“I’m sorry-”
“No.” He held up a hand. “No, I’m sorry. That was insensitive. Work’s fine. We’re all bearing up. Lattimore’s the same. He’s got steel balls, you know? Nothing rattles him. Me-I’m a coward.” But there was no self-pity in his tone. He winked at Quinn. “Not you, though. You’ve got brass tits, Harlowe. Especially for a page-flipping historian.”
“Easy for me to talk tough. I’m not on the front-lines.”
“You were last week,” he said softly.
When Steve finally headed back to work, taking the rest of his iced coffee with him, Quinn watched him pick up his pace as he rushed down the sidewalk. Not for a single five-second stretch had he relaxed. She realized now why Alicia had said she found him difficult to be around for any length of time. The poor guy had been half in love with her for so long, and yet he’d never stood a chance with her-he drove her nuts.
But his distress over Alicia’s death seemed genuine, and for Quinn, that was enough.
Steve was on Pennsylvania Avenue, on his way back to work, when his cell phone rang. He recognized the tight, controlled voice of the older of the two goons. “What, are you assholes spying on me?” Bravado-he was sweating like the pig he was. “I just had iced coffee with Quinn Harlowe. Or do you know already? Are you following her-or me?”
“Did she ask you to meet her?”
“No. I knew you’d be breathing down my neck and just showed up. She’s working up a dossier on you bastards.”
Silence.
“I’m serious. Your boss is Oliver Crawford, right? Are you the ones torturing and executing the guys that kidnapped him? I hope the feds are onto you. I hope they’re fucking all over you. I hope-”
“Calm down.”
“I am calm.”
But he wasn’t. He could feel the blood pounding in his arteries. His chest was tight. If he wasn’t so young, he’d be worried about a stroke or a heart attack. As it was, he thought he’d crack. Just collapse on the sidewalk and start blubbering. Was that what they’d done to Alicia? Scared the living shit out of her to the point she was drooling on herself?
“Where are you on the names we want?”
Steve wasn’t fooled by the mildness of the question. He was running out of rope with these bastards. “I’m working on it.”
“Work faster. What about Harlowe? Is she part of the task force investigating the vigilantes?”
“What?”
A hiss of impatience, like he was stupid. “Harlowe. What’s her role in any vigilante investigation?”
Hell. Steve wiped sweat off his brow. These guys were vigilantes. Had to be. “She doesn’t have one. No. She’s just nosy.”
Another couple seconds of silence.
“We’re not the bad guys here,” the goon said quietly, a hint of humor-and sarcasm-in his tone.
Steve glanced around him, but no one was eavesdropping. Still, he lowered his voice. “You’re never going to leave me alone, are you? You’ve got me by the balls, and you’re going to twist until I shrivel up and die.”
“We’re seizing an opportunity that you yourself presented to us. We’re careful people. We have a great responsibility. There’s much at stake.” He sounded so persuasive, so reasonable. “I don’t ask you to understand, just to do as you’re told.”
“What about Quinn? I’m guessing not everyone thinks you’re the good guys you say you are. She’ll find out. She’s like that. I’ve heard how she works. She throws out one little question in a meeting and turns it around, upside down and inside out. That’s why she’s in demand. Don’t underestimate her.”
Because if they did underestimate her, she’d be onto him as well.
“We’ll do our job. You do yours. Keep us informed.”
Steve clicked off and lifted his arms, trying to let some air in between his wet shirt and his skin, with little success.
He had no doubts now. He knew where he’d made his bed.
For better or worse, he was in the sack with fascist sociopaths.
23
Seeing his wife cry never failed to make Nate Winter think of his two younger sisters. He, Antonia and Carine were orphaned as children when their parents died in the White Mountains of New Hampshire, and he remembered his helplessness when he’d hear them sobbing into their pillows at night. He’d never admitted to his own tears.
Sarah wasn’t crying so much as trying to keep herself from crying. She’d worked all day on a dig in back of the historic northern Virginia house where they lived and then had started packing for their move that weekend.
Honey-haired and blue-eyed, she was the most beautiful woman Nate had ever known, but right now, her cheeks had red splotches, and her eyes were bloodshot. She grabbed a tissue and blew her nose. “I don’t know what’s the matter with me.”
“You’ve been working nonstop. Take the night off-”