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  A hand reached across the counter and snapped the folder shut. When Katya looked up, it was into Alex’s eyes.

  “He was nineteen years old and in prison, Kat,” he said, his voice low and furious. “You know what the guy looks like. Don’t be naive. It doesn’t suit you, babe.”

  “This is none of your concern, Mr. Zheng,” her mother said from across the room, her tone one that would brook no argument.

  Another hand slipped into view and picked up the folder. Katya let it go and looked up to see Skeeter, who walked the folder back around the counter and handed it to Marilyn.

  “I think your daughter’s seen enough, Senator.”

  “And you are?” Marilyn looked down her nose at the polite but horribly underdressed girl.

  “Skeeter Bang, Senator Dekker.” Skeeter held out her hand. “I voted for you in the last election.”

  “Oh.” Marilyn couldn’t help herself. She smiled and took the girl’s hand. “I think it’s so important to appeal to the younger voters in my district.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” Skeeter pumped her hand up and down, and Marilyn handed the folder back to Linda.

  “How did the other man die?” Katya whispered to Alex. The photos had been gruesome, utterly awful, and she hated to think Hawkins could have had anything to do with them—but Alex was right. She couldn’t afford to be naive, and she hadn’t been naive, not even at eighteen. She’d known what would probably happen to him, and it had almost destroyed her.

  “It was a hit,” Alex said after a long moment. “Contracted for on the outside, probably by Dylan Hart, I think now; he’s got more connections than your mother. The dead man, Wes Lake, had it in for Hawkins in a real bad way. One of them was bound to end up dead.”

  “Well, it’s just so lovely to meet you, Ms. Bang, but my daughter and I have an appointment.” Marilyn’s voice rose enough to interrupt her and Alex’s conversation.

  “Appointment?” Alex asked, turning to face her mother, his voice suddenly unsure.

  “Yes,” Marilyn said succinctly. “The weekend’s events have only brought Big Jon Traynor’s losses more sharply into focus. My campaign kickoff is today, and now we can add a little pleasure to our business. He has often expressed a desire to see you again, Katya. You were Jonathan’s dearest friend, and I think he deeply misses those days when you and Jonathan were always around the house. We’re not getting any younger, Kat, and sometimes it does seem to have all gone by so quickly.”

  Well, that cinched it. Kat was entering the twilight zone, full speed ahead, no brakes.

  CHAPTER

  24

  DAMAGE CONTROL, that was the issue here, not giving in to her heart’s desire and asking her mother if she was completely nuts.

  A nice little visit to the new campaign manager would have been pushing her boundaries to begin with. That the campaign manager was Big Jon Traynor was awful. She did not want to go, but she was going—quietly and without a fight—for Christian’s sake. Far safer for him to have her mother ensconced in the Traynor mansion, absorbed by her upcoming campaign, than to have her thinking too much about Hawkins. Marilyn had done quite enough damage there for one day.

  Damage Kat was determined to mitigate. She couldn’t bear to think of him in jail. Again. For something he hadn’t done. Again.

  So she called her lawyer, discreetly, during the hubbub of leaving the loft, with Alex flashing the bloody piece of dress and all but demanding that he be allowed to go with her, and Marilyn demanding that he simply disappear, because there was worse than what she’d already revealed—which Kat didn’t even want to think about—and that it was all his fault it had come down to this to begin with.

  “George?” she said when the phone was answered.

  “Yes?”

  “It’s Katya. My fiancé has been arrested and taken downtown in Denver. His name is Christian Hawkins. The arresting officer is Lieutenant Loretta Bradley, and I want him out of there yesterday. Whatever it takes.”

  “Consider it done. Anything else?”

  “No, and thanks, George.”

  “You can thank me when you see the bill.”

  Kat flipped her phone shut just as the shouting match was winding down. Her mother had won, naturally.

  But Kat had just won as well. She defied anyone, even her mother, to go up against her Denver lawyer and come out in one piece. George Dale was ruthless, and he was connected all the way to the White House. He’d be down at that precinct before she and her mother got to the Traynor mansion.

  With Alex completely freaked out, and Skeeter looking none too happy, Kat left with her mother. Like a lamb to slaughter, because it suited her purposes. And like a lamb, regardless that she was seething inside and worried sick over what her mother might try to do to Christian, she bore it in silence.

  She expected the ride to the Traynors’ to be a strain, and her mother didn’t disappoint.

  “Some very disturbing . . . information . . . has come to light,” Marilyn began once they were in the back of the limo. “Very disturbing. It could disrupt the whole campaign. Linda?” She held her hand out, and her aide pulled a manila envelope out of her briefcase.

  Thousands of different types of things came in manila envelopes. Millions, actually, but Katya had this niggling little suspicion of what might be in this particular manila envelope. She couldn’t believe it, of course. It was too awful to even bear contemplating, let alone to actually have to endure. No, the reality of her mother having received copies of the same photographs of her and Christian that had been in her apartment was simply unacceptable.

  With trembling hands, Marilyn opened the envelope, and Katya thought, Oh, please, Mother, really. Do we have to actually look at them, with Linda and your four goons sitting here with us?

  The answer became all too obviously clear, when Marilyn pulled the photos out of the envelope and dropped them in Katya’s lap.

  “Do . . . do you know what this could do to my reelection if these got out? We barely survived the last scandal you created, and now you’re embroiling us in a whole new, sordid mess. Really, Katya.”

  Katya flipped through the photos, slowly, one by one. She was beyond being shocked by them at this point. They actually looked pretty tame compared to last night. Quite tame, really.

  “No, Mother. I don’t know what this could do to your campaign. This is obviously not you in these photos. What do you think, Linda?” She started to hand a couple over to the aide, who tried to look shocked rather than smug, but hell, there wasn’t a person in the car who hadn’t seen these pictures and probably made copies, and Kat knew it.

  Marilyn was too quick for her, though, snatching them back before Linda got ahold of them.

  “Don’t be smart, Katya. It doesn’t suit you.”

  God, did her mother even listen to herself?

  “Ruin me is what they can do, and then where will all of our hard work have gone? Hmmm? Did you think of that?”

  No, she most certainly had not been thinking of her mother’s hard work while those photos were being taken.

  “What did you think you were doing? What, Kat?” Marilyn’s voice was rising.

  Kat wanted to say “Fucking my brains out,” but she showed a little discretion instead and simply put both of her hands over her face and slowly slumped down in the seat.

  Her mother was insane.

  “I’ve spoken with a private detective, one in Washington, D.C., and he has assured me the photos can be doctored so it looks like rape. With a rape charge on top of a murder charge, not to mention the old murder charges, and maybe I can get the prison to reopen the Lennox and Lake cases, I think we can put him away for life this time.”

  Completely and totally insane. Someone should tell CNN.

  Peeking out from under her hand, she checked her watch. Almost noon. At one o’clock, she’d call George back and see where they were with Hawkins. The instant he was out of jail, she was dumping her mother. She didn’t have a choice, really. It had
become a matter of survival—Christian’s survival—and that’s all that mattered.

  It wasn’t until they turned on to Speer Boulevard that Katya felt her first spark of hope about going to Big Jon Traynor’s.

  The sound roaring up behind them was unmistakable: horsepower, lots of it, with headers. A quick glance out the window showed the limo being flanked by a flat-black Porsche on one side and a big, green, mean machine with a black racing stripe running over the hood on the other.

  Roxanne was on the loose, with Skeeter behind the wheel and Alex holding on for dear life, his eyes as round as demitasse cups. She didn’t know who the guy driving the Porsche was, but neither did she doubt that he was on her side.

  LAWYERS in love were fascinating, Hawkins thought. It was like watching vultures fight over carrion, with him being the carrion, and the two vultures being Francesca, his lovely, plump, middle-aged, really-ought-to-know-better, very expensive lawyer, and George Dale being the reserves sent in by his most lovely Kat. While they argued brilliantly, set bail, and made veiled remarks, they were also falling in love at first sight. He’d never seen Francesca so lit up, and he couldn’t imagine that a balding, middle-aged senior partner from Dale, Preston, and Doyle normally conducted his business with a ridiculous grin plastered on his face.

  The two of them were simply having too much fun—and it was three fucking o’clock.

  “Can we leave yet?” he asked, his patience running so damn thin, he could see through it. He was amazed they couldn’t.

  “No,” they both chimed in unison, then thought that was somehow significant. Their smiles broadened.

  Oh, brother. And he was paying three hundred and fifty dollars an hour for this?

  “How about if I leave?”

  Francesca looked over at him, as if she’d just noticed. “Sure, Cristo. You’re clear.”

  He could have left, and she hadn’t told him? He was docking her for that, just for the principle of the thing. “Can I take your car? Maybe Mr. Dale here can give you a ride home.”

  And he was charging her for the setup. He could tell she was thrilled.

  “Of course,” George said, brightening.

  “Keys, Francesca?” He held out his hand.

  Five minutes later, he’d made a call to Skeeter and was heading to Big Jon Traynor’s house.

  NAUSEATING was the best word Katya could come up with for the luncheon Big Jon and his wife, Lily Beth, served Marilyn’s campaign finance committee. It wasn’t the food. It was the company. Besides the Traynors and Marilyn and her staffers, there were at least a hundred other people at the tables, people who’d made big donations and wanted a piece of the campaign action, shakers and movers. One of them was Philip Cunningham. Sharp-faced, with a blade of a nose and a thin mouth, and still red-haired and freckled, he was easily recognizable as the gawky kid they’d all called “Stork.” He’d arrived late and had sat at another table, but the way he was watching her out of the corner of his eye was enough to churn her stomach into knots—and still it was nothing compared to the way Big Jon was watching her.

  She hadn’t realized the man hated her. The last time she’d seen him had been at the trial, and she’d probably just been too shell-shocked to notice. But he hated her; she could feel it every time their eyes met. He was standing at the head of the main table, introducing her mother in glowing terms to the people who would be doing her money-grubbing for her over the next eighteen months, and every now and then his gaze fell on her and chilled her to the bone.

  As far as she was concerned, either Philip or Big Jon could have planted the pictures and the dress pieces or done any number of things to frighten or destroy her—but she couldn’t imagine either of them killing Ted Garraty just to give her a scare. There had to be a motive, and the only one she could come up with was the old “Dead men tell no tales” one.

  Maybe Ted had been trying to blackmail Philip for the death of Debbie Gold. Of course, that left a big hole where Big Jon was concerned, as she doubted if the then-senator had been running around on the streets of LoDo with his son’s friends, picking up prostitutes and throwing them in the South Platte River.

  No, that was never going to wash, even though Katya knew very well that senators weren’t saints.

  So that brought her back to Philip, who kept nervously glancing her way and dabbing at the sweat breaking out on his brow with his napkin. He looked like a heart attack waiting to happen. If seeing her made him that much of a wreck, no wonder he’d bailed out on their meeting yesterday.

  Of course, the question was why seeing her upset him so much.

  “Ms. Dekker, you have a phone call.” One of the serving maids leaned down quietly to deliver the message.

  Katya was only too relieved to have a reason to escape. She scooted away from the table with a whispered apology and followed the young woman out of the Traynors’ ballroom.

  “I’m sorry, miss, but the call came in on the billiards room line, and it’s a ways into the south wing.”

  Katya remembered the billiards room and the south wing. The pool room was there as well, and for teenagers, it had been a natural gathering place.

  “Normally, we’d be able to route the call to a more convenient place, but with all the people here today, I guess all the lines are busy.”

  That was fine with Katya; the farther away from the campaign finance committee she could get, the better. The only people who knew where she was were Skeeter and Alex, which made her doubly anxious to take the call. She figured they must have news about Christian, and taking the call also gave her an opportunity to call her lawyer again.

  When she’d checked in earlier, George was already down at the station extricating Hawkins from the mess of lies her mother was trying to drown him in. He’d told her everything was going well. There wouldn’t be any problems, which had relieved her immensely, but it was going to take a little more time, which had made her nervous. She wanted him out of there, and she wanted the hell out of Big Jon Traynor’s.

  She didn’t know where Alex and Skeeter and the man driving the Porsche had gone. They’d all roared by when her mother’s limo had turned into the Traynors’ driveway, and though she hadn’t seen them since, an earlier call to Alex the last time she’d checked in with George had confirmed they were all out there, somewhere—and if she walked out the front door, someone would be there to pick her up.

  It was the one solid, comforting thought she’d held on to every time Philip or Big Jon had leveled a glare in her direction.

  She was going to have to disown her mother, if it worked like that, completely disavow any connection whatsoever. A name change would help, and in her heart of hearts, she had to secretly admit she was hoping for Katya Hawkins.

  The Traynor mansion had over forty rooms spread across more than twenty thousand square feet. It was more of a small castle than a home. The house was old, so the rooms weren’t large, but they did make a bit of a maze. After the maid pointed her in the right direction to the south wing, Katya went in search of the billiards room, certain she’d be able to find it. The house had been added on to over the years, with rooms stuck on rather at random. Though the stone front of the house had retained its architectural integrity, the back of the house was a labyrinth.

  When she heard the sound of breaking balls, she followed it, thinking possibly one of the Traynors’ other children might be home. Jonathan had been the oldest by far, but there had been six more after him.

  She rounded the corner into the billiards room and stopped, surprised. The guy playing pool by himself couldn’t possibly be a Traynor. He was too old for one thing, and he was an Army Ranger for another, if she believed the tattoo on his arm. No son of Big Jon Traynor would ever have joined the Army.

  Then something about him struck her as familiar.

  “Stuart?” she said, wondering what in the world Stuart Davis was doing in the Traynors’ billiards room.

  He jerked his head up, obviously startled, then a big grin sp
read across his face. “Katya.”

  Stuart had never been the brightest bulb in the basket, and it took him a couple of seconds to remember that the last time they’d actually been together was the night he’d torn off half her dress trying to run her down in the alley.

  She hadn’t forgotten, though, and it must have shown on her face, because after the initial smile of recognition, his face sobered.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “I was—uh—having lunch with the Traynors. Big Jon is my mother’s new campaign manager.”

  “You’re probably not supposed to be down here.” He looked enormous in his fatigues, his biceps bulging out from under his olive green T-shirt, his chest huge, the whole way he held himself telling her he was nothing but solid muscle from his skull on down—which she was sure didn’t bode all that well for her.

  Suddenly, Philip didn’t look nearly as suspicious as she’d thought. Stuart, on the other hand, looked like he could kill people with his bare hands.

  “Yes,” she managed over the growing lump in her throat. “I’m . . . ah . . . sure you’re right.” She turned to leave and was thanking her lucky stars up until she got halfway back down the hall.

  Another man stepped out of a side room, blocking the end of the hall and holding a cell phone up to his ear. “Yes, sir,” the man said into the phone. “I’ve got her.”

  “Albert?” That made the afternoon complete—a complete and total unnerving disaster. She didn’t know why Stuart Davis and Albert Thorpe were lurking around Big Jon’s billiards room, or why she’d been sent down here, but she doubted if she had a phone call waiting, and she was smart enough to figure out none of this could mean her any good.

  SKEETER didn’t like the setup. Alex knew, because she told him as much about every five minutes, and they’d been staking out Big Jon Traynor’s place for over two hours.

  Kid Chaos didn’t like the setup. Alex knew, because he told Skeeter as much through the earpiece of her radio about every fifteen minutes from where he was doing recon in back of the Traynor place.