Catherine Coulter - Split Second

She knows, of course, and it scares her to her heels, Savich thought, but he only nodded. He didn’t expect her to say any more, and she didn’t. Maybe she couldn’t; maybe she was forbidden to. He shook his head at himself. His imagination was running away with him. He said, “Lucy’s right. Someone thinks he knows what the ring can do, and it’s worth killing for. Do you still wear it around your neck?”

She nodded.

“May we see it?”

Slowly, Lucy pulled the gold chain out of her shirt, the ring threaded through it. Every eye in the room went to it, as if pulled by an invisible wire. She took the ring from the chain and handed it to him.

Savich rolled it around in his palm and passed it to Dane to look at. He said, “You’ll see there’s that single Welsh word etched into it— SEFYLL —it means to stop moving, to become stationary.”

“Stop moving what?” Ollie said.

“I don’t know,” Lucy said.

Dane said the word aloud, and again, her heart seized for a moment, but nothing happened. All the agents had to repeat the word, and some of them got it close. Ruth said it right on the button. Lucy jerked, couldn’t help it, and she knew Savich saw it. As for Coop, he held her hand and said nothing at all.

Lucy took the ring back from Ollie, slid it onto the gold chain, and slipped it inside her shirt. All of them looked at the small bulge where the ring lay warm against her flesh.

“Your relatives,” Ruth said, “the Silvermans. They all know about the ring?”

“They denied even knowing about the ring; they didn’t show any interest when I told them last night. I know they have to be our first suspects, given what’s happened, but it’s hard to accept that. I grew up with them in my life, and they’re the only family I have left.” She looked around the conference table as she spoke.

Families, Savich thought. They were the very devil, if you wanted to be objective. “Lucy, I know how hard this is for you, but you need to keep an open mind. Now, you’re butt-deep in the swamp here. I want you to stick with Coop. Consider him another pair of jeans.”

Lucy saw Coop’s pants lying on the floor next to her bed, saw that Coop was grinning at her. She said, her voice cool, “I think that’s an excellent idea.”

There was a good deal of laughter.

Savich looked at Lucy again. “I could bring the Silvermans in for an interview, either together or separately, but the fact is, you and Coop have already found out what they had to say. We have no evidence yet of any complicity between them and the two men who tried to kill you, or the theft of the letter, so we don’t have enough probable cause to get a search warrant. They probably wouldn’t even speak to me without a lawyer at this point. So I’ll treat them as your family unless we find something definite to talk to them about.”

He paused for a moment, searching her face. “However, I’ve already done some checking into Alan Silverman’s financial dealings, and his longtime presidency at the Washington Federated Bank. You said you thought he was very rich, and retired from banking?”

“Yes, he retired nearly two years ago. As far as I know, he’s always had a great deal of money.”

“Lucy, he didn’t retire from the Washington Federated Bank like you were told. The board voted him out for gross mismanagement. He lost the bank a great deal of money in the recent financial crisis. The bank may be insolvent, and if the FDIC closes it, he will lose all the equity he has left. There’s even the possibility of an indictment. So, we can’t write off financial motives on his part, if he’s involved.”

How could he use the ring to fix this? It was odd, Lucy thought, but she wasn’t all that surprised. Ever since their visit to Uncle Alan’s house last night, she’d begun to see him with new eyes. Aunt Jennifer and Court, too. Now she wondered if she’d ever really known Uncle Alan, or his family. Her heart pounded. She’d never known her own father, either. She said, “I guess I understand why no one told me the truth about it. Maybe Court and Miranda don’t know what really happened.”

“One more thing, Lucy,” Savich said. “Whoever tried to kill you failed spectacularly. They’re going to be afraid now, afraid and maybe desperate. I want you and Coop to be very careful. Remember, close as a pair of jeans.”

Georgetown

Friday night

Savich felt the length of his wife’s body beneath him, all loose and relaxed now. He breathed in the scent of her as he nuzzled her neck. He finally managed to lift himself off her and rest his weight on his elbows, but he couldn’t resist kissing her again. He loved her mouth, her tongue. It made him crazy. “Do you remember way back when you were staying with me so I could protect you? Like Lucy and Coop? And you had that very fortuitous nightmare?”

She hummed deep in her throat. “And you came galloping in on your white horse to save me. No, wait, it was white boxers. And you stayed, to my everlasting gratitude. Goodness, what a time that was, Dillon.” She hugged him tight. “The luckiest day in my life was when I shot you in Hogan’s Alley.”

He kept kissing her, then said, “Do you know I still have those pants I ripped that day?”

“I’ve seen them hanging in the back of the closet. Do you want to get them mended?”

“Oh, no, it would be like destroying a wonderful memory.” He laughed, rolled over on his back, and brought her against his side. “More than six years we’ve been together. Now we’ve got Sean, and another big honking mess on our hands, just like we did then.”

“Big honking messes—nothing new in that.” She kissed his neck, lightly rubbed her palm over his chest, then rested her face against his shoulder. “Our lives, I suppose, aren’t what you’d call exactly normal, are they? Not like the Perrys next door, for example, an accountant and a paralegal.”

“Would you want us to be in those types of professions? To be nine-to-fivers?”

“Since it’s never even been a consideration, I’d have to guess no. The thing is, Dillon, both of us are a perfect fit for what we do, a perfect fix for what we are, and that makes us really lucky. Sometimes I wonder what I’d have become if I’d never met you. I don’t think it would be a pretty picture, Dillon.”

He ran his palm down her hip, pausing here and there to knead. “Have I ever told you that you’ve got a lovely, twisted brain? I love to watch the way you figure your way through the murkiest problems. Let me add that when you take chances, it scares the bejesus out of me.”

“You’re not alone in that, but I guess it’s part of the job description. It’s what we are, Dillon, and I pray every day it’s what we will continue to be until we’re too old to aim our SIGs.”

“I find myself thinking it’d be nice to go fishing in a nice mountain lake somewhere—we’re eighty or so—and when we finally manage to row back to shore, there’ll be Sean and his family waiting for us, and all our grandkids.”

“What a lovely thought. Only thing is, I really hate fishing.”

“I’ll do all the dirty work for you, not to worry.”

She grinned against him, and he felt it. She leaned up to look down at him. “I know a couple of wives married to cops, and they’re always stewing about danger, and I’ve seen the fear of something happening to their husbands come to define their marriage.”

“The reason for so much divorce,” Savich said.

“At least both of us are together, to help each other, to look out for each other. I think we’re right where we need to be, Dillon, as long as we feel we make a difference.”