Playing Dead

“Steve-”

“Don’t bother making excuses.”

“I wasn’t going to.” He should have, but he didn’t regret his relationship with Claire. He only regretted deceiving her.

“I knew you’d fallen for her, but you’re going to get yourself in deep shit if you persist in this. What if she is working with her father? What if she knows where he is and is helping him evade the authorities? Can you honestly tell me that your judgment isn’t clouded? That you can-oh, this is really fucked. Anything you learn we can’t even use to prosecute. You’ve contaminated the entire case!”

“Whoa, hold off a minute, Donovan,” Mitch said. “O’Brien is a fugitive, and we can pursue him using any means possible. There is no contamination, other than the fact that Claire will hate my guts when she finds out I lied to her.”

“We sure as hell can’t use anything you’ve learned to-”

“To what? Prosecute Claire for talking to her father? Is that what you really want to do? We don’t even know that she has seen him. What we’ve guessed is that somehow he got a message to her, told her something that prompted her to track down Maddox.”

“She’s supposed to report any communication, not just physical contact.”

“I get that. But we agreed that the most important thing was putting O’Brien in federal custody to protect him. Wrongly convicted or not, he is in danger on the streets. If Claire is in contact with him, being close to her will help us find him. If we push her, I won’t be on the inside.”

His deception suddenly took a darker focus. He was not only watching Claire, but actively using her. It made him ill, but it was the single best way they had right now of finding Tom O’Brien.

“Think she’s on to you?”

“No.” Claire wasn’t the type to keep her opinion to herself.

“You’re going to have to push.”

“She’ll know.”

“What do you think this is, Bianchi? A game?”

“I’m not playing any fucking games. I think O’Brien made contact with Claire, but I can’t for the life of me figure out what he could have said that would have her working with him. I searched her computer and desk this morning when I sensed a change in her demeanor, found nothing from him, but lots of research on Oliver Maddox and the Western Innocence Project. And this guy”-Mitch tapped the file he was reading as Steve drove-“Professor Don Collier, which I already told you.”

They’d arrived at Maddox’s town house. “Okay, we work this but I’m going to be sitting on Claire,” Steve said. “I have to. If the tapes suggest that O’Brien was heading to Sacramento, I need to put this case on the front burner, which means authorizing surveillance on Claire.”

That would mean Mitch’s position would be made known to his colleagues.

“Shit.”

“You’ll have to tell Meg what you’ve been doing. I have your back on this, Mitch.”

So his career might be saved, but his personal life was going to go to hell, and fast.

They entered Maddox’s town house. It was messy, but it didn’t appear to have been tossed. There was no rotting food in the refrigerator-only condiments were on the shelves. Had someone come in here since the disappearance to clean it out?

“Maybe his girlfriend cleaned it out,” Mitch said.

“We’ll ask,” Steve said. “No computer.”

“There was no computer found in his Explorer.”

“There was a computer here,” Steve said and pointed to a printer and cables next to the desk. “Someone grabbed it. Could be Maddox took it. The windows were down in the Explorer. Maybe it floated out in the crash.”

“I searched the floor of the river extensively. I would have found it. Silt builds up, but in four months it would have been visible, and it would have been too heavy to float downstream.”

They searched the desk, Maddox’s bedroom, kitchen, every possible hiding place for sensitive information. Nothing. Except for the empty refrigerator and the missing computer, the house seemed in order.

“So we can assume that Maddox hadn’t planned to leave town,” Mitch said. “He didn’t stop his mail, shut off his electricity, water, anything. He may or may not have had the computer with him. He didn’t say anything to his girlfriend, based on the report. The last known meeting he was supposed to have had was with his advisor, Don Collier, who said he didn’t see Oliver Monday morning when they were to meet. If we assume that he is telling the truth, we can’t account for Maddox’s whereabouts from 5:30 p.m. Sunday-when his neighbor saw the Explorer leaving. If he didn’t show up for the meeting with his advisor, he was probably already in the river.”

“Why Isleton?” Steve asked. “There’re maybe a thousand people living there. A bar, a restaurant, not much else.”

“The way his Explorer was facing, he was heading from Isleton when he went under. On his way from meeting someone possibly? If so, we just need to figure out who.”

“That’s the million-dollar question.” Steve shook his head as he gave the place one more glance. “There’s nothing here.”

“Do we have his phone records yet?”

“Yeah, I have them in the car.”

“Let’s find out the last person he spoke with,” Mitch said. “Looks like the only evidence we have is Oliver’s stomach contents.”

“If we can get anything off the flash drive.”

“Think of this, Steve,” Mitch said. “Why would he swallow something like a flash drive unless he was desperate and thought that was the only way to save valuable information?”

“Maybe he was hungry,” Steve said lightly.

“Hungry for the truth.”

Jeffrey had known Hamilton since they met rushing the same fraternity. And for all those years, Hamilton had held over his head all the times he’d saved his ass. Whiny Richie jumped on that same bandwagon, pointing to all the money he made them and laundered to fund Jeffrey’s political campaigns.

Now, Jeffrey was in the position of saving the day, and he would make sure his longtime friends knew it.

“It’s all coming undone,” Hamilton said over the phone. “I had a flag on the O’Brien file at archives. And guess who just pulled them? Claire O’Brien!”

“I told you we should have taken care of her a long time ago.”

“If O’Brien was dead, this wouldn’t even be an issue,” Hamilton snapped.

“That was your job. You’re the one who’s tight with all the lawyers and judges and prison wardens.”

While listening to Hamilton rant, Jeffrey watched the pretty young campaign intern finger-fuck herself like he had commanded. They were in his hotel room between appointments with big money donors. Jeffrey was furious that Hamilton had called during the short time he had to play, even though he reluctantly admitted that the situation in Sacramento was getting out of control. The fact that someone had found Oliver Maddox’s body was unfortunate. But there was still nothing to tie Maddox back to them. They just needed to keep their cool.

“-and then there’s Harper,” Hamilton was saying. “Jeffrey, are you listening?”

“Of course.”

“Are you alone?”

“Yes,” he lied smoothly. He watched Julie turn herself on. He was fully clothed, of course. He didn’t have time to go through the motions of foreplay and seduction. He didn’t care if Julie or whoever he decided to favor that day got off or not. Jeffrey would be the first to admit that it was all about him and his pleasure, and if the woman didn’t like it, he had plenty to choose from.

Hamilton warned him repeatedly about a potential sexual harassment scandal, but Jeffrey was careful. He paid his staff well and he paid extra well for favors like the one Julie was doing for him now. She looked at him and he motioned for her to keep going. He was getting hard, but Hamilton was worse than a cold shower.