Allan Folsom - Day Of Confession

She was sitting alone at the bar when he came in. For a moment the long auburn hair and emerald green evening dress threw him off. But he knew the face, he'd seen her a hundred times on television, wearing her trademark baseball cap and L. L. Bean-type field jacket, reporting under artillery fire from Bosnia, the aftermath of a terrorist bomb blast in Paris, refugee camps in Africa. She was no actress. She was Adrianna Hall, top European correspondent for WNN, World News Network.

Under almost any other circumstance Harry would have gone out of his way to meet her. She was Harry's age or a little older, bold, adventuresome, and, as the concierge said, very attractive. But Adrianna Hall was also media, and that was the last thing he wanted to deal with now. How she found him he didn't know, but she had, and he had to figure out what to do about it. Or maybe he didn't. All he had to do was turn and leave, which was what he did, glancing around, acting as if he were looking for someone who wasn't there.

He was almost to the lobby when she caught up with him.

'Harry Addison?'

He stopped and turned. 'Yes…'

'I'm Adrianna Hall, WNN.'

'I know…'

She smiled. 'You don't want to talk to me…'

'That's right.'

She smiled again. The dress looked too formal for her. 'I'd had dinner with a friend and I was on my way out of the hotel when I saw you leave your key with the concierge… He said you told him you were going for a walk. I took a chance you wouldn't go too far-'

'Ms Hall, I'm sorry, but I really don't want to talk to the media.'

'You don't trust us?' This time she smiled with her eyes. It was a kind of natural twinkle that teased.

'I just don't want to talk… If you don't mind, it's late.'

Harry started to turn, but she took his arm.

'What would make you trust me – at least more than you do now?' She was standing close, breathing easily. 'If I told you I knew about your brother? That the police picked you up at the airport? That today you met with Jacov Farel…?'

Harry stared at her.

'You don't have to gape. It's my business to know what's going on… But I haven't said anything to anyone but you, and I won't until an official okay is given.'

'But you want to see what I'm about anyway.'

'Maybe

Harry hesitated, then smiled. 'Thanks – but as I said, it's late…'

'What if I told you I found you very attractive and that was the real reason I waited for you to come back?'

Harry tried not to grin. This was the kind of thing he was used to at home. A direct and very confident sexual come-on that could be done by either male or female – and taken by the other party either in fun or seriously, depending on one's mood. Essentially it was a playful crumb tossed out to see what, if anything, would happen next.

'On the one hand I'd say it was flattering. On the other I'd say it was a particularly underhanded and politically incorrect approach to pursuing a story.' Harry put the ball back in her court and held his ground.

'You would?'

'Yes, I would.'

An elderly threesome came out of the bar and stopped beside them to talk. Adrianna Hall glanced at them, then looked back to Harry, dipped her forehead slightly and lowered her voice.

'Let me see if I can give you a slightly different approach, Mr Harry Addison… There are times when I just like to fuck strangers.' She never took her eyes from him when she said it.

Her apartment was small and neat and sensual. It was one of those things, sex that comes right up from nowhere. Heat that just happens. Somebody strikes a match, and the whole place goes up.

Harry made it clear from the beginning – when he'd answered her and said, 'So do I' – that the subject of either Danny or the murder of the cardinal vicar of Rome was off limits, and she'd agreed.

They'd taken a cab, then walked a half block, talking about America. Mostly politics and sports – Adrianna Hall had grown up in Chicago, moving to Switzerland when she was thirteen. Her father had been a defenseman for the Chicago Blackhawks and later a coach for the Swiss national team – and they were there.

There was a click as she closed the door. Then she turned and came to him in the darkness. Mouth open, kissing him roughly, her tongue exploring his. The back of his hands so gently and expertly running over the top of her evening gown, teasing her breasts. Feeling her nipples harden as he did. Her hands opening his slacks, taking down his shorts. Taking his hardness in her hand, stroking him, then lifting her skirt and rubbing him against the thin silk of her underwear. All the while kissing and deep breathing as if it were for all time. And Harry slipping off her underwear, sliding her dress over her head. Unhooking her bra and throwing it into the darkness as she eased him down onto the couch, slipping his shorts from his ankles and moving up, taking him into her mouth. His head rolling back, letting her, then raising up on his elbows to watch as she did. Thinking he had never felt so enormous in his life. Finally, after minutes, easing her head away, lifting her up, carrying her through the orderliness of the living room – a giggle in the dark as she gave him directions – down a short hallway to her bedroom. Waiting, vamping really, as she pulled a condom from a nearby drawer – swearing under her breath, struggling to tear open the foil – then, succeeding, taking it out, and easing it down around him.

'Turn over,' he whispered.

Her smile enraptured him as she did, so that she faced the head of the bed. And he mounted her from behind, feeling the insertion into her warmth, beginning the stroking, the slow in and out, that he sustained almost forever.

Her moaning stayed in his mind for a long time. By Harry's count he'd come five times in two hours, not bad for a thirty-six-year-old. How, and if, she kept score of her own orgasms he had no idea. What he remembered was her not wanting him to fall asleep there. Just kissing him once more and telling him to go back to his hotel, because in two hours she had to get up and go to work.

Wednesday, July 8, 4:32 a.m.

Harry's last glance at the clock. Time crept. If he slept at all, he didn't know. He could still smell Adrianna's perfume, almost masculine, like citrus and smoke. Getting up, going to work in two hours, she'd said. Not just to work like most people, but to the airport and a plane to Zagreb and then into the Croatian backcountry for a story on human rights abuses committed by Croats against Croatian Serbs who had been driven from their homes and slaughtered. It was who she was and what she did.

He remembered, somewhere during their circus, breaking his own rule of not talking about Danny and asking what she knew about the investigation into the bombing of the Assisi bus.

And she'd answered directly, not once, even in tone, accusing him of trying to use her. 'They don't know who did it…'

He'd looked at her in the darkness – her bright eyes watching his, the gentle rise and fall of her breasts as she breathed – trying to judge if she was telling him the truth. And the truth was, he couldn't tell. So he let it go. In two days he would be gone, and the only time he would see her again would be on television, in her baseball cap and L. L. Bean field jacket, reporting some kind of struggle from somewhere. What mattered now, as he watched her, moved down to caress her breast, encircle its nipple with his tongue, was that he wanted her once more. And once more after that. And then again, until there was nothing left, everything gone from his mind but this thing that was Adrianna. Selfish, yes. But it wasn't entirely one-sided. The idea, after all, had been hers.

Running his fingers slowly up the inside of her thigh, he'd heard her whimper as he reached the sticky wetness where her legs came together. Fully aroused, he was easing up, about to mount her, when abruptly she shifted, rolling him over and getting on top, pulling his erection sharply inside her.