—
WHEN SHE’D BEEN ELECTED to the Senate, Taryn Grant had bought the mansion in Georgetown, which backed up to Dumbarton Park. The house was supposedly seventy years old, but if there were more than a few molecules left from the original structure, she hadn’t been able to find them. Built of red brick, with a terrific garden behind eight-foot brick walls, everything had been “updated” to the point where the house might as well have been built a year earlier.
She had an eye for good houses, and as stately as this house was, and as well located, the major attraction was that it had been previously occupied by the outgoing secretary of defense. The basement had been reworked at taxpayer expense to be absolutely secure and was known as a SCIF space, she’d learned when she got to Washington. She’d had her own security firm go over it inch by inch and they’d found no faults. Sitting down in the basement, she might as well have been in a bank vault.
If she’d actually shot Parrish, her biggest problem would have been cleanup and disposal, because nobody outside the place would have seen or heard anything. And, she thought, it might still come to that.
* * *
—
GRANT WAS RICH.
She was also tall, blond, and physically fit. She controlled most of a billion dollars, her share of her family’s agricultural commodities business, the fifth-largest privately held company in the United States, now run by an older brother. In addition, she owned two small but profitable Internet companies, run by remote control through CEOs as ruthless as she was, but with less money.
As a tall, blond, physically fit woman, there were rumors about her supposedly voracious sexuality, though nobody had the photos. The fact was, she was okay with occasional sex, if performed discreetly, with attractive men, but she was hardly voracious.
Power, not sex, was the drug she mainlined. She wasn’t much interested in policy, or the Senate, or being on television: she wanted the hammer, the biggest one she could find. Barack Obama was her hero for one reason and one reason alone: he’d served a single term in the U.S. Senate before he became president.
“Madam President” had a nice round sound to it.
If everything went just right, Grant was two years out.
But not everything was going just right because Parrish’s goons had failed on what had seemed a straightforward mission: kill Smalls and make it look like an accident. Parrish had stood in the SCIF and laid it out like a commando mission: “That’s all these guys have done, for most of their adult lives. The people they took out . . . not all of them were from enemy countries. Sometimes, you need to remove a particular guy in a friendly country.”
She’d asked, “Like Pakistan?”
“Yeah. And like Germany.”
* * *
—
FOUR DAYS AFTER she’d pulled the gun on Parrish, Grant had him back in the SCIF. A blinking red light on her desk told her that he was armed. She opened the desk drawer where she kept the Beretta so it would be handy, but she didn’t take it out.
She was angry all over again, though this time better controlled.
“You know that there was some controversy around my election . . . that people died,” she said. It wasn’t a question.
“Yes, I know,” Parrish said.
“Then you know the name Lucas Davenport?”
“I read all the clips. He was the cop who led the investigation,” Parrish said.
“A year or so after the investigation, he was appointed to be a U.S. Marshal,” Grant said. “He got the job because Smalls and the former Minnesota governor . . .”
“Henderson, the guy who ran for vice president.”
“Yes. They pulled some strings in Washington, got him the new job,” Grant said. “I don’t know what his position is, except that he was involved in a major shoot-out down in Texas last year. Anyway, guess what? Smalls has him on your accident case.”
“He won’t find anything,” Parrish said. “There’s nothing to find. I’ve read the West Virginia State Police files now—I had a guy get copies off their computers—and they’ve officially determined that it was a one-car accident resulting in minor injuries to one person and death to the other. No alcohol involved, no charges pending. Routine. Case closed.”
“Happy to hear it. But I need to know what Davenport’s doing,” Grant said. “He is intelligent and he is dangerous. When I say dangerous, I mean a killer. You think your superspies can handle that?”
Parrish didn’t like the sarcasm, but he said, “Sure. I’ll need some money.”
“We have a family office in Minneapolis,” Grant said. “There’s a man there named Frank Reese. I will send him a message, telling him to expect you or one of your associates. He will give you whatever amount you need, in cash, but I expect it to be accounted for. I’m not cheap, but I won’t tolerate being chumped.”
“I understand,” Parrish said. “When you say send a message . . .”
“Thoroughly encrypted, to a site that only Reese and I know about,” Grant said.
“Good. I’m impressed,” Parrish said. “Look, if this gets complicated, would it be better to ask Reese for a big chunk all at once or better to go back to him several times?”
“How much do you need?” she asked.
“I don’t know. If every time we go back, it could be tied to a particular . . . event . . . that could be a problem. We may need several events over the next couple of years.”
She nodded. “I’ll tell Reese to give you a half,” she said. “How soon can you look at Davenport?”
“Half of what?”
“Half a million,” she said. “Is that going to cover it?”
Impressed again, though Parrish didn’t say so. “I’ll fly out to Minneapolis this afternoon. I’ll want to handle Reese myself. Keep the loop tight,” Parrish said. “I’ll have somebody on Davenport right away, figure out where he’s staying.”
“He probably doesn’t have a hotel yet. I’ve been told he won’t actually get here until tomorrow or the next day.”
“Where are you getting this information?” Parrish asked.
“I have a friend in the Smalls organization.”
“Huh.” Impressed again. “If Davenport’s flying commercial, we can pick out his flight and spot him at the airport when he gets here.”
“Do that.” She waved him toward the door. “Stay in touch.”
On the way out, Parrish paused, then turned. “You want to know everything, so I have a proposition that you might be interested in. Or, you can kill it.”
“What?”
“If this Davenport guy wasn’t investigating the incident, who would be?”
She thought about it, and said, “I don’t know. Maybe nobody. Davenport has a personal problem with me. He thinks I had something to do with the murders around my election. He wants to get me. Nobody else, that I can think of, has the same incentive, except maybe Smalls himself.”
“Still, he’s a small-town cop, right?”
“Jesus, Parrish, it’s not a small town,” Grant said. “There are three million people in the Twin Cities metro area. Davenport was an agent for the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension. They’ve got the technical abilities of the FBI.”
“Still . . .”
“Still, bullshit. I know a lot about Davenport. He dropped out of law enforcement for a couple of years, invented a computer software company, and sold out for something between twenty and thirty million dollars, and he’s now worth maybe forty million. He built that company and sold it in two years, starting with nothing. If you underestimate him, he’ll eat you alive.”
“All right, I get it. If we had a guy who wasn’t as smart and didn’t have the incentive, that would be better for us, right? What if Davenport got mugged and hurt? Not killed, but hurt bad enough to take him out of it. Take him out long enough that the Smalls accident is old news. Antique news.”