Biddle sank back. When Anneliës looked at him again, his expression was distant. “Sometimes,” he began in a soft voice, “I know God will send me to Hell for my lust. Other times I believe you are the reward for my faith.”
Anneliës forced a certainty into her voice she did not feel. “I am your reward darling,” she said.
Biddle looked at her and gave a sheepish shrug. “I’m sorry to be weak,” he said.
Anneliës shook her head. “You’re just confused, but it’s very understandable. That’s why I’m taking you to a hotel. You’ll feel better when you’ve had some sleep.”
FIFTY
MORRISTOWN, NJ, JULY 1
MAGGIE WOKE TO THE SATURDAY morning traffic report on the clock radio, but then remembered Brent, the weight of his encircling arm and the warmth of his naked body spooned against her. She experienced a few blissful seconds until reality hit.
She tried to shrug out of his grasp, but his arm tightened. “Let me up,” she muttered. Brent relented, and she kicked off the covers and staggered into the bathroom, feeling the leaden staleness in her body. For a time she leaned against the sink without moving, and finally, fighting the heavy pull of exhaustion, she began to brush her teeth.
After too many days with hardly any sleep, her brain seemed to run in slow motion while the rest of the world hurtled by in real time. In the harsh light of morning, her theory about a connection between the terrorists and the theft and murders—and the memo she’d written to Jenkins—all seemed hopelessly ineffectual, an attempt to connect the unconnectable. Only, last night when the pieces had seemed to fit together so perfectly, she’d opened her big mouth and told Brent. It had felt right at the time, but now she realized the inevitable consequence—that when the authorities refused to take her ideas seriously, Brent would go after Biddle on his own.
When she stepped out of the bathroom, Brent was already out of bed. “Try and go back to sleep,” she said.
He shook his head. “No way.”
She put her hand on his cheek, feeling his impatience like an electric motor beneath his skin. “You have to stay put,” she said. “Give me time to pull a few more things together.”
Brent stiffened. “Wait for the bureaucrats to allow you to take Biddle down?” He shook his head. “They’ll never do it.”
She sighed because she couldn’t argue with his logic nor deny that time was running out. She thought about tomorrow’s POTUS visit. “Just stay put,” she said again.
She stood on her tiptoes, gave him a quick kiss, and felt a surge. Was it love? she wondered miserably. Probably. “Be tough,” she said, speaking to herself as much as to him.
Ninety minutes later and most of the way through her third cup of coffee, she was searching through the previous night’s police reports for any mention of the Turners or Tom Beddington and Darius McTighe when an overwhelming wave of guilt slammed her anew. Four more people dead! And she had shot Beddington herself. It had been clear self-defense, but she had pulled the trigger on a cop. A very, very dirty cop, but still…
So far there was nothing in the reports, but she rubbed her eyes and forced herself to read to the end. Finally, she shoved back from her computer and ground her knuckles into her eyes. She had no time for pointless recrimination. She needed a plan, only what? She couldn’t seem to think. Ideas refused to string together, but she was desperate for a strategy—one that had a hope of working with just herself and Brent.
“Wow,” a voice said from the entrance to her cubicle. “Looks like somebody had a rough night.”
She glanced up, sweeping a handful of barely combed hair from her face, and saw Steve Kosinsky leaning against the partition with a large cup of coffee in each hand. She forced a smile. “That bad?”
Kosinsky shrugged. “You’re still gorgeous. You’re just tired gorgeous.” He stepped into the cubicle and put one of the cups on the edge of her desk. “I can only hope that it means you finally came to your senses about the phantom boyfriend.”
“You mean dumped him?”
Kosinsky smiled and cocked his head. “Anyway, everything okay?”
She waved a hand, taking in her cubicle. “My favorite way to spend Saturday.”
Kosinsky stood on his tiptoes and glanced around at the empty cubicles and offices. “They need a few brave souls to hold down the fort. POTUS’s speech is much more important that finding out whether a bunch of towel heads have a nuke.”
“That’s politically correct.”
“I care.”
“Are you going back to the docks?” she asked.
“Nope.” Kosinsky scowled. “Everybody in my unit’s out checking parked cars and trash bins today, so it’s my turn to man the phones while we let commerce grind to a halt.”
“Have you seen Jenkins?” Maggie asked.
Kosinsky shook his head. “Somebody said she was here most of the night. She’s probably gone home to catch some sleep.”
Maggie narrowed her eyes and studied him, wrestling with the beginnings of a desperate idea. With nothing left to lose, she plunged. “Do you have time to help me with something? I have a wild hunch I’m trying to check out.”
Kosinsky shrugged. “Yeah,” he said. “What is it?”
“You’ve got to keep it to yourself.”
He hesitated for a beat. “Why?”
“Because it’s pretty far-fetched. I sent Jenkins a memo on it, but she hasn’t said anything, so…”
“You don’t want to embarrass yourself?” He smiled. “Not a word will escape my lips.”
“Thanks,” Maggie said. “If you could run some background checks, arrest reports, give me everything we’ve got on a few people.” She wrote the names on a yellow pad: Prescott Biddle, Fred Wofford, Reverend Howard Turner, Owen Smythe, and Betty Dowager. She briefly considered adding the two deputies, but held off.
Kosinsky picked up the paper and read the names. “You’re too busy?” he asked.
“Yes,” she lied. She felt bad about bringing him into this, but she couldn’t afford to bring suspicion on herself, not right now.
He read the names and smiled. “If I get you the stuff on these people, will you have dinner with me?”
Maggie slapped her hand on her desktop. “Do you ever quit?”
Kosinsky gave her an innocent look. “Moi?”
Two hours later, she was on the phone trying to explain to an irate police chief in Port Chester, New York why nobody at Project Seahawk had followed up on a report of suspicious boating activity he had made several days earlier.
“You’re telling me it’s this POTUS visit?” the chief demanded.
“Yessir.”
“Tell the sonofabitch to stay in Washington and let people do their jobs.”
“I’ll pass that on, sir,” Maggie said. She hung up as Steve Kosinsky stepped into her cubicle waving a sheaf of papers.
“Yes?”
“Here’s what you asked for.”
He looked over his shoulder then sat in the chair beside her desk. “Want to tell me what’s going on?” he said in a low voice.
Maggie held out her hand. “May I see what you got?”
Kosinsky handed her the papers. Prescott Biddle’s report was on top. She skimmed it, seeing that he’d spent two years at a Tennessee bible college before transferring to Harvard. From there he’d done two years of divinity study at an evangelical seminary and then attended M.I.T.’s Sloan School. Afterward, he’d worked at several different money management firms until starting Genesis Advisors. He made large donations to ultra-conservative causes and served on several corporate boards and on the national board of a church called the New Jerusalem Fellowship.