by Tracy March
Jessie sat on the edge of the bed, her arms crossed. “I’m not emotional.”
“Save that for someone who doesn’t know you like I do. All those feelings you’ve got bottled up are messing with your head. You need a moderator.” Nina pressed her palm to her chest. “That’s me. As for the rest of it—the tox report, the cover-up, the danger of revealing the truth—we’ll figure things out together.”
Jessie managed a half-smile. One of several framed pictures on Sam’s bureau caught her eye. She stood and picked up the faded image of her family, a duplicate of the old photo she had in her suitcase. After studying it for a moment, she handed it to Nina.
Nina’s sorry-things-went-so-wrong expression mirrored Jessie’s feelings. There’d been a time when Jessie, Sam, and their parents were a happy family—at least, she had thought so. And she still had a bond with Sam. Regardless of what had happened in this room, Jessie felt a growing sense of belonging in her sister’s home.
“Maybe there are answers hiding in this place,” Jessie said. “I just have to stay here to find them.”
Chapter Seven
Jessie had seen the you-go-girl look on Nina’s face before. Lips curved up at the corners, apple cheeks, eyes narrowed and shimmering. Nina nodded and set the Croft family picture back on Sam’s bureau. The frame was out of line with the others and out of place from where it had been. Jessie reached over and nudged the grainy image of her family back to its original position.
“Better now?” Nina teased. “I’d forgotten what it was like to live with Miss Meticulous. This place should suit you fine.”
“It’s a good thing. Franz told me to take all the time I need, but I can’t afford to stay at the inn long-term.”
“You could stay with us.”
“I know, and I appreciate that. But I think I’ll be okay here.” Jessie’s nerves settled as the idea of staying at Sam’s place took root. “I’ll sleep at the inn tonight and come here tomorrow.” She shrugged one shoulder. “See who can find me at this address.”
Nina leveled a look at Jessie, a suspicious quirk to her eyebrows. “What does that mean?”
Jessie sat on the bed and opened her purse. She pulled out the envelope she’d gotten this afternoon and showed Nina the picture. “This was delivered to me at the inn today, slipped in with the mail.”
Nina straightened her spine, all the way up through her neck. “And it took you this long to tell me about it?” She sounded more hurt than defensive.
Jessie tried to hide her sheepishness, but she felt the involuntary tell—little muscle twitches at her eyes, tightening around her mouth—and knew Nina saw her guilt. Her best friend wouldn’t have expected her to keep secret something as cryptic, and possibly significant, as the picture.
“I didn’t know you wanted in,” Jessie said, her tone apologetic. “That you’d be willing to risk knowing too much. But now I need you to help me decipher this.”
Seeming satisfied with Jessie’s explanation, Nina sat on the bed and studied the picture for several moments. Her silver hoop earrings swayed as she shook her head. She pinched the envelope by one corner and held it up with a steady hand. “We shouldn’t be touching this stuff.”
“Don’t even go the forensic, who-sent-it route, because that would be futile. Am I supposed to go to the police and tell them I think Sam was—” Jessie stumbled on the word.
“No,” Nina said. “There probably wouldn’t be any prints except yours, mine, and whoever got the mail at the inn. The paper and ink look pretty standard.” She crinkled her nose. “Forget it.”
“No police,” Jessie said. “Nothing about the picture is threatening or criminal.”
“Any idea who would want you to have this or what it means?”
“No.”
Nina inspected the front of the envelope, plain except for Jessie’s name, computer-printed. Then she sniffed it. “Smells like—” She sniffed again.
“Lavender,” Jessie said. “That’s from the sachet in my purse.”
“Who carries a sachet in her purse?”
“I do.”
Nina smirked, but her look quickly turned serious. “You’re the proud new owner of some pretty damaging information.”
“So are you.”
Nina’s gaze shifted and lost focus.
“You did the right thing by telling me,” Jessie said.
Nina pressed her lips into a tight line. “Just be smart. And careful.” Jessie nodded and held the picture in front of them. “You know any of these people, other than Sam?”
“I recognized a couple of them,” Jessie said. “The names helped. Then I spent the afternoon online, trying to restrain myself from following an endless link path for each one.”
“Gotta love the Internet,” Nina said. “What did you find out?”
“Except for Sam, they’re DC’s new generation of early-fortysomething elites. Left to right.”
Nina pointed. “Senator Elizabeth Briel.”
“Represents Maryland. She’s all over newspapers and C-SPAN—the forward-thinking fresh face of government. Not that we couldn’t use a few of those.”
Elizabeth Briel had the aura of Glinda the Good Witch, updated and sexy in a clingy-yet-cautious ivory pencil dress, beginning off the shoulder and ending mid-thigh. Tendrils of blond hair fell from her messy updo, accenting her slender neck. She had prominent cheekbones, pink lips, and blue eyes that flashed with the camera.
“Her face is all over the place,” Nina said. “She was pregnant the same time I was. Even showed up on the cover of one of those maternity magazines as Supermom-to-Be. I think she and her husband had a son.”
“Speaking of.” Jessie skimmed her finger across the photo and stopped on the man standing next to Senator Briel. “Her husband, Counselor Philippe Lesort.”
“Counselor—impressive.”
“Canadian diplomat for Science and Technology. Also a noted photographer. He combines photography and science with a dash of activism. Real artsy stuff.”
“Love the hair,” Nina said in a throaty voice.
His black hair was combed away from his face, but pieces of it fell casually across his forehead. He stood taller than the rest of them, broad shouldered and fit, his face like Michelangelo’s David, with full lips and a strong chin. His tuxedo looked well tailored yet casual, paired with an open-collared shirt.
Jessie raised her eyebrows. “The rest of him isn’t too bad, either.”
The light moment was lost as Jessie smoothed her finger beneath the image of Sam, who wowed with her starry smile and shimmery crimson sheath.
Nina squeezed Jessie’s hand. “She looks like a princess.”
Jessie remembered playing dress-up with Sam—tulle skirts and tiaras, their mother calling both of them “princess.”
“Dr. Ian Alden,” Nina said. Jessie focused on the next man in the picture.
He was tall and lean, at least six feet, with an air of Ivy League snobbery emphasized by the striped ascot tied at his neck. Not handsome in the classic sense, but interesting—his features too delicate for a man, his skin too fair. His hair was tangled in loose waves of golden copper and had started to recede at his temples.
“Fertility specialist,” Jessie said, remembering the sites she’d found earlier, “with a boutique practice near Embassy Row. He offers sophisticated procedures, some of them controversial.”
“Like what?”
“Preimplantation genetic diagnosis, gender selection, intracytoplasmic sperm injection.”
“Slippery slope kind of stuff,” Nina said.
Jessie looked at her quizzically.
“What?” Nina lowered her eyebrows. “I know about that stuff. I read your articles.”
Jessie smiled appreciatively. She wondered if her father knew anything about her work beyond the fact it had interested the president.
“Ian Alden has his arm around Sam.” Nina tapped her fingernail on the photo where Ian’s hand clutched Sam’s waist. “Isn’t that
his wife standing next to him?”
“Not really next to him. There’s more space between the two of them than any of the others. But yes, Helena is his wife.”
Except for her curvaceous figure and the rounded tip of her nose, Helena Alden was all lines and angles. Her coffee-brown hair lay in a sleek, geometric bob. She looked like a pagan priestess in her low-cut black gown, her piercing eyes glimmering with the secrets of Gothic witchcraft.
“Alden and Associates is her namesake,” Jessie said. “A lobbying firm on K Street that represents biotech companies. They push the development of breakthrough medicines and stem cell technologies.”
“That’s noble.”
“Sometimes.” Jessie had seen the lack of ethics in their arguments—won in large part by the most sizeable contribution to a legislator’s campaign or the shapeliness of a lobbyist’s legs. “Before Sam stopped returning my calls, she seemed to have adopted Helena as a mentor. Sam had been working for her ever since she interned at Alden and Associates her senior year at Georgetown.”
“I wonder how she’s taking Sam’s death,” Nina said, “considering how close they were..”
“I was wondering the same thing,” Jessie said. “And I plan to find out. I’m going to get Sam’s things from Alden and Associates tomorrow morning.”
Chapter Eight
From the rear window of Michael’s Swann Street apartment, he watched Jessie and Nina in Sam’s bedroom across the alley. One floor down, lights on, blinds open. He had an HD view through his digital binoculars, equipped to take snapshots or video. During his assignment to Sam, he’d sometimes edited footage he’d taken of her for Croft—adding a little substance to his reports and putting Croft’s high-tech equipment to good use.
Focused on Jessie, he switched the binoculars into video mode and pressed record. He’d seen her on YouTube and watched her from the landing at the inn, standing at the window with her back to him. But now he saw her animated with her friend. Her mannerisms were similar to Sam’s, except more reserved—the tilt of her head, the way she bunched her lips when she was thinking.
He listened to her conversation with Nina, the sound of her voice filling his apartment a beat behind the movements of her mouth. She looked determined and strong, with a glint of underlying gentleness and fear. An unexpected surge of protectiveness pulsed through him. Michael had doubted he could commit to the job with Jessie after what had happened with Sam, but now he’d gone and surprised himself. Or maybe Jessie had surprised him.
She’s definitely different from Sam.
His commitment to Sam had been a she-could-be-my-little-sister kind of loyalty. After he’d spent eight hard-boiled years in the Secret Service, getting a high-dollar offer to keep tabs on an unpredictable twenty-four-year-old had seemed like an overpaid babysitting job—a stress-free way to transition into civilian life while Croft fed him security-consulting leads. But he’d gotten attached to Sam. She’d been his own personal proving ground for the past two years as a civilian. She’d been his responsibility, and now she was dead. Croft had been right about his emotional involvement with her, but not for the reasons he assumed; Michael had been attached to Sam because she’d been his responsibility.
And he had failed her.
But he’d been given a chance to redeem himself—to bring Sam’s murderer to justice and to look out for Jessie.
Now that he knew about the picture she’d received at the inn, all of her online searches from this afternoon made sense. Already familiar with Senator Briel, Philippe Lesort, and Ian and Helena Alden, Michael hadn’t been looking forward to learning more. He already knew more about them than he cared to know and had spent more time with them than he’d wanted to spend. Even so, the picture Jessie had described to Nina intrigued him. He’d caught sections of it through his binoculars and snapped some photos. Hearing about it had given him a better view.
Judging from the date Jessie had searched over and over online, he figured the photo had been taken a couple of years ago, almost to the day, early in his assignment to Sam. He hadn’t attended the event where the picture was taken and didn’t know why it was significant. Yet he had to agree with Jessie and Nina. Pursuing the source of the picture would be like trying to find a specific pellet from a spent shell of double-ought buck. But the picture was a starting point, and it marked four of Sam’s closest so-called friends as persons of interest.
Or red herrings.
Michael needed to figure out which. But he couldn’t divert his attention from Jessie long enough to do the grunt work himself. She’d have to take the steps or missteps, and he would be right there with her.
The clause from Croft’s contract echoed in his mind: refrain from developing a physical or emotional relationship with Jessica Ryan Croft. Michael wished he could accuse Croft of having been presumptuous. But as he watched her now, he had to confess—she captivated him in a way that Sam had not.
A way paved with mystery and danger and longing. He exhaled loudly.
Use her, protect her, and resist her. A risky proposition.
Michael couldn’t help thinking that if Croft had been a proper father, things would’ve turned out differently. Sam’s death would have been investigated, and he and Jessie wouldn’t be chasing clues. Croft had enough power to get to the truth, but not enough balls to pursue it.
Selfish bastard.
Judge Croft was supposed to be all about the rule of law. Bringing Sam’s killer to justice was the last thing he could have done for her, but he’d picked politics over parenthood.
Again.
Croft had probably been made aware of the toxicology report, then masterminded a cover-up. Michael didn’t have the evidence to expose him for it, but he intended to at least make him worry about the security of his secret. As far as Michael knew, Croft had no clue that he and Jessie knew about the semen sample submitted for analysis, and the alcohol and Rohypnol cocktail that had stopped Sam’s heart.
Michael set the binoculars on the windowsill, picked up his cell phone, and speed-dialed Croft. In mid-ring, the line connected.
“Croft.” The guy could make his own name sound like a four-letter word.
Silverware clinked in the background, along with muffled music and conversation. “Checking in, sir.”
“Hold a minute,” Croft said.
The background noise came in waves, then quieted to hollow static.
“Is Jessica at Sam’s place?” Croft’s question reverberated as if he’d relocated to the men’s room.
“She is. With a friend.”
“She brought someone with her from Charlottesville?”
“No, her friend lives here.” Michael checked his notes even though he knew from memory what he planned to say. “Her name is Nina Daniels, formerly Nina Harrison, Jessica’s college roommate for four years. You remember her?”
Croft’s silence was interrupted by a toilet flushing.
A silent yes or a silent no? Michael couldn’t decide. “Nina Harrison Daniels, age thirty, DC native. Graduated from the University of Virginia with honors, alongside your daughter. Married to deployed Marine Nathan Daniels. A one-year-old daughter, Sophie Claire.”
“I don’t need a biography.”
“You might.”
“Watch your tone,” Croft said.
“Nina Daniels is a forensic toxicologist at the DC Medical Examiner’s Office,” Michael said. “You interested now?”
Croft missed a beat. “No more than I was before.”
Michael second-guessed the wisdom of delivering the information by phone. But even if he’d done it face-to-face, Croft probably wouldn’t have reacted. Lawyers who argued in his courtroom said that the judge never flinched and he never showed emotion. His advocates called him judicious. Michael called him cold.
“What else have you got?” Croft asked, as if the bullet Michael had just fired were a spitball. Water ran behind Croft’s words, followed by the rip and crinkling of a paper towel.
“Jes
sica’s going to Alden and Associates in the morning to get Sam’s personal things.”
“Then check in afterward, and let me know how that goes for her,” Croft said, back amid the music and conversation. “And check your attitude before you call.”
Croft clicked off.
Michael tensed with the urge to wring The Rooster’s neck, but he steadied his breathing and refocused. He’d keep a check on Nina through Jessie. If anything went awry with her anytime soon, Croft would be responsible.
Chapter Nine
Jessie peered up at the silver façade of the Millennium Building, squinting at the gray morning sky. Like contestants in an architectural pageant, similar buildings lined K Street, notorious for its law firms, lobbying groups, and PR agencies. All of them traded on their power addresses, including Alden & Associates. Jessie knew too well about their ability to influence decisions on Capitol Hill, in the White House, and in numerous federal agencies.
“Street Sense,” a voice called out. “Street Sense.” She glanced down the sidewalk, where a man in a tattered parka waved a tabloid-style newspaper. “Street Sense.”
A woman stopped and bought one while people dressed in bulky coats bustled past. Some glanced at Jessie, then looked away. Others stared through blank city-eyes. She tugged at the ends of her scarf, pulling them tighter around her neck.
Jessie imagined Sam’s everyday life working in one of DC’s trophy buildings for a big-name lobbying firm. It made sense that her sister had been attracted to a place like this. Growing up, she’d been the more social of the two of them, always trying to influence people—for better or worse. She’d found a perfect way to make a living, yet someone had wanted her dead.
But why?
Maybe Helena Alden knew something that would prove significant. After her online research yesterday, Jessie had called Alden & Associates. The receptionist had connected her to Helena’s line, but the call had gone to voice mail. She’d asked if she could stop in this morning and left her cell number. Helena had texted back: 8 am OK check in with lobby guard.