Unless she left her hand there.
The moment continued.
Toni decided.
She did not pull her hand away.
31
Suddenly aware of how stiff and tired he felt, Jay Gridley looked at the clock.
Wow. He'd been up all night.
He had scanned enough material to fill a tanker, but now he had a better sense of the programmer they'd chased. Before, they hadn't had diddly, but now that they'd gotten a closer look, a picture was starting to resolve. The guy had the earmarks of somebody trained in the CIS, and Gridley was betting he was a Russian. Not a firm ID, but it sure narrowed things down considerably.
He tapped at the keyboard, using RW mode instead of VR. This was slogwork, basic number- and word- crunching, and he wanted the raw data where he could see it for what it was. He had the Net Force scanning mainframe winnowing possibilities and feeding him those that were within the parameters. Currently, the computer was going through all registered programmers living in Russia.
They were gonna get this lubefoot. It was just a matter of time…
The priority incoming e-mail chime sounded. Gridley shook his head. The tags were in place on the winnow; if something showed up, his station would scream at him. He shifted to the mail and opened it.
Hmm. The incoming was from one of the field teams. They had, they said, something on the Day assassination.
Well, okay, that was important, too. Not as important as the programmer, at least not in Gridley's mind — Day was dead and he'd be dead forever. Nobody could hurt him anymore, but the net was still taking hits. Then again, catching a killer was nothing to turn one's back on. And everybody knew that if they didn't come up with something soon, the boss's head was gonna roll. That was how things always worked around here.
Gridley downloaded the attached file and opened it. It didn't take long for him to see the meat of the message.
Well, well. Look at that…
Megan Michaels was on the front porch of their house, holding hands with a dark-haired, burly man. The two of them kissed. The man slid his hands down her back, cupped her buttocks. She moaned softly, then turned and saw Alex standing there. She smiled at him. 'I'm his now,' she said. 'Not yours.' She reached over, put her hand on the man's crotch—
Michaels came out of the nightmare, thick with jealousy and anger.
Dammit!
Scout was asleep, curled into a tight little ball near Alex's feet. There was a new dog bed on the floor next to the TV console, a top-of-the line hand-woven basket with a pillow full of cedar shavings, but the dog declined to use it unless Michaels made him. Somehow, ordering a dog who'd saved his life to sleep on the floor didn't seem right; besides, if Scout wanted to sleep on the bed, well, it was plenty big enough. It wasn't as if he was a mastiff.
When Michaels awoke, Scout raised his head and looked at him. He must have decided nothing was wrong, because he relaxed and recurled himself after a moment.
Walt Carver had a ten a.m. meeting with the President. If Net Force did not have anything new for him to bring to the table regarding Steve Day's assassination, Net Force would grow itself a new head — as soon as Alex Michaels's got lopped off…
Hell with it. He got up and shuffled toward the bathroom.
Scout stood, stretched himself like a cat, hopped off the bed and came to stand next to Michaels. The dog sat, then watched intently as the stream of urine splashed into the toilet bowl. What was Scout thinking? That this was a bit of territory the man was marking as his own?
'Yep, this is my toilet, all right,' Michaels said. 'Mine, mine, mine.'
Scout yipped in acknowledgment.
Toni lay in her bed, staring at the ceiling. Naked next to her under the covers, Jesse 'Rusty' Russell slumbered on, breathing heavy.
Oh, Lord. Why had she done this?
She glanced at the man next to her. Rusty was attractive, smart, sexy. She had certainly enjoyed the taste and feel of him, and it had been quite an athletic and satisfying romp. The bought-long-ago condoms she had dug from under the panties and bras in her dresser drawer were still a few months shy of their expiration date. She and Rusty were adults, they weren't married to anybody else, so — who got hurt?
This was all true, and yet, it still wasn't right. Why did she feel so guilty? What was she doing here with this…
It should be Alex lying there, sated, happy, in love with her. It should mean something. She liked Rusty okay, he was a nice enough man, but he wasn't somebody she was going to spend her life with, or even any big piece of her life. She knew that. He'd been a considerate and experienced lover. The sex had been fun — she'd be lying to herself if she pretended anything else — but sex by itself wasn't enough, no matter how good it might be. There needed to be more, a lot more. She liked Rusty, but she didn't love him.
She loved
Right. So how could she have done this? And how was she going to be able to look Alex in the eye now? She had been unfaithful to him.
Next to her, Rusty stirred.
She should get up, shower, get dressed. She didn't want him to awaken and expect a repeat of last night. It had been enjoyable, but it had also a mistake — and she was not going to repeat it.
Ruzhyo sat cross-legged on the motel bed, staring at nothing. He was not bored — he did not get bored anymore, hadn't for years — but he was not very interested in much of anything. It did not greatly bother him, but he was aware of his lack of connection to the world.
Plekhanov would eventually call; today, tomorrow, the day after. Likely when he did call, the Russian who had adopted Chechnya as his own would, using the fugue of non-specific and indirect language, order Ruzhyo to go forth and kill again. It would be part of Plekhanov's grand plan to become a powerful man who could run countries as he chose. In the beginning, Plekhanov's reasons had been important to Ruzhyo. Now, that Plekhanov wished a thing to happen was sufficient in itself. Ruzhyo was the tool that did the deed; it was his only reason for staying alive.
Live. Die. It was all the same.
Jay was waiting when Michaels arrived at his office. He was smiling.
'You have good news?'
'Oh, yeah.'
'Come in.'
In the office, Jay said, 'Take a look. If I may?' He waved at Michaels's workstation.
'Be my guest.'
Jay lit the system, called up a file.
'This is the report from our field team in New York State,' the younger man said. 'And this—' — he tapped keys, and an image flowered on-screen—' — is the Not the Brothers Dog Kennel. Located on the beautiful eastern
