The FBI Thrillers Collection: Vol 11-15

by Catherine Coulter

  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, bent 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 mold ings. 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-fiancé.

  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.”

  “A
h, 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 hair was pulled back and clipped at the nape. She wore 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 Greek 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 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.”