Linda Howard - Kill and Tell

She was lying on her side, one breast plumped by her arm. Gently, Marc rubbed a knuckle over the

velvety, slightly swollen texture of her nipple and watched, fascinated, as it immediately tightened and elongated, the pinkish beige color darkening almost to red.

Her heavy eyelids fluttered open, and a sleepy smile curved her lips. "I'm sorry," he murmured. "I didn't mean to wake you."

She reached out and wrapped her fingers around his swollen penis. "Oh, I think you did." Her voice was drowsy, sensual. Lazily, she stroked him up and down, bringing him to full erection. He laughed and moved her hand away from him before she aroused him to the point where all he cared about was orgasm. She shifted closer until they were lying pressed together and lifted her mouth to his.

"How long before you expect to hear from that McPherson man?"

"I'll give him until tomorrow afternoon."

She looked wide-eyed and solemn. "Are we going to spend the entire time in bed?"

"Probably."

"Don't you have to work?" She traced his lips with one fingertip, then trailed it down his chest to circle his flat nipples.

"I took some personal time off. A case I was working cleared yesterday, and I didn't have anything else urgent." He didn't let himself think about how the case had cleared.

"So we can stay right here?" She hadn't lost the solemn look. Marc inhaled deeply as that slender finger worked its way down his torso, bypassing his erection to reach beyond and stroke his testicles.

"Right here." He did a little of his own stroking, down her spine to the crease of her buttocks, back up, down again. Each time his fingers stroked farther down. She gasped and arched against him, her buttocks tightening. Her nipples were pebble hard.

"What do we do if he doesn't call?"

"Proceed on our own." He squeezed her bottom, then eased one finger into her. She felt like warm, wet satin inside, tight on his finger, shivering delicately with arousal. He thought it was Henry Miller who had said entering life by way of the vagina was as good a way as any, and he heartily agreed. He could happily spend the rest of his life with some part of his body inserted into Karen, feeling her excitement, watching her little squirms.

She didn't have much patience. Her brown eyes were almost black as she suddenly put both hands on his chest and shoved him onto his back. He laughed as she straddled him, using both hands to position his penis and sliding down onto him so completely that his laugh changed to a groan. Oh, yes, he was definitely'going to marry this woman.

His beeper sounded.

"You said you're off duty," she accused, frowning.

"I am. That would be Antonio." He stretched to reach his beeper and checked the number. "Bingo."

"He can wait five minutes," Karen said firmly.

"And you can't?" He was teasing. He didn't think he could, either.

"No," she said, and proved it.

"You sound as if you've been running," Shannon observed when Marc called him, ten minutes later.

"I was downstairs," Marc replied. It wasn't a lie. He had been downstairs—about two hours ago.

"McPherson just called back. They're looking into any acquaintances Whitlaw and Medina had in common, but right now they don't have anything. Ah, he did say they were going to put a tail on Karen, to see if they can spot anyone else following her and also to step in if she's in danger. I didn't tell him she's here."

"Good. Hold off on telling him for a while. I might change my mind later, but for now I don't want anyone but the two of us to know."

Marc wanted to think more about the situation before he gave away Karen's location. Involvement by the CIA, even peripherally, made him uneasy. He didn't assume, as a lot of people did, that they were either bad guys or assholes, but by nature of the Agency they dealt with a lot of bad guys. On the other hand, it could be handy to have McPherson's shadow following them when he and Karen went to Columbus, to that storage unit. Tomorrow should be interesting.

Chapter 18

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He couldn't just walk away. Hayes came to that realization during the night, in the middle of his plans to do just that. He had kept careful records of each meeting, what was required, and the results. The records incriminated him, but they also incriminated the senator, who had much more to lose. It followed that if he had kept records, so had the senator, the mistrustful son of a bitch. Hayes had no doubt Vinay would come snooping around. There were two ways to play it. The smart way, he decided, would be if he could arrange for it to seem as if he were on the senator's staff in, say, a security position. Everything above board. Vinay might have some snooping done by his own guys, though if he went by the book, he would involve the FBI in the investigation. CIA or FBI, that didn't matter, so long as his name popped up easily before they really began digging. Any half-assed check would turn up the information that he had done some work for the Company himself, a couple of decades ago. His name would shoot to the top of Vinay's list. When questioned, he would say, yeah, he told Senator Lake about Rick Medina's death and also mentioned that the word was he had a son who was also a Company man. That was logical, because he had been in a position to know those things. Bingo, mystery solved, no further investigation needed.

That was the smart way. The problem was, the senator would balk at having himself linked to Hayes. Maybe he could convince the senator otherwise. He decided to give it a shot, though he didn't have much faith in the outcome.

The second way, the dumb way, the risky way, was to find the senator's records and destroy them. That would be a job. Hayes hoped to hell the senator didn't have the records in his congressional office; that was the most dangerous place to keep them, where they were most likely to be turned up by accident.

In his Georgetown townhouse? Possible. His estate in Minnesota was more likely; it was larger, more hiding places, plus the senator had grown up there. He knew the house, the grounds, intimately. Then there was the summer house in Cape Cod, but the senator hadn't been there this summer, so Hayes thought he could dismiss that possibility.

If he had stashed the records in a safe deposit box somewhere, which was what Hayes had done, then they were beyond reach. He would have to find out which bank and what name the box was rented under, get the key, and learn how to copy the senator's signature. Hayes had a lot of talents, but forgery wasn't among them. Then there was the possibility that rather than deposit the papers himself and take the chance of being recognized, the senator had had his wife do it under her name. Mrs. Lake was a sweet, cheerful, uninquisitive person, and she adored her husband. She would do whatever he told her. The possibilities were endless. The one place the records wouldn't be was in a computer. The senator was computer-illiterate; hell, he had never even learned to type. From birth, he had been surrounded by wealth, and if he wanted to send a letter, he simply dictated it to a secretary or scrawled it by hand if he wanted it to be personal. From the beginning, Hayes had been relieved to know that; his personal opinion was that if you wanted sensitive information to get out, you put it in a computer. They were notoriously unconfidential. He wondered how many people would use accounting programs in their online computers if they knew the information could be accessed. Using the bank account number, a thief could then wipe out the account.

Bank accounts. Something about bank accounts niggled at him. Something he should have thought about days ago.

Suddenly, he knew what it was, and he wanted to kick his own ass. He had overlooked something so obvious that he shook his head in disgust.