“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 Harley, 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?”
