Her fall from the top had been swift. Allegations of alcoholism, stories botched or never written. Relegated to the obit page and she was several years shy of forty. Her two Pulitzers had not saved her from that fate. She looked hungry on the film.
Well, Creel would play her dreammaker. He would give her the one story that would catapult her right back to the top.
He called Caesar and told him to be ready to go in two days. Putting down the phone, he sat back in his chair as the door to his study opened and Little Miss Hottie sauntered in holding a bottle of champagne and wearing only what she’d been born with.
“I love your office,” she said. “It just feels like you. I come in here sometimes and just soak it in.” She sat down in his lap and drank straight from the bottle.
“This is a nice surprise,” Creel said as he ran his hand along her naked thigh. “It wasn’t on the schedule, sweetie.”
“A thank you for that kickass ring you got me, baby,” she slurred. She was drunk, and, from the shrunken appearance of her pupils, also high. Yet Creel had found his wife was at her lovemaking best while stoned out of her mind.
“It’s amazing, really, what twenty carats will get one these days,” sighed Creel, as Hottie slid up on his desk.
The buzzing sound woke Shaw. He instinctively sat up and scanned the room, until he realized where he was. Next to him Anna was still sleeping. He rubbed his face and glanced at his phone. It was Frank. He snatched it up and went into the next room, looked out the window onto a moonless London night. The rain had passed but a chill mist still floated down the street obscuring everything it touched.
“What do you want?” Shaw said.
“Spending the night? The lady must really love you.”
“You go near her again, Frank, I’ll kill you.”
“Don’t make promises you can’t keep, my friend.”
“What the hell do you want?” Shaw snapped.
“Well, since you didn’t seem all that interested in the assignment from MI5 it’s my job to put your ass back to work. And I hope you’ve got the notion of freedom right out of your head. Or else the little woman can come and visit you in the biggest shithole prison I can find.”
His reconciliation with Anna was so powerfully euphoric that Shaw found himself immune even to Frank’s taunts. “Where?” he asked curtly.
“Paris. You’ll take the Chunnel over this afternoon. Initial instructions at St. Pancras. The rest in Paris.”
“Piece of advice, Frank, always watch your back.”
The line, however, was already dead.
Shaw smiled and clicked off. He had Anna. That’s all that mattered. The enormous weight lifted off him almost made Shaw feel he could fly.
He ate breakfast with his fiancée, kissed her good-bye, and was about to leave the apartment while she showered when he remembered he’d left his jacket in her cluttered office off the dining room. When he retrieved it, he happened to see the card on her desk and picked it up.
“Katie James, New York Tribune,” he said slowly, his anger rising.
He flipped the card over and saw the London address penciled in there. That’s how Anna had known about Scotland. He checked his watch. He had time. He slipped the card into his pocket.
CHAPTER 36
SHAW COULD SENSE the eye burning into him from the peephole. He would have laid down a bet that she wasn’t going to let him in. He would have lost.
Katie got right down to business. “Look, I can tell you’re upset but did you see Anna?” Her voice was anxious, her features worried.
She sat down on the small sofa and curled her legs under her. She had on a hotel bathrobe and slippers covered her feet. Her hair was wet and straight. Shaw could still sense the steam coming from the bathroom. Her shampoo’s aroma drifted into his nostrils. Yet he barely noticed. He was so angry he could barely keep from shaking.
“Can I ask you a question?” he said.
“Go ahead.”
He exploded. “What the hell do you think you’re doing getting involved in my life?”
“I was just trying to help.”
“I don’t need your help, lady.”
She sat back and crossed her arms. “Really? So you’re totally oblivious to the fact that you have this amazing woman head over heels in love with you but trying to figure out whether you’re her knight in shining armor or a psychopath?” Her tone was far more aggressive now.
“You have no business, no right butting into this.”
“I told Anna to talk to you before she made up her mind. I told her I thought you were a good guy. Well, are you or aren’t you?”
“Right now I’m having a hard time making up my mind.”
“Why?”
“Because part of me wants to strangle you.”
“Okay. I can understand that. Would you like some coffee instead?”
For the first time he noticed the room service table with her breakfast on it.
“No.”
“Well, I’m sure you won’t mind if I help myself.”
She poured out a cup of coffee and took a bite of bagel. “Well?”
“Well what?” he shot back.
“Did you talk to Anna?”
“Yes.”
“And?”
“And it’s none of your damn business.”
“So that’s the only reason you came here? To read me the riot act?”
He moved so fast her eyes could barely follow. The room service table smashed against the wall with a loud crash.
Unperturbed, Katie finished her coffee and put her cup down. “Are you finished with the histrionics?”
“Stay out of my life.”
He turned to leave.
“I actually have one question for you. And it doesn’t involve Anna,” she quickly added.
He stopped at the door and glowered at her.
“What did you mean when you said you’d been to hell and it was just as bad as everyone thought it was?”
“Like I told you before, you wouldn’t understand the answer.”
In response, Katie slid her robe partially down, exposing a blistery red gash on her upper right arm.
“Try me.”
Shaw eyed the old wound on her shoulder. “Gunshot?”
“I figured you were the sort of man who could tell. Fired by one ticked-off Syrian. Good thing he was such a lousy shot. He said later he was aiming at my head.”
She picked up an unbroken coffee cup and the carafe that miraculously hadn’t burst open and poured him a cup of coffee. As she handed it to him she said, “Whenever Clint Eastwood got shot in the arm in a movie they’d just pour some whiskey on it, wrap a little sling around it, and he’d get on his trusty horse and ride off. They never bothered to dwell on what happens when the bullet enters your arm and keeps going, shattering an artery here, ripping up muscle and tendon there, or nicking my left ventricle on its pinball ride through Katie’s organs. I was in rehab for three months after they finally weaned me off the ventilator. They had to cut a nice little hole in my back to get the slug out. It was flat as a pancake.”
Shaw sat down. The sight of the wound seemed to have wilted his anger. “Soft head. Designed to tumble through your body, trashing everything in its path. And it tends to stay in you, which means a surgeon has to cut you open in another place, while you’re just about dead, to get the sucker out.”
She eyed him from over the rim of her cup. “How many gunshot wounds do you have? You can show me, I won’t tell.”
“A good plastic surgeon could take care of that scar.”
“I know. They wanted to when I got back to the States.”
“So why didn’t they?”
“I didn’t want them to.”
“Why not?”
“Because I wanted to keep the scar. That explanation cover it for you?”
Her face softened and she said in a calmer tone, “Look, you have every right to be pissed off at me. If you were messing in my life – not that I have one right now, but if you were – I wouldn’t be happy about it. For what it’s worth, I was just trying to help. You picked a great lady and it’s easy to see how much she loves you.”