Mihaly’s mouth twitched into an odd smile. She wondered if he was trying to hide his pain, but his eyes were definitely twinkling with amusement.
“You thought I meant that wasn’t Meg?” He chuckled. “No, that is most certainly Meg. But that is not our young Scandinavian friend. It is his picture that has been faked.”
Confused, Lauren glanced from Mihaly, to the stacked photos, then back to Mihaly. It was a tempting idea, but made no sense. “What makes you think so?”
“Because it is me.” He actually seemed to be enjoying her discomfort. “I am the man in those pictures.”
She realized her mouth was hanging open, and closed it. “How, um, I mean, what… ?” She gave up.
“They were obviously stolen from my apartment. You must realize they were meant to be private, only for Meg and me.”
Numbly, Lauren nodded. If she learned any more about her sister’s love life she’d never be able to look her in the eyes without blushing.
Drew cleared his throat, probably no more eager than she was to know the details of Meg’s private life. “Why would they change them?” he asked. “They couldn’t work as blackmail, since Meg would have recognized them.”
“I suspect your father was the intended target, at first. If their marriage were real, these might have been very effective blackmail.”
“At first? What are you talking about?” Drew demanded.
“Imagine the situation you described to me,” Mihaly explained. “Senator Creighton and Meg announce their marriage. They wait for someone to contact them with some sort of blackmail. They are prepared for this type of photo, but they aren’t worried. If the pictures are of Senator Creighton and some woman, he would expect that they can not damage his career. It is well known that he has dated, and been intimate with, many women in this town. Am I correct?” he asked Drew.
“Correct,” Drew muttered.
“In his home state, it is known he is like this. It is also known he is a good senator, so they re-elect him. If these photos show up, so what? He says, ‘I am appalled, I did not know she took them.’ Then maybe the woman looks bad, that’s all. They would not influence his vote. He doesn’t care, so he is immune.”
Mihaly watched both of them to see if they followed his reasoning. Lauren nodded. “We get that much. Senator Creighton can’t be blackmailed with dirty pictures of himself. But they would expect him to want to keep similar pictures of his wife out of the press.”
“Yes, quite likely,” Mihaly agreed. “It is the nature of politics, at least in your country. Wives are expected to be pure, a good influence on the man. The people are more likely to forgive his indiscretions if his wife does.”
His assessment of American politics sounded right on target to Lauren. “So why change the pictures? Why aren’t they just as effective with your picture on them? It shows his wife fooling around with another man.”
Mihaly rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “This is the troubling part. I believe the pictures are more than blackmail. They are a warning.”
“How? For whom?” Drew said it, but Lauren was glad he asked. She was starting to wonder if she was the only one getting lost in the tangled web of lies.
Mihaly assessed them before answering, debating how much information to share. Finally, pointing to the pictures, he said, “Do you understand what this means? They broke into my apartment to get them. The blackmailers know who I am and what I do, and they were still able to get into my apartment. Meg knows what that says about their level of competence.”
Drew was nodding, but Lauren wasn’t about to let him off that easily. “That’s not good enough,” she said, surprising both men. “I want specifics here. We’re talking about my sister, who apparently means something to you.”
“I love Meg,” Mihaly said, as if that should have been obvious. “And she loves me.”
“So you said. And I’m beginning to believe it, at least your side of it. So I think I have a right to know exactly who you are. Are you a spy? Have you involved Meg in something dangerous or illegal?”
“Lauren, he can’t—” Drew began. Mihaly cut him off with a raised hand.
“It’s okay, she has a right to ask.” He smiled at her. “Spy. That word has a certain panache, no? Perhaps more than I deserve. I am the Romanian Deputy Ambassador to the United States. But I also provide information to certain people in my country. Sensitive information. I do not meet with agents in dark alleys or sneak into government buildings to steal documents. Usually. But what I do is not always legal. Technically.”
Lauren frowned. “Yeah, that’s real specific.”
“I think you can say he’s a spy,” Drew said.
Mihaly shrugged.
She wasn’t happy with the answer, but realized she wouldn’t get any more out of him. “And Meg knows this?”
“Yes.”
“But all this blackmail stuff isn’t related to who you are and what you do?”
“No.”
Lauren didn’t think so either, but she wanted to hear him say it. “So how is altering pictures to put someone else’s face on your body a warning?”
“These people are not being subtle. It means they have eliminated me. Removed me. It is a threat, in case Meg wants to turn to me for help. Obviously, they do not want me helping her. So they would expose her affair and my identity along with it. She won’t contact me, because it would put me in danger.”
“And she won’t put you in danger because she loves you.”
“Yes. She is wrong to do this, of course, but she is acting out of love.”
His confidence in Meg was amazing, and Lauren was beginning to believe it was justified. She bit her lip while she thought it through. Mihaly Dragos was at the very least a close friend of Meg’s and probably the person best qualified to help her deal with threats from government agents. Yet, she hadn’t contacted him. Meg must care a great deal for the Romanian man if she chose to protect him when she needed his help the most.
“All right, so the pictures aren’t sexual blackmail,” Lauren said. “They’re a warning that Meg shouldn’t contact you. Which explains everything except why Meg and Harlan ran from the Secret Service agents they were supposed to be working with.”
Mihaly considered the problem. “On that, I agree with Drew’s conclusion. One of them recognized the blond man as a Secret Service agent. It is the only answer. Some of these men act like they are invisible, you know, but they are not. Maybe this one made that mistake.”
He leaned forward, more intense than he’d been before. “You must let me help you. We have to find them before these rogue agents do.”
Lauren thought “rogue agents” was a good term for them. She also thought it sounded dangerous as hell. “What do you think we should do?”
“Is there someone who might know a place Senator Creighton would consider safe? Or anyone he might contact if he needed help?”
“I wish it were us,” Drew complained. “But he won’t let us get involved, so my only guess would be Senator Pierson. Their politics may differ, but they’ve been friends for years.”
“Can you trust him?”
“Yes. If he were part of it, he could have removed us from the picture before we went to Florida. Plus, he already helped us once.”
“Then perhaps he will be able to help again.”
Drew nodded and looked at Lauren, including her in his response. “We’ll talk to him.”
“And this Agent Chapman you mentioned. He is expecting to hear from you?”
“I’ll contact him again,” Drew offered. “Maybe he already knows something about the guys who followed us to the motel yesterday.”
“Yes, we will have to involve him. Perhaps he can find out who the other Secret Service agents are, the ones Meg and Senator Creighton ran from, if they really are agents.” He scowled at the facedown photos. Lauren had half expected Mihaly to propose some clandestine operation right out of the pages of an espionage novel and was mildly disappointed that he
would run straight to the authorities with their story.
“And perhaps he will recognize the blond man in the pictures. I would especially love to be present when we find him.” From Mihaly’s expression, he was not going to be forgiving about someone else having seen his private photos of Meg.
But exactly how private were they? Lauren recalled her initial assumption that Meg had been unaware of the camera. A hidden camera wouldn’t be a surprise in Mihaly’s electronically enhanced apartment. Lauren had to consider the other possible explanation for the pictures. If Meg hadn’t known she was being photographed, she might have been appalled to discover that her lover had taken advantage of her that way. She might have avoided contacting Mihaly because she no longer trusted him.
She should have thought of it sooner. Lauren eyed Mihaly suspiciously. “I’m surprised Meg agreed to let you take those photographs,” she said.
He looked up, dark gaze sparkling as he assessed her. “Meg can be rather uninhibited,” he said, watching her closely. “The photos were her idea, Lauren. Perhaps there is more to your sister than she lets you know.”
Lauren blinked. He sure had that right.
Mihaly slid the pictures back in the envelope, folding the clasp. “I would prefer to keep these, if you don’t mind.”
She minded only if he was lying about being the man in the pictures, and about Meg being aware of the camera. She had a feeling he wasn’t.
Lauren nodded, and watched him fold the envelope before fitting it into an inner pocket of his suit coat. The photos would be creased, but she imagined he had negatives. Or maybe it was Meg who had them. Suddenly recalling the rows of video tapes at Meg’s apartment, she flushed, glad they hadn’t decided to look through them. Who knew what else her sister had decided to record.
Drew used the tapped house line and put Agent Chapman on speaker so Lauren and Mihaly could hear.
“What do you want now?” Chapman’s voice barked.
“Hello to you, too.”
“What state are you in now, Creighton? Or have you left the country?”
Drew grinned, beginning to enjoy ruffling Chapman’s feathers. “We’re back in Georgetown.”
“Be still, my heart.” The words were flat and lifeless.
Lauren stifled a giggle and whispered to Drew, “Be nice, I like this guy.”
For a second Drew felt a stab of jealousy toward Chapman, wishing she’d said that about him. Not that she hadn’t demonstrated how much she liked him in several ways over the past few days, but he hadn’t actually heard the words. He was surprised to realize how much that mattered. Shrugging it off for now, he groused to Chapman, “Hey, don’t I get points for keeping you updated?”
“You’re a bit late. I got word last night about three a.m. that you were home. I really enjoyed that wakeup call, by the way, ’cause I’ve been getting way too much sleep lately.”
Drew didn’t hide his surprise. “You have someone watching the house?”
“We’re not totally incompetent, Creighton.” The agent’s voice was sharper now, and not the least bit friendly. “We even know that you visited your father’s safety deposit box. Again. I might overlook that bit of identity fraud on Miss Sutherland’s part if you want to tell me what it is that’s so important in there.”
He glanced at Lauren before answering. “Come on over, and we’ll tell you all about it.”
A moment of silence followed. “Are you saying you’re ready to cooperate?” He could hear the caution in Chapman’s voice.
“Fully.” He waited to see if the agent would believe him.
“Let me guess. You have something important and you need help.”
“Yes.”
“I’m an hour away.”
“Then we’ll see you in an hour.” Drew hung up the phone and looked at Lauren and Mihaly. “One down, one to go.”
Pierson seemed even more eager for an update than Chapman. “Come on over, I’m at the apartment. You need the address?”
“I have it in Dad’s book. Be there in ten,” he said, clicking off.
Lauren looked confused. “He has an apartment?”
“Pierson’s from Pennsylvania,” Drew explained. “That’s not too far from Washington for him to get home on weekends, so his family stays there and he lives in an apartment when he’s in town. A lot of senators and representatives do that. It’s not far from here. You want to come?”
“Are you kidding? Just try to stop me.”
He loved it; she was always ready for a new adventure. How this woman ever led a structured, uneventful life was beyond him. It sounded like she had a lot of cautious living to make up for, and he was just the man for the job.
“I’d better stay out of it,” Mihaly said, jerking his thoughts back to the moment. “Just be back by the time Chapman gets here.”
“No problem. And I’ll get Gerald to come over, too. He’ll kill me if I leave him out of this.”
The visit with Pierson would be quick. All he needed to do was prod the senator into examining his memories. Maybe he could shake something loose, some tidbit of information like the one that led them to Senator McNabb.
Pierson ushered them inside his small apartment and showed them to the single couch while he pulled up a chair. His face was paler than normal, and his anxiety was anything but subtle, with his hands on his knees, looking ready to spring into action at a moment’s notice. “Did you talk to Charly? What did you find out?”
He and Lauren had already discussed how they would answer this one. Even though Pierson had given them that lead, Drew saw no reason to tell what they’d learned. He’d promised Senator McNabb to leave her out of it if he could, and he intended to do that.
“That’s no longer important, Senator Pierson.”
“It’s not? I don’t understand. I thought you needed to find out who the blackmailer is.”
“We think we know. At least, we have enough information to track him down.” An exaggeration, but close enough.
Pierson looked ready to go after the blackmailers himself, right now. “You do? My God, tell me what you found out. Have they tried to compromise other senators? Do you realize the implications here?”
“We do.” He should have guessed that Pierson would see how the blackmail scheme would play out. The man wasn’t stupid. Naturally, he would fear the very scenario that Senator McNabb confirmed.
Drew glanced at Lauren and raised an eyebrow. She nodded, agreeing they would have to fill Pierson in on some of what was happening. He couldn’t hide a quick smile, enjoying the fact that they were thinking alike. They worked well together. They did everything well together. He squeezed her hand.
Since Pierson was aware of the possibilities, Drew didn’t try to play it down. “Someone is trying to control votes on key bills, Senator. And this won’t be the only time. Senators, and maybe congressmen, will be repeatedly pressured into voting a certain way. We don’t know how many, but it’s possible it’s already happening. I don’t even want to think about how it would upset the balance of power. Someone has a very large, very frightening agenda.”
“Damn straight! And if it’s already started, this is more urgent than I thought. We have to find out who it is and stop them.”
It felt good to know they had someone from the inside in their corner willing to help.
“We agree, Senator,” Lauren chimed in. That’s why we’re turning over everything we know to the Secret Service, who can contact the FBI and whoever else they need to track the culprit down.”
Pierson’s eyebrows went up. “Well, that’s a change. The last time I talked to you, you didn’t trust them because Harlan and Meg gave them the slip.”
“We can’t do this alone; we need help,” Drew admitted.
“Hell, I’ll help however I can. Just don’t get the authorities involved if you don’t know who you can trust.”
“They already were involved,” Lauren reminded him.
“But they don’t know shit! Why not keep it tha
t way?”
Two days of thinking about it had obviously gotten Pierson pretty worked up. Drew held up a hand. “Don’t worry. We’ve been talking to an agent we’re pretty sure we can trust.”
“Who?”
“He’s the guy in charge of the task force my dad was working with.”
Our Little Secret Page 25