Something About You (8 page)

“It’s pathetic, babe. Truly pathetic.”

AS CAMERON HEADED back into the kitchen with Collin, the first thing she noticed was that Jack looked uncomfortable. Probably not particularly thrilled to be spending his Sunday morning with her.

“I apologize if we’re interrupting,” he said.

“Actually, it’s fine—I was just leaving,” Collin said. “Got some work to catch up on.”

Wilkins’s face lit up. “Next week’s column? Can you give me a hint? I’m a huge fan,” he explained to Cameron.

Because Wilkins was such a nice person, she resisted the urge to roll her eyes. Guys geeked out over Collin all the time and, frankly, his healthy ego was a testament to that. “He’s a very talented writer,” she agreed diplomatically.

Collin snorted. “Like you would know. When’s the last time you read one of my columns?”

She pooh-poohed this with a wave. “I read your column all the time.”

“Oh? What was last week’s about?” he asked.

“Sports stuff.”

Collin turned to Wilkins and Jack. “This is why I stick to men.”

Cameron watched as Jack and Wilkins processed the meaning of Collin’s remark. Wilkins blinked. “Holy shit, I didn’t realize you were . . .” he trailed off uncomfortably.

“A Sox fan? I get that a lot,” Collin said teasingly. He gave Cameron a quick peck on her cheek. “Thanks for the hospitality, Cam. If you can handle a second drowning of the sorrows, I’ll call you later and let you know how it went with Richard. Hopefully when he moved his things out of the apartment, he at least took his CDs. I mean, we might be gay, but . . . Enya? Really?” With a nod in farewell, he addressed each of the two men. “Wilkins—it was a pleasure; it’s always nice to meet a fan. I hope the other agents don’t make fun of you too much when your partner here tells them about the Carrie Bradshaw comment. And as for you Agent Pallas—man-to-man, if you ever insult my girl on national television again, I’ll . . .” he stopped.

Everyone in the room waited, hanging. Jack raised an eyebrow. “Yes?”

Collin turned to Cameron with a look of astonishment. “I’ve got nothing. I had this whole exit speech going and I was gonna end with some big macho threat but when I got there, it was like—bleh—nothing. That’s a pisser.” He appeared disgusted with himself, then shrugged it off. “Oh well. Catch you guys later.”

He strode out without a second glance.

Seven

AFTER COLLIN SHUT the front door behind him, Cameron shrugged at the two FBI agents.

“He gets a little protective sometimes.” She said this not as an apology, more an explanation. Although in truth, it would take a lot more time than any of them had that morning to fully explain the wonder that was Collin.

“How long have you two been friends?” Wilkins asked.

“Since college. We lived together our senior year, along with our friend Amy.” Cameron eyed the frittata and realized she was starving. She glanced over at Jack, who stood against the counter looking as though he didn’t plan to leave anytime soon. She sighed. Apparently she’d be having a side of scowling FBI agent with her eggs that morning.

“I assume this has something to do with the Hodges investigation?” She walked over to the overhead cabinet to the left of the sink and pulled out three plates. She handed one to Wilkins and gestured to the frittata. “Help yourself. If it’s half as good as Collin’s omelets, you won’t want to pass this up.”

She offered a plate to Jack, catching his look of surprise. Sure, she had her share of flaws, but being rude to guests in her home wasn’t one of them. Correction: being obnoxiously rude to guests in her home wasn’t one of them. When said guest had declared on national television that she had no balls, she still considered vague aspersions and semitransparent snubs to be within bounds.

“No, thanks,” he said awkwardly. “I . . . ate earlier.”

Cameron grabbed forks and napkins for her and Wilkins, feeling Jack’s eyes on her. She ignored this and paused for a moment at the utensil drawer, debating over what one might use to slice a frittata. A pizza slicer? A pie cutter?

“How about a spatula?”

Cameron saw Jack watching her with amusement.

“It’s that flat metal thing with the handle by your left hand,” he said.

“I know what a spatula is,” she assured him. And she actually knew how to use one, too—for flipping grilled cheese sandwiches. One of the few things she could make without burning. Fifty percent of the time. Maybe forty.

She served herself a hearty slice of the frittata and took a position against the counter on the opposite side from Jack. It felt odd standing close to him in the confines of her kitchen. Too intimate.

“Do you have a lead in the investigation?” Cameron asked between bites.

“Not yet,” Jack said. “We’re waiting on the lab reports, and we’re going to interview Senator Hodges’s staff over the next few days. The purpose of this visit is to discuss some security issues related to you.”

Cameron stopped eating and set her plate down on the counter, not liking the sound of that. “What kind of security issues?”

“We’d like to place you under protective surveillance.”

She felt her stomach tighten into a hard knot. “You think that’s necessary?”

“Consider it a precautionary measure.”

“Why? Do you have a reason to believe that I’m in danger?”

“I would put anyone who witnessed this high-profile of a murder under surveillance,” Jack said vaguely.

“That’s not an answer.” Cameron turned to his partner. “Come on, Wilkins—you’re the good cop. Level with me.”

Wilkins smiled. “Surprisingly, I don’t think Jack’s trying to be the bad cop this time. He’s the one who suggested that you be protected.”

“If that’s the case, then I must really be toast.”

Shockingly, Cameron could’ve sworn she saw Jack’s lips twitch at the corners.

“You’re not toast,” he said. “If it makes you feel better, there are politics in play here. Davis isn’t going to let anything happen to a federal prosecutor who’s assisting an FBI investigation.”

“You’re still skirting around the issue. Why is it even theoretically possible that I’d be in danger? The killer never saw me.”

“We have a couple of theories about what went on in that hotel room,” Jack said. “My instinct is that someone was trying to frame Senator Hodges for murder. If that’s the case, when that someone realizes that the FBI hasn’t arrested Hodges, he’s going to start wondering why. And although your involvement in this case is being kept confidential, we’d be foolish to ignore the risk of a leak. I’d like to be prepared for that possibility.”

“But I barely got a look at the guy,” Cameron said. “He could walk right up to me on the street and I wouldn’t recognize him.”

“That’s exactly why you’re under protective custody.”

Cameron fell silent. Sure, she’d always known the situation was serious—a woman had been smothered to death, after all—but in the hours that had passed since Friday night, she’d been hoping, perhaps naively, that her involvement in the mystery surrounding Mandy Robards’s death and the blackmailing of Senator Hodges was primarily over.

She reached up and pinched between her eyes, feeling a headache coming on. “I could’ve stayed at any other hotel that night, but no—it had to be the Peninsula.”

“We’ll keep you safe, Cameron.”

She peered up at the unexpected words of reassurance. Jack seemed about to say something else, then his expression turn impassive once again. “You’re our key witness, after all,” he added.

“So will it be just you two watching me, or will there be other federal agents involved?” Cameron asked.

“Actually, since the Bureau has primary investigative responsibility, CPD will handle the protective custody,” Wilkins said.

So it wouldn’t be Jack guarding her. “Oh. Good.” The idea of being in continual contact with him unnerved her. Not because she couldn’t handle him, but because she didn’t need him glaring at her all day long. Those dark, watchful eyes were enough to put anyone on edge.

“How will this protective surveillance work?” As a prosecutor she’d had cases where she’d placed a witness in protective custody—usually, as Jack had said, merely as a precautionary gesture—but she’d never been on this end of things.

“There’ll be a car posted in front of your house whenever you’re here, and the officers will follow you to and from work. When you get to your office, you’ll be protected there by building security,” Jack said.

Cameron nodded. The U.S. attorney’s offices were located in the Dirksen Federal Building, along with the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois and the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. Everyone entering the building had to pass through metal detectors, and anyone wanting to access her floor needed proper identification. “What about when I go places other than work or home?”

“Such as?”

“I don’t know, all the places people usually go. To the grocery store. To the gym. Or to meet my friends for lunch.” She deliberately didn’t mention that she also had a date on Wednesday evening, thinking that particular information was nobody’s business but her own. Well, Collin and Amy knew, but they didn’t count. They knew everything.

“I guess you’ll just have to get used to having a police car outside the grocery store, the gym, and wherever it is you go for lunch with your friends,” Jack lectured. “And this goes without saying: you need to be careful. The police surveillance is a precautionary measure, but they can’t be everywhere. You should stick to familiar surroundings, and be vigilant and alert at all times.”

“I got it. No walking through dark alleys while talking on my cell phone, no running at night with my iPod, no checking out suspicious noises in the basement.”

“I seriously hope you’re not doing any of those things anyway.”

“Of course not.”

Jack pinned her with his gaze.

She shifted against the counter. “Okay, maybe, sometimes, I’ve been known to listen to a Black Eyed Peas song or two while running at night. They get me moving after a long day at work.”

Jack seemed wholly unimpressed with this excuse. “Well, you and the Peas better get used to running indoors on a treadmill.”

Conscious of Wilkins’s presence, and the fact that he was watching her and Jack with what appeared to be amusement, Cameron bit back her retort.

Thirty thousand hotel rooms in the city of Chicago and she picked the one that would lead her back to him.

Eight

“AREN’T YOU THE least bit curious to know what the hell the FBI’s doing?”

Despite the fact that the light was dim—they had deliberately chosen a table in a dark corner of the bar—Grant Lombard could tell that Alex Driscoll, Senator Hodges’s chief of staff, was one very nervous man. From both the edge in Driscoll’s voice and the way his eyes kept darting around the bar, Grant knew he was looking at a man who was struggling to keep his shit together.

“Of course I’m curious,” Grant told him. “But pushing the FBI isn’t going to get us any answers. And it might land Hodges in jail.”

Driscoll leaned in, lowering his voice to a hiss. “I don’t like it—they’re hiding something. I want to know why he hasn’t been arrested.”

“What do the lawyers say? For the money you guys are paying them, somebody should be able to tell you something.”

“The little pricks are telling us to lay low.”

“Then maybe that’s what you should do.” Grant took a sip of his beer—not normally his drink of choice, but anything stronger could impair his perception and ability to read Driscoll.

“I would think, as the senator’s personal security guard, that you might want to muster up some interest in this,” Driscoll spat out. He grabbed one of the cocktail napkins the waitress had brought with their drinks and dabbed his forehead with it.

The gesture did not go unnoticed by Grant. Frankly, he was surprised Driscoll had survived without having some sort of fit or breakdown when the FBI questioned all of them.

“All I’m saying is that we need to be very cautious in how we handle this. Did Hodges ask you to come talk to me?” Grant asked, even though he already knew the answer to that. Hodges didn’t do anything he didn’t know about.

“Of course not. He’s so grateful the FBI hasn’t arrested him, he doesn’t take a piss nowadays without first clearing it with Jack Pallas.” Driscoll took a heavy swig of his whiskey rocks, which seemed to help calm him. Either that, or he was changing tactics and a better actor than Grant thought.

“Look, Grant, we’ve worked together for a while now. So you’ve been around long enough to know that a scandal like this can’t be contained forever. Eventually somebody’s going to leak something to the press. As the senator’s top advisor, I need to flush out those leaks. Maybe even catch them before they’re sprung.”

Grant feigned hesitation. Just as he hoped, Driscoll took it up another notch.

“For chrissakes, Grant, it’s not like you’re a fucking boy scout. You’ve been covering up Hodges’s affair with that whore for over a year now.”

Grant stared Driscoll in the eyes. “What is it you want me to do?”

“Find out what the FBI knows.”

“If your twenty-five lawyers can’t accomplish that, what makes you think I can?”

“You have other ways,” Driscoll said. “You’ve always come through for us in the past.”

“My ways require incentives.”

“Use whatever incentives you want—as long as I get my answers. I want to know what the FBI’s hiding, and I want to know fast.” Driscoll stood up and pulled out his wallet. He threw a few bills on the table. “And remember, you report directly to me. Hodges doesn’t know and will never know anything about this.”

“The senator is lucky he has you to clean up his messes,” Grant said.

Driscoll picked up his glass and stared at the amber liquid. “If he only knew the half of it.” He finished his drink in one swallow, set the glass down, and walked off.

Grant took another swig of his beer, thinking about how convenient it was that Driscoll was such a paranoid asshole.

With the chief of staff’s orders as a cover, he was now free and clear to go about using his ways to find out what the FBI knew, and more important, how concerned he needed to be about their investigation. They were holding something back, even an idiot like Driscoll could tell that. And given what Grant personally knew about the crime scene—which of course, was pretty much everything—the only explanation for the fact that the FBI had not yet arrested Senator Hodges for Mandy’s murder was that they found something that Grant had overlooked. And as calm as he might’ve seemed on the outside, that possibility was starting to make him pretty fucking nervous. Probably because the possibility that he had overlooked something was not entirely far-fetched.

He had, after all, been in a bit of a hurry after killing the bitch.

Mandy Robards.

If his ass wasn’t on the line, Grant would’ve gotten a good chuckle out of the irony of the situation. Even dead, she was still screwing people. Took one hell of a talented prostitute to do that.

And talented she had been, if at least half the stories Hodges had told about her were true.

He’d been working for Hodges for nearly three years now. Because Hodges was both a U.S. senator and an extremely wealthy man (CNN’s most recent list had estimated his net worth at nearly $80 million), he had employed a private security guard for years. When his prior bodyguard had left three years ago to work for the Secret Service, a friend of a friend had recommended Grant as a replacement.

Generally, Grant liked working for Hodges. It certainly was an interesting job. In a nutshell, he handled all actual and potential threats, both direct and implied, against the senator and his political career. This meant that he acted as Hodges’s personal bodyguard, traveled with the senator wherever he went, and was the liaison between Hodges and the various outside security and investigative agencies they worked with—everyone from the state and federal officials who handled the death threats the senator occasionally received, to the security staffs at both the Capitol and Senate Office Building.

Over the last three years, Grant had become one of the senator’s most trusted confidants. In fact, he knew things even Driscoll didn’t know.

Like how it had all started with that damn Viagra.

According to Hodges, he’d started down the little-blue-pill-popping path “to help things out with the wife,” and Grant believed that was true. The senator was essentially a good-hearted man, better than most politicians Grant had met (and in his line of work he’d met quite a few), but like most politicians, he was susceptible to flattery and had a misguided sense of invincibility. So when those little blue pills kicked in, and Hodges got a bit more vim in his verve, he began to avail himself, so to speak, of female companionship—of the paid variety.

Within a few months a pattern developed: when business required the senator to be in the city late at night, he would spend the night at a hotel instead of making the fifty minute drive back to his North Shore estate. On those nights, Grant would arrange for one of the girls to stay in the same hotel. Hodges was either smarter than most cheating men, more paranoid, or both—he would never allow the girls to come to his room. Nor would he buy a condo in the city to use as home base for his extramarital affairs, out of fear that reporters would watch his place and keep track of the comings and goings of any visitors.

Mandy Robards was not the first girl the escort service sent, but after only one night, she became Hodges’s favorite. Unbeknownst to the senator, Grant had taken upon himself the task of waiting in his car outside the hotel in order to make sure that the women “exited safely from the premises” (aka got the hell out of the hotel in the dead of night when no one was watching). In the beginning, his reasons for watching the girls had been somewhat altruistic—it was his job to protect the senator after all—but quickly he began to see the value in having as much information as possible about Hodges’s dirty secret.

From the car, he had observed the handful of women the senator rotated through as they went in and out of the hotel. Mandy wasn’t the prettiest of the bunch—in fact, except for her flaming red hair, her looks were generally unstriking—but Grant suspected that was part of her appeal. Perhaps the fact that she wasn’t drop-dead gorgeous made it easier for the senator to buy into the four-hour fantasy that she was there because she genuinely liked him, not for the two thousand dollars in cash he handed her on the way out the door.

What Grant had seen in Mandy, on the other hand, was an opportunist.

It was after her third visit with the senator, probably about the time she felt safe in assuming that she’d become one of his regulars, that she’d started things in motion. Although it would be months before Grant realized it.

She had exited the hotel—the Four Seasons that time—nearly four hours to the minute after she’d arrived and surprised him by ignoring the open cabs that drove by. Normally, the girls made a fast getaway from the hotel, probably to shower. Instead she lingered for a moment, then turned and strode toward his car in her high-heeled black leather boots. She knocked on his window and cocked her head at an angle when he unrolled it.

“Want to join me for a drink at the bar?” she asked in her pack-a-day voice.

While normally such a suggestion from a woman would have certain connotations, Grant had sensed this was more than a casual invitation. True, he was a good-looking guy and worked out everyday to maintain the muscular build he’d acquired in his Marine Corps days, but seeing how she’d just had sex with another man—his boss, no less—the idea of her hitting on him right then was just gross.

Thus assuming there was more to it, Grant had agreed. Truthfully, he was intrigued. And he was more intrigued, an hour later, when he left the hotel bar having gotten nothing from Mandy other than the distinct impression that she’d been chatting him up over drinks. She’d seemed eager to learn about him and his background, yet all she’d revealed about herself was one minor (and frankly, not exactly jaw-dropping) detail.

“It’s not like I want to be an escort forever, you know,” she said with a sigh.

No shit, really? And here he’d thought prostitutes had such good 401(k) plans.

But Grant kept his mouth shut. And after her next visit with the senator, Mandy asked him to join her for another drink, and then the visit after that, too. It became an arrangement between them, and it wasn’t long before their talk became less casual. Nevertheless, out of an abundance of caution on both their parts, it took about five months of circular conversations, the loops of which gradually grew smaller and smaller, before they finally got down to the point.

Blackmail.

What made it work, in essence, was that they were both gamblers. Grant’s game was poker, and some unfortunate losses at high stakes tables had put a real stress on his credit. Mandy’s game was sex, and she’d been waiting for the escort service to throw her the perfect score. When the married senior senator from Illinois showed up on her hotel room doorstep, she knew she’d found him.

The plan they devised had three parts: they would catch Hodges on video performing those acts of service generally considered outside the traditional senator/constituent relationship. Mandy would then present Hodges with a copy of the video and her demand. When Hodges balked at the blackmail and turned to his personal security guard and most trusted confidant for advice, Grant would make a big show of exploring all the options. He would then use his influence to steer the senator away from going to the authorities, and would ultimately and most reluctantly inform him that he had no choice but to pay.

They were careful in their planning, only meeting in person. No exchanges by phone or email. No records that could link them together. They decided it would be a one-time deal, after which they would go their separate ways. Mandy would quit the escort service and get out of town, and Grant would continue on with business as usual, with the senator none the wiser to his involvement in the scheme.

They agreed to ask for five hundred thousand dollars.

Then they agreed it wasn’t enough and bumped it up to a cool million.

Not an exorbitant sum to Hodges, whose family had founded one of the largest grocery store chains in the country and owned an NFL football team, and certainly an amount he could pay without much doing. But it was enough to get Grant back on his feet after the gambling losses and more than enough to get Mandy off her back. The profits would be split fifty-fifty, they agreed.

Or so Grant had thought.

The time to strike came when the senator was invited to a thousand-dollar-per-plate charity fund-raiser for a children’s hospital that would keep him in the city late into the evening. Hodges asked him to make the “necessary arrangements” and Grant set about doing exactly that. They would be staying at the Peninsula, where Hodges was a frequent visitor, and Grant knew the layout of the hotel well. He’d been given a tour by hotel security earlier in the year when the senator’s son, daughter-in-law, and two grandchildren had stayed there that had pretty much told him everything he needed to know, including that which was most important: where the hotel kept their cameras.

Mandy requested room 1308, a room she’d stayed in before. Given its location, it suited their needs perfectly. It was in a corner and right across the hall from a stairwell, providing Grant a low-visibility means to sneak in and out of the room. And, personally, he got a kick out of the sinister connotations that came with the number thirteen. Another man in his position might have felt guilty, planning to screw his boss out of a million dollars, especially when that boss had been fair and respectful to him. But Grant was not that man.

Senator Hodges was weak. Sure, Grant had vices, everyone did, but the senator had put himself in a position to be preyed upon by others, and that made him a fool. Plus the guy had more money than sin and Grant didn’t see anything wrong with redistributing some of that wealth in his direction. Given what he knew about the senator’s private affairs, he’d earned that money just for keeping his mouth shut.