Grace Cunningham picked up her briefcase and walked into the
closet-size room that held the copy machine.
She hated hanging around after her stint in this office was
finished. But, if anybody asked, she had a good reason to be
here. The last time the great man who'd hired her to
organize material for his autobiography had mislaid some of
her notes, he'd cost her hours of work. This evening,
she wanted her own copy of the research summary.
He'd left her at nine, as he always did, and she had no
illusions about why. He was using her as a cover to meet
another woman. And they weren't working on his book.
Unless he was planning a chapter on "sexual conquests."
But as a junior research assistant with a day job at the
Smithsonian, Grace wasn't in a position to complain.
Everybody in her office kept telling her how lucky she was
to score this assignment. She didn't bother filling them
in on the level of stress.
She'd thought he was taking his honey farther down the
hall. But when intimate laughter drifted through the wall
from the adjoining office, Grace went rigid. She didn't
want to hear what was going on in there, but she
couldn't turn off the lurid pictures that suddenly
flashed into her mind.
The client was a man of immense power in the capital of the
free world. A guy who worked behind the scenes in ways the
public couldn't even imagine. Although a few knew his
name, they felt his influence. Only in his late fifties, he
was starting to worry about his health.
Grace had seen the woman�a blonde much younger than her
lover. Young enough to flatter his ego.
Her low, throaty voice drifted through the closed door.
"I have an idea you'll want to try."
Grace's insides clenched. Her mother hadn't raised
her to listen in on a scene like this.
She turned off the copy machine and then the light as a man
wearing a business suit stopped in the corridor outside the
next-door office and gave the closed door a smirking look.
Obviously he knew what was going on in there, too.
Feeling her face redden, she took a step back into the
shadows, hoping he hadn't seen her and wouldn't
think she was eavesdropping. Every muscle in her body tensed
as she listened to the sound of rustling clothing and
panting breath through the connecting door.
Each minute that ticked by felt like a century. Finally she
heard the moans of a man reaching orgasm.
Thankful that her unwanted stint as a voyeur was over�
she went still when the cry of satisfaction changed to a
loud gasping sound of pain.
The man she'd seen in the hall ran through the office
where Grace was standing and charged through the connecting
door into the room where the lovers were closeted. He was
shouting something that sounded like, "Ridgeway is down!
Repeat. Ridgeway is down!"
Obviously the guards had gone into panic mode. Seconds
later, more footsteps came pounding down the hallway.
The door between the two offices was open, giving Grace an
excellent view of what was going on inside. She pressed her
fist against her mouth. A few moments ago she'd been
embarrassed by the sounds of lovemaking. Now she was
grappling with something far worse.
Armed bodyguards kicked open the hall door and shoved their
way into the office where the man lay unmoving on the beige
carpet.
"Get a doctor," one of them shouted into the
microphone at his collar. "He's unconscious. Get the
defibrillator."
A man holstered his weapon and sprinted into the hall,
reappearing moments later with a plastic case. Someone else
started CPR.
Grace shrank into the shadows, her heart pounding as she
stared at John Ridgeway, head of the Ridgeway Consortium,
one of the most prestigious think tanks in DC. This morning
he'd been advising the president. Now he was lying gray
and unconscious in a back office of the consortium's
downtown headquarters.
Oh God.
Her gaze bounced around the room, and she saw Ridgeway's
sex partner crouched in the corner, pulling up the bodice of
her black dress to cover her small breasts.
The woman's gaze met Grace's for a couple of frantic
heartbeats, then flicked to the right before settling on the
bodyguard bearing down on her. Grace knew her name. It was
Karen Hilliard.
The man grabbed Karen by the elbow and pulled her roughly to
her feet.
"What the hell did you do?" he demanded, thrusting
his face into hers.
She raised her chin. "Nothing. I haven't done
anything. Let me go."
The man's hold on her arm tightened. "You're
kidding, right?"
More footsteps came rapidly down the hall, and an older man
with thinning dark hair and unstylish horn-rimmed glasses
entered the scene of chaos. Grace recognized him at once.
Ian Wickers, Ridgeway's chief of staff.
"What's happened?"
"Looks like a heart attack."
"Will he pull through?"
"Don't know. The doc's on his way."
Wickers turned to the guard who held the woman in place.
"Take her to the secure room in the basement."
"Yes, sir."
The man hustled Karen out. After they were gone, Wickers
addressed the room at large, his voice clipped and
commanding. "Archer, zip up his fly."
One of the bodyguards kneeling over the unconscious man
unceremoniously maneuvered his limp penis back inside his
underwear and zipped up his pants.
Wickers kept talking. "Mr. Ridgeway was alone when he
had a heart attack. I'm not going to have a scandal
cloud the reputation of the consortium."
"Yes, sir," came a chorus of agreement.
From her hiding place in the next room, Grace watched the
unfolding drama, her heart thumping. When her knees
threatened to give way, she leaned back against the wall,
grappling with her own disbelief.
It had all happened so fast. Too fast. She should have done
something. But what?
Her brain threatened to shut down. But she forced herself to
take deep breaths and stay cool.
One salient fact leaped out at her, grabbed her by the
throat and wouldn't let go.
A cover-up.
She was a witness to a cover-up of major proportions.
They'd hauled Karen Hilliard off to the basement and
made it look as if John Ridgeway was alone and working late.
What was going to happen to Karen Hilliard now? And what
would these ruthless men do if they discovered another woman
had seen everything? Heard everything. Would they let her
live to tell about it?
Feeling as if she was standing on quicksand, she pressed her
hand against the hard surface of the copy machine. If only
she'd left the building when her research job was over,
she'd be home by now.
The medics brought a stretcher and loaded the unconscious
man onto it.
"Will he make it?" Wickers asked.
"He's already dead. Like Michael Jackson," the
doctor answered.
After all the frantic activity, the room and the hallway
were finally empty. This might be her only chance to get away.
The security man who had seen her earlier had forgotten
about her in the confusion. But when he started thinking
clearly, he would remember there'd been a witness.
She wanted to run. But she forced herself not to panic. Two
years ago she'd turned her life upside down and come to
Washington on her own. If she could do that, she could get
through this.
At least she'd caught one lucky break. She'd gone
shopping with a coworker on her lunch hour at a couple of
the boutiques on Seventh Street. Fumbling in her briefcase,
she pulled out a black jockey's cap and jammed it onto
her head, pushing her sable-colored locks out of sight.
She thought about hiding her blue eyes with sunglasses. But
that would look strange at night.
Keeping her head down so the security cameras wouldn't
pick up her face, she stepped out of the copy-machine room.
But she couldn't stop the death scene from playing out
in her mind. She'd known Ridgeway had heart problems.
And hidden them from the public. He was arrogant. And
secretive. And he'd thought he could operate outside the
laws of God and man.
She started to turn away. Then from under the sofa, she
caught the glint of something that sparkled. As she stared
at it, she remembered the split second when Karen had looked
at her�then to her right. Toward the couch.
Every self-protective instinct screamed at Grace to get out
of the building before it was too late. But instead of
running in the other direction, she took a quick step toward
the couch, then another. Reaching underneath, she felt
something that wasn't part of the office equipment. It
was Karen's beaded evening bag.
Had it gotten kicked there during the emergency? Or had
Karen deliberately hidden it?
Why? As proof of what had happened?
Or maybe she'd understood Grace's dilemma�and
handed her a kind of insurance policy.
With shaking fingers, she shoved the evening bag into her
briefcase. Conscious that she had to get out before they
locked down the consortium complex, she stood and walked
into the hall, striding to the exit as if she'd only
been working late.
"See you next week?" the security guard asked, and
she knew he wasn't in the loop.
"Yes," she managed to say in a cheerful voice as she
turned in her badge, signed out and walked toward the gate
that opened onto Pennsylvania Avenue, praying it was still open.
Brady Lockwood bent his muscular six-foot frame so that he
could stare into the unpromising depths of the refrigerator,
eyeing a red-and-white carton of kung pao chicken and half a
Philly cheese steak.
How old were they, exactly? Probably old enough to send his
digestive system into spasms.
He tossed the takeout containers into the trash, then
grabbed a bottle of ginger beer and took a swig, wincing as
the sharp bite of the potent soft drink hit his mouth.
For the past three years he'd lived in Washington, DC,
in La Fontana, one of the grand old apartment buildings that
lined upper Connecticut Avenue.
Better get back to work, he told himself, heading for the
office down the hall. He'd taken a new case this
afternoon. Typical P.I. deadbeat-dad stuff. Not like the
interesting assignments he'd gotten from the Light
Street Detective Agency.
But that was then. This was now.
He'd just started thumbing through the files, when the
phone rang. Although the ID didn't give the caller's
name, the number told him it was the Ridgeway residence.
He braced to hear his brother asking for help with his
latest mess.
Instead, John's wife expelled the breath she must have
been holding. "Brady, thank God."
"Lydia, what's wrong?" he asked, picturing her
delicate aristocratic features stiff with tension but not a
strand of her dyed auburn hair out of place.
"I can't talk over the phone," she said, her
control almost slipping. "Just come over here.
I�need you."
I need you.
In the twenty-five years they'd known each other, she
had never uttered those words. In public she could look
friendly. But she'd never asked for his help. What was
going on over there?
"I'm on my way."
Hurriedly, Brady changed from sweats into dark slacks and a
button-down shirt. As an afterthought, he shrugged into a
tweed jacket and paused to swipe a comb through his unruly
dark hair.
On the ride up rain-washed Connecticut Avenue, he felt the
hairs on the back of his neck prickle. He reached for his
cell phone, then drew his hand back. He couldn't call
Lydia to ask what was wrong, not when she'd sounded so
secretive. Was she going behind John's back? What?
As he wove in and out of traffic, his mind drifted to the
strange workings of fate. And of genetics.
Brady might be the smarter brother, but it was John who had
the ear of the U.S. President.
Brady's goals had been more modest. He'd seen what
the quest for power did to a man, how it changed his values
and warped his perspective. All he'd wanted was a
fulfilling job, a comfortable life�and a wife and two kids.
His hands clenched on the wheel. Unfortunately, that had
been too much to ask.
As he turned into the driveway of the Ridgeway estate, the
man in the guardhouse gave him a grim-faced look. Before
Brady could blink, a bank of bright lights switched on,
momentarily blinding him.
"Get out of the car," a voice boomed. "Keep your
hands in the air where we can see them."
Shadows moved behind the lights. Men. With guns�judging
by the glint of metal.
"Out of the car," the voice boomed again. "On
the double if you don't want to get your ass shot."
Brady stepped into the rain, blinking as the spotlights
stabbed into his vision.
From behind the wall of light, he heard a familiar voice,
Bill Giordano, the man who headed his brother's home
security detail.
"It's okay, Taylor. He's Ridgeway's
brother."
Brady was allowed to get back into the car, along with the
security man, and they proceeded up a curving drive toward
the fifty-room mansion his brother had bought ten years ago.
"What are you doing here?" Giordano said, speaking
in the quiet tone that Brady knew meant watch out how you
answer.
"Lydia called me. She said she needed me. What's
going on?"
"There's no easy way to say this. Your brother is
dead."
Brady managed to drag in enough air to say, "How?"
"Heart attack�we think," Giordano answered.
"He was catching up on some work at the office before he
and Lydia went to a reception."
"Doesn't the consortium have a doctor on staff?"
"And defibrillators. All the goddamn latest equipment.
If they could have saved him, you know damn well they would
have."
Brady nodded, trying to pull himself together.
Lydia was waiting for him in the upstairs family lounge. Her
eyes were red-rimmed as she walked toward him, setting a
glass on an end table as she crossed the room.
As if to mock the occasion, she was dressed for an evening
reception in a long emerald gown that was the perfect color
for her hair and skin.
When she embraced him, the scent of the liquor on her breath
grabbed him as tightly as her arms, and a seductive thought
wove itself into his mind. He could have a shot of bourbon.
Just one. To get himself through the trauma of John's death.
Stop it.
One drink, and he was on a one-way trip to hell. No bourbon.
No exceptions.
The cab pulled up in front of Grace's apartment just off
Dupont Circle. She already had a ten-dollar bill in her
hand, which she handed to the cabdriver.
"Keep the change," she called as she hurried through
the drizzle to the front door of the converted brownstone.
Once it had been a single residence. Now each floor had two
apartments.
Her low-heeled shoes clattered on the uncarpeted wooden
steps as she climbed to her second-floor unit, unlocked her
front door and stepped into the small living room.
When she'd locked the door behind her, she stopped
short, her stomach clenching as she looked around the
shadowy room.