Текст книги "Something about You"
Автор книги: Julie James
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Текущая страница: 6 (всего у книги 18 страниц)
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.
When the night finally arrived, everything started out smoothly enough. After Hodges headed to the hotel after the fund raiser to—how thoughtful—call his wife to say good night, Grant drove his car into a dark alley a few blocks away and quickly shed the trademark suit and tie he always wore when working with the senator. He threw on a nondescript black blazer, hooded T-shirt, and jeans, an outfit that would make him less identifiable on the off chance anyone spotted him around room 1308. A few minutes later, he parked the car and entered the hotel through its back entrance, located the stairwell that would lead him to Mandy’s room, and hurried up the thirteen flights of stairs. Having timed things nearly to the minute, Mandy had just arrived herself and was waiting in the room. She had a small video camera she had purchased, per his instructions, from a spy shop on Wells Street.
Grant set up the camera, gave Mandy a thirty-second tutorial, and hid it behind the television that was conveniently located in front of the king-sized bed.
“What’s with the gloves?” Mandy asked, taking in his black leather-clad hands while he worked.
In hindsight, Grant probably should’ve given the answer to this question a little more consideration, as it was the first sign of trouble.
“Just being careful,” he’d said matter-of-factly while opening the armoire doors another quarter inch and checking to make sure the camera wasn’t visible.
“Just being careful how?” Mandy asked.
When Grant turned around, he saw she had her arms folded across her chest.
Her eyes narrowed suspiciously. “You mean, just being careful, as in, if Hodges doesn’t go for this, and he turns me in to the cops, there’s no proof you were ever involved? Is that the kind of being careful you’re talking about?”
She might not have been the prettiest call girl Grant had ever seen, but she wasn’t the dumbest, either. Unfortunately, he didn’t have a lot of time to finesse the situation.
“We’re blackmailing a United States senator, Mandy. Yes, I’m being careful. And so should you. But it’s not exactly going to be a secret to Hodges that you’re involved in this. You’re the one screwing him, remember? Not to mention, the one who’s making the deal with him for the money.”
“Funny how, when you say it like that, it sounds like I’m the one who’s doing all the work,” she said. “Not to mention”—she mimicked him—“the one taking all the risks.”
Fucking women. He should’ve known she’d start bitching about something last minute.
Grant took her by the shoulders, tempted to give her a good shake. “This was your plan, Mandy. And it’s a good one. Just keep cool, and let’s do this.”
It took a moment before Mandy nodded. “You’re right.” She exhaled. “I’m sorry, Grant. I think I’m getting nervous about all this.”
“Don’t be nervous,” he told her. “All you need to do is turn the camera on when you hear Hodges knock—make sure you put the armoire doors back in the exact spot they’re in now, then turn the camera off when he leaves. The rest of it is no different than any other job. I’ll be watching in my car from the street below. Turn the lamp by the window on and off three times so I’ll know when you’re done. I’ll come up, check the tape to make sure everything’s okay, and then you’ll leave just like you would any other night.”
“Thanks, boss. Anything else?” she asked sarcastically.
“Yes. Make it look good.”
And did she ever.
As planned, Grant re-entered the hotel as soon as he saw the signal in the window and hurried back up to her room. When Mandy let him in, he pulled the camera out from behind the television and checked the tape. He started at the beginning, then played the tape back on fast-forward. He stopped intermittently to watch, being sure to keep the volume down. Soon, Senator Hodges would very likely come to regret his ever having met Ms. Mandy Robards, but for that night at least, he was quite vocal in expressing his pleasure with their acquaintance.
“See anything you like?” Mandy drawled as she reclined on the bed in one of the hotel bathrobes.
“Just making sure the tape’s clean all the way through,” Grant told her. The beauty in blackmail videography was in the details. Those doggie-style spanks were probably worth five hundred grand alone.
Grant continued to watch the replay on fast-forward, the senator pumping, Mandy bouncing, and the bed all a-shaking at comical speeds, until he got to the end. He slowed to watch approvingly as Mandy very cleverly maneuvered herself and Hodges in front of the camera as he paid her in cash before leaving. The last shot on the tape was Mandy turning off the camera.
When it was finished, Grant pulled out the tape and handed it over to Mandy. As they’d agreed, she would make a copy before showing it to Hodges. “Nice work,” he said.
Mandy smiled as she slid off the bed. “Thanks.” She grabbed her purse off the desk and put the tape inside. She leaned against the desk, taking him in.
“Sorry I was a bitch earlier.” She nodded at his hands. “The gloves, they threw me off for a second. But you were right, this is serious business and we need to be careful. I understand why you need to take your precautionary measures, and I know you’re going to understand why I need to take mine.”
There was a sudden gleam in her eyes that Grant didn’t trust. “Understand what, exactly?”
In answer, Mandy reached into one of the deep pockets of her bathrobe and instinctively Grant went for the gun in the shoulder harness he always wore. But she beat him to the punch as she pulled her hand out of the robe and Grant saw the flash of silver—
Of a small tape recorder.
He let out a deep breath in frustrated relief. “Jesus Christ, Mandy. What the hell is that?”
“I told you—my precautionary measures.” She hit play on the tape recorder, keeping the volume low, but high enough so Grant could hear well and clear.
“I’m sorry, Grant. I think I’m getting nervous about all this.”
“Don’t be nervous. All you need to do is turn the camera on when you hear Hodges knock—make sure you put the armoire doors back in the exact spot they’re in now, then turn the camera off when he leaves. The rest of it is no different than any other job. I’ll be watching in my car from the street below. Turn the lamp by the window on and off three times so I’ll know when you’re done. I’ll come up, check the tape to make sure everything’s okay, and then you’ll leave just like you would any other night.”
“Thanks, boss. Anything else?”
“Yes. Make it look good.”
Mandy shut off the tape with a smug grin. “That spy shop on Wells Street you sent me to was quite a find.” She held up the recorder. “It’s amazing how small they can make these things nowadays. The whole time you were here earlier, you never noticed I had it in my pocket.”
“I’ll have to remember to frisk you next time,” Grant said sarcastically. “What’s with the tape, Mandy?”
“I want to renegotiate the terms of our arrangement.”
“You think you should get more than half?”
“I think I should get it all.”
“Why the hell would I ever agree to that?”
“Because if you don’t, I’m going to Hodges with this tape and telling him this whole thing was your idea,” she said.
“As if he’d ever believe that.”
“Men believe a lot of things they shouldn’t when they’re thinking with their dicks.” Mandy gave the tape a little shake for his benefit. “Besides, he doesn’t have to believe me. I have it all right here. I love how this little clip makes it sound like it’s your idea—like you had to talk me into the whole scheme. And that, of course, will be exactly what I tell Hodges. And the police.”
Grant knew he should’ve been nervous. Panicking, even. But instead, he felt a cold blue flame of anger beginning to burn inside him. And he felt strangely calm.
“I’m not giving up my half,” he said.
Mandy laughed scornfully. “Half. As if you even deserve one-tenth of this money. I set this up. I did all the work. The only thing I’ve ever needed you for is to make sure Hodges doesn’t go to the cops. And that you will still do, unless you want to do twenty years in jail for blackmailing a federal official. Because if I go down in this, trust me—you will, too.” She flashed him a smile. “Sorry, Grant. But like we said, this is a one-shot deal. I have to make the most of it.”
She was so proud of herself right then. So smug and confident.
Too confident.
As Grant stood there, pointing his gun at her, he had one thought on his mind.
He would not be out-smarted by a fucking whore.
Mandy slipped the tape recorder back inside the pocket of her robe and eyed his hands unconcernedly. “You can put the gun away, Grant. We both know you’re not going to shoot me.” She turned her back on him and began heading toward the bathroom.
Grant reached under his blazer and tucked the gun back inside his shoulder harness. “You’re right. I’m not going to shoot you.” Without warning, he lunged for her—pleased she never saw it coming—and grabbed her by the throat and threw her onto the bed. She hit it with enough force to bang the bed loudly against the wall. Before she could scream, Grant was on top of her, and the bed slammed against the wall a second time as he pinned her. He slapped his hand over her mouth.
“You don’t know who you’re messing with. You need to understand who’s in control here, bitch,” he hissed.
Mandy’s eyes widened—his sudden burst of rage finally put some fear and respect into her—and she began to fight back. Grant grabbed one of the pillows next to her head and brought it down over her face. Her arms flailed, her hands clawed for his face, and she kicked out with her legs, trying to buck him off. Probably not the way she was used to being ridden in bed, Grant thought, using his elbows and chest to hold the pillow down while he grabbed for her wrists and pinned them under his knees.
She fought really hard at that.
Grant let it go on for a nice long moment, finding her panic and the power he held over her to be strangely thrilling. Intoxicating. He was about to pull the pillow away, ready to see the submission in her eyes, when it hit him that she was such a dumb-ass scheming bitch that she would never really submit, and he knew then that he never should’ve trusted her in the first place and in that moment, he hated himself for being so naive. He knew that, no matter what she might say, no matter what she might promise right then, he’d never be able to believe anything that came out of her lying mouth. For all their plotting, he wasn’t going to get a fucking dime because of her, and worse, now she had him. Sure, he could take the tape away from her, but he could never, ever trust her to keep her mouth shut, she’d always have this thing she could hold over him, that he’d planned to blackmail the senator. And even if he could convince her to walk away, he’d always be wondering when the day would come when she’d be back, wanting something.
He knew this for certain: he did not want to spend the rest of his life looking over his shoulder. He didn’t want her to have that kind of power over him. They were supposed to be partners, but now it seemed to be every man and woman for him or herself. And he didn’t see any other option.
So he kept the pillow right where it was.
It took longer than he expected. Her struggles grew weaker, feeble, but still she persisted, and it wasn’t until a good two minutes or so had gone by without any movement that Grant dared to lift the pillow with his gloved hands.
Her eyes were open and empty. Staring down at her lifeless body, Grant’s first thought was that he was surprised he didn’t feel more. No remorse, just . . . nothing. Though he’d been in the Marines, he’d never actually killed anyone and he’d always assumed it would be kind of a big deal.
Hmm. Apparently not.
Grant sat up and smoothed back a lock of hair that had fallen into his eyes. He climbed off Mandy’s body, thinking he’d better get out of that hotel room. Fast. His mind raced, the adrenaline kicked in, and it took him a second or two to clear his thoughts. He needed a plan and was impressed by how quickly one came to him.
The senator.
Hodges’s fingerprints were all over the room. The escort service would have a record that he was the one who’d been with Mandy that night. And if he left behind the videotape of the senator and Mandy having sex, that would give the authorities enough of a potential motive. A crime of passion, they’d guess. She’d tried to blackmail the senator and when he found out, he’d panicked and killed her.
It would be enough, Grant told himself. It had to be. It wasn’t like he had a lot of options. There were only so many scenarios one could explore when unexpectedly finding oneself in a hotel room with a dead hooker. Plan A: get the fuck out. Bonus plan B: pin it on someone else.
Grant reached into the pocket of Mandy’s robe and found the tape recorder. He slipped it into the back pocket of his jeans, making sure it was hidden by his blazer. He put the videotape and recorder back behind the television, then hurried to the door. He flipped up the hood on his T-shirt.
After all, one never knew who might be watching.
AND NOW HE needed to finish what he’d started.
Grant set his empty beer bottle off to the side and took out his wallet to add a few bucks to the cash Driscoll had thrown down earlier. As he left the bar and stepped outside, he flipped up the collar of his coat to guard against the crisp fall wind that came rolling in off the lake. An L train roared by on unseen tracks somewhere in the near distance.
Grant thought back to Driscoll’s orders.
Find out what the FBI knows.
He had every intention of doing just that.
It wasn’t going to be easy getting the information, he knew, but his mind was already working. Jack Pallas could potentially be a problem—if the stories going around about him were even partially true—but Pallas had made enemies with some people that no one should make enemies with, and Grant had a feeling he could use that to his advantage.
The FBI obviously had something. Although not enough to point them in his direction—yet—he didn’t like having any loose ends lying around. And as soon as he found out what the loose end was, he planned to take care of it. For nearly fifteen years he’d been covering up other people’s secrets and lies. He would handle this with the same objective precision. No more being played the fool. No more mistakes. From now on, he was in control.
And he would do whatever it took to keep it that way.
