the well of the desk.

She had time. It was something that had to be done. She opened the top drawer and began sorting through papers. She made piles that had to be handled when his will went through probate, invoices to be paid, a few catalogs he’d evidently marked for order.

She’d sorted through the papers in most of the desk when she opened the bottom drawer and found a beautiful hand-carved bubinga wood pen box. She lifted it out carefully. Sure enough, there were a good dozen pens inside, some of them gifts from foreign countries, from ambassadors he’d visited in his travels. There was a slip of paper at the bottom of the box with three pairs of numbers written on it. A safe combination.

Rachael hadn’t even thought about a safe. She looked around but didn’t see one. If she owned a safe, she’d keep it in the room where she spent most of her time. She searched the bookshelves, looked under the carpet, and when she lifted a Durbin Monk Irish countryside painting, there it was, built into the wall. She dialed in the numbers and it opened easily.

Inside she found an accordion file that was filled with insurance documents and a journal from the year before showing all his appointments for twelve months. Behind the last page of the journal, she found an envelope labeled “Will & Testament of John James Abbott.”

His will. She hadn’t thought about whether he had a copy. Jimmy had told her she would inherit a third of his estate, her two sisters the other two-thirds, and this included his shares in the family business. He’d said once, she remembered now, that when he was sworn into the Senate, he turned his proxy for the voting shares over to Laurel, to distance himself from his financial interests while he was in office. She began to read.

It couldn’t be right.

She read it again, and yet a third time.

She found Brady Cullifer’s number in Jimmy’s Rolodex and dialed. He’d just returned to his office from court and came on the line.

“Brady, I just read Jimmy’s will. There’s something very wrong here.”

An hour later, she heard a car pull into the driveway. Not Jack— not yet. It was Brady, walking swiftly up the flagstone path to the house.

She met him at the front door.

“Rachael, I couldn’t believe it when you called me. There must be some mistake here, there must be. I’ve brought the original will. We’ll compare them, all right? Jack isn’t back?”

“He’ll be back soon. He’s still at that meeting at the FBI.”

Rachael spread the will she’d found on Jimmy’s desktop. Brady lay his beside it. “Let’s see what we’ve got here,” he said, and the two of them bent down.

“Rachael? Where are you?”

Rachael straightened, a smile on her face. “In here, Sherlock. Come in.” She walked over to the door to the study. “Hey, what are you doing here?”

“Jack asked me to come. What’s going on? Oh, hello, Mr. Cullifer.”

“It’s Agent Sherlock, isn’t it?”

Sherlock smiled at him, nodded.

Rachael grabbed Sherlock’s arm. “I found Jimmy’s will, only it doesn’t say what it’s supposed to say. I called Brady and he brought over the original so we could compare them.”

“A forgery, Mr. Cullifer?”

“I don’t know, Agent Sherlock. We’ve just begun to study them.”

All three of them leaned over the desk to compare the two wills.

Sherlock read the first page and looked at them. “They’re different, Mr. Cullifer. We’ve got a forgery here.” She shook her head. “Wouldn’t you know it? This was all about money. Why does it always have to be about money?”

She should have detected something in Cullifer’s steady, monotonous voice, but she didn’t until she tensed at a dark voice close to her ear. “Some days I think the angels aren’t on our side. You’re very unexpected, Agent,” and at the moment the last word sank into her brain, he struck her hard with the butt of his gun.

She heard Rachael yell as she fell to the floor.

“Stefanos! What—”

He struck Rachael, and watched dispassionately as her eyes went wide with shock, then blurred with pain, and closed, and she fell beside Sherlock. A trickle of blood snaked down her cheek.

FIFTY-EIGHT

Hoover Building

Savich frowned, lightly tapped his fingertips on his cell phone. “What’s wrong?” Jack asked in a low voice, leaning close, momentarily blocking out the mellifluous voice of federal prosecutor Dickie Franks.

“Sherlock isn’t answering. We have a deal. Anytime one of us calls the other, we always pick up, doesn’t matter if we’re in the shower or out running. Her phone’s on, so she should answer. This is the second time I’ve called.”

He was ready to seize up when Faith Hill sang out “The Way You Love Me.” “Sherlock? It’s about time, where—Dr. Bentley?”

Every eye at the conference table swiveled to look at Savich. When he punched off his cell, Savich said, “That was Dr. Bentley. Greg Nichols was poisoned by a massive dose of superwarfarin, a rat poison. Dr. Bentley said there was still a lot of it in his bowels, so he may have ingested it with a recent meal, maybe the cioppino they talked about. Jack and I need to head out, find out who served him his lunch yesterday.”

The three federal prosecutors began debating alternatives again. Dickie was saying, “I was thinking it’s time we simply hauled the Abbotts’ butts down here. We can handle their lawyers.”

Janice Arden, the veteran of the three, said, “Or we could wait to see if Savich finds proof of who poisoned Nichols.”

Savich wasn’t listening. He was too worried. “Jack, try Rachael’s cell phone.”

“I did. She’s not picking up.”

“Try her landline.”

There was no answer. Savich didn’t say a word, simply dialed his own landline.

Again, no answer. “Sherlock said she might go over to see how Rachael was doing when I told her you and I would probably be late. I wanted coverage even though it’s daylight. I was hoping maybe she brought Rachael back to our house.” He drummed his fingers against the conference table. “Evidently not.”

FIFTY-NINE

Sherlock didn’t want to open her eyes. She knew if she did, she’d want to vomit, or pass out again from the god-awful pain, or both. Well done, kiddo, you let the nice lawyer pull you right in with that will business. A civilian, no, less than a civilian—a lawyer. But who had struck her? Stefanos, she thought—or Quincy—but there was Stefanos Kostas’s face in her mind. She knew somehow it had been him, she could hear the echo of his voice. She’d been hit on the head before, a long time ago, really, but the pain was familiar, like an old enemy. She recognized it instantly, and hated it. Don’t open your eyes, let it stay dark a moment longer. Don’t open your eyes.

“Sherlock?”

Rachael’s voice, far away—blurred, vague. She was alive, thank God. Sherlock wanted to forget she heard her, but her quiet voice came again. This time, she heard fear in it. “Sherlock. Please, wake up. Talk to me.”

One eye opened, and Sherlock shuddered with the pain of it.

“I’m sorry, but you’ve been unconscious too long. Wake up, please wake up.”

“Well, all right,” Sherlock whispered, and opened both eyes. Flashing pain sliced through her head, and rising bile clogged her throat. She swallowed, still wanted to vomit, and swallowed again.

Rachael said, “I was nauseous, too, but it’s almost gone now. At least I can control it. You will, too.”

“Rachael?” Was that her voice? That thin little thread of sound?

“Yes, I’m right beside you. I woke up maybe five minutes ago. Are you all right?”

Now that was a joke. “Yes, but give me another moment.”

“We’re both tied up.”

“Yes.” Sherlock felt the ropes digging into her wrists. They’d tied her ankles, too, but around her slacks, so there was some protection. “Brady Cullifer,” she said, “he’s a real showman—all that concern about your father’s will. He staged it like a pro, sucked me in like a raw rookie. I’m sorry, Rachael, I didn’t protect either of us.”

“Stefanos Kostas hit you.”

“I know. I wasn’t fast enough.”

“I’m the lousy judge of character here. I trusted Brady completely,” Rachael said. “He seemed to like me, right from the beginning, and he’d worked for Jimmy for at least two decades. Jimmy trusted him, felt he was completely loyal.”

She sighed. “I never believed for a second he was involved. I liked him so much, he was so comforting, so sympathetic. It’s beginning to look like every single person Jimmy introduced me to is involved in this thing. And Brady Cullifer’s in the thick of it. He sucked Jack in, too.”

“Yes, he got all of us. I wonder where we are?”

“I woke up briefly. Before I went under again I realized we were moving, in a car. I think we were stuffed in a trunk. This room is too dark to see much of anything, so I don’t know where we are. Has Brady brought us to his office? His house?

Sherlock heard voices. “Keep quiet. Play dead.”

A door opened and light speared into the dark.

“Looks like they’re still out,” Stefanos said, and came down on his knees. He placed two fingers against the pulses in their necks. “Strong. They’re not dead.”

Laurel said, “All right, then. They’re alive, no bullet wounds or injuries, we can go through with what we discussed. It will be an auto accident. It is too bad, though, that we now have to deal with this damned FBI agent, as well.”

Stefanos said, “I didn’t have a choice. But we’re good at this. We’ll stage it just like Nichols and I did with Jimmy.”

“I’m not a murderer,” Cullifer said, his voice suddenly austere. “Stefanos struck both of them down. I helped bring them here as you asked. You can deal with them as you choose.”

Laurel laughed. “So you draw the line at slipping barbiturates into Rachael’s wine? You didn’t think she was supposed to die? We will all deal with this, Brady, and don’t forget that. You’re certain that the real will the senator made is now in his papers?”

“Yes, everything’s as it should be.”

Laurel said, “Not ideal, but at least there will be no smoking gun for the FBI to discover when Rachael and the FBI agent are found dead in an automobile accident.”

Quincy said, “I still can’t believe we’re ending up leaving Jimmy’s will to be found there and not our own version. After all that’s happened, we’ll have nothing at all to show for this, not majority control, not even a way to prevent an audit. I still think we should leave our version of his will. Why not? I mean, everyone can be suspicious, wonder why Jimmy didn’t leave anything to his adopted daughter, but what can they do?”

“We’ve been through this,” Brady said. “I was very particular in my wording, emphasizing it was his father’s deepest wish that all stock remain in his children’s hands. But now—”

Laurel said impatiently, “But now having our version of the will surface would be like waving a red flag at the FBI and confessing our guilt. Look, Quincy, all the stock will go to our two nieces and Rachael’s family. Yes, it’s a damned tragedy to have to deal with people like that, but perhaps we can buy them out. It will cost us, admittedly, but at least the will the FBI will undoubtedly find won’t be our forgery. They can prove nothing about the senator. They can prove nothing about Greg Nichols. As for Rachael, we’ve been extremely fortunate. We will be harassed, but I don’t see how they’ll be able to indict us. We will salvage this mess yet. Rachael has given us a golden opportunity. We will use it. Then we can go back to our lives, the nightmare behind us.”

It had nothing to do with my father’s confession. Sherlock was right, it was about money the whole time, money and control of the company. Unfortunately for them, I didn’t die. When I showed up with the FBI, they knew they were in deep trouble.

Rachael managed not to move when someone toed her in the ribs. Quincy’s voice came from above her. “I can’t believe this damned girl survived. I’ll tell you, I thought it was all over when she showed up with the FBI.”

Keep it down, dammit, keep it down. But it wouldn’t stay down, wouldn’t—Rachael sneezed.

“Well now, look who was playing possum,” Quincy said. “You trying to be cute, too?” He kicked Sherlock hard in the side. Her breath whooshed out at the sharp blow. “Come on, Agent Sherlock, time to rise and shine, as my nanny used to say.” He drew back his foot again.

“Leave her alone,” Rachael shouted as she struggled to sit up. “Don’t, Quincy.”

Laurel stared down at her. “You didn’t drown. Perky showed me the nice stout ropes, the block of concrete, and yet you still managed to get free, even full of those barbiturates. Imagine Quincy’s surprise when he went to the senator’s house to make certain everything was set. Pity he didn’t have time to get to you before you drove off.”

“I guess you and Perky screwed up, or whichever one of you was with her at Black Rock Lake. But it didn’t matter much, did it?” Rachael said. “You found me fast enough.”

“It took a bit of research to turn up that backwoods town Parlow, but you managed to survive that, too,” Laurel said.

It was difficult to be conciliatory—no, it was impossible. Rachael was filled to overflowing with hatred. She looked up at Laurel, her coarse hair haloed in the light. “Greg Nichols didn’t survive. You appear to be getting better at poisoning people.”

Quincy kicked her in the ribs.

Rachael saw Cullifer move back to stand in the doorway. Was he afraid of what he’d done?

Laurel dropped to her knees beside Rachael, grabbed her by her long hair, wrapped it around her fist, and jerked her head up. “How did you get out of Black Rock Lake? All of us were surprised, particularly Stefanos and Perky, who were sure you were dead.”

Why not tell her? It didn’t matter. “Stefanos and Perky didn’t tie my wrists, only wrapped the rope around my chest. And they didn’t bother to check me out, Laurel. I was awake, and I can hold my breath for a good long time.”

Laurel reared back a bit, and a hank of hair fell alongside her cheek. She brushed it back, shook her head. “Bad luck, it was just bad luck.”

“And bad luck that two of the assassins you sent after me are dead, and two others are headed straight to jail, once they get out of the hospital. I don’t think I’d want to work for you, Laurel, even with a good life insurance plan.”

Laurel struck Rachael across the mouth. She felt her lip split, felt the blood well up and dribble down her chin.

Laurel screamed at her, “Shut up! Now, you look at me, you miserable whelp. Damn you, you look like the senator, don’t you? How he loved that stupid braid you wear. It makes you look like a teenage hooker.” She shoved Rachael onto her back, and rose.

Stefanos closed his hand over her shoulder. His voice softened. “Don’t let her get to you, Laurel. It’s all right. We won’t have to worry about her any longer. Her luck’s finally run out.”

Sherlock’s cell vibrated in her jacket pocket. She tensed, but managed not to move. If there was only some way she could open her cell phone, but she couldn’t. Not yet. Was it Dillon? Had he tried before, while she was unconscious? If he did, he had to be worried.

“You might as well drag them into the living room, Stef, get ready to go. Quincy, make sure the windows are shut and the drapes pulled.”

Quincy asked, his voice contemptuous, “Tell me, Stefanos, when did you last use this hidden bordello of yours?”

Stefanos said, sounding amused, “A good week now, Quincy, a good week. You know you love the decor, don’t be shy about it.”

Being dragged about thirty feet into the living room hurt, but that was all right; it wasn’t as bad as the alternative. Rachael’s stomach ached from the blow from Quincy’s foot. She looked over at Sherlock, who lay on her back, her eyes closed, and, it seemed to Rachael, barely breathing. Then Sherlock’s eyes opened and she blinked in the bright light. They weren’t at Cullifer’s office or at his house. They were in a bungalow that indeed resembled a bordello, just as Quincy had said. Stefanos Kostas’s hideaway for his many mistresses?

The living room walls were covered with flocked red velvet wallpaper, gold brocade draperies over the window. They were lying on a Persian carpet beside four chaise longues and large deep chairs.

It was tacky Rachael thought, and called out, “I’m very thirsty. Could I have some water, please?”

She was ignored.

Sherlock said, “You poisoned Greg Nichols, didn’t you? You didn’t trust him anymore?”

Stefanos threw back his head and laughed. “You were awake the whole time we were talking, weren’t you? Well, it doesn’t matter. Actually, Nichols planned how to kill his boss. He approached us to talk about the senator. He was more than willing to buy in since he didn’t want to go to jail with the senator, have his own life ruined. I went along for the ride since Nichols already knew everything he had to do to make it look like an accident. Then the fool lost it after you and Agent Crowne went to see him, Rachael. You must have really scared him. He whined how everything was crashing down, and he knew we were all going to jail. He wanted to leave town. He wanted money, can you believe that? Well, he left town all right, didn’t he?”

Laurel walked to her husband, put her arms around him, and kissed his cheek. “That was well done, Stef.”

Stef? Laurel called her philandering husband Stef?

His arms went around her. “It will be all right, matia mou,” Stefanos said, and kissed her hair. “I always snip loose threads.”

“And why not?” Laurel said, eyeing both of them impartially. “Does everyone agree? We can’t have an FBI agent disappear. Agent Savich would never let that go, never. It would have been hard enough to have Rachael disappear. Our only choice now is an auto accident, fitting, I think, particularly for Rachael.”

Quincy nodded.

Stefanos stepped away from his wife and pulled a small blunt-nosed .38 from his jacket pocket. “Ladies, we will untie your feet. You will stand up and we will go out to Agent Sherlock’s car. You needn’t concern yourselves about anything else.” He turned to his wife. “I believe we’ll drive to those cliffs near where Rachael’s father died. There’s never much traffic there, even this time of day.”

“Yes, that’s good. Let Brady help,” Laurel said.

Quincy said, “Brady must have slipped out, the shitty little coward.”

“No matter,” Stefanos said, and smiled at Rachael and Sherlock. “We don’t have to worry about Brady. He has a very strong sense of self-preservation.”

SIXTY

Dillon shut MAX’s top and rose. He said, “Excuse me, sir, but Agent

Crowne and I have to go. There’s trouble.” He and Jack were halfway to the conference room door when Maitland called out, “But, Savich, where are you going? What happened?”

“Sherlock’s in trouble,” Savich said over his shoulder, never slowing. “MAX helped me track down her cell phone GPS coordinates.”

“But how do you know she’s in trouble?”

There was no answer because Savich and Jack were gone. Savich roared out of the Hoover Building garage, only to hit the afternoon traffic on Pennsylvania Avenue. The Porsche preferred to fly, but Savich also knew how to skim around other cars, slip in and out whenever there was a sliver of an opening. Too many people, Savich thought, and turned onto Seventh Street and picked up some speed as they passed the National Mall. He caught Pennsylvania Avenue again, heading toward the Potomac, and crossed the John Philip Sousa Bridge at a crawl, but was soon speeding north on 295, the Baltimore-Washington Parkway still light with commuters.

“Looks like we’re heading to Hailstone,” Savich said. “Eighteen minutes, if traffic stays light and the cops stay away.”

“I can’t believe she and Rachael are at Stefanos’s mansion. Why? How’d they get from Rachael’s house to Hailstone, Maryland?”

“We’ll find out. Jack, have one of our people check out Rachael’s house, see if her Charger and Sherlock’s Volvo are there. Is your seat belt fastened?” There was a break in traffic and Savich let the Porsche hit one hundred miles an hour, smooth as a slide of silk.

Jack nodded and used his cell phone.

A clear stretch ahead. Savich hit the hammer. The Porsche glided to 110, passed a speeding Cadillac. Savich saw the guy’s white face flash by.

A black Ferrari danced with them for a mile or two, then let them go, Savich smoothly pulling around it. The driver sent Savich a look of surprise and a thumbs-up.

Traffic thickened up and the Porsche growled back down to sixty. “They got both Rachael and Sherlock, Savich, you know they did. But how? Sherlock’s more careful than the Secret Service.” What are they going to do to them? But he didn’t ask that, his jaw locked so tight he couldn’t get the words out. “Why now? In the middle of the day? It’s a huge risk. What happened to make them move now?”

The Porsche ate up the miles. Savich said, “Jack, I’ve never believed people like Laurel Kostas wouldn’t commit murder based on strong emotions. Everything has happened so quickly, we never really thought this through. I don’t buy they murdered the senator because he was going to talk, even harder to believe they were trying to murder Rachael because she was going to confess what her father did. It simply isn’t enough of a motive. And then even after she’s with us and they know we must know everything, they still tried to get to her, broke into her house. It doesn’t make sense.”

Jack said slowly, “Okay, if the guy who broke into the house wasn’t there to kill her, then why was he there?”

Savich said, “Money.”

Jack said, his eyes locked on the highway ahead, at the blur of cars, “All right, something to do with money. But what?”

“I have a feeling we’re going to find out right now.”

The Porsche’s sexy female GPS voice told them the Hailstone exit was in 3.2 miles. “Good, good,” Savich said like a mantra. “Almost there. We’ll make it in a couple of minutes.”

Savich took the exit in a tight, controlled turn. After another right turn onto Nimere Avenue into the town of Hailstone, he said, “Rachael said her father left her a third of his estate, including the company stock and the house.” He smacked his palm on the steering wheel. “Why is that worth so much to them?”

“Maybe it’s about control of the Abbott empire,” Jack said.

The Porsche took a left on Clapton Road as smooth as spreading butter, doing sixty.

Jack said, “Wait, the Kostas mansion is back to the right. Where are we going?”

The GPS announced the location was 0.5 miles ahead.

“I don’t know,” Savich said.

An old gray Chrysler pulled onto the road directly in front of the Porsche.

SIXTY-ONE

Laurel said, “Just a moment, Stef.” She looked down at Rachael. “Tell me why you didn’t make the senator’s grand confession for him last night when you had the perfect chance.”

Quincy said, “That’s clear enough, Laurel. She finally realized she’d be considered a traitor to her father, and her idea for that damned foundation she wants to run would be trashed.”

Keep them talking, keep them talking. Rachael saw it in Sherlock’s eyes, and so she said, “No, none of that. Fact is, Aunt Laurel, I decided that only Jimmy could make public a revelation with such far-reaching consequences. His decision, no one else’s.”

“Are you telling the truth?” Quincy asked her.

“I’m lying here at your feet. Why would I lie?”

Suddenly tears appeared in Laurel’s eyes. The prison matron was suddenly remorseful about murdering her brother? Tears? Rachael stared at her. What was going on here?

Laurel said, “It means I didn’t fail. And do you know, I’d already accepted that I had? I despised you so much, Rachael. Daddy would never have forgiven me if you had spoken out. Never. He believed there was never any excuse for failure.”

Daddy? Her father? That profane old man who took my father from my mother? But he was dead, months and months dead, dead before they murdered Jimmy. Daddy?

“That old bastard,” Quincy said. “How did he even find out what Jimmy did? I didn’t have a clue until Jimmy told us.” Quincy banged his fist against his palm.

“Dammit, he should have told me, too. I was his loyal son. I stayed, didn’t go haring off to the damned Senate. I was the son who did whatever he asked. Damned old bastard.”

Rachael and Sherlock barely breathed.

“Calm yourself, Quincy. Daddy never told me how he found out about it,” Laurel said. “I do know he had Jimmy followed now and again, had detectives check on him. He liked to know where all the pieces were on the chessboard—you know that was always his way. Plus, he was very angry that Jimmy ignored all his ideas for new legislation.”

“Stop your whining, Quincy,” Stefanos said. “It is really unattractive, doesn’t go well at all with your patrician image.”

“Shut your trap, you suck-up—”

Stefanos laughed. “Is that envy I hear?”

Quincy shouted, “Envy of what? That the old man invented your image to suit himself and his own purposes, and you let him?”

Stefanos said, “I always thought it was one of your father’s better ideas.”

Sherlock was working the knots at her wrists. Please, let them keep talking, let them thrash it all out, go for each other’s throats, for all I care. Three more minutes, that should do it. She worked until her wrists were raw and she felt the sting and wet of her own blood but it didn’t matter. They’d found her ankle holster and taken her Lady Colt, but they hadn’t searched her inner jacket pocket with its single Kleenex and her Swiss Army knife.

Quincy said, “Yeah, right, making a fool of Laurel for fifteen years! I never liked it. I knew what people were saying about you behind their hands. But Father used to laugh when he’d hear gossip about your mistresses, about your barhopping, your partying with hookers in this little bungalow, not even five minutes from where you lived with my sister. Did you laugh with him, Laurel?”

She said, her voice light, “I’ve always loved the theater.”

Sherlock felt her cell vibrate again. Dillon, it had to be Dillon. He’d come, she knew he’d come.

Stefanos turned to Rachael, smiled down at her. “You have no idea what he’s talking about, do you?”

“I only know you’re a philandering jerk.”

Laurel said, “But that’s only what everyone was supposed to believe. Stefanos’s reputation as a womanizer—that was my father’s idea. He got a real kick out of building that reputation for my dear Stef.”

Stefanos picked it up. “It worked to our advantage, what with business associates believing I was nothing more than a simple-minded playboy he’d bought for Laurel. I got so many of those old jackasses to invite me to their weekend retreats where they paraded their mistresses about, talked openly about the women they were screwing, about this business expansion or that merger. They couldn’t imagine I was a threat to them. All the booze, the sex, the stupid schemes. I recorded all of it, even managed to videotape some of it when those old codgers came over to my own little place here. They loved all the red velvet. They never saw the cameras. The old man was very pleased. He enjoyed watching the films I made.”

Laurel said with a smirk. “Business took a marked upswing.”

“I haven’t done so much of that now that the old man’s dead,” Stefanos said. “It was getting tiresome.”

Laurel said, “Before Daddy became really ill that last time, he told me what Jimmy had done. He asked me to promise I would never allow anyone to find out. He was worried because he said Jimmy had this tender girl’s conscience, he hated to say it out loud since Jimmy was his oldest son, but the truth was the truth. He’d bred a weakling. Jimmy had all our mother’s flaws. It shamed him.”

“Dammit, Laurel, our old man was nuts. You know what else? I think he turned on Jimmy when he broke away to run for the Senate. You know why—it was Jimmy’s idea, not his. He hated that he couldn’t control Jimmy, hated that Jimmy wouldn’t do what he told him to.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Laurel said. “Not now. When he was dying, he asked me again to promise, to accept it as my responsibility. And so I did.”

Quincy said, “And look where that’s led. Jimmy’s dead. Greg Nichols is dead. These two bitches will shortly be dead, and we’re fighting for our lives here.”

A lot of bodies piling up around you, aren’t there, Laurel? Rachael held very, very still.

Stefanos looked at his wife’s white face. “The promise you made to your father was honorable, Laurel. As to what he really was, it no longer matters, just as you said. It’s only us now, and we will do what we must to survive. To win.”

Laurel said, passion thick in her voice, “Daddy mattered. He mattered more than anyone.” She walked over to Rachael and went down on her knees beside her. “After Daddy died, your mother thought she could cash in at last, make her move, and so she sent you to the senator, and that ridiculous fool decided you were a gift from the gods.”

“He adopted the bitch,” Quincy said. “I couldn’t believe he did that, and so fast.”

“Yes, well, Jimmy never cared about money, now did he?” She looked up at her brother. “In the end, he didn’t care about the family, either. He became a threat to us.” She touched her fingers to Rachael’s cheek. “And now you will die in a car accident, just like he did, and we will survive.”

Laurel got slowly to her feet, strode over to where Stefanos was standing next to the fireplace. Without her shoes, she looked smaller, a frumpy, heavyset matron in fishnet stockings. She looked tired, old, her lipstick long gone, a spiky band of coarse hair hanging along her cheek.

Stefanos took her hand, kissed it, then smoothed his thumbs over her eyebrows. “All will be well now, matia mou. Quincy and I will take the ladies to the agent’s car and send them on their final journey. The FBI will howl and bitch, but what can they do? They have no proof against us. They have suppositions, they have a wish list, but nothing our lawyers can’t handle.”

Stefanos turned to look at Rachael and Sherlock. A dark brow went up. “Time to see if there’s an afterlife, ladies,” he said, and raised his .38.

SIXTY-TWO

Savich saw the woman’s deathly white face the instant before he would have slammed into the driver’s side of her Chrysler. He turned the Porsche’s steering wheel hard to the left, pumped the brake, fed in a bit of gas, and that magnificent machine responded perfectly, but the road simply wasn’t wide enough.

The Porsche came to a stop, the front wheels dangling over a ditch.

The ancient Chrysler slowly moved forward again. Savich looked up to see the woman give him the finger. He laughed, couldn’t help it.

Jack was cursing as he opened his door and looked out. “Well, the damned ditch is only six feet deep. We’ve got to get the Porsche out of here fast, Savich.”

Savich carefully opened the driver’s door and eased out. “Stay put, Jack, we’re a bit wobbly.” He dialed 911, asked for immediate assistance. He punched off, punched in Sherlock’s cell. She didn’t answer. He looked around, watched at least six cars roll by, people looking, but nobody stopped. Savich raised his face. “Where’s a cop when you need one?”

Time, Jack thought, time was running out. Savich dialed Sherlock’s cell once again.

There was no answer.

SIXTY-THREE

Rachael said, “There’s something I don’t understand. When you broke into my house, you weren’t there to kill me, were you? I mean, there was no reason any longer. You took a huge risk.”

Stefanos said, “We needed to replace the forged will with the will the senator had made and told you about. When we believed you dead in Black Rock Lake, disappeared forever, it was all much simpler. The forged will was in place—with no mention of you. You know the rest of it. We had to salvage what we could. We had to protect ourselves. But it didn’t work out, did it? Why the hell did you scream? I was nowhere near you.”

Rachael said, “I was having a drowning nightmare, thanks to all of you.”

The ropes on Sherlock’s wrists split apart. Her wrists hurt, her hands were numb.

She didn’t look at Rachael. It was all on her, no one else.

Stefanos said, “All right, no more talk. Quincy, let’s get this over with. We’ll haul them out to the car. Don’t you move, Agent, or I’ll kill you here.” And he raised his .38.

When he bent over to grab Sherlock’s feet, she kicked him hard in the chest. He couldn’t yell, he had no breath. He fell backward, grabbing his chest, and the .38 flew out of his hand. Sherlock flipped open her Swiss Army knife and sliced through the ropes on her ankles in a single motion.

She heard the .38 hit the carpet but didn’t know where it landed. There wasn’t enough time. Quincy was on her, yelling, hitting her, then his hands were around her neck. She sent the back of her hand into his Adam’s apple. Quincy fell back, gagging, clutching his throat.

Sherlock rolled over to Rachael, flicked the knife over the ropes tying her ankles, then sliced through the ropes on her wrists.

Laurel was moving, fast, but Sherlock didn’t stop, she couldn’t stop.

“That will be quite enough.”

Rachael was finally free. They both looked to see Laurel holding Stefanos’s .38. Sherlock said right in Rachael’s face, “Get out of here. Now.” She rolled upright and threw her knife at Laurel.

The knife went deep into Laurel’s shoulder and she screamed.

“You bitch.” Tears streamed down her face as blood flowed down her chest. Laurel made a strange growling sound, and pulled the trigger.

Sherlock felt the sharp punch of the bullet. She wanted to pull the knife out of Laurel’s shoulder and slam it into her black heart. But she knew she couldn’t do it. She was on her knees, couldn’t seem to stand. She stared at Laurel, and fell onto her side.

Was that Rachael yelling? At Laurel? “You bloody bitch! That’s it, I’ve had it with you, do you hear me?” She heard a door slam in the distance, fast footsteps, heard a struggle, then Rachael screaming, “I’ve got the gun! Quincy, Stefanos, don’t you two move! No, wait, move—I want to wipe you off the face of the earth! You murdering bastards, you murdered my father!”

Even though she couldn’t move, Sherlock heard the sound of men’s voices, then Quincy yelling. Why? Maybe to save himself from Rachael?

Sherlock smiled. One of the men’s voices was Dillon’s. He’d taken his time, but he was here now. Finally he was here. She heard Rachael shouting, heard Dillon’s voice, quiet and close. Everything was all right now.

She felt cold suddenly, but it didn’t matter. Dillon would see to things. She closed her eyes and let her brain shut down.

SIXTY-FOUR

Savich lightly rubbed his fingers along her palm. He hated that her beautifulhand was limp, the flesh flaccid. But he’d put cream on her hands and they were soft. Two days, two whole days since that crazy woman shot you. Two days, but at least you’ll live. I’ve prayed so much I’ll bet God has closed down the switchboard. Do you know how close Laurel came to killing you? Jack was squeezing your side so tight you’re still bruised.

Savich looked up to see Mr. Maitland standing quietly in the doorway.

“The pain was pretty sharp so they gave her some more morphine,” Savich said. “She’s out. Before she closed her eyes, she asked me if she’d gotten Stefanos’s ribs. I told her three of them were busted, that he was hurting pretty bad. She said her aim with her Swiss Army knife wasn’t what you’d call real accurate—small wonder since it isn’t made for throwing. I told her Laurel wasn’t feeling too hot, either, and wasn’t it better that she’d stand trial and lose everything?

“Then she told me she really doesn’t need her spleen. I agreed. What was a spleen in the face of all the problems in the world? She was out again before she could laugh.”

Both of them considered this.

Maitland said, “We’ve got Brady Cullifer in a stylish orange jump-suit in a nice cell. He’s demanding to make a deal, ready and willing to roll big on Quincy, Stefanos, and Laurel because he claims he never killed anyone. The prosecutors—particularly Dickie—want him to sweat big-time before they offer him anything.”

Savich said after a moment, “That shoot-up we had in the Barnes & Noble in Georgetown—Sherlock was so angry at me because Perky could have killed me. To preserve my marriage, I let her throw me around at the gym.”

He sighed. “Now, look at her, flat on her back, minus her spleen, and I’m the wreck.”

“It’s over now, everyone’s alive, and all your agents are working double to cover your cases for you. We’ve got auditors going over all the Abbott corporation books. Be interesting to see what we find.”

Savich thought about it for a moment, then said, “There’s something I should tell you about the senator.” And Savich did, every detail of what happened eighteen months before.

Maitland said, “Thank you for telling me, Savich.” He sighed. “I know none of us want it, but it’s going to come out anyway at the trial. Hell of a thing. I am sorry about all of it.”

There was a light rap on the door. A nurse stuck her head in. “Agent Savich? Your mother-in-law begged me to come in and pull you out of here so she can see her daughter.”

Savich kissed Sherlock’s mouth, straightened, and said, “Okay, she can have five minutes.”

The nurse smiled at him.

Maitland said, “They’re all here—your mom, your boy, your sister, your in-laws from San Francisco, half the unit. I wonder when Director Mueller will show up. We even have some media. No, don’t worry, we’ll deal with them when the time comes.”

Maitland closed a big hand on Savich’s shoulder. “When Sherlock wakes up, you’ve got to bring Sean in to see her. He’s scared, but he’s doing okay.” He looked back at Sherlock. Her brilliant red hair spilled onto the white pillowcase, but her face was still pale, too pale.

He wondered when Savich was going to tell her that Sean’s terrier had chewed up her best and only pair of fancy high heels, the ones she’d worn at the Jefferson Club.

SIXTY-FIVE

Jamaica

Four days later

Savich and Jack made their way along the limestone cliffs to the narrow promontory where a man wearing baggy shorts, sneakers, and a Redskins T-shirt sat next to a mango tree, his arms around his knees, staring out over the water.

The spot wasn’t civilized and touristy like Negril, the closest town. The air smelled wild, the winds blew fiercely, the land baked hot and dry, and the cliffs rose a good seventy feet above the blue blue water that dashed against black rocks below, spewing white foam upward, the sound mesmerizing.

He didn’t move, didn’t say anything, didn’t acknowledge them when Savich sat down on one side of him, Jack on the other next to an ackee tree, although they both knew he’d heard them coming over the loose rubble that crumbled toward the cliff.

He said, “I wondered when someone would come. Are you CIA or what?”

“I’m Special Agent Savich, FBI, and this is Special Agent Jack Crowne.”

The man still didn’t move. He said, “Tourists dive off the cliffs at Negril, but not here. All those rocks below, sticking up like black teeth, and there are more hidden below the surface. They’d tear the flesh off your bones even if you managed to miss the others.”

Savich looked at the young man’s profile, dark complexion, thick straight black hair, a nice, wholesome-looking man who resembled his father, but he couldn’t be completely sure because they hadn’t yet seen him full face.

Savich said, “We haven’t told your father and mother that you’re alive and well and living in Jamaica.”

Jean David Barbeau finally turned to face him. He did indeed look a great deal like his father, but, unlike his father, he didn’t look ghastly pale from grief, his dark eyes weren’t desolate and empty. He looked calm, almost indifferent, as if he didn’t care they were there, and it was all over for him. He said, “How did you find me?”

Jack said, “Since your body was never found, I started thinking about the speedboat that rammed the boat you and your father were in, and why was it there exactly. The reports stated the boat’s name was River Beast. I checked into it and discovered the owner had a nephew who attended Harvard with you. Don’t think he rolled on you easily. We brought young financial analyst David Caldicott to the fifth floor of the FBI building, scared the crap out of him, and he finally admitted that he’d helped you stage your suicide.”

Jean David said, “David called me last night, told me how you threatened him, his parents, said he had to, no choice. He was sorry.”

“I know,” Jack said. “We gave him the phone.”

Jean David’s head whipped up at that. “Why?”

Savich said, “To triangulate your location. We wanted to know if you really were where Caldicott said you were.”

Jack said, “We found out you have a passport under your mother’s maiden name. You used it to come here, the day alter you tried to kill Dr. MacLean in Washington Memorial Hospital.”

“I was afraid you’d accuse my father of that.”

“Didn’t fit,” Savich said. “You’re a young man, you move like a young man, and your father isn’t a young man and no way could he move the way you did on the hospital security video. You had us chasing our tails there for a while, but then again, you’re quite the student of strategy, aren’t you, Jean David?”

His laugh was ironic. “Yeah, that’s me, the strategic expert. I always was smart; people used to tell me so in school and at the CIA. My bosses were grooming me because of my brain, but I’ll tell you, when it came to what was really important to me, my brain didn’t count a damn.”

“You’re talking about Anna Radcliff,” Savich said.

“Yes, Anna.”

“Her real name is Halimah Rahman, not Anna,” Savich said.

“No, damn you, her name is Anna. That bastard MacLean told you her name, didn’t he? And that’s how you got her.”

Savich said, “Dr. MacLean said your father had mentioned an Anna. It wasn’t difficult to find her and a half dozen of her terrorist friends.”

Jean David’s voice shook a bit. “If only she’d listened to me. I told her Dr. MacLean was blabbing about us. I told her she had to leave the country. I swore I’d join her, but she didn’t leave.”

He looked off into the distance, but Jack didn’t think he was admiring the Caribbean. Jean David said, “You know, I still think of her as Anna. That’s how she introduced herself to me in that coffeehouse in Cambridge.” He gave a sharp laugh, pointed to the single petrel swooping down to the surface of the water. “I know her real name is Halimah, but to me she will always be Anna. She confided in me, praised me, was interested in me, interested in what I thought. And she was so damned beautiful. I fell for her, fell hard. The sex was great, but you know, it was how she spoke to me, how she listened to me, laughed with me, admired everything I said. I fell completely in love with her.”

He turned to look at a huge cormorant that had entered the scene, not six feet from the petrel, hovering a dozen feet above the water, lazily scouting lunch. He spotted a surface fish and dove clean and straight. “I’ve watched him before,” Jean David said. “He’s really good. He’s smart. See, that’s a wrasse he’s got. He never misses.”

‘Your parents are a mess,” Savich said. “As Agent Crowne said, we haven’t told them you’re alive.”

“Yes, well, I did what I could, now didn’t I? My father was planning to send me into hiding, God only knows where. He kept making excuses for me, saying it wasn’t my fault, it was this evil woman’s fault, and what did it matter anyway since it was only a bit of American intelligence gone awry. I’m French, he said, who cares?

“But I know my parents, particularly my mother. The disgrace would have been more than she could bear. Hell, I couldn’t deal with it, either.” He shrugged.

Jack said, “You’re saying you tried to kill Dr. MacLean to keep him from talking about Anna?”

Jean David laughed. “Finally, something you’ve got all wrong. Those two attempted hit-and-runs, and the bomb on his plane, I didn’t do those things, I wouldn’t know how. It was Anna’s associates, as she called them. Like I said, Anna didn’t leave the country. She and her friends were doing well here. They believed they could contain any fallout, and so they started off by killing that friend of Dr. MacLean’s. They found out about him because they were already following Dr. MacLean.”

“Anna told you that?” Savich asked.

“She told me everything. Then you arrested her, and she was gone from me, forever. I guess I went nuts. Those guys had three chances to get MacLean and failed. I wasn’t going to fail. But I did. You know, I couldn’t believe that nurse shot me.

“By then I’d already staged my own suicide, of course, to solve the CIA’s problem, my parents’ problem, my problem. Everyone would be happy. Using Caldicott’s speedboat was the only weak point in the plan, but I had no choice. I had to hope the authorities wouldn’t doubt what had happened and dig too deep. They didn’t. But you did.”

Savich said, “Telling your father you were going to kill yourself, that was an excellent touch. You were gone, your parents were safe.”

There was surprise on Jean David’s face. “You got my father to admit I killed myself? I thought he’d go to the grave with that.”

Savich nodded. “He was devastated, he no longer cared about much of anything because his only son was dead. He saw no reason not to tell me. Your mother, however, didn’t want him to.”

Jean David shrugged. “It was better with me dead than standing trial as a traitor. Trust me on that.

“As for my life, it was over once you took Anna. She is the only woman I have ever loved. I’ll bet you’ve got her jailed and being interrogated as a terrorist in some place like Guantanamo.”

“She is a terrorist,” Jack said. “What’s even better is we got her whole group along with her.”

“Yeah, well, I love her. All I wanted to do was kill the man responsible but I even failed at that. I saved myself but I couldn’t save her.” Jean David fell silent, watching two pelicans follow in the cormorant’s trail. He said finally, “I understand that if it wasn’t for you, Agent Crowne, MacLean would already have died, scattered in a hundred pieces in the Appalachians.”

“Both of us would be,” Jack said.

Jean David whirled around to face him. “Dammit, my parents were his friends! He betrayed all of us.” He gave a harsh laugh and threw a pebble over the cliff. “I should have been the one to execute him, but I didn’t. I even told Anna I wanted to kill him, but she said I wasn’t trained, I’d fail. As if training made a bit of difference when her friends tried to kill him.

“But she was right. And would you look what happened—that corrupt bastard killed himself. I wonder if he saw any irony in that. After all, he believed that I’d killed myself.”

Jean David spat onto the rock just beyond his toe. “He knew me nearly all my life. Damn him, I was fond of him. Do you know he even visited me at college when I was a freshman? Just to see how I was doing, he said.” He struck his fist against his thigh. “I tell you, he deserved to die, deserved it. That trip to the hospital to kill him, I knew that was crazy. I knew it even as I was doing it, tried to talk myself out of it even as I walked up the stairs to his floor. But there was Anna’s face in my mind, and I knew I’d do it anyway.” He kicked a rock with his foot. “It turns out vengeance isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.”

Savich said, “Do you know why Dr. MacLean killed himself?”

Jean David picked up a pebble and tossed it from hand to hand. More cormorants flew in and swooped down to the water for lunch. He said absently, “These guys prefer the bigger fish, like snapper, but they’ll take wrasse. I guess Dr. MacLean killed himself because he finally realized he was to blame for all this misery, realized he didn’t deserve to live.”

That was close enough, Jack thought. Why bother to waste his breath explaining about the disease that had robbed MacLean of himself? Jean David undoubtedly already knew about it, and didn’t believe it, or didn’t care.

Savich reached out and grabbed Jean David’s arm.

He winced. Savich dropped his arm. “It got infected, didn’t it, but it’s better now. You saw a Dr. Rodrigo in Montego Bay. He said you left it until it was nearly too late.”

“Yes, it’s better, but who cares?”

Jack said, “Did you know Dr. MacLean was also a longtime friend of my family?”

Jean David said, “I don’t suppose he tried to ruin you and your family, too?”

“Well, you see, I didn’t betray my country and refuse to take responsibility for it.”

Jean David twisted around to face him. “Look, I know you’re thinking I’m a selfish asshole. I’m not sorry about Dr. MacLean, but believe me, I regret passing secure information on to Anna because of what she did with it, sorry about all of it. But I did it, so anything I say comes across as a pitiful excuse, as self-serving, as meaningless to anyone who counts.”

Jack said, his voice emotionless, “It seems you were ready and willing to risk the lives of any number of people. I wonder how many more CIA operatives have died and will die because of the information you passed to your girlfriend.

“This woman you claim you love—she is a terrorist. She kills people. Her name isn’t Anna, it’s Halimah. She’s a Syrian fundamentalist. She’s been trained to seduce young men, to use them. She used you, played you to perfection. What she gave you was a fantasy, and you bought into it. Love? It wasn’t ever about love, and you should know that by now.

“You’re not only an asshole, Jean David, you’re pretty stupid. Talk about letting a woman lead you around by your dick. Aren’t you done with that?”

After a moment of acid silence, Savich said, “But you’ll always be smart to your parents, Jean David—their beloved, precious son who was seduced into making a few bad judgments. I don’t think they’ll ever allow themselves to accept that their son is responsible for the loss of countless innocent people.”

Jean David said, “One of the excuses my father made for me was that I couldn’t be a traitor to this country—I was only born here by accident, after all. No, France is my country, and I owe my allegiance only to France.

“The thing is, he’s dead wrong. Hell, I’m a Redskins fan. America is my country. I would never have done what I did on purpose.” He sighed. “I don’t suppose it matters now. You want to take me back, don’t you?”

“Yes,” Jack said. “We do.”

He was fast. Savich managed to grab his Redskins shirt, but it was so old, it ripped off him. He saw the white bandage on his arm as Jean David Barbeau leaped off the high limestone cliffs on the far west coast of Jamaica. He didn’t make a sound.

Savich was breathing hard, shocked and furious that he’d let him get away from him. He and Jack stood at the edge of the cliff. They saw him floating facedown seventy feet below.

“Do you think he hit those hidden rocks?”

Savich said, “I don’t think it matters.”

“His parents,” Jack said. “They’re going to be destroyed all over again.”

“Only if they find out about it. Let’s retrieve his body, see how we can get him buried here in Jamaica, and try to keep what happened here from getting back to them.”

He heard a loud squawk. Savich looked at the group of cormorants hovering some fifty feet above Jean David’s body. They hovered a moment, then winged their way out over the Caribbean.

Savich turned to Jack. “It’s odd, isn’t it, how both these cases involved obsessions with family honor and family shame. So much needless tragedy.”

“No, not in this case,” Jack said slowly, looking down at Jean David’s body, waves pushing it back and forth against the black rocks. His body would be torn to shreds, he knew, and he didn’t care. “I think it’s about a spoiled young man who found out he wasn’t as smart as he thought he was.”

“All right, let’s get this done.” Savich pulled out his cell phone and called the local police captain.

EPILOGUE

It was a fine day in Slipper Hollow. By count, nearly half the population of Parlow, Kentucky, had made the five-mile trip to a place few of them had even known about a few short months before. It certainly wasn’t at all hidden now. There’d been a two-dozen-car caravan driving the two-lane road, winding and turning back on itself, trees pressing in on all sides, mountains hovering, then, all of a sudden, there was a wide turnoff to the right onto another, narrower road, beautifully paved and landscaped with bushes and flowers on both sides. It was a very wide driveway, really, and it led to a beautiful hollow of land in the midst of which sat a magnificent house, built almost entirely by Gillette Janes himself.

It wasn’t to celebrate a wedding that half the town came out on this beautiful, warm fall day, it was the installation of a new cell phone tower right on the property. Now everyone had cell phones, and glory be, they worked. All the time. Deals had been made, Dougie Hollyfield knew, between the newly established Abbott Foundation and the cell phone company.

It was the middle of September, a vivid day, blue sky, the leaves beginning to change color, and the golds and oranges mixed with the remaining green made you weep with the beauty of it.

Rachael and Jack Crowne were engaged now, Sheriff Hollyfield knew, and they sure looked it, always standing close, always touching, even as they greeted people and directed them to the two huge open-sided tents, loaded with tables of food, circular tables and chairs, and hired waiters serving champagne and beer. There was even a band and a dance floor made of plywood.

Agent Dillon Savich stood with his wife, Agent Sherlock. She’d been shot, she’d admitted to Sheriff Hollyfield the day before when he’d asked her about it, and had lost her spleen, but she looked fine now. Their son, Sean, was throwing a football with half a dozen other little boys in the meadow outside the tent.

As for the engaged couple, they’d announced a Christmas wedding here at Slipper Hollow and invited everyone. Sheriff Hollyfield could imagine a White House-sized tree all decorated with lights standing in the middle of the hollow. A bit of snow would be nice.

Dougie Hollyfield, as was his habit, kept his eyes open, watching, and when a little girl ran after a Frisbee and stumbled, he immediately ran toward her. He was so fast he even beat her mother. He looked up to see Gillette Janes speaking to Jack Crowne’s older sister, dark-haired, tall and leggy like her brother, a lawyer. They looked mighty interested in each other.

He remembered how badly the house had been shot up, and he’d had to deal with the aftermath of all those people trying to kill not just Rachael, but Jack Crowne and Gillette Janes himself. What a mess that had been. But it seemed to have changed things here quite a bit, beginning with the huge building project Gillette had begun two weeks later when he’d opened up Slipper Hollow to the world around it.

Dougie Hollyfield’s cell phone blasted out “Born Free,” programmed especially for him by Agent Savich the previous day. He answered it and grinned hugely at the clear, crisp voice of one of his deputies. “What did you say? Mrs. Mick’s car broke down and she’s in labor and alone? Well, why didn’t you call Dr. Post? You don’t have his cell number?” Dougie gave it to him. “Look, he’s here, so I’ll tell him his fun is over and to meet you at the hospital with Mrs. Mick.”

He flipped his cell closed, accepted a glass of very nice champagne from a passing waiter, and walked toward Dr. Post, who was laughing at something Suzette from Monk’s Cafe was saying to him.

Funny how life worked, he thought, and waved to Dr. Post, who turned and lost his smile.

The cell tower party lasted until midnight. Everyone was calling everyone else, even when they stood three feet apart, and everyone was exchanging cell numbers.

It was a glorious night, a half-moon high in the sky, the music slow and dreamy now, couples dancing.

Dougie Hollyfield didn’t think there was any more champagne in Slipper Hollow.