“No involvement. You’re in Denver, I’m in L.A. How can there be involvement?”
“Well, you didn’t call just to chat.”
“I need only one tiny favor.”
“I can’t do favors for you.”
“Tess, I pulled a thorn out of your paw. That has to count for something. Anyway, it’s not a big deal. I just need to know if a given individual is enrolled in the witness protection program.”
“The U.S. Marshals run that program, not the FBI.”
“Yeah, like you don’t have access to their databases?”
She did, of course, and Abby, of course, knew it. “I’m not going to help you,” Tess said. Somehow the living room of her apartment, which had always seemed big enough until now, was suddenly too small, the walls closing in like the jaws of the trap.
“It’s not a big deal, Tess. Just a little tidbit of info that no one will ever miss.”
She felt her resolve failing. “I can’t do it,” she said again.
“You can if you believe you can. Some Zen wisdom there. How about it, Grasshopper?”
Tess lowered her head. The phone was hot in her hand, or maybe it was her hand that was hot. She knew she should refuse. Should end the call. But Abby was right. There was a debt, and a connection.
“If I try,” she heard herself say tonelessly, “will you promise to leave me alone after this?”
“Sure. Until the next time I need a favor.”
“Abby ...”
“You know, for a lion who got relief from a painful foot injury, you sure are grouchy.”
“That’s what happens when people call me at midnight.”
“Did I wake you?”
“Uh, no. Just ... reading.”
“Reading in bed?”
“Yes.”
“What’s his name?”
Tess blinked. “I didn’t say—”
“You didn’t have to. I actually heard your face go red with a demure Catholic-schoolgirl blush. So is it serious? You two going steady?”
“I ... it’s somebody I ... never mind.”
“You’re not giving me the good dish, Tess. Is he married?”
“Of course not.”
“Just asking. Younger than you?”
Tess had to smile. “Are you saying I’m old?”
“Not at all. I’m only wondering if you’re robbing the cradle. You know, women reach their sexual peek at forty. Men, at eighteen. Something to think about.”
“I’m not forty.”
“The question is, is he eighteen?”
Despite herself, Tess had to laugh. “No, he’s not. But he is a couple of years younger than I am.”
“Good in the sack?”
“Come on, you don’t expect me to answer that.”
“There’s that blush again.”
The ridiculous thing was, Tess really was blushing. She could feel the warmth in her face. “I just can’t talk about it now,” she said.
“Sex between consenting adults is nothing to be embarrassed about, no matter what those prickly old nuns taught you. I mean—he is an adult, isn’t he? Of legal age?”
“He’s thirty-six. How did we get on this subject, anyway?”
“You know how it is with me. One thing leads to another. There doesn’t have to be any logical progression. It’s more like stream of consciousness.”
“Like swimming upstream, I’d say.”
“Hey, you made a funny. Good for you. This guy is loosening you up, Special Agent. Taking some of the starch out of your undies.”
Tess sighed. She honestly did not know whether or not she liked Abby. She was quite sure she disapproved of her, but as for liking her ... that was another question.
“What is it you want from me?” she asked, resigned now.
“Got a pencil?”
“Hold on.” Tess found a pad and pen, and turned on a lamp. “Go.”
Abby gave the name, address, Social Security number, and other particulars of a woman whose personal history extended only eight years into the past.
“Got it,” Tess said when she finished scribbling. She still felt a little stupid for getting talked into this. “I assume I can reach you at the number you’re calling from.”
“It’s my cell. Handcuffed to my wrist at all times. And, Tess—”
“You don’t have to thank me.”
“Wasn’t gonna. I was just going to say I need the info ASAP.”
“I’ll do my best. There are no guarantees.”
“Never are, in our line of work.”
“You and I are not in the same line of work,” Tess said, but Abby had already hung up.
Tess refolded the phone and went into the bathroom. In the glow of a nightlight she ran some water from the tap and splashed her face. Her headache was stronger than before. Funny how even a brief dialogue with Abby was enough to start her head throbbing.
She looked at herself in the mirror. The face that gazed back was framed in a shoulder-length fall of strawberry blond hair, brushed daily to smooth out its natural curls. She came from Highlands stock; her ancestors had roamed the steep hillsides, braving the winter winds, dancing reels around bonfires, surviving poverty and famine and war. She sometimes wondered if she’d stayed this long in Denver because something about chill winds and mountain slopes spoke to her ancestral instincts.
Her forebears had been hard, tough people, and she thought there was a certain toughness in her, as well—a quality not immediately apparent in her smooth skin and quiet voice, but noticeable, perhaps, in the set of her mouth and the gray depths of her eyes. Few FBI agents ever drew their weapon in the field, and fewer still ever fired it, but in her fourteen-year career she had killed three men, each of whom had been doing his best to kill her. She’d had to be tough to survive those battles, and to survive the death of the one man—sorry, Josh—the one man she’d ever really loved. If there was such a thing as a soul mate, Paul Voorhees had been hers, and he still was, even if six years had gone by since a serial killer named Mobius had murdered him in a Denver suburb and left the body for her to find.
Mobius had been after her, not Paul. Sometimes she almost wished she had been home that night instead of him.
She sighed. Morbid thought. She was having a lot of those lately. Did Abby really have to ask her age? Two weeks ago she’d turned thirty-nine, and lately she was feeling every one of those years. Faint creases had appeared at the corners of her eyes, and she had to work harder to keep extra weight from collecting on her hips. She didn’t like it. Though still young by any reasonable standard, she was feeling old.
But at least she had Josh. He’d been good for her, even if they had to skulk around, dining in out-of-the-way restaurants and feigning disinterested professionalism on the job. And if women really did reach their sexual peak at forty, then she still had something to look forward to.
The thought made her smile, and the smile, she noticed, deepened those wrinkles near her eyes.
She left the bathroom and slipped back into bed.
“You okay?” Josh asked sleepily.
“Fine.”
“Who called?”
“Trouble.”
He rolled over. “Shouldn’t have answered, then,” he mumbled.
Tess shut her eyes. “Now you tell me.”
6
Reynolds needed to relax. The town-hall meeting had gone smoothly enough—no combative questions from the audience, no slip-ups on his part—but she had been there again. Tucked away at the back of the room, in a dim corner, alone, saying nothing. Watching him.
He hoped Abby Sinclair was as good as she claimed.
Keyed up, he had driven Stenzel back to the campaign headquarters to pick up his car, then parked the minivan at his office. The minivan was solely for business purposes, its maintenance and miles tax-deductible. In the parking lot he kept his real car, a blue Mustang hardtop with a three-valve V-8.
He drove the freeways. Years ago he would have ridden a Harle
y, with no buffer between the wind and his body, feeling the lash of air as he screamed through tunnel of roaring noise. But a bike didn’t fit his image now, and besides, he was too old for that crap.
The long drive had calmed him down. Reynolds was feeling good as he parked near the condo in Costa Mesa. He had no key to the place, so he had to buzz the intercom. “It’s me,” he said when she answered. She let him in without another word.
He stepped into her apartment, and she shut the door behind him. She was in a nightgown and fuzzy slippers.
“It’s late,” Rebecca said, peeved.
“Out driving.” He said it without apology. He didn’t have to explain himself to her. She was his goddamned secretary, for Christ’s sake. All right, technically she was his constituent services coordinator, the intermediary who dealt with the various real and imagined crises in the lives of the voters in his district. She was stationed permanently in Orange County, the only staffer to run his office here when he was in D.C. They saw each other whenever he was in town. Fortunately it was an election year, and he was in town a lot.
They went into her bedroom. “Do anything tonight?” he asked, not caring, just making conversation as he stripped off his clothes.
“Watched TV.”
“Huh.”
“Nothing much on. Who was that woman?”
He glanced at her. “Woman?”
“Four o’clock appointment. Sinclair.”
“Personal matter.”
“You can’t talk about personal matters with me?”
“Oh, I can. I just figured we’ve got better things to do. What do you care about her, anyway?”
“She’s very attractive.”
“Didn’t notice.”
Rebecca made a face. “Right.”
“What are you, jealous?”
“Just ... curious.”
“You know what they say about curiosity and the cat.”
“No, what?”
“It killed the cat.”
“What did?”
He was exasperated. “Curiosity.”
She frowned. “I don’t get it. What is it, a riddle?”
“It’s a saying. An old saying. I guess it’s from before your time.”
“Must be.”
Suddenly he was feeling old. He didn’t like it. It made him angry. Made him hot.
“You’re a dumb bitch,” he said quietly, “you know that?”
“Jack—”
He shut her mouth with a searing kiss. He was tired of hearing her talk. He never wanted to hear her talk. He had enough conversation in his life.
When he broke away, he had silenced her. He unbuttoned her nightgown and let it fall away. “On the bed,” he ordered.
She sank onto the mattress, naked, supine, her ash blond hair fanning across the pillows.
“Roll over,” he said. “On your belly.”
“Do we have to ...?”
“Roll over.”
She obeyed, her bare back displayed for him like a side of beef. He whacked her hard on the ass, and she gave a little yelp of pain.
“You like that, bitch?”
“Yes, Jack.”
Another smack. The cheeks of her buttocks reddened.
“You like that?”
“Yes.”
A stinging wallop.
“Like it?”
“Yes.” Tears in her voice.
He grabbed her by the knot of hair at her nape and yanked her head back. “Say it louder.”
“Yes, Jack.”
“Yes, what?”
“Yes, I like it. I like it!” Her eyes glittered, wet.
He reached under her, cupping a breast, squeezing hard.
“You like that?”
“Yes.”
He made a fist, crushing the flesh in his hand. “Like it?”
“Yes ...”
“Louder.”
But she couldn’t say it louder. She was crying.
Well, if she wouldn’t talk, she would scream. He knew how to make her scream. Some of the bruises still hadn’t healed from last time. Now there would be more.
And she would like it.
***
An hour later, he pulled into the driveway of his home in Newport Beach. He went in via the side door, disarming and rearming the alarm system, then made his way through the ground level.
The house was big, but not quite big enough to be ostentatious, decorated in a simple but elegant style that looked more costly than it was. The décor had been his wife’s assignment, one of the few times in their twenty-five year marriage when Nora had actually contributed something to the partnership besides her family’s money. For the most part she was only a prop for him to lean on, an attractive prop, plumper then she once was but still curvaceous enough to draw admiring glances. She was neither shrewd nor wise, she had little imagination and limited ambition, but she did possess the cardinal virtue of loyalty. She had been faithful to him, always. He couldn’t say the same about himself.
“Jack.” Her voice drifted down from upstairs. “Is that you?”
“It’s me.”
He climbed the spiral staircase, shedding his jacket. He found Nora in bed, a book in her hand and a mildly annoyed expression on her face.
“Your meeting must have ended hours ago.”
He wondered why both of the women in his life insisted on criticizing him. “I took the Mustang for a spin.” He went into the bathroom and began to undress.
“Sometimes,” Nora said from the bedroom, “I think you love that car more than me.”
“Don’t be stupid.”
“How did it go? The meeting, that is?”
“The usual.”
“Press coverage?”
“No.”
“Good turnout, at least?”
“Not bad. What are you doing up so late? That book keeping you awake?”
“Actually, I was waiting for you.”
He had removed most of his clothes by now. Distantly he wondered why he never undressed in front of his wife. He had no qualms about stripping with Rebecca in the room. “Waiting? Why? Something you need to talk about?”
“I was just ... feeling lonely, I guess.”
He ignored the obvious implication. “You have plenty of friends around here.”
“Yes. I suppose I do.”
He threw in the pajamas and came out of the bathroom. Nora was pretending to read, her face set in a blank stare.
“Now you’re mad at me,” he said with a sigh.
She didn’t look at him. “How long has it been since we were ... together?”
It had been four months, but he feigned ignorance. “I’m not sure.” Before she could pursue the point, he went on the offensive. “As I recall, I’m not the one who kept saying no.”
Now she did look at him. “You hurt me, Jack.”
“Because of what I just said? It’s the truth.”
“It’s not what you said. I mean, you hurt me. The last time we ... you hurt me.”
“I got a little carried away.”
“More than a little.”
“It was a scratch.”
“Go on and tell yourself that, if you want to.”
She returned to her book, but her eyes were wet.
“Maybe I’ll sleep in the guest room,” he said.
She didn’t answer. That was fine. He’d had enough of this conversation, anyway.
He took the pillow from his side of the bed and carried it down the hall. He was pissed off now. The drive and his recreational outing with Rebecca had cooled his jets, and now he was all tense and edgy again.
He lay in bed, eyes shut, and took himself back to Rebecca’s bedroom, his hands working her over, her mouth issuing soft grunting protests that rose gradually to screams. Muffled screams, choked off by the pillow she pressed to her face so her neighbors wouldn’t hear—but screams, nonetheless.
Eyes closed, he shivered with pleasure, and unaccountably he thought of Abby Sinclair.
He would like to make that bitch scream, too.
He really would.
7
Abby was a downward facing dog, or more exactly she had arched her body into the yoga position of that name, when her cell phone rang. Her first thought was that Tess was calling with news on the witness protection thing. It was only eight o’clock in the morning, though. A little early to be hearing about that.
She pushed herself to a standing position and answered. “Abby Sinclair.”
It wasn’t Tess. It was Reynolds’ assistant, the ice princess, Rebecca somebody-or-other, who’d rejected Abby’s sisterly appeal. “Please hold for—”
“Congressman Reynolds,” Abby finished. “I know the drill.”
Evidently the congressman was too important to dial his own phone. She waited for a half minute, wondering how much she should reveal about last night’s less-than-successful enterprise, until Reynolds came on the line.
Surprisingly, he didn’t ask any questions. “I’ll be in L.A. for lunch today at the Brayton,” he said without preamble, and with none of his synthetic charm.
Abby was confused. “You’re asking me to lunch?”
“No.” His tone registered impatience with her stupidity. “I’m having lunch with some contributors. I’ll meet you at the hotel beforehand. The rendezvous court, eleven thirty. Go through the lobby and the galleria, past the elevators, and you’re there. Got it?”
“There’s not much I can tell you so far.” And there was even less she wanted to tell.
“I want any information you have.”
Click, and the call was over.
Abby was beginning to seriously dislike this man. What was worse, she was beginning to distrust him.
There might be some connection between Andrea Lowry and Jack Reynolds, but she didn’t think it had anything to do with housekeeping.
The Brayton Hotel was downtown. L.A.’s central library was right across the street. It had been a while since Abby had done any research there, the Internet having rendered it largely unnecessary to comb the stacks. But there were some items she couldn’t find online. On its Web site, the L.A. Times archived its articles as far back as 1985, but included no photos. It was the photos that interested her. The library would have the complete editions—text and pix—on microfilm.
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