Deadly Dreams (50 page)

Surprised, she met his gaze. He smiled wryly. “Think I don’t have outside sources? You drew your weapon. Fired it. Hit your target.”

“Do you need to pronounce it when you’re right?”

“No. I need to pronounce you cured. Now get out of here. Tell Paulie to put you back on the active list.” His voice was growing weaker. Which just seemed to make him more irritable.

Her throat grew full. But there was no objection on her lips. Not anymore. “Thank you, Adam.”

Giving up what appeared to be a losing battle, his eye closed. “For what?” he muttered. “Not accepting your resignation? There’s a little matter of you saving my life. Call it even.”

She gave a laugh that was dangerously close to a sob. And eased out of the room before he could call her on it.

Nate sprang away from his stance against the wall at her appearance. She noted with some pleasure that a number of her colleagues were gathered in the waiting room. But when she would have headed to join them, he guided her past the waiting-room door.

She had a moment to recognize Shepherd, the fed sent from DC to evaluate the failed operation resulting in Adam’s shooting. Then they were past the windows in a more isolated area of the hallway. “I want to get a chance to talk to Special Agent Shepherd.”

“I can tell you everything Dev repeated.” He held up a cup of coffee. “He’s as good with information as he is at dispensing caffeine. He said Ramsey told him that Shepherd had been all through Jennings’s financials. Had found his bankbook for the overseas account, where I guess the payment for potential hits would go. There were no deposits over the last six months. He’s guessing at this point that Jennings was working for himself.”

Risa shook her head. “There was no connection. Adam had never arrested Jennings. He’d never been involved in one of Adam’s cases.”

“But Jennings once had a girlfriend whose father was put away for life by your boss.” Nate brought the cup to his lips. Drank. “That’s all the details Shepherd shared, but it’s looking more and more like that personal connection will have to be explored further.”

She considered the possibility. “Personal connections can get sticky.” Her voice was sounding more hoarse from the effort of talking. But there was still something she hadn’t told Nate. “Baltes is the one who gave your sister the idea to take off. I don’t know how or why they met up. A distraction, he called it.”

He looked shocked. And more than a little anxious. “Last week she didn’t come home one night. I assumed she’d gone clubbing with friends. Maybe he arranged to run into her there.” He shook his head, as if bemused.

But when he looked at her again, his eyes were intent. “I do know how complicated personal connections can be. When I was running across that clearing and saw you trapped in that ring of fire . . .” His voice cracked, just a little on the last word. “I don’t pretend to understand it, whatever it is you dream. What causes it. But that will be the last damn time I ever discount it.”

It was, she thought sappily, more touching than the most fervent declaration of love. And something that had never been offered to her before, by anyone other than her boss. “I can’t tell you what that means to me.”

The muscle in his jaw clenched. “I promised myself after our last phone conversation that I’d still have the chance to tell you exactly what
you
mean to
me
. I’m in love with you, Risa.” As if to stem any protest she would make, had she been able to summon the power of speech to do so, he went on. “Yeah, I can guess what you’re going to say. I know exactly how many days we’ve known each other. It’s too soon. But it’s still there. And if there’s one thing I’ve learned in the last few hours, it’s that time doesn’t mean a thing. It’s the now that matters. And you’re my now. My future.”

One hand came up to cup her jaw. Her senses swam. Shakily she managed, “Psychological studies indicate that situations of high stress cause heightened emotion in the involved parties.”

His faced lowered to hers. “Exactly why I’m going to make sure we have plenty of boring years together to prove the psychologists are full of shit.”

She shook her head. Paused to savor the kiss he pressed against her lips. A moment later she murmured, “You don’t have to prove anything to me. I don’t need psychologists to tell me what I feel. I love you, Nate. But I wouldn’t say no to some uneventful times, regardless.” A thought struck, and for the first time worry pierced the fog of happiness. “Adam proclaimed me ready to return to work.”

He caught her bottom lip in his teeth. Tested it lightly. “Two and half hours by car in good traffic. Less by train. C’mon, after the last few days, we’ve overcome far more important things than distance.”

She tilted her head back to regard him soberly. He was more right than he could know. She’d confronted her fears. All of them. And although she knew she had further to go in that regard, she was overcoming the self-doubt that had crippled her for the last several months.

“We have,” she agreed. “I’d say we make a damn good team.” His arm went around her waist to pull her closer. She slipped her hand around his neck and sank into his kiss.

Long moments went by before she opened her eyes again. Another two or three before the fog in her brain lifted enough to realize they had an audience.

“Risa.” Ryne Robel, another of Adam’s investigators raised his coffee in salute. “Good to see you again. You’re looking . . . well.” He managed, barely, to dodge the punch his diminutive wife, Abbie, aimed at his arm.

Embarrassment filtered in. But not enough to have her stepping out of Nate’s arms. “Privacy?”

“If you want privacy, you shouldn’t be making out in a hospital corridor,” Kellan Burke observed laconically. “They’ve got rooms here, you know.”

“Everyone out.” Ramsey and Macy Reid, Kellan’s fiancée, shooed the group back to the waiting room.

Zach Sharper threw an arm over the shoulders of Cait Fleming, the willowy former model turned forensic anthropologist. As they trailed after the rest of her colleagues, Cait raised her hand over her shoulder, waggled her fingers for Risa’s perusal. The large emerald engagement ring was hard to miss. “Congratulations, Cait. Zach,” she called. The man sent them a self-satisfied grin before they turned into the doorway of the waiting room.

Risa looked at Nate. “You realize they’re all going in there to talk about us.”

He didn’t look upset at the prospect. “Then I say”—his face lowered to hers—“let’s give them plenty of material.”

Death was rarely the result of divine intervention. Often nature could be blamed. More frequently another person was the cause. On that drizzly gray evening in early November, nature had an alibi.

If Supreme Court Justice Byron Reinbeck had known what fate had in store for him that day, he’d have spent less time writing the scathing dissenting opinion on Clayborne vs. Leland. Which, in turn, would have had him leaving his chambers at a decent hour. That would have negated the need to stop at his favorite sidewalk vendor for flowers to take to Mary Jo, his wife of twenty-five years. She was having a dinner party that evening and he was running unforgivably late.

But not being blessed with psychic powers, he pulled over at the sidewalk in question. Danny was there, rain or shine. Seven days a week, as far as Byron knew. And he never folded up shop until he’d sold his entire inventory.

“Mr. Reinbeck, good to see you.” A smile put another crease in Danny’s grizzled, well-worn face. A three-sided awning protected him and his wares. “I gots just the thing. Just the thing.” He sprang up from his battered lawn chair with a surprising spryness.

Byron turned up the collar of his overcoat, belatedly remembered the umbrella in the backseat. Hunching his shoulders a bit, he pretended to contemplate the bouquet of yellow roses thrust out for his approval. He suspected Jimmy stocked them daily, on the off chance that he’d stop.

Yellow roses were Mary Jo’s favorite.

He reached for his wallet. “You’re a lifesaver, Danny.”

The older man’s cackle sounded over the crinkle of the wrapping paper he was fixing around the bundle. “You has to be in big trouble for these flowers not to do the trick.”

A quick glance at his watch told Byron that he was only a handful of minutes away from “big trouble.” He withdrew a couple bills, intending to leave without waiting for change.

He didn’t have a chance to turn around when the sharp “crack” of the rifle sounded behind him. But he saw the splash of crimson on the front of Danny’s stained brown hoodie. Had a split second to feel pain and shock before pitching forward, his lifeless body crushing the fragrant long-stemmed beauties against the plywood table.

Adam Raiker rapped softly at the door of the library. Although there were three occupants in the room, only one voice bade him to enter.

Because it was the only one that counted, he eased the door open, his gaze going immediately to Mary Jo Waverly-Reinbeck. “Everyone’s gone.”

Even grief stricken as she was, there was no mistaking the command of the woman. The red sheathe she wore accentuated her pale blond hair and ice blue eyes. She was brilliant and witty and had been known to dismantle a seasoned defense attorney with a few well-chosen lines.

But it was her devotion to one of Adam’s closest friends that had endeared her to him.

Tears still running freely down her face, she held out a hand to him. “Thank you, Adam.” He crossed the room to her, aware of the impatience emanating from the other two in the room. He took her hand in his and, at her urging, sank into the seat beside her.

FBI deputy director Garrett Schulte leaned back in his chair and offered Adam a polite smile. But there was no pretense of civility from the other man. Curtis Morgan served in Homeland Security in some capacity, Adam recalled. Given his presence here, it was a position of some import. Regardless, it was Byron Reinbeck’s widow who held his focus.

“Gentlemen.” She took a moment to wipe at her face with a tissue. “I’m sure you both know Adam Raiker, by reputation if not personally. Adam is a dear family friend.” When her voice broke, she paused to compose it. “I’d like a few moments with him now. We can resume our discussion in fifteen minutes. If you’d excuse us?”

Schulte and Morgan exchanged a startled glance but the assistant director recovered first. “Of course.” When he rose, the other man followed suit. “Is there anything we can get for you?”

“I’d like a copy of the investigative report updated daily and delivered to me.” Even under the circumstances it was difficult for Adam to suppress a smile at the men’s reactions to Jo’s crisply worded request. “Perhaps you can discuss the details involved for making that happen.”

Without another word, the men moved to the open door. Through it. And when it shut behind them, Adam knew the woman had successfully distracted the two from his presence here. They were going to be kept busy employing a duck-and-dodge strategy that would allow the investigation to continue in confidence while still placating the widow of one of the most powerful men in the country. The focus on her connection to Byron Reinbeck also meant they’d underestimate the fact that Jo Waverly-Reinbeck was a brilliant assistant U.S. attorney in her own right.