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.”
His arms went around her. “It will be all right,
“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.”
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
