Deadly Sins (10 page)

So she mentally shoved aside the niggle of remorse and concentrated on the upcoming face-off with Senator Jonas Newell.

“I understand you had a bit of problem after work yesterday.”

Adam deliberately misunderstood. “You mean when your agent insisted on accompanying me to my friend’s house? It wasn’t a problem really. I’ve got nothing to hide. I trust she included our conversations in her report to you.”

Hedgelin had the grace to look a bit discomfited. But he didn’t offer an apology and Adam didn’t expect one. “Actually, I was speaking about the accident you reported. The hit-and-run.” He waited, but when Adam didn’t say anything, he unerringly plucked a page from the sheaf in front of him. “Someone ran you off the road, it says.” He raised his brows. “Did you get a look at him?”

“Sounds like you have the report in front of you, so you can see that I didn’t.” Suddenly weary of the back-andforth, Adam’s tone grew pointed. “I have to admit I thought at first the driver was one of yours.”

“You thought I had an agent keeping you under surveillance?” Cleve chuckled and shook his head. “You overestimate your importance. We’re stretched thin enough already with this investigation.”

Nodding as though it made perfect sense, Adam said, “So you could only spare an agent to follow me until ten but not all the way home? You’re right. Thinking otherwise would be a stretch.”

When a flush darkened the man’s cheekbones, Adam added, “But relax, I didn’t think an agent would go so far as to try and run me off the road. Too much paperwork to explain the vehicle damage.”

Drumming his fingers on the desktop, the assistant director responded, “Why does it seem that trouble follows you around?”

“Sometimes it’s reversed. Sometimes I follow trouble around. There was a time you followed it with me, remember.”

The other man’s gaze shifted. “I wasn’t talking about Louisiana.”

“No.” Adam’s voice was even. “You never do, at least not with me. But I hear you have plenty to say about it when there’s no one around to refute your memories. Such as they are.”

Hedgelin’s gaze when it returned to him was glacial. “Be very careful, Adam. Remember you’re here at my say-so.”

Adam rose. “Our memories don’t seem to mesh on that point, either. But you have nothing to worry about. Last night was likely the result of some drunk taking a shortcut home after tipping one too many back at the local tavern. Nothing to worry about.” He turned and headed to the door.

“I hope you’re right. I won’t allow any outside diversions in this case. It’s too important.”

The words summoned a recollection of Adam’s and Paulie’s conversation about this very thing last night. “Finally,” he said as he went through the door. “Something we agree on.”

Senator Newell’s quarters were located on the second floor of the Russell Senate Office Building, overlooking C Street. It apparently consisted of a string of offices linked together like beads on a necklace, each with adjoining doors. Jaid made the assumption based on the slow progression they seemed to be making down the line.

Because they arrived fifteen minutes early for the appointment, they were left cooling their heels in the outermost office, guarded by a dragon disguised as a middle-aged woman who was obviously torn between two decades. Although she still dressed like a fifties sitcom mom, someone had obviously taken her in hand at some point and yanked her forward a few decades. And then left her there. Her long wash-and-wear perm with big bangs was straight out of the eighties. She was impervious to Shepherd’s charm and looks, and ignored Jaid completely, alternating between her work and casting Adam furtive, suspicious glances.

Her name, amusingly enough, was Imelda Hachette.

A half hour after their arrival, they were herded through the next office, which seemed crammed full of young freshfaced twenty somethings, each with a phone to his or her ear or eyes glued to a computer screen. Jaid, Shepherd, and Adam were then deposited, rather unceremoniously, with the young aide there, who had made it quite clear for the last fifteen minutes that he had no idea what to do with them after they all declined his offer of coffee.

Adam was reading a sheaf of papers he’d taken out of his briefcase. If Jaid leaned toward him, just a bit, she could make out enough to recognize that it was a briefing report on the case. She wondered if he had access to the same report she and Shepherd got or if his were more complete. She had a feeling that if it wasn’t, Hedgelin would be hearing about it.

Agent Shepherd was bent over an electronic notebook of some sort. She considered her technology skills above average most of the time, until she was surrounded by computers geeks who could eek information out of a piece of equipment faster than she could access the Web with hers.

With a barely audible sigh, she settled back into her chair. Patience wasn’t a trait that came naturally to her. It came, she figured, from waiting most of her life for one thing or another. Her first several years were spent as a child anxiously waiting for her father to come home so she could join him in the garage to work on the GTO. It was their quality time, mostly because it excluded her mother.

Then after he’d walked out on them, she’d spent the next seven years waiting for him to come home again.

Rather than delve into the dysfunctional morass of her childhood, she aimed a look at the young man ensconced behind the desk, who’d been introduced as Scott Lambert, junior aide to the senator. After his attempts at small talk had failed, he’d returned to the work on his desk and tried to ignore them.

Jaid considered the man. He wasn’t much taller than her at five-ten or so. Slight build. Pale brown hair. Nondescript looks. From her research on the way over she’d discovered that Newell had a staff of nineteen. She couldn’t imagine what would keep that many people busy, but from the count she’d done so far, Lambert made number eight. Which left eleven members of staff that likely outranked the junior aide. She hoped that didn’t mean they had eleven more offices to make their way through. Most likely it simply meant that Lambert had been designated to babysit them until the senator was ready.

She checked her watch. Eleven oh two. “How long have you been with Senator Newell?”

He perked up at the question. “Four years now. I also worked as a page for him when I was still in college.” He beamed a smile at her that looked a bit more relaxed than the barely covered nerves she’d sensed since they came in. Nerves that surfaced every time he glanced at Adam. Obviously, Lambert shared the receptionist’s mistrust of the man’s appearance.

“What do your duties entail?”

Lambert ran a hand over his short hair. “A number of things, actually. I sort of go where I’m needed. Right now I’m acting as assistant to the communications director,” he nodded at a much larger empty desk in the corner of the room. “Our job is to manage the interface between the congressman and the public. I’ve also filled in as the senator’s scheduler, and I actually started as a caseworker, assisting constituents who need help.”

“What exactly is the pay grade for managing an interface?”

She could feel both Shepherd and Raiker looking at her. She shrugged. “It’s a valid question given Newell’s views on downsizing the bureau.”

“But perhaps not relevant under the circumstances.” Adam’s voice was a low rumble, meant for her ears only, with an unusual note of humor threading through it. And the sound of it had memory ambushing her with the devastating impact of a cruise missile.

The two of them, still wrapped around each other in his huge bed, flesh damp, their breathing ragged. “I have to point out . . .” She’d needed to haul in another breath to continue. “If that was meant to bolster your argument about the age difference between us . . . you didn’t do much to prove it.”

Adam’s low, husky chuckle had sent tiny tendrils of heat firing through her veins. Then he’d rolled above her, his face lowering to hers. “Well, damn. I’m guessing this isn’t going to prove it, either.”

The sneaky snippet from the past slipped in with sly ease, neatly slicing through defenses she’d spent the last eight years building. The familiar pang it left in its wake had her straightening. She reached for another brick to build that inner wall higher. She’d survived Adam Raiker. She’d proved to herself that she didn’t need him—didn’t need any man to complete her life.

But she’d never managed to exorcise those old ghosts. She could keep them at bay for long stretches at a time. It only took his proximity to unleash them in a battering mental torrent.

Lambert’s earnest tones saved her. “Senator Newell is cognizant of the importance of your agency’s work. But he believes in a smaller government, and in this economy every government entity has to share the sacrifice.”

Everyone, Jaid thought darkly, apparently with the exception of the senator. But she didn’t need Adam’s polished Italian shoe nudging her foot to have her dropping the line of questioning. Her political views could only be described as eclectic, more issue oriented than partisan. But she had a feeling there were few issues she and Senator Newell would agree on.

Earnestly, Lambert sought to convince them otherwise. “The senator has long fought for tougher sentencing laws for violent crimes. That’s admirable from a safety standpoint. He’s endorsed by many law-enforcement organizations.”

“Well, we can all get on board with that, right?” Shepherd said heartily even as he snuck a look at the clock. As if encouraged by the response, Lambert further regaled them with more than Jaid ever wanted to hear about the senator’s accomplishments and agenda.

She tuned him out and turned her thoughts to home. To Royce. His birthday was coming up, and he’d been begging for a new skateboard ramp. Something bigger and meaner than the plywood one she’d built for him a couple years ago. He wanted a six-foot half-pipe these days, which meant he planned to start trying more daring tricks. Stretch his boundaries.

Because that was an urge she understood all too well, she’d probably give in to his pleading, despite her mother’s dire warnings. Patricia Marlowe thought all children should be wrapped in cotton batting. The better to not see or hear them. At any rate, Jaid had always found it confining, which meant she better get to ordering the ramp, because it didn’t look like she was going to have the time to shop any time in the near future.

Lambert stopped to draw a breath only because the phone on his desk rang. He answered, and then a moment later replaced the receiver in its cradle and shot out of his seat. “The senator can see you now. I’m sorry; he doesn’t have much time, so we’ll need to hurry.”

“Oh, now he’s in a hurry,” Jaid muttered, but she got up with the two men and followed the aide to the hall door. It was forty-five minutes past their scheduled meeting. She wondered how much of that time the senator had spent conducting business and how much sitting alone in his office, flexing his muscles by making federal agents wait for him.

This time they were led down a hall and past several more doors before arriving at their destination. She could only assume that the other eleven staff members were housed in the space they passed. When Lambert opened another door and she saw that they were in yet another reception area, Jaid had the fleeting thought that they’d been led in a big circle.

But the person behind the desk was male and appeared firmly rooted in this decade. He rose, nodding to Lambert, who murmured a good-bye and exited, not, thought Jaid, without a bit of relief.

“Robert Weaver, the senator’s personal assistant.” His voice was as smooth as his stride. He moved toward the adjoining door. “The senator can see you now, but I’m afraid he’s only got a few minutes before his next appointment.”

The trappings of the opulent office they were shown to didn’t reflect the austerity Newell preached. But the man himself did. Spare to the point of gaunt, the senator was seated behind an acre-wide desk of aged polished mahogany. His suit was nondescript, and a cosmetic dentist hadn’t enhanced the tight smile he spared them.

He waved them to seats without rising and consulted a sheet in front of him. “Agents Marlowe and Shepherd.” Glancing up he demanded, “Which one’s which?”

Jaid gritted her teeth, although his attitude was hardly unexpected. “I’m Agent Marlowe. This is Agent Shepherd.” She gestured to Shepherd.

But the senator’s attention had moved back to his sheet. “And you are . . .” His eyes widened a bit behind his rimless glasses before his attention bounced to Raiker. “Adam Raiker. Well, you I’ve heard of. Didn’t realize you were back with the bureau.”

“I run a forensics consulting firm these days. I joined the task force investigating Justice Reinbeck’s death at the request of President Jolson.”

The senator slapped the desktop lightly, his mouth pursing with displeasure. “Consultant,” he scoffed. “Duplication of services, I call it. If we eliminated all the consultants and consulting firms operating in this government, we’d save the taxpayers . . .”