Patterson, James - Alex Cross 3 - Jack and Jill

Don Hamerman peered around the table. He was definitely wired. The other word to describe him, the one that came to my mind anyway, was supercilious.

“Please feel free to correct me on any point I make. Feel free to add any updated information you might have,” he said with a tiny sneer.

Except for a few sighs, no one spoke. No one seemed to know any more than I did. No one had a worthwhile clue so far. That was the scariest thing of all.

The possibility existed that the President and First Lady were the ultimate targets for Jack and Jill... or maybe not even the ultimate targets?

Jack and Jill came to The Hill. What in the name of God for?

To wipe out all the bleeding liberals? To punish sinners? Was the President a sinner in their minds ?

“Jay, do you want to say something now?” Hamerman asked Secret Service Agent Grayer.

Grayer nodded and stood up at the worktable. He leaned against it with his hands. He looked a little pale. “There's a very tough problem here,” he said to us. “The danger is real, believe me. This is as scary as anything I've seen in my time at the White House. You see, I was the first one inside Senator Fitzpatrick's apartment after the killing. I was there, alone, at six o'clock that morning. I called the Metro police... the same is true for Ms. Sheehan and for Michael Robinson. Each time Jack and Jill has called the Secret Service first. They've contacted us right here at the White House. They told us... that they're practicing for the big one.”

ON FRIDAY NIGHT Jack and Jill checked into a high-priced suite at the Four Seasons Hotel, one of the Washington area's best. No one was scheduled to die at the exclusive hotel. Not that they knew of, anyway. Actually, the killers were taking the weekend off-- while everyone else in Washington, the police geniuses especially, stewed in their own juices.

What a fabulous treat the weekend was. What a delicious notion.

The six-hundred-dollar-a-night suite overlooked a corner of Georgetown, and they never left it for a moment. A masseuse came Friday night for a double shiatsu session. Sara had a facial and a manicure on Saturday morning. Room service sent up a personal chef Saturday night, and he prepared their meal in their room. Sam had also provided for four dozen white roses to be delivered when they arrived. It was paradise regained. They felt they deserved it for what they had accomplished so far.

“This is so unbelievably decadent. It's a postmodern, grossly socially incorrect fairy tale,” Sara said at a luxurious high point late on Sunday night. “I love every minute of it.”

“But do you love every inch of it?” Sam asked her. Only he could get away with a touchy line like that -- and he did.

Sara smiled and felt a rush of heat inside her body. She looked at him with warm and inquiring eyes. “As a matter of fact, I do.”

He was deep inside her, thrusting slowly and gently, and she was wondering if he truly loved her. She wished for it with all her being, but she didn't believe it, couldn't believe it. She was, after all, Sara the gimp, Sara the drudge, Sara the drone.

How could he have fallen in love with her? And yet sometimes it seemed that he had. Is this part of the game for him, too? Sara wondered.

Her fingers ran all over his chest, played with individual hairs.

She touched him everywhere: his beautiful face, his throat, stomach, buttocks, his dangling testicles, which seemed as large as a bull's. Sara arched up toward him, wanting to be as close as she possibly could, wanting every inch, yes, wanting everything of him that there was. Even his real name, which he wouldn't tell her.

“We've earned this weekend,” Sam said. "It's also necessary, Sara. Rest and relaxation are a real part of war, an important part.

Jack and Jill is going to get progressively harder from here on.

Everything escalates now."

Sara couldn't help smiling as she stared up at Sam's face. God she loved being with him. Under him, over him, sideways, upside down. She loved his touch -- sometimes strong, sometimes so surprisingly gentle. She loved, yes, every inch of him.

She'd never felt like this before, never thought that she would.

She would have bet anything against its happening. In a way, she had bet everything, hadn't she? For the cause, but also for Sam, for this.

Sam was such a closet romantic, too. It was so unexpected from The Soldier, from any man she had known before. The suite at the Four Seasons was his idea, just because she had mentioned -- mentioned it once -- that it was her favorite hotel in Washington.

“Say,” she said to him now, whispering during their lovemaking, “do you want to know my favorite hotel in the whole wide world?”

He got the joke -- he got all of her humor and twisted ironies.

His large blue eyes sparkled. He grinned. He had brilliantly white teeth, and such a shy, disarming smile. She thought he was much better looking than Michael Robinson had been. Sam was a real-life action hero. The Soldier. In a real war for survival, the most important war of our times. They both believed that to be the truth.

“Please, don't tell me the answer,” he said with a laugh. “Don't you dare tell me your favorite hotel in the world. You know I'll have to take you there somehow if you do. Don't tell me, Sara!”

“The Cipriani in Venice,” Sara blurted out, laughing.

She had never actually been there, but she'd read so much about it. She had read about everything, but experienced so little until recently Sara the hopeless bookworm, Sara the bibliophile, Sara the cipher. Well, no more. Now she lived as almost no one had before. Sara the gimp lives!

“Okay, then. When this is all over -- and this will end -- we'll go to Venice, for a holiday I promise you. The Cipriani it is.”

“And Sunday brunch at the Danieli,” she whispered against his cheek. “Promise?”

“Of course. Where else but the Danieli for brunch? That's a given. As soon as this is finished.”

“It's going to get worse, isn't it?” she said, hugging his powerful body a little tighter.

"Yes, I'm afraid so. But not tonight Jilly. Not tonight, my love.

So let's not ruin this by thinking too much about tomorrow. Don't make a wonderful weekend into a bad Monday"

Sam was right, of course. He was a wise man, too. He started to move again on top of her. He flowed like a fast river current over the top of her. He was such a generous and beautiful lover; he was both teacher and student; he knew how to gve and take in bed. Most important, Sam knew how to bring her out of herself.

God, she had needed that -- forever, it seemed. To get outside of herself. Not to be the gimp anymore. Not ever again. She promised herself that.

Sara pursed her lips tightly. In pleasure? In pain? She wasn't even sure anymore. She shut her eyes, then quickly opened them.

She wanted to look.

He held himself over her, as if he were pausing during a push-up. “So you've never been to the Cipriani, Monkey Face?” he asked. His cheeks weren't even flushed. He effortlessly held himself over her. His body was so beautiful, strong and agile, rock-solid. Sara was in good shape also, but Sam was superb.

He called her “Monkey Face,” from Hitchcock's Suspicion. It wasn't really such a great movie, but it had hit the spot for them, hit their spot. Ever since they'd seen it, she'd been the Joan Fontaine character, Lena. He was Johnny, who had been played by Cary Grant. Johnny had called Lena “Monkey Face.”

At the end of the film, Lena and Johnny had driven off into a sunset on the Riviera, presumably to live happily ever after. The Hitchcock movie was an elegant, witty, mysterious game, just as this was.

Their game. The most exquisite game two people had ever played together.