WINNER TAKES ALL Read online

  The whimpering was louder now.

  “Hear that?” he said as he helped her out of the car. “Your abandoned baby is crying for you.”

  “What do you mean, my baby? Grant gave him to you.”

  “To both of us, actually. Remember?”

  “Oh, right. Our early wedding present.”

  He felt his smile start to fade but caught himself and forced it back into place.

  He unlocked the interior door to the house and led her inside, pausing to deactivate the alarm system. They walked down the hallway into the kitchen.

  A small, screened enclosure he’d fashioned a couple of weeks earlier occupied a corner. Layers of newspapers covered the floor there. Inside were a large cardboard box, open on one side and padded with old towels; separate bowls containing water and food; and a furry, honey-colored puppy that yipped and wiggled excitedly at their approach.

  “Hello, Cyrano. Did you miss us?” Annie reached over the short barrier to pick him up—then recoiled. “Yuck! Oh, Cyrano! What a nice, smelly mess you’ve left for Daddy.”

  “Great.” Hunter surveyed the soiled newspapers. “And he’s got himself a bit messy, too. Let me tidy up down here while you run a bath for him.”

  “All right. But you’d better get out of your good clothes first. And I’ll try to see where poor Luna is hiding, too.”

  “I’m still hoping they’ll learn to get along. Luna doesn’t like that’s she’s no longer the center of attention.”

  “Females are like that, you know.” She smiled sweetly, then turned and left.

  When he carried the puppy into their bathroom, he found Annie leaning casually against the wall next to the tub. She wore a wisp of a smile, and even wispier black bra and panties.

  “I think I’m overdressed,” he said.

  She eyed him up and down. “You could lose the t-shirt. But the boxers are okay . . . for the time being.”

  He placed the pup down gently in the shallow warm suds, then stripped off the t-shirt and tossed it into a corner.

  “Mmmm. That’s better,” she said, running a warm, smooth palm across his chest. He leaned in for a kiss, but she turned away coyly to attend to the dog. “First things first. Could you hand me that bottle of shampoo?”

  He sighed dramatically and complied. “I see I’m no longer the center of your attention.”

  “Well, then we’re even.” She squeezed some gel into her hands and began to rub it onto the pup’s white chest.

  “But everyone tonight agreed I deserve special attention. So I expect you to lather me up like this, too.”

  “And vice-versa, Mr. Hunter. Perhaps we can share the shower in a little while.”

  “In that case, I think we should make short work of this mutt, Miss Woods.”

  They rinsed Cyrano off, then Annie lifted him onto the bath mat. She knelt over him and went to work, drying him vigorously with a thick towel. Hunter sat back against the wall and watched appreciatively as her curves flexed and jiggled.

  “Now what are you grinning about?” she asked.

  “I think you’ve just invented a new spectator sport.”

  “Lecher.”

  “I can’t help it. You bring out my inner perv.”

  He fell silent for a moment. Then said, “You’ve seemed a trifle distracted the past few days.”

  She frowned. “It’s not you. Just a lot of stuff coming down on us at work. Which is distracting when Grant and I have been trying to focus on finding the Russian mole.”

  “You mean, the one I didn’t shoot.”

  It got a smile.

  “Yeah. That one. The one we’re sure is still burrowed somewhere inside the Agency. It would be nice to be able to concentrate on just that, rather than worry about office politics.”

  “So, what’s going on?”

  She turned and sat facing him. Lifted the bundled puppy onto her lap. Began stroking its head.

  “Houk and Burroughs are planning to gut the Ops directorate.”

  “What?”

  “That’s what I came back to after our month in Pennsylvania,” Annie continued. “Grant hasn’t told me the details yet, but I can tell he’s worried. They’ve been fighting it out for months in the director’s conference room. It doesn’t seem to be going well. So I’m worried, too.”

  “You have every right to be. Mason Houk is the most incompetent CIA director in thirty years—which is saying a lot. He had zero background in intelligence when our dear president appointed him. Glover gave him the job only because Houk was a loyal political suck-up.”

  “Burroughs is worse,” she said. “Grant despises Houk, but he sees Burroughs as his main enemy.”

  “He’s right. I crossed paths with him back when he was a young analyst, ass-kissing his way up the Langley ladder. Now he’s managed to ass-kiss his way right up to number two. Wesley made no secret that he despised Ops and hated ‘cowboys’ like Grant and me.” He shook his head. “For your sake, I hope Grant can beat them, Annie.”

  “For all our sakes . . . Well, I think Cyrano is dry enough, now. Hey, little guy, it’s time to go back to your bed.”

  Dylan took the pup from her. He went downstairs, holding the little ball of fur to his face and talking to him soothingly. He placed Cyrano gently down into his padded box, next to an equally furry stuffed toy dog. He pressed a button on the toy, and it began to emit a heartbeat sound.

  “There you go. See? You have company. Now, go to sleep.”

  He returned upstairs and went into the master bedroom. He found Luna hunched tensely in the middle of the canopy bed, staring uneasily past him toward the hallway.

  “Mrrrraooow!”

  “Don’t worry, you’re safe here, girl,” he said, stroking her head. “I put the big bad wolf in his cage downstairs.”

  He heard the shower running behind the closed door of the bathroom. He slipped out of his boxers, then entered.

  The bathroom was entirely dark, except for a faint golden glow from the glassed-in shower in the corner. A single ceiling light, dimmed to a soft amber, filtered down through the shimmering veil of spray.

  She stood motionless beneath the cascading water like a naked goddess, framed against a rectangle of dark gray marble . . . stood with eyes closed, head thrown back, back arched . . . stood while it flowed through her hair, glistened over the tawny curves of her breasts and hips, streamed down the impossible length of her thighs and calves . . .

  He watched, transfixed, for perhaps half a minute, before he could once again breathe and move.

  She remained motionless, eyes shut, even as he entered the shower and closed the door behind him. He joined her under the hot needles of spray—moved behind her, pressed against her, wrapped his arms around her, began to run his hands over the soft, slick skin. In answer she moved only her face, turning her head and raising her wet, parted lips to meet his . . .

  2

  An hour later they lay atop the sheets, wrapped in each other’s arms, exchanging slow, gentle kisses. The comforter was somewhere on the floor. So was the cat.

  “Poor Luna,” he murmured in her ear. “It’s been a disruptive few weeks for her.”

  “It’s been a disruptive year. For all of us.”

  “It has.” He squeezed her.

  “By the way—how are your baby foxes?”

  He chuckled. Out at his Connors Point house, a mother fox had dug a den near the shed in his yard. At dusk the previous Saturday, they had watched her and her five small kits from the breakfast nook window, barely thirty feet away. The vixen—nicknamed Red Mama by Annie—sat on watch at the corner of the yard, while her babies, no bigger than kittens, pounced upon and wrestled each other in the grass. They enjoyed the spectacle until Dylan’s neighbors, Billie and Jim Rutherford, let their young golden retriever out of their house. Immediately, the mother fox signaled to her kits; they scrambled down into the den while she leaped into the marsh, hoping to draw the dog away.

  “They’re already getting notice
ably bigger,” he answered. “I hope Red Mama can protect them from the hawks and eagles until they’re big enough to fend for themselves.”

  “Nature is so cruel. Everything preys on everything else.” She paused. “Like some people.”

  He kissed her bare shoulder. “Animals don’t have a choice. People do.”

  They fell silent again for a moment. Her words reminded him of the banquet.

  “It was nice seeing Susie again,” he said. “She already looks a lot better.”

  “She’s bouncing back a lot faster than anyone thought she would. Oh, and she wanted me to tell you she’s absolutely thrilled about our engagement.”

  His hand stopped in her hair. “You told her?”

  She drew back to look at him. “I didn’t have to. She saw my ring. What’s wrong with that?”

  “Oh, nothing’s wrong with that.” He smiled and started running his fingers through her hair again.

  She put her head against his chest. “I’ve been wanting to tell Dad, too. But that’s going to be a lot harder.”

  He didn’t respond.

  “Dylan, I think we should meet him first. Together. We should get him used to us as a couple.”

  “That’s probably a good idea.”

  “It will be tough for him to accept that his former enemy will soon be his son-in-law. Even though you did save my life.”

  He remained silent and realized his hand had stopped moving again.

  She noticed and pulled away once more, frowning.

  “What’s the matter? Are you having second thoughts?”

  “Of course not.”

  “You look like something is bothering you.”

  He was thinking about the big blond guy who had been following him, just two days ago. He hadn’t told her about that. He didn’t want to worry her. Not until he could figure out what that was all about.

  And then there was the other thing.

  “I guess it’s just the banquet tonight. It was pretty emotional for me.”

  “You seemed to handle the surprise pretty well.”

  “Not just the surprise. Seeing and hearing all those poor victims again.”

  She put her hand on his cheek. “You’ve done so much for so many of them, Dylan.”

  He kissed her fingers.

  But not all of them, Annie.

  3

  Cyrano had finished doing his business and was sniffing and pawing the pine cones in Annie’s back yard when Hunter’s phone vibrated in his pocket. He tugged it out and shielded its screen from the glare of the morning sun. It was a text from Danika at the office, relayed through a “spoofing” website to a burner located in a storage unit near D.C., then call-forwarded to his current, temporary burner, which he swapped out frequently. It read: “Call your editor.”

  He checked the time. Seven forty. Annie would be heading off to work shortly.

  “Come on, boy. Time for breakfast.” He walked over and scooped up the pup.

  Back in the kitchen he put Cyrano inside his pen. Then settled into a chair, took a sip of the lukewarm coffee he’d left there, and keyed in Bronowski’s line at the Capitol Inquirer. He set the phone on the table and let it ring while he buttered a scone.

  “Not now!” barked the harried voice over the speakerphone.

  “If you feel that way, Bill—I quit!”

  “Oh, Dylan. It’s you. Sorry. I didn’t expect a call-back this soon.”

  Hunter heard rustling papers and phones ringing faintly in the background. “I’m just lonely. What’s up?” He took a bite of the scone.

  “Okay, so last night I had this phone chat with Cap Moyer. He’s campaign manager for Roger Helm. He told me something that—at least on its face, and if true—sounds like it could be a story. He says this past two weeks the feds started going after Helm’s biggest contributors. Investigating and harassing them. He’s sure it’s meant to intimidate them, make it too scary for them to continue backing the guy. And he says it’s working.”

  “What’s that got to do with me?”

  “I was just thinking . . . this sounds a lot like what you just investigated—what the feds were doing to those property owners and that fracking company in Pennsylvania. Politicians and officials conspiring to screw ordinary citizens. That was a big story for us. So I figured you could look into this, too.”

  Hunter sighed. “Big campaign donors are hardly ‘ordinary citizens.’ If Glover’s administration is targeting the rich cronies of a rich political opponent, why should anyone care? It’s just the usual dirty tricks crooked politicians play on each other.”

  “Not the usual dirty tricks, Dylan. We’re talking personal IRS audits, FEC investigations—then, this past week, FBI raids on their homes and offices, seizing computers and records. In the middle of the night, no less. Real Gestapo stuff.”

  Hunter spotted Annie hovering at the kitchen’s entranceway, listening. He put down the rest of the scone.

  “Bill,” he said, “this presidential campaign is probably the most disgusting in American history. I’ve done my best to tune it out and ignore whatever these idiots and crooks are saying and doing to each other. Besides, politics isn’t my beat. You have good people on staff who handle political stories for you.”

  “Yeah, but conspiracies involving powerful elites are your beat. Nobody here handles that sort of stuff better than you. And let me add, it’s not just rich guys being targeted. What the feds are doing seems to be coordinated with nasty street protests by a bunch of nonprofit activist groups against Helm’s company and employees, as well as the donors. They’re picketing people’s homes and businesses, vandalizing cars, threatening violence.” He paused a few seconds. “The rest of the press is looking the other way, or parroting the party line about all this. Like I said, it’s a lot like what just happened in Pennsylvania.”

  Hunter remained silent. Annie approached him. Rested her hand on his shoulder.

  Bronowski went on. “Dylan, I’ve been watching politics thirty, thirty-five years. My gut tells me Moyer is right. That all this is coordinated. A desperation move, after Ashton Conn’s death, to salvage the election for Carl Spencer. Moyer suspects it’s being run right out of the White House—or at least that the administration is involved. Maybe—maybe not. But still, this is banana republic stuff. It would be nice for the country to know about it. And even nicer for us if you were the one to find out.”

  Annie winked and gave him a thumbs-up.

  “Look,” the editor continued, “you aren’t on staff; I can’t tell you what to do. But I’d really like you to look into this. Meet with Moyer and Helm and some of the people being targeted. See if you can get somebody at the FBI to talk. Find out what the hell’s going on. You can call on people here to help you.”

  Annie leaned down and whispered, “You need a new project to keep you off the streets.” She kissed his ear and straightened, leaving the scent of her perfume.

  He smiled up at her. He felt the smile waver as he remembered the Jacksons.

  “Okay, Bill. I’ll poke into it. The next couple of days I have some loose ends to take care of. But I should be able to get to it right after that.”

  “Great! Thanks, Dylan. I’ll text you Moyer’s number when I dig it out of the debris on my desk. But right now I got a paper to put out.”

  And with that he was gone.

  “I’m glad, Dylan. This could be another big story for you,” she said, buttoning her long suede coat.

  “Well, you saw where my last story led us.”

  Her fingers stopped.

  He silently cursed his stupidity.

  “Don’t worry, love,” he said. “Actually, I agreed because interviewing politicians will be a nice, boring change of pace.” He flashed a grin. “And we can both use a month or two of boredom.”

  She smiled back, tentatively. “That’s for sure.” She finished buttoning up, then picked up her purse from the table.

  “So, Dylan Hunter, just what are these ‘loose ends’ you
have to take care of?”

  He rose quickly and pulled her into his arms.

  “You’re at the top of my loose-ends list, Annie Woods.”

  “Oh? And just how loose do you want me to be, mister?”

  He lowered his lips close to hers.

  “Let’s decide that back here on Saturday night.”

  FIVE

  It took Lasher a while to negotiate the Thursday afternoon traffic into Virginia. Following Trammel’s instructions, he turned his Chevy rental off Braddock Road and onto a narrow country lane. It cut into a square mile or two of forest—an almost-uninhabited island slowly eroding in the encroaching sea of upscale residential neighborhoods.

  He reached the long brick wall that enclosed Trammel’s estate and continued a quarter mile to where a break in the trees and the wall heralded the entrance. He turned into the driveway, where his progress was arrested by twin gates. In the center stood a stone gatehouse whose wooden roof arched over it on both sides.

  A guy in a security guard’s uniform stepped out and approached. Lasher lowered his window.

  “I help you, sir?” the guard said, his accent matching thick Slavic features. His belt held a walkie-talkie and what looked like a holstered Glock.

  “My name is Lasher. I have a three o’clock meeting with Mr. Trammel.”

  The guard nodded. “He expect you, Mr. Lasher. Your ID, please?”

  He handed over a fake driver’s license that listed his name as “Raymond Paul Lasher.” The guard checked the photo against his face.

  “Okay. Drive to house, around circle, to parking area on left side.”

  Lasher nodded and raised his window again. The guy retreated into the gatehouse, raising the walkie-talkie to his mouth. Seconds later the gates parted slowly on a recessed track. He pulled through and continued along the tree-lined paver drive.