The night felt endless. She woke to the same rain and darkness, the hot damp air, the contrasting coolness of the rain-laden breezes. She couldn't see a clock anywhere, wouldn't have looked at it in any case. She kissed her way down his body. By the time she reached his groin, he was awake, erect, groaning. She kissed his shaft, licked the length of it, and felt it grow even more, then she took him fully in her mouth. Torment was a two-way street, and she wanted him to enjoy it as much as she had. She didn't know how many times they made love that night. Her mind was in a fog, her body completely turned over to him. When she was so exhausted she simply couldn't respond again, he cradled her in his arms and brushed a tender kiss across her eyes. "Sleep, darlin'," he whispered in that black magic voice, and it was as if she only needed to hear the words before she let go of consciousness.
Chapter 10
Hayes was a careful man. He hired competent people, but when someone told him a job was done, he didn't necessarily take it for granted that the job had been done to his satisfaction. He made it a point to double-check everything. His caution paid off, letting him catch and deal with irritants before they became major problems. The people who worked for him considered him a major pain in the ass, but the people for whom he worked were eternally grateful for his attention to detail. When Clancy called and reported he had taken care of his assignment, Hayes believed him; Clancy was damn good at what he did. But he still contacted another source to have a copy of the police report on the house fire, as well as the newspaper account, faxed to him on a private, untraceable line. He was competent with computers but more comfortable with older technology; he thought the security was better. With computers, who knew what little puke in Hoboken or somewhere was taking a peek at everything he sent or received?
His source called back the next day. "I can't find anything about a Karen Whitlaw's house burning," he said. "There was a house fire, but the house belonged to a couple named Hoerske." Hayes cursed. It wasn't like Clancy to burn the wrong house. "Do me a favor," he said. "Look in the phone book, and see what Karen Whitlaw's address is."
"Okay. Just a minute." The sound of riffling pages came through the phone line. "Whitfield… Whitfield…
Whitlaw. There's no Karen Whitlaw listed, but there is a K. S. Whitlaw."
"Hold on." Hayes checked the file he had on Dexter Whitlaw's wife and daughter. The daughter's middle name was Simone. "That would be her."
"Okay. The address is… hell, the address is the same as the Hoerskes' house." Hayes felt a headache forming behind his eyes. He pinched the bridge of his nose. "Fax everything you have to me."
"Sure."
Twenty seconds later, the fax machine was humming as it spit out the requested documents. Hayes didn't bother with the police report; he picked up the copy of the newspaper account: "A fire yesterday morning destroyed the residence of Nathan and Lindsey Hoerske. According to the fire marshall, the flame began in the kitchen. The Hoerskes, who bought the home only four months before, were not at home at the time of the blaze."
Hayes tossed the sheet down. It didn't take a genius to figure out what had happened; the Whitlaw woman had sold the house. Probably Clancy had looked up her address in the phone book, but phone books were only updated once a year.
He called Clancy. As always, he got voice mail. "Leave a number," Clancy's voice instructed, without identifying himself. "If I know you, I'll call back."
"You fucked up," Hayes said, also not identifying himself.
"The hell I did," Clancy said, picking up the phone. He sounded pissed; he wasn't used to customer dissatisfaction.
"She didn't live there, asshole. She sold the house four months ago."
"Well, sonofabitch. I hate that, burning down a house for nothing."
"Find her. And this time, do the job right."
Senator Stephen Lake expected to be the next president; a lot of other people expected the same thing. He and his older brother, William, had been groomed for public office from the time they were born, but when William died, Stephen had become the heir apparent. The Lakes were lawyers and judges and politicians, and Stephen was the fourth generation to follow that path. Senator Lake had always been acutely aware that William was his father's first choice, the apple of the old man's eye, and after William's death, Stephen had tried even harder to be the perfect politician, to make up to his father in some small way for the pain of losing his favorite son. He had set a sure and steady career course, building a reputation over the years as a man who always took the high road; an admirable position, Franklin Vinay thought, but the chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, not to mention the agencies involved, would be better served by pragmatism than idealism. The DDO didn't like being summoned to the senator's office like a schoolboy ordered before the principal. He went anyway, and none of his distaste was revealed in his expression as he sat in the beautifully appointed office. He did wonder, though, what had brought the senator back to the capital during August; the last Vinay had heard, Senator Lake had been happily settled at the Minnesota estate he so loved. Vinay couldn't imagine anything less than a national emergency luring any of the politicians from their vacations during the worst of the summer heat. Since he would have known before any congressman if there was a national emergency, perhaps even before the president, Vinay knew that wasn't the case.
That made Senator Lake's presence all the more curious, and Franklin Vinay wasn't a man who ignored curiosities.
"Coffee, Frank?" the senator asked, gesturing toward a pot.