I stopped two feet from the table. “Oh, shit. Oh, shit. Oh, shit,” I hissed at Brodie. “I know that guy. He works for Gairloch.”
“I know him, too, Princess. Keep going.”
I couldn’t argue. Brodie physically moved me toward the table, and pulled out a chair for me. Once again, I shared a table with Mr. and Mrs. Rollins, the crack-selling congressman and his wife.
“I hope this night goes better than the last we shared.” The congressman guffawed. “Crazy bastard set himself on fire. Never seen anything like it, but I’m sure glad to see you again.”
“That makes one of us,” I muttered.
“Huh? What was that?”
Brodie interrupted. “Congressman Rollins, it’s good to see you again. Iain Brodie, sir, we’ve met several times.”
Rollins became flustered. He stared at Brodie as if he was adjusting his eyes. His hands flew to his chest, clutching onto himself for balance or perhaps to remind himself that he was still alive and unhurt.
There was real fear there.
“Yes, of course,” he said. “Colonel Brodie, how could I forget you? One of the finest military minds I ever met.”
“Thank you, sir. Retired colonel now, of course. I’m enjoying the cruise with my friend, Abigail. A retirement celebration, if you will.”
Rollins smiled. “Interesting. Lord Gairloch didn’t mention anything to me about your retirement.”
“He’s been busy, as you know.”
“Yes, terrible business. Terrible. We were there a couple of nights ago when the first fire happened and then yesterday the whole house went up. Some of your compatriots were burned alive, they say.”
“I heard that the gardener saw one man run out of the building like a giant fireball, screaming so loud it scared off the birds,” Rollins’s wife, Cynthia, said, overjoyed by the news. “Another fellow had to be scraped off the floor. Scraped. He melted, you see.”
Rollins nodded. “Lord Gairloch came out with only the clothes on his back, but he’s damned lucky to have come out at all,” he said. “It cut our business short, too. That’s why we had time for the cruise. A happy accident, but a damned expensive one.”
“You don’t say? Maybe we can talk terms, then. I’m in business for myself these days.”
I didn’t know where Brodie was going, but I was feeling slightly sick from the conversation. The talk of Brodie’s melting compatriots wasn’t too bad, but the idea of Brodie going into business with Rollins turned my stomach. Nevertheless, my appetite stayed intact, and I was thrilled when the waiter came over to our table.
“I would like the dinner with the highest fat content,” I told him. “And for dessert, I want the dessert with both the highest fat content and highest sugar content. If that doesn’t have chocolate in it, bring me something with chocolate, too.”
“In business for yourself?” Rollins continued the conversation after we ordered. “So, you got that whole Taylor matter worked out?”
“More or less.”
“I want you to know I didn’t agree with Gairloch on that whole situation. What he did, I didn’t wholeheartedly approve of it. Just wanted you to know.”
Cynthia leaned forward. “Colonel Brodie, did you know that Stephen is also an experienced military man?”
Rollins laughed. “Now, don’t start with that story, Cynthia.”
“I will, too, and you can’t stop me. When Stephen was in high school, he had a job delivering pizzas, and one night a soldier on leave— a big soldier—jumped him for his money. You know, the tips and all that. Well, Stephen fought him with the only thing he had: a pizza. He beat that soldier with the pizza until he was half dead on the ground. He didn’t lose one cent of his tips!”
“To be fair,” Rollins said, smiling. “It was a pizza with the works. The soldier didn’t stand a chance.”
***
I ate my dinner as fast as I could and urged Brodie to do the same. Then I sacrificed my dessert to leave even quicker. We spent a total of forty-five minutes with the Rollinses, and it was forty-five minutes too long.
“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” Brodie asked me when we got on deck.
“I don’t know. Are you thinking this thong is killing me? If I wanted to floss my ass, I would have used the waxed brand and not rayon? Are you thinking that?”
“Okay, you’re not thinking what I’m thinking. I’m thinking that Rollins just told me who killed Taylor.”
“He did? Where was I?” I asked.
“You were sitting next to me. Rollins said Gairloch killed Taylor, maybe not in so many words. Gairloch led me to believe that Taylor was trying to do a deal with Georgia, and the Russians killed him for it. But there were no Russians. What really happened was Gairloch killed Taylor and pinned it on me. That’s why he wanted me dead, to make the Taylor matter go away. With me dead, the case would be dropped, and everyone would go on thinking I killed him. It’s brilliant.”
Brodie was as happy as only a vindicated man could be.
“Gairloch killed Taylor?” I asked.
“Gairloch killed Taylor, Princess.”
***
Gairloch killed Taylor, but Brodie couldn’t just tell the police. All the physical evidence pointed to Brodie as the culprit, and besides, Gairloch was well respected and powerful. Who would have believed that he was capable of murder? Nevertheless, Brodie was overjoyed with the discovery, and it spurred him into action.
He spent most of his days working on the ship’s computers and phones. He conspired and plotted with Logan when he was awake and coherent. Brodie left me out of the particulars, but I knew it was Taylor, Taylor, Taylor, all day, every day. He was a man on a mission, and I stayed out of his way to let him fulfill it.
Unlike Brodie, I had nothing to do. I didn’t want to risk bumping into Rollins and his wife, so I stayed in the cabin most of the time. On one of my few excursions, I visited the ship’s store and bought a handful of romance novels. They were more or less all the same: sexy guy, sexy woman, sexual tension, and happily ever after.
After my fourth book, it got me thinking: Brodie was a sexy guy, I was not bad, we had our share of sexual tension, but would we have our happily ever after?
The odds weren’t in our favor. First of all, Brodie wasn’t my ideal man. He was a mercenary, and even if I discounted the kidnapping, murdering, thievery, and general lawlessness, his job included a lot of travel.
He wasn’t the stay-at-home, take the kids to Little League, flowers on Valentine’s Day type. There was no white picket fence in his future. He was erratic, and I already had enough erratic in my life. I was raised with erratic, and it wasn’t all sweetness and light.
Because of my mother’s craziness, I had led an isolated childhood, and I didn’t want to relive it as an adult. I had had enough of living on the fringes. I wanted mainstream.
I had to face facts. A breakup was coming, not that we were ever really together. He never mentioned anything about staying in New York with me, and I was reasonably sure that if he attempted to speak the L.O.V.E. word, his mouth would explode.
As the ship approached New York, Brodie became more focused on clearing his name, and I became more focused on our impending separation. I was hardly living the plot of a romance novel.
I visited Logan a couple of times a day. He was making a miraculous recovery, even walking around the cabin, aided by his personal doctor. Doctor Rosenblatt, initially more interested in the casino and the ship’s midnight chocolate buffet, acquired a newfound work ethic when Logan sat up the first time, and she got a good eyeful of his perfect bone structure and permanently wind-tossed hair. In fact, she became very fond of giving him sponge baths. Logan was probably the cleanest gunshot victim of all time.
He took the attention in stride, used to women fawning over him. With great kindness, he complimented her endlessly, throwing her into a fit of giggles and, “Aw, shucks.”
I timed my visits between sponge baths and the doctor’s attentions. Since she preferred to take lunch up on deck for the all-you-can-eat shrimp fiesta, I took that time to eat with Logan in his cabin.
“Brodie was just looking for you,” he said, our fifth day out at sea.
“Brodie is too busy to look for me.”
Logan smirked. “Careful, Abby, your face might freeze like that.”
“Like what?”
He pointed toward my face. “Your lips. Very pursed, and not in a kissable way.”
I relaxed my face and took a bite of my salad.
“You’ve been doing that often lately. Pursing your lips, scrunching your face, snapping, sulking, pouting—”
“Okay, I’ve got the picture,” I interrupted. Logan waited patiently, while I decided how much to say to him.
“I’ve been reading romance novels,” I said, finally.
“Oh, no.”
“They always have happy endings.”
“And you’re not sure that Iain is the happy ending sort of person.”
“Is he? You know him better than I do.”
Logan sat back in his chair, the movement making him grimace with pain. He recuperated quickly and took a sip of water. “Brodie isn’t the ‘share a suite with a woman’ sort of person. He isn’t the ‘matching robes’ sort of person. He isn’t the ‘risk the mission for a woman’ sort of person.”
“So, maybe there’s a happy ending in my future?”
“I’d say you have a thirty to forty percent chance. And no, he hasn’t said anything to me about it. And no, I don’t ask.”
I didn’t ask, either. It felt like I wasn’t only holding my tongue, but I was also holding my breath at all times. Waiting, that’s what I did. I waited and held my breath for Brodie to say something. By the time we sailed into New York Harbor, I was dizzy from the lack of oxygen.
Brodie had “people” in New York, too. They met us at the dock with a parade of SUVs. Whoosh went our luggage. Brodie escorted me to one of the waiting cars, his hand firmly on my lower back. “I hate this city,” he said, opening the back door. And away we went.
***
“You doing all right, Princess?” Brodie asked with the phone attached to his ear. I wandered around the apartment, taking it all in. It was the New York I had heard about but was never invited to. We were on Central Park West with panoramic views and furniture that I recognized from modern art books. I didn’t know if Brodie owned the apartment or if he was borrowing it from Peggy Guggenheim or Doris Duke or someone like that.
I started to answer him, but he put his finger up and pointed at the phone. He was constantly on the phone to mysterious people, talking about what, I didn’t know.
I didn’t want to hold my breath any longer. I had an appointment back at my old job the next morning, and I wanted to have the talk with Brodie before I left.
“I want to talk with you.” I waved my hands in front of his face. He pointed to the phone again. “I need to talk with you,” I repeated. Maybe I was pursing, pouting, or scrunching because Brodie finally gave me his attention.
“George, I’ll have to call you back,” he said and clicked off the phone. He took a seat and stretched out his long legs in front of him.
“When Laird Mackenzie saw Josephine by the lake, he knew she was the only woman for him, even though she was English and betrothed to Sir John, and he was a warrior, unused to the niceties of courtship,” I began.
Brodie tilted his head to the side, his eyes unblinking. “Laird Mackenzie.”
“Yes,” I said. “Aurora couldn’t stand Garrett, but when the Vikings attacked, they stuck together—it didn’t hurt that she was handy with a sword—and they saw that they were truly compatible, and he had a great chest and rarely wore his tunic. Richard was a vampire and Delilah was a virgin, but they worked it out, too. Now, all these things on their own don’t mean a thing, but if you put them together, I think you’ll see a logical pattern, something we can learn from.”
Brodie squinted as if he didn’t see me clearly. “I don’t know any of those people, Princess.”
“It doesn’t matter. It’s the point of the thing. Don’t you see? It’s the end of the rainbow, the finale at the Fourth of July pops concert, the piece of chocolate with your coffee after dinner. Hell, it’s dessert.”
Brodie’s face brightened. “That reminds me, do you want to eat out tonight? Logan suggested a restaurant not far from here.”
I stomped my foot and wagged my finger under his nose. “Don’t change the subject,” I said.
“Subject? What subject? I can’t make anything out through the blah, blah, blah. Who are you talking about? They sound like characters out of a book.”
I looked around for something to throw at him. Everything was glass or porcelain, very expensive, and sure to break into a million pieces when it made impact with Brodie’s hard head. I didn’t want to be responsible for destroying a Ming vase or Waterford crystal. I looked around for a paperweight. Everybody has a paperweight, I thought. There had to be one around there somewhere.
“I don’t like that look in your eye, Princess. It’s a new look, and to be perfectly honest, it’s got me frightened.”
My eyes scanned the room, but I quickly lost steam. If I didn’t know what I wanted, how could I insist that Brodie would?
“Have you ever been with a woman?” I asked.
Brodie leaned forward and raised his right eyebrow. “Excuse me?”
“Not in that way. I know in that way. I mean, serious. Have you ever had a serious relationship with a woman?”
The edges of Brodie’s mouth curved up in the tiniest of smiles. He grabbed my arm and pulled me down onto his lap.
“I’ve heard other men recount these kinds of conversations they had with their women,” he said, nuzzling my neck. “So, I know what I’m supposed to say now.”
“You do?” My head dropped back to allow him to kiss lower down.
“Yes. I know what to say to keep you, and I know what to say to let you go.”
“So, what are you going to say?”
“Nothing. Haven’t you learned by now, Princess? I’m not exactly a man of words.”
He wrapped his arm around my waist and pulled me higher onto his lap, his warm chest against my back. “Princess.” His voice brushed against my ear in a faint whisper. “I do so enjoy being inside you. It’s hard to focus most times, my need to get back to you is so very strong.”
My breathing slowed, and my mouth dropped open. My skin came alive at his touch. The tingling sensation increased, making me squirm on his lap. He was a man of action, and his actions were honest. There was no artifice to Iain Brodie. He did want me, but beyond sex, I didn’t know his feelings. I was weak. I welcomed him any way I could have him. I let myself be overcome with desire and need.
Brodie’s fingers made their way up my thigh, rolling up my skirt as they went. When he reached my panties, he tugged at them, ripping them in two. He lifted me off his lap and rested me on the ground on all fours. I heard him unzip his jeans. “You’re ready,” he said, caressing me between my legs and stating the obvious. I was desperate for him. I moved against his hand, but I wanted more.
Brodie adjusted his position until his pelvis cupped against my rear. He guided himself deep inside me. The position allowed him to fill me up more than he ever had before. His hands gripped my waist, and he rocked in and out, slowly. His breath was heavy and labored, but he didn’t alter his pace in order to find his satisfaction quickly.
My desire rose until I was on the edge of a climax. I drove back into him with a ferocious need. He stopped moving and allowed me to take my pleasure from him. He possessed me fully, and knowing that fact heightened my arousal.
I screamed out his name and clenched around him, drawing him in even farther. Unable to restrain himself any longer, Brodie thrust into me harder and faster. An animal cry escaped his lips, and I felt the force of his release inside me. We stayed in that position for several moments, unable to move, our bodies trembling with aftershocks.
Finally, Brodie gently separated himself from me, and we lay facing each other on our sides on the floor. We looked at each other, as if seeing one another for the first time.
Brodie didn’t have any words, but that didn’t change the fact that I had dozens of questions. Perhaps, I realized looking into his fathomless brown eyes, he was not the person to ask.
***
Brodie left before dawn on some Taylor mission that I was afraid to ask about. I, on the other hand, was back on the subway headed to my old job at the News Daily and old life. The only change was a far better wardrobe and distractions that gave me an inability to focus.
The News Daily editor, John Fuller, was a fiftysomething Republican with a permanent five o’clock shadow and a perverse comb-over that wound around his head like a Sikh’s turban. He was usually soft-spoken, but I had heard him have more than one tantrum and reduce more than one hardened reporter to tears in the newsroom. He was surprisingly happy to see me. John got up from his desk, letting a wave of crumbs fall from his lap. He pumped my hand in greeting.
“Williams, how the hell are you? They didn’t change you too much, except for your hair and that shiner. I guess the English are tougher than I thought. You ready to work? You remember how to be a real reporter?”
“Um,” I said.
“Good!” He slapped me on the back and stomped out of the office, gesturing for me to follow him down the hall. “Another goddamned meeting to go to,” he complained. “A lot has happened since you left, Williams. Some corporate bastard lobotomized zombies bought the paper.”
“They did?” I had been away from the news since the Simoros Islands. I wondered what else I had missed in the world.
“They love meetings. Meetings in the morning, afternoon, evening. On the weekends, they have meetings called retreats where they play flute music in the background, and some idiot in a white toga goes on and on about trust and readership surveys.” Fuller spit in disgust, and I dodged, hopping to the side.
“This meeting now is about social networking,” he continued. “You can fuck me in the ass with your social networking. What the hell does that have to do with midterm elections?”
“Well,” I began, but I didn’t know what social networking was any more than Fuller. Whatever it was, I was reasonably sure I wasn’t good at it.
“Williams is back. She got tired of England,” Fuller announced.
The meeting room was filled to the rafters with what looked like the entire editorial staff. Usually editorial meetings were attended only by the editors and possibly a reporter or two. An all-staff meeting was unheard of. No one wanted to have reporters waste time not reporting.
There was a grumbling of welcome as I entered, but they were focused on a man at the front of the room. He was short and slim and dressed in a tailored Prada suit and little rectangular glasses. He fiddled with a laptop, which projected a graph onto a screen. I read the title above the graph. “Making friends equals making readers.”
My mother would have had a fit with all the bad energy in the room. Even I could feel it. All eyes were on the little man, as if they could shoot out eye-daggers and impale him to the screen. I guessed social networking wasn’t a popular idea at the News Daily.
“Welcome, everybody,” he started. “As you know, I’m the junior acquisition transition mediation consultant for parent company HLM and my name is Dick Decker.”
Ralph from the metro page sat next to me. He elbowed me in the ribs. “We all call him Prick Pecker,” he told me with glee.
“I want to take a moment and tell you again how pleased HLM is to add the New York News Daily to its portfolio of over two thousand middle-tier properties.”
“Oh, goody, we’re the Walmart of papers,” I heard the managing editor say from across the room.
Decker ignored him. “I know that we can finally turn the News Daily around to a profitable enterprise. Now let’s talk about the exciting world of social networking.”
There was a general groan from the room. “Is it that bad?” I asked Ralph.
“Worse,” he muttered back to me. “You wouldn’t believe the things they say nowadays. I used to be a journalist. Now I’m a ‘content provider.’ What the hell does that mean? And what’s next? Do you want fries with that?” He sighed and stared out into nothing. “Content provider. Yeah, when I was a child, I always said I wanted to grow up to be a content provider.”
The meeting ended after about ninety minutes without incident except for Jimmy from advertising making farting noises every time Dick Decker turned his back to us to illustrate something on the screen with his laser pointer.
After learning about the profit potential from making electronic friends, everyone scattered back to work. It was time for me to get to One Police Plaza back to my old beat as cops reporter, but John Fuller had other ideas. He gestured to me to follow him back to his office.
“Telling the general public that I prefer two-ply toilet paper somehow makes me more accessible to the paper’s readers! Devoting a page and a half to readers’ comments is a good journalistic decision!”
He ranted all the way back to his office. His face was red, and his comb-over was falling down the back of his head. I worried that a call to 911 was in his future, and I didn’t have a cellphone. I hoped he could last until we got to his office and a landline.
“Sit,” he ordered. He rested his elbows on his desk and took a deep breath. “I got nowhere for you to go,” he said.
My heart dropped to my stomach, and my throat constricted.
“I don’t have a job?” My eyesight grew blurry. Without my job, how would I live? After Logan recuperated, and he and Brodie left town, where would I stay?
“You’re on payroll, Abby. No need to hyperventilate. Should I get a paper bag?” I shook my head. “It’s just that things are shifting around here. Give me some time to find a place for you. In the meantime, stick around the newsroom and look busy.”
I got up to leave. “And don’t tell our new bosses about our little arrangement. Stay clear of them,” he warned.
***
I wandered around, looking for a free desk and computer. I skirted the edges of the newsroom, hoping for something discreet. The farthest forgotten corner was encased in books and paper, and it gave me an idea.
“Stuart, are you in there?” I asked.
I stepped over a stack of reference books and peeked around a corner of newspapers. Stuart sat in the middle of all of it, pouring over a thick book and actively gnawing a pen. His desk was nowhere to be found, long ago buried in Stuart’s collection of research materials.
He was the paper’s top researcher. He knew almost absolutely everything, and what he didn’t know, he knew how to find. There were rumors aplenty about Stuart. The one about him being a virgin was most definitely true. My favorite was that he was the son of a high-class madam, who discovered his genius at an early age when he recited the entire Las Vegas phone book by memory over breakfast. I had always known Stuart as a mild-mannered, painfully shy middle-aged man, and he saved me more than once by coming up with crucial facts when I was stuck in a story.
I tapped him on the shoulder. “Stuart, it’s me, Abby.”
Stuart looked up from his book. “You look different. Fancier.”
“I’m sorry to bother you. I know you’re busy, but I was wondering if you can help me with a project.”
Stuart perked up, forgetting his book. “I’m not busy. I just finished typing up my report on Ford Pinto fires. No rear bumper and protruding bolts,” he explained.
“I’m looking for information on Emmett Gairloch. It’s sort of urgent.”
“Lord Emmett Gairloch, House of Lords, very rich, likes automatic weapons, but he’s a peace activist,” he said. He cleared away a bunch of papers with a swipe of his hand, and lo and behold, a keyboard was underneath. He hit a couple of keys, and his monitor lit up.
“Looks like his house burned down,” he said. “Some sort of electrical fire, but look at the picture. Those are arson fingerprints. Do you think I should call the police?”
I took a seat next to him. He smelled like unwashed socks and unwashed everything else. He wore a t-shirt and surfer shorts. There was dried pizza sauce in his beard.
“Let’s forget about the fire for right now,” I said. “I want to dig deeper into his job. I want to know if he has a side business. Someone told me that there’s always something on the side.”
I stayed with Stuart as he searched every possible avenue for information on Gairloch, but he couldn’t find anything about his murky business, which I knew existed.
“Never married,” Stuart commented. “Just like me.”
“I’ve never been married, either,” I said.
“That’s because you have commitment issues. I don’t have commitment issues. I just can’t get a date.”
“I don’t have commitment issues, Stuart. The men have commitment issues, not me.” Where was he getting this stuff? He was way off base. I straightened my blouse and adjusted myself on the chair. “You know, it’s not easy out there. There’s a shortage of Prince Charmings these days.”
“Found something.”
I pitched forward to read off his monitor. “Tax evasion?”
“Not exactly,” said Stuart. “Some tax mix-up twenty years ago. He claimed a dependent, but he didn’t have any.”
“Who was the dependent?” I asked, but I already knew. Brodie was a teenager around then and in Gairloch’s care.
“This is interesting,” Stuart said, reading further. “He also declared too much income that year. He corrected it right away, but it was a considerable amount.”
“How much?”
“I can’t access private tax records. I’m just telling you what was reported. It was in the millions of pounds, but beyond that, I have no idea. There’s nothing about the dependent, either.”
I read over his shoulder. It offered precious little information. I wanted to be able to tie him to the murder, to his side business, and get him put away where he couldn’t be a threat to me or Brodie.
Stuart opened the top desk drawer, pulled out a box of Mallomars, and handed me one. He stuffed two into his mouth.
“Taxes are crazy,” he said, blowing out graham cracker crumbs. “Even though he declared more money, he didn’t have to pay extra taxes because of that dependent. I got to think about getting an accountant. I do my taxes on my own, and I get screwed every year.”
Ding. Ding. Ding. Bells went off in my head. Wow, I was a genius. “Who was the accountant, Stuart?”
He threw another Mallomar into his mouth and typed furiously. “Good thinking, Abby. Joseph Fredenberger.”
“I need to find that accountant, Stuart.”
More typing. Then Stuart let out a slow whistle. “He’s dead. Hit and run a couple of months after he filed the tax return for Gairloch. I need a drink. This is better than Pintos.” He popped open a can of root beer and swigged half of it down.
I was at a dead end. I couldn’t prove Gairloch killed his accountant any more than I could prove he killed Taylor. I didn’t think the added income was a mistake. Gairloch probably had secret bank accounts from Switzerland to the Caymans, taking in money from his illegal activities. My kidnapping, alone, must have netted him a pretty penny. And I bet he must have been very angry when his accountant declared some of his illicit income.
I let Stuart play at his computer a little longer, while I ate half of his Mallomars.
“He’s involved in lots of charities,” he noted. “Save the rain forests. Save the whales. Save the sea otters. No nukes. No land mines.”
“He likes his causes,” I said. “He even has a button machine.”
“Here’s a weird one. He funded a scientist’s research.” Stuart clicked off the monitor and turned to look at me. “Guess. Guess what research it was.”
“Sadomasochism sex games,” I said.
“No. You’re way off.”
“Vlad the Impaler?”
“Closer. Saber-toothed tigers. He gave the guy enough money to buy three hundred and fifty saber-toothed tiger skeletons. They might even make a museum.”
Stuart turned his monitor back on. There, in a photo, in all his glory, was Lord Emmett Gairloch, all teeth in a wide smile. He was debonair as always, wearing a gray sweater, and in his hands he held two enormous saber teeth. Next to him, I supposed, was the scientist, who held an entire saber-toothed skull and an equally big smile.
“Weird, huh?” Stuart pulled out a bag of chips from behind a stack of magazines. “They’re not called saber-toothed tigers anymore. They’re called saber-toothed cats ’cause they’re not really tigers. Tigers sounds cooler, though. Saber-toothed cats. Like who cares, you know? It sounds like your aunt Maude could have one in her house or something.”
It reminded me of something, but I didn’t know what. It lay at the outskirts of my brain, just out of my reach. The more I tried to remember, the further away it got. Stuart busied himself with his chips and made cat noises.
“Meow, meow. Wouldn’t that be funny if they sounded like cats, too?” he asked. “You got some ice age dude with his spear heading off some ferocious saber-toothed cat, and instead of roaring, he meows at him. That would be funny. Meow. Ha! And the ice age dude could have him as a pet. He would call to him when he got back to the cave. ‘Psst. Psst. Psst. Come here little saber-toothed cat.’”
Stuart giggled and piled some chips into his mouth.
“Psssssssst,” I repeated.
It came to me like a bolt from the sky. Gairloch mentioned Sabre S to Rollins when I was hiding in his mansion. He said he wanted to purge Sabre S. That must be the name of his organization, I thought.
“Stuart, have you ever heard of Sabre S?”
“No,” he said, mystified as if it was the first time he found himself completely ignorant of a subject. He stopped chewing and set aside his bag of chips. Then he was a whir of activity. He hit pay dirt after thirty minutes.
“Arms dealing, drug dealing, people dealing, inciting insurrections, inciting panic, robbing banks, robbing governments, robbing old ladies, torture, mayhem. Gee, Abby, Sabre S is responsible for every evil to plague our world. Look, they even threw little Timmy down the well. No proof, of course. It’s all rumor. What story are you writing? It sounds like a doozy.”
I read everything he found. It was all based on rumor, innuendo, and conjecture on fringe sites. There wasn’t a shred of evidence that Sabre S existed. But I knew it existed. I heard it from the horse’s mouth himself. Sabre S left a trail of dead bodies, broken families, and overturned governments in its wake. It made me sick to think of it and more determined to dig deeper.
I gave my editor the rundown on Sabre S, and he gave me the go ahead to work on the article. “Take your time,” he said. “International conspiracies sell papers. Just get it right, Williams. Maybe there’s a book in it for you.”
I got journalistic goose bumps. Everything clicked into place for me. A book. I liked the sound of that. Fuller was being awful nice to me lately.
***
Brodie was still away when I arrived back at the apartment. Logan was sitting up on the couch reading a book. I sat next to him.
“So,” I said. “Sabre S.”