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"No."

"Guess not," she said, sighing with disgust as she came erect and threw her hair back. "Uncle Tate went berserk when he caught us smoking that time. Wonder what he would have thought if he'd caught us sharing that cowboy?"

Avery blanched and looked away. "I. . . don't do things like that anymore, Fancy."

"No shit? For real?" She seemed genuinely curious.

"For real."

"You know, when you first came home from the hospital, I thought you were faking it. You were Miss Goody Two Shoes all of a sudden. But now, I believe you really changed after that airplane crash. What happened? Are you afraid you're gonna die and go to hell, or what?"

Avery changed the subject. "Surely Eddy's told you something about himself. Where did he grow up? What about his family?"

Fancy propped her hands on her hips and regarded Avery strangely. "You know where he grew up, same as I do. Some podunk town in the Panhandle. He didn't have any family, remember? Except for a grandma who died while he and Uncle Tate were still at UT."

"What did he do before he came to work for Tate?"

Fancy had already grown impatient with the questions. "Look, we screw, okay? We don't talk. I mean, he's a real private person."

"For instance?"

"He doesn't like me going through his stuff. One night I was searching in his drawers for a shirt to put on and he got really pissed, said for me not to meddle in his stuff again, so I don't. I don't pry, period. We all need our privacy, you know."

"He's never mentioned what he did between Vietnam and when he came back to Texas?"

"All I've ever asked was if he'd been married. He told me he hadn't. He said he'd spent a lot of time finding himself. I said, 'Were you lost?' I meant it like a joke, but Eddy got this funny look on his face and said something like, 'Yeah, for a while there, I was.' "

"What do you think he meant by that?" "Oh, I suspect he freaked after the war," Fancy said with breezy unconcern. "Why?"

"Probably because of Uncle Tate saving his life after their plane crashed. I guess Eddy relives bailing out, being wounded, and having Uncle Tate carry him around in the jungle until a chopper could pick them up. If you've ever seen him naked, you must've noticed the scar on his back. Pretty gruesome, huh?

"He must've been scared shitless they were gonna get captured by the Cong. Eddy begged Uncle Tate to leave him to die, you know, but Uncle Tate wouldn't."

"Surely he didn't think Tate would," Avery exclaimed.-

"Well, you know the fighter pilots' motto—'Better dead than look bad.' Eddy must've taken it to heart more than most. Uncle Tate was the hero. Eddy was just another casualty. That must still play on his mind."

"How do you know all this, Fancy?"

"Are you kidding? Haven't you heard Grandpa tell it often enough?"

"Oh, sure, of course. You just seem to know so many of the fine details."

"No more than you. Look, I'm going out to the pool. Do you mind?"

Inhospitably, she walked to the door and pulled it open. Avery joined her there. "Fancy, the next time you want to use something of mine, just ask." She rolled her eyes, but Avery ignored her insolence. Touching the girl's shoulder briefly, she added, "And be careful."

"Of what?"

"Of Eddy."

"She said for me to be careful of you."

The motel room was cheap, dusty, and dank. But as Fancy bit into a fried chicken drumstick, she didn't seem to notice or mind. She'd become accustomed to the shabby surroundings in the last several weeks.

She would rather have had her trysts with Eddy in a more elegant hotel, but the Sidewinder Inn was located on the interstate between campaign headquarters and the ranch, so it was a convenient place for them to meet before going home. The motel catered to illicit lovers. Rooms were rented by the hour. The staff was discreet—out of indifference, not empathy.

Because they had worked through the dinner hour this evening, Fancy and Eddy were sharing their time together with a bucket of Colonel Sanders's best. Naked, they were sitting amid the rumpled sheets, eating fried chicken and discussing Carole Rutledge.

"Careful of me?" Eddy asked. "Why?"

"She said I shouldn't be getting involved with a man so much older," Fancy said, tearing off a bite of meat. "ButIdon't think that's the real reason."

Eddy broke apart a chicken wing. "What's the real reason?"

"The real reason is because she's eaten up with jealousy. See, she wants to play the good wife for Uncle Tate, just in case he wins and goes to Washington. But in case he doesn't, she wants to have someone waiting in the wings. Even though she pretends not to, I know Aunt Carole craves your body." Playfully, she tapped his chest with the drumstick.

Eddy didn't respond. He was staring absently into space, frowning. "I still wish she didn't know about you and me."

"Let's not have another fight about that, okay? I couldn't help it. I walked out of your room and there she was, clutching that stupid ice bucket to her chest and looking like she'd just swallowed her tongue."

"Has she told Tate?"

"I doubt it." A piece of golden-brown crust fell onto her bare belly. She moistened her fingertip, picked up the crumb, then licked it off. "I'll tell you something else," she said in a mysterious whisper, "I don't think she's quite right in the head yet."

"What do you mean?"

"She asks the dumbest questions."

"Like what?"

"Yesterday I mentioned something she should have a vivid memory of, even if she did suffer a concussion."

"What?"

"Well," Fancy drawled, dragging the nearly clean drumstick across her lips, "another ranch was buying some horses from Grandpa. When the cowboy came to look at them, nobody was around. I took him into the stable myself. He was real cute."

"I get the picture," Eddy said drolly. "What does Carole have to do with it?"

"She discovered us screwing like rabbits in one of the stalls. I thought I was sunk, see, because this was a couple of years ago and I was barely seventeen. But Carole and the cowboy connected immediately. You know, snap, crackle, pop. The next thing I know, she's as naked as we are and rolling around in the hay with us."

She fanned her face theatrically. "God, it was fantastic! What an afternoon. But yesterday, when I mentioned it, she looked ready to puke or something. You want some more chicken?"

"No thanks." Fancy tossed her cleaned bone into the box and took out the last chicken leg. Eddy encircled her ankle with his hard fingers. "You didn't give away any of my secrets, did you?"

She laughed and nudged him in the butt with her bare foot. "I don't know any of your secrets."

"So what did you and Carole talk about regarding me?"

"I just told her you were the best I'd ever had." She leaned forward and gave him a greasy kiss on the lips. "You are, you know. You've got a cock of solid iron. And there's something about you that's so exciting—dangerous, almost."

He was amused. "Finish your chicken. It's time you headed home."

Disobediently, Fancy looped her arms around his neck and kissed him languorously. She left her lips in place as she whispered, "I've never done it doggie fashion before."

"I know."

She drew her head back sharply. "Didn't I do it good?"

"You did it fine. But I could tell you were surprised at first."

"I love surprises."

Eddy cupped the back of her head and gave her a searing kiss. Together they fell back onto the sour-smelling pillows. "The next time your Aunt Carole starts asking questions about me," he panted as he pulled on a rubber, "tell her to mind her own frigging business." He plowed into her.

"Yes, Eddy, yes," she chanted, beating on his back with the drumstick she still had clutched in one hand.

THIRTY-THREE

"What the hell," Van Lovejoy said resignedly. He took a final drag on a cigarette he had smoked down to his stained fingertips. "I wouldn't be any better at blackmailing than I am at anything else. I would have fucked up."

"You threatened her with blackmail?" Irish stared at the video photographer with contempt. "You failed to mention that when you told me about your meeting with Avery."

"It's all right, Irish." Avery laid a calming hand on the older man's arm. With a trace of a grin, she added, "Van was miffed at us for not including him in our secret."

"Don't joke about it. This secret is giving me chronic indigestion." Irish left his sofa in pursuit of another shot of whiskey, which he poured into his glass from a bottle on the kitchen table.

"Bring me one of those," Van called to him. Then to Avery, he said, "Irish is right. You're up shit creek and you don't even know it."

"I know it."

"Got any paddles?"

She shook her head. "No."

"Jesus, Avery, are you nuts? Why'd you do such a damn fool thing?"

"Do you want to tell him, or should I?" she asked Irish as he resumed his seat next to her on the couch. "This is your party."

While Irish and Van sipped their whiskey, Avery related her incredible tale again. Van listened intently, disbelievingly, glancing frequently at Irish, who verified everything she said with a somber nod of his grizzled head.

"Rutledge has no idea?" Van asked when she had brought him up to date.

"None. At least as far as I can tell."

"Who's the traitor in the camp?"

"I don't know yet."

"Have you heard from him anymore?"

"Yes. Yesterday. I received another typed communiqué."

"What'd it say?"

"Virtually the same as before," she answered evasively, unable to connect with Irish's shrewd blue eyes.

The succinct note, found in her lingerie drawer, had read,You've slept with him. Good work. He's disarmed.

It had made her queasy to think of that unknown someone crowing over what had happened at the Adolphus . Had Tate discussed their lovemaking with his traitorous confidant? Or was he so close to Tate that he had sensed his mood swing and made a lucky guess into the reason for it? She supposed she should be glad that he thought it was a ploy and hadn't figured it for an act of love.

"Whoever he is," she told her friends now, "he still means to do it." Her arms broke out in chill bumps. "But I don't think he's going to do the actual killing." The word was almost impossible for her to speak aloud. "I think someone's been hired to do it. Did you bring the tapes I asked for?"

Van nodded toward an end table where he had stacked several videotapes when he arrived, just a few minutes ahead of Avery. "Irish passed along thenoteyou sent me through his post office box."

"Thanks, Van." Leaving her place on the sofa, she retrieved the tapes, then went to Irish's TV set and VCR and turned them on. She inserted one of the videos and returned to the sofa with a remote control transmitter. "This is everything you shot during our trip?"

"Yep. From your arrival at Houston to your return home. If we're going to watch unedited home movies, I've got to have another drink."

"Next time, bring your own bottle," Irish muttered as Van sauntered into the kitchen.

"Screw you, McCabe."

Taking no offense, Irish leaned forward and propped his elbows on his knees. On the television screen Tate was seen emerging from a jetway . Avery and Mandy were at his side. The rest of the entourage was in the background.

"You've got the kid, but where are his parents?" Van asked, returning with a fresh drink.

"They drove down. Zee refuses to fly."

"Funny for an air force wife, isn't it?"

"Not so much. Nelson flew bombing missions in Korea while she was left at home with baby Jack. Then he did some test piloting. I'm sure she was afraid of being widowed. And Nelson's buddy—Tate's named after him—was lost at sea when his plane crashed."

"How'd you learn all that?"

"I went to Tate's office when I knew he wouldn't be there, with the excuse of wanting to have all the pictures reframed. I manipulated his secretary into conversation about the people in—Wait! Stop!"

Realizing that she was controlling the TV with the transmitter, she stopped the tape, backed it up, and replayed it. Very quietly, fearfully, she said, "He was at the airport when we arrived in Houston, too."

"Who?" Irish and Van asked in unison.

Again Avery rewound the tape. "This is still Hobby Airport, right, Van?"

"Right."

"There! See the tall man with gray hair?"

"Yellow polo shirt?"

"Yes."

"Where? I don't see him," Irish grumbled. "What about him?" Van asked.

Avery rewound the tape. "Does this thing have a stop action?"

"Hell, yes." Irish snatched the transmitter from her hands. "Say when. I haven't seen a goddamn thing to—"

"When!"

He depressed the button, freezing the action on thescreen. Avery knelt in front of the TV set and pointed the man out to Irish. He was standing in the background, at the periphery of the crowd.

"He was in our hotel," she declared as the realization struck her. "We were rushing off to a rally and he held an elevator for us."

That's why she had noticed him in Midland. She had just seen him in Houston, although it hadn't registered at the time that the sweaty man who'd come from a workout in the hotel gym was the same as the man in the western suit.

"So?"

"So he was in Midland, too. He was at the airport when we landed. And I saw him later, in Dallas, at the fund-raising dinner at Southfork ."

Van and Irish exchanged worried glances. "Coincidence?"

"Do you really think so?" Avery demanded angrily.

"All right, an avid Rutledge supporter."

"I had just about convinced myself of that," she said, "but I've been dropping by campaign headquarters nearly ever day since we got back, and I haven't seen him among the volunteers. Besides, he never approached us while we were away. He was always at the edge of the crowd."

"You're jumping to conclusions, Avery."

"Don't." It was probably the harshest tone of voice she'd ever used with Irish. It startled them both, but she modified it only slightly when she added, "I know what you're thinking and you're wrong."