The 14th... And Forever

by Merline Lovelace

  Setting his assistants to work on the financial disclosure forms and tax returns, Jack attacked the bank statements himself. Item by item, record by record, the team scrutinized every financial transaction. Using a spreadsheet Jack set up on the notebook computers, they bounced every bank deposit against reported income from a host of sources. Verified the rates of return on every investment. Tracked every expense, no matter how small, to ascertain whether the senator’s outlays exceeded his reported income.

  Her stomach hollowing, Angela realized it was just a matter of time until Jack demanded an explanation for the unexplainable.

  The moment arrived far sooner than she’d anticipated. Less than two hours after he first delved into the bank records, Jack sat back, frowning.

  “This doesn’t make sense.”

  Ramirez jumped up and peered over his shoulder at the computer screen. “What doesn’t make sense?”

  “The senator’s pattern of expenditures for the past year. He’s made a number of large cash withdrawals, but I find nothing to show for them. No increase in property insurance to cover significant purchases. No new stocks. No bonds. No real estate transaction or significant charitable contributions.”

  “How much money are we talking about here?”

  “Several hundred thousand.”

  The special agent whistled. “What do you suppose the senior senator from South Carolina’s spending all that money on? Does he have an expensive habit that’s gotten out of hand, I wonder? Something our friends at HealthMark might just be willing to help him pay for?”

  Jack pulled his gaze from the computer screen. From across the room, he searched Angela’s face.

  “You won’t find a record of those cash expenditures,” she confirmed quietly. “The senator gave me that money.”

  One of the accountants gaped. Ramirez spun around, his eyes bugging.

  “Senator Claiborne gave you two hundred thousand dollars?”

  “One hundred and ninety-three thousand, seven hundred and fifty-two, to be exact.”

  “In cash?”

  “In cash.”

  “What for?”

  “I can’t tell you.”

  “You can’t—?” The agent stuttered in sheer astonishment. “You can’t tell me?”

  “No.”

  In the blink of an eye, he went cold and hard and official. His narrowed gaze sliced into Angela.

  “Let’s get something straight here. I wasn’t real happy about your involvement in this case to begin with. If you start obstructing the investigation now, I’m going to become even more unhappy.”

  “That money has nothing to do with your investigation,” she insisted.

  “That’s not your call.”

  “That’s the one I’m making.”

  “Look, Ms. Paretti—”

  “Hold on, Manny.”

  His mind racing, Jack rose and crossed to where Angela sat stiff and unmoving on the cushions. A dozen different explanations for the payments occurred to him, some more palatable than others.

  The most obvious was that the senator had bailed the Parettis out of their financial hole, but that didn’t track with Jack’s observation of both Tony and Angela. Neither one would accept out-and-out charity, not to the tune of one hundred and ninety-three thousand dollars.

  The idea that the senator had paid Angela for personal services above and beyond her driving duties, Jack dismissed out of hand.

  Which left only one remote possibility.

  “Does this money have anything to do with the bills Uncle Guido put into circulation?” he asked her, his words low and for her ears only. “Did the senator lend you the money to cover his bad paper?”

  “No! He would have, if we’d asked him to, but we managed to catch all but a few of the bills before they hit the street.”

  “Then what, Angela? What was it for?”

  “I can’t tell you.” Her eyes pleaded with him. “You’ll have to trust me on this, Jack. Please.”

  For one fleeting instant, he recalled the image of the blonde who’d cozied up to him in Tampa. For just that long, his rational, logical mind acknowledged that it was possible Angela had chosen this time and this place to capitalize on the undeniable attraction simmering between them. It was possible she’d engaged in a desperate attempt to win Jack’s trust on her boss’s behalf.

  As swiftly as that possibility occurred, it collided with a single, absolute certainty. Angela hadn’t used her body to entice him. She wouldn’t play those kinds of games. Whatever her reasons, she’d given herself wholly, unreservedly. She hadn’t been using him then, and he damn well wouldn’t use her any longer.

  Spinning around, he strode across the room and reached for the phone.

  “What are you doing?” Angela demanded, scrambling off the cushioned shelf.

  “I’m taking you out of the middle,” he told her grimly. “From now on, this is between your boss and me.”

  Chapter 11

  “What’s the senator’s private number?” Jack asked, the phone gripped tight in his hand. “I don’t want to work my way through a network of underlings.”

  Angela hesitated, tugged in a dozen different directions. In her heart, she knew Jack was right. He and her boss needed to get face-to-face. Only the senator could explain about the money, and then only to those he absolutely trusted.

  Jack needed to understand what drove Henry Claiborne. Needed to glimpse the unshakable core of integrity at the depths of his sometimes devious soul. But the habit of protecting her boss went too deep for her to just hand him over, even to the man she’d welcomed into her arms and her body just hours ago.

  “Let me make the call,” she said, holding out her hand.

  He handed over the phone.

  Angela dialed a restricted number on the old-fashioned rotary instrument and waited, her heart pounding. The senator’s senior legislative aide answered on the second ring.

  “Marc? Is the senator there?”

  Marc Green’s voice leaped across the wires. “Angela! Where the hell are you? What’s going on?”

  He sounded as shaken as she’d ever heard him.

  “I can’t talk right now.”

  “What do you mean, you can’t talk? You have to. I won’t operate in the dark like this.”

  “This doesn’t concern you, Marc. Just put the senator on.”

  She knew instantly that she’d said the wrong thing. For the past few years, she’d tried to keep the confidence and trust Henry Claiborne placed in her from eroding his senior staffer’s authority or confidence. She hadn’t always succeeded.

  Usually, Marc hid his resentment. The only times it surfaced were in the somewhat patronizing explanations he gave visitors of her “special” relationship with the boss, like the one he’d given Jack. And, as now, in an occasional reminder of who was in charge.

  “May I remind you that I’m still the senator’s legislative director?” he said icily. “Until you take over this position, too, you’d better remember that anything and everything concerning his office also concerns me.”

  Angela drew in a steadying breath. With Jack and Manny Ramirez and the two accountants listening to the exchange, she had to hold on to her professional cool.

  “Marc...” she began placatingly.

  The staffer didn’t want placating. Ruthlessly he cut her off.

  “I want to know what’s going on. I want to know why the boss was late for his meeting with the civic leaders this morning. I want to know why he postponed the hearings on the medical reform bill, and I want to know where the hell you are now.”

  Angela didn’t lose her temper often, but when she did, she lost it the same way. she did everything else. Completely. Wholly. With all the passion of her lively nature.

  “Listen to me, Green. I don’t have time for your wants right now, and I have even less desire to pander to your conservative, uptight ego. I suggest you put the senator on. Now!”

  A frigid silence came over the line.
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  Angela waited it out. Through the haze of her own anger, she caught Jack’s eye. Once again she was reminded of the subtle differences she’d detected between the two men. Although they both worked in the upper echelons of power, Jack wielded his own brand of authority. Marc drew his from his boss.

  “The senator’s not here,” the staffer finally answered coldly. “He left an hour ago.”

  “To go where?”

  “He wouldn’t say.” The three words might have been chipped from granite. “He left instructions to call his beeper number if we needed him.”

  Angela knew instantly where her boss had headed. The same place he went whenever he wanted privacy and peace. As he always did on those occasions when he didn’t employ Angela’s services, he’d have changed taxis at least once to cover his tracks. Maybe twice, if he’d thought there was a chance that the cabdriver had recognized him.

  “Right. I’ll talk to you later, Marc.”

  “Angela!” Green made an almost audible effort to control his temper. “At least tell me if Merritt’s with you. Will he be available to testify if we reschedule the hearings for tomorrow?”

  “I’ll get back to you.”

  She hung up, knowing she’d have to do some serious ego-soothing with Marc when—if!—she got back to work. The way things were going, that might take a while.

  “It sounds as though the senator’s legislative director isn’t pleased with the fact that he’s been left out of the loop,” Jack observed.

  “His nose is a bit out of joint,” Angela conceded, “but he’ll get over it.”

  She hoped.

  Dismissing Marc with a wave of one hand, she put herself right back into the middle of Jack’s investigation.

  “The senator’s not at the office. He postponed the hearings and left an hour ago, without saying where he was heading. I think I know where he is. I’ll take you there...on one condition.”

  “No conditions,” Ramirez protested. “No deals.”

  “I’m pretty sure I know where the senator is,” she retorted, still fired up from her confrontation with Marc. “You don’t. If either of you wants to talk to him any time soon, you agree to my condition.”

  “Let’s hear it.”

  “I agree.”

  The two men spoke simultaneously.

  Aggrieved, Ramirez turned to Jack. “Wait a minute here. I’m supposed to be the agent in charge of this investigation. You can’t just go around making deals without even knowing what the hell they are.”

  “With Angela I can. I trust her.”

  Afterward, when she had time to think about it, Angela would pinpoint this moment as the precise instant she suspected she’d fallen, and fallen hard, for the senator’s goat. It didn’t matter that he was an accountant. That her driving made him nervous. That she didn’t know what kind of music he liked or whether he’d support the medical reform legislation or if her mother would approve of him.

  He trusted her, and she trusted him, and in Angela’s book that formed a bond more binding than the physical one they’d shared such a short time ago.

  “Let me make one call,” she told the two men, although her smile was for Jack alone. “In private.”

  “We’ll wait outside. Let’s go, troops.”

  “Wait a minute!” Ramirez yelled, grabbing at his coat as he followed his team members outside. “Wait a minute! What’s the condition? Is that the condition? A private call? Dammit, Jack!”

  Angela made her call, snatched up her purse and joined the others less than two minutes later.

  “All right. I’ll take Jack and you, Ramirez, to see the senator...if you agree that you won’t disclose his location to anyone. Anyone! That’s the deal. Take it or leave it.”

  Nodding, Jack pulled open the Chevy’s passenger door. “We’ll take it.”

  - “Wait a minute!” the agent protested again. “Wait just a damn minute!”

  “You wait,” Angela said with a grin. “I’m going to burn some rubber.”

  Ramirez dived into the back seat just as she put the Chevy in gear and hit the gas. A spin of the wheel brought the car around. The rear tires spitting pebbles and oyster shells, the vehicle tore down the narrow lane. Forty minutes later, Angela pulled into the driveway of a brick house in a rolling suburb that skirted Virginia’s famed horse country. Although the sloping front lawn was still winter brown, it had been trimmed and shaped and tended with obvious devotion. A white rail fence surrounded the property, and a matching trellis interwoven with rose stems arched over the brick sidewalk.

  Angela bypassed the front door and led the way to a side entrance. While they waited for an answer to the knock, Jack exchanged a look with Manny. From the agent’s bemused expression, he couldn’t quite place the flamboyant, flashy senior senator from South Carolina in this quiet setting, either.

  But it was the senator who answered the door. More or less. Not the white-suited, string-tied suthrun-gentleman image he cultivated so carefully on the Hill. This Henry Claiborne wore a droopy hand-knit sweater, baggy brown pants and well-worn slippers on his stockinged feet.

  “Well, well, missy,” he boomed, greeting her with a hearty kiss on the cheek. “I know you wanted me to replace the Chrysler, but did you have to blow it up?”

  Angela grinned. “Even with the new engine Tony put in, it didn’t have enough power to suit me.”

  A chuckle rumbled deep in his chest. “Nothing will ever have enough power to suit you.”

  “That’s true,” she admitted.

  Or almost true.

  As she stepped into a sunshine-filled kitchen, Angela’s mind zinged to a narrow bed. A pair of strong thighs spreading hers. The taut muscles of Jack’s back and buttocks as he thrust into her.

  He had enough power to suit her. More than enough. The heady thought sent a spiral of heat through her belly and a rush of warmth into her face. Flustered, she stood back while the senator greeted the two men.

  “Well, sir,” he told Jack, “I’ll admit I thought it would take you a mite longer to untangle my finances, yes, just a mite longer, but I was expecting Angela’s call.”

  “I don’t suppose it occurred to you this morning to tell Special Agent Ramirez about the cash withdrawals and save me a few hours’ work?” Jack drawled.

  One corner of the carroty mustache lifted. “No, as a matter of fact, it didn’t.”

  The short, wiry FDA agent bristled at his genial tone. “This isn’t a game, Senator.”

  “I don’t believe I consider it one, either,” the legislator replied, his voice deceptively soft. “It was my car that blew up last night, and my driver who almost went with it. I don’t take kindly to that, sir. Not at all. Someone’s going to pay for it, and pay dearly.”

  Angela hid a smile as Ramirez blinked and took a half step back. Henry Claiborne all bluff and friendly could work his way around the staunchest opponents. The same man soft and sibilant could raise the hairs on a dog’s back.

  “Let’s go into the parlor,” he suggested, genial once more, “and we’ll have our little chat.”

  Angela led the way to a sunny front room that held two comfortable armchairs with crocheted doilies pinned to the seat backs and armrests, a nubby plaid sofa and a three-legged sewing basket spilling a colorful array of embroidery threads.

  “Hi, Buttons,” she cooed, scooping a fat ginger-colored cat off one chair. She tickled it behind the left ear and claimed its seat. Buttons spread like a furry blob across her lap, liberally coating her black tunic and skirt with reddish-brown cat hair, and twitched his left ear patiently until Angela resumed the tickling.

  The senator gestured his guests to the sofa and settled himself in the other chair. Steepling his fingers over the paunch disguised by his bulky sweater, he waited for his visitors to fire the opening round.

  “We’d like to know about the cash withdrawals you made last year,” Jack said evenly. “Withdrawals that amounted to almost two hundred thousand dollars.”

  “One h
undred and ninety-three thousand, seven hundred and fifty dollars, I do believe.”

  “Fifty-two,” Angela put in helpfully.

  “Fifty-two,” he amended. “Well, son, I gave the money to Angela, as I believe she told you.”

  “She did. She didn’t tell us why, though.”

  He beamed affectionately at his driver. “She wouldn’t. She’s too loyal to. betray a confidence.”

  “Too loyal, or too stubborn?” Jack asked with a faint smile.

  “Both,” she returned. “You’d better remember that, Merritt.”

  His smile deepened. “I will.”

  The senator’s bushy red brows rose at the exchange. Angela caught the gleam of interest under his heavy lids, and knew she’d have some explaining to do later.

  “So what was the money for?” Ramirez asked impatiently, either uninterested in or oblivious of. the side currents swirling around him.

  “Well, sir, Angela used it to make a down payment on this house. I didn’t want the transaction in my name, for reasons of privacy, you understand.”

  Manny Ramirez was too professional to say a word, but Angela saw his startled gaze dart to her, then to the doilies covering the arms of her chair. When his black eyes came back to her, they were filled with a speculation she’d seen all too many times before. She knew without being told what he was thinking. The same thing so many others thought when they learned that she was more than just the senator’s driver.

  Ramirez was having trouble envisioning her and the senator in this little love nest, though. Angela couldn’t blame him. Neither of them was exactly the doily type.

  She wasn’t the only one who intercepted the agent’s speculative glance. The senator’s eyes narrowed, and Jack’s glinted a warning. Angela felt a silly rush of happiness at the unmistakable message he telegraphed to the FDA agent. No matter what the evidence, no matter how damning the situation, he wasn’t going to accept the obvious.

  Special Agent Ramirez was as tough as he looked, however. Not afraid to tackle the issue head-on, he leaned forward and laid it out.