CHAPTER 2
Finally, one of the Secret Service agents came over to get him. “Mr. Godwin, we’re ready for you over here,” the agent said.
Paul grunted impatiently. “It’s about time,” he said.
“This way, sir.”
The agent led him to one of the tables in the Washington Hilton’s lobby. Two agents were seated there, a man and a woman, both with laptops and a thick pile of adapters and cords spilling over the sides of the table. Paul didn’t recognize either agent, and he thought he had at least seen most of the agents on Juan Perez’s team. These two must have been from somewhere else.
“What’s this all about?” he said. “I want to speak to Senator Sutton. Where is she?”
The agent who’d come to get him spoke up. “We need your cell phone, sir.”
Paul felt a tinge of panic. His world was in that phone. “Why?”
“We’re looking for pictures, videos, text messages. Anything that might have evidentiary value in our investigation.”
“I didn’t take any pictures during the shooting,” he said. “I was too busy trying not to get shot.”
“We still need to see your phone.”
Paul glared at the agent. Right after the shooting, the Secret Service had locked the hotel down. Nobody went in, nobody went out. The wounded and their spouses were taken to the hospital, but everybody else was put in one of the hotel’s meeting rooms and told to wait.
And for a while, Paul had done as he was told. He went where they told him to go and answered their questions in a numb haze. But now that the adrenaline had worn off, Paul was impatient to get back to work. He needed to check with Senator Sutton. They needed to script out their response to what had happened here tonight. There were press conferences to plan and meetings to set up, and all of it had to be done right now. The more time that went by, the more time Senator Sutton’s enemies in Congress and the media had to spin this to their advantage. There was no way in hell he was going to let them take his phone from him at a time like this.
“Where are Agents Perez and Compton? I’m Senator Sutton’s senior chief of staff and I’ve been dealing directly with them. I want to speak to them about this.”
“Agent Perez is at the hospital being treated for his injuries,” the agent said. “Agent Compton is with him. Now I need your phone please.”
“This is crazy,” Paul said. “What’s your name again?”
“I’m Agent Frank Carlton. If you’d like you can lodge a complaint at a later time, but right now, I need your phone.”
Behind him, another agent moved closer. Paul sensed the movement and glanced over his shoulder at the man, who stared back at him without expression.
Paul turned back to Carlton. “You should have a warrant for this.”
“You’re not a suspect, sir. We’re just gathering information, such as pictures and videos of the crowd here tonight, that could be helpful in our investigation. We want to make sure your boss doesn’t get shot at again. Nobody wants that, right?”
“Don’t patronize me,” Paul said. “And no, I won’t let you have it. There’s privileged information on there.”
“Nobody here cares what your boss had for lunch last Tuesday,” the agent said. “That’s not what I’m after. Now please, sir, your phone.”
Paul looked around, hoping to find somebody he knew, somebody who could intervene on his behalf, but there was nobody. He was pretty much stuck on his own. Realizing he was beat, he reached into his coat pocket and pulled out his iPhone. He punched in his security code and handed it over to Carlton. “I don’t appreciate this kind of treatment, Agent Carlton.”
“iPhone,” Carlton said, as though he hadn’t heard. He handed it to the female agent sitting at a Mac-Book. “This one’s yours.”
The female agent took the phone and plugged it into her computer. She made a few quick keystrokes and then wrinkled her brow. She glanced up at Paul. “You have over four hundred photos in here from tonight alone.”
“I told you,” he said. “I’m Senator Sutton’s chief of staff. It’s my job to get pictures of her at events like this.”
“Anything after the shooting?” Carlton asked.
“Doesn’t look like it,” the woman said.
“Okay, capture it all.” He looked at Paul. “Did you take any videos?”
Paul lowered his eyes. “No,” he said quietly.
“He has twenty-eight text messages from after the shooting,” the woman at the computer said.
“To who?”
“Twenty-three of them to Senator Sutton. The others I don’t recognize.”
“All right,” Carlton said. “We’re gonna take it.”
“What? No,” Paul said. “No, you can’t take my phone.”
“You’ll get it back as soon as we’re done with it.”
“How long will that take?”
Carlton shrugged. “I don’t know. Three, four hours maybe. We’ve got to run every single one of those photos you took through our facial recognition software. That takes time.”
Paul felt dizzy. “Please,” he said. “Please don’t do this. Capture whatever you need to. Download it or whatever you do. But please, I have to have that phone. Here in the next few hours I’m going to be scheduling press conferences and interviews and meetings. I have to have that phone. It’s got everything in there. All my contacts, everything. Please, what happens in the next few hours could shape the rest of Senator Sutton’s political career. Please.”
Carlton glanced at the two agents seated behind their computers. Neither returned the glance. Paul studied the man’s face for some sign of mercy. Rachel Sutton’s shift to the political middle had won her a lot of new friends in the Republican Party, and made a lot of enemies among the core faithful in the Democrats. If this agent was a dyed-in-the-wool Democrat, he might harbor some resentment, and he could sink Sutton, or at least help to sink her, by holding on to that phone.
“Capture a mirror of his device and return it to him,” Carlton said.
Paul let out the breath he’d been holding.
“Thank you, Agent Carlton. Thank you.”
Carlton nodded. “If we find anything, though, I’m gonna need the phone back. We have to have the source of the information to make a solid criminal case.”
“Okay,” Paul said.
Paul thought the agent was about to walk away when he suddenly stepped in close and whispered: “That boss of yours is doing a lot of damage to the cartels. I hope she keeps giving ’em hell. And you tell her, if she runs for president, it’ll be the first time in my life I ever vote for a Democrat.”
He turned and walked away without waiting for Paul’s reply, leaving Paul standing there with a confused grin on his face.
The female agent kept his phone for another two minutes before finally handing it back to him.
“That’s it?” he said.
“Yep,” she answered.
“So, I can leave?”
“No,” she said. “You can go back to that couch over there and wait. Agent Carlton will tell everyone when they can leave.”
“Oh. Any idea how long that’ll be? I’ve got a ton of work I should be doing.”
“I have no idea,” she said. “But he’s got Texas billionaires and Mexican movie queens waiting on the hook, too, and if he’s not letting them go, I don’t think your chances are too good for an early release.” And then, with venom in her voice, she added: “And I don’t care who your boss is.”
He walked away, feeling equal parts relief and anger as the realization that the Secret Service now had records of every e-mail he’d ever sent, every photo he’d every taken, every appointment he’d ever made, and every website he’d ever visited. They quite literally had put his entire life under a microscope. The sense of violation was enough to make him physically ill.
He was walking across the lobby, sending another text to Sutton, when he bumped into a woman in a black dress. “Oh, sorry,” he said, and then did a double take when he realized who it was. “Oh, my God. Monica, it’s you!”
“Yes,” she said.
“Wow. I didn’t think I was going to see you again.”
She smiled and lowered her eyes. “I was afraid of that, too. When the Secret Service men separated us, I was upset because I didn’t have your number. I tried to get them to let me see you, but they wouldn’t let me.”
Paul shook his head. He couldn’t believe his luck. Her name was Monica Rivas, and he’d met her earlier that evening, during the cattle call before Senator Sutton gave her speech. He’d sensed someone at his shoulder and turned, expecting to meet yet another Texas banker and his trophy wife. Instead, he came face to face with a stunning Mexican beauty. Never very good with women, he’d babbled some kind of lame greeting and gone on stammering, desperately trying to think of something cool to say, when Wayne Sutton had whisked him off on an errand “to find a decent martini in this goddamned place.” He’d been almost grateful to be rescued from the botch he was making of it.
But later, Paul had caught her smiling at him from across the room, and he’d put down his iPhone and gone over to make a proper introduction.
Things had gone well from there. She was easy to talk to, with a bubbly laugh and eyes that seemed to make him the center of the room. She was a Mexican citizen, but had been educated at Harvard. She was a lawyer, a voracious reader, could speak four languages. Her insights into the potential legal barriers ahead for the senator’s International Asset Seizure Law were nothing short of brilliant. He was having trouble deciding whether he wanted to debate her or make love to her.
Actually, it wasn’t a very hard decision to make.
And then, when the bullets started flying, she’d thrown herself into his arms. He’d pulled her behind a table, and there, lying on top of her, the gunfire still crackling just a few feet away, he’d watched her eyes catch fire with fear and desire.
It was, for all the terror and screaming, one of the most erotic experiences of his life. But then the Secret Service had locked down the scene, and before he knew it, he was being pulled away. With everything that happened after that, and all that still needed to be done, he’d given up on seeing her again. Just another bad break in a string of bad breaks that defined his history with women.
But here she was.
And her brown eyes still held a touch of that desire he’d seen earlier.
“Listen,” he said, “I’m gonna be crazy busy here for probably the rest of the day, but I would love to see you again. Would you give me your number? Maybe I could . . . call you?”
She shook her head, and her black hair moved like a wave over her bare shoulders.
“Oh,” he said. “Oh, okay.”
As many times as he’d been shut down like this, he thought he’d be used to rejection by now, but it was always awkward, and it always hurt.
Not knowing what else to say, he started to turn away. But then she put a hand on his wrist. He looked at her hand, at her slender fingers and perfectly manicured nails, then up to her face. She was smiling, and it was a wicked little grin.
“What is it?” he said. He wasn’t sure why he was whispering, but he was.
“I was so upset when they pulled us apart, Paul. Please, let’s not go away so quickly again.”
“Well, okay. Sure. I have a lot of phone calls to make, though. You won’t be too bored?”
Her smile turned demure. “Paul.”
“What?”
“Don’t you have a room here in the hotel?”
“A room?” For a moment he didn’t understand. And then he did. “Oh,” he said. “Oh, a room. Yeah, I sure do, but . . .”
“But what?”
“Well, Monica, I . . . God, I’ve got about a million things I have to do before I talk with the senator again. I have a press conference to put together and . . .” He trailed off there. She was frowning, the disappointment plain on her face. She looked embarrassed. He couldn’t believe he was saying no to this woman, but what was he supposed to do?
And then, like she was reading his mind, she smiled and said, “I understand. You are a dedicated man. I like that. I respect that. A man should be a man when it comes to his job. Perhaps we will see one another again some time.”
“I . . .”
But she had already turned away. He watched the way her dress moved as she walked, the liquefaction of her clothes, and he knew he’d never have a chance at something this good ever again.
Ah, hell, he thought.
“Monica, wait!”
 
 
Paul had his coat off and was struggling to get loose of his tie before they’d even closed the door. He had his hands all over her, and she on him, the two of them kissing, squeezing, exploring each other.
He groped for the light switch. Couldn’t find it.
“Damn,” he said.
“Leave it off,” Monica said, breathing hard. Her eyes were bright in the darkness, staring up at him. Paul had read in books of women whose faces were lit with passion like that, and he’d always thought such things to be the purple prose of hack writers. He certainly never thought he’d see it firsthand.
“Monica,” he gasped.
Her long black hair had turned into a beautiful tangled mess after their ride up in the elevator. He loved the way it spilled over her shoulders. He loved the way her black dress clung to her breasts, to her hips. She was fantastic. She leaned in close to him, close enough he could smell the honeysuckle of her perfume and feel the heat of her breath on his neck. Her arms went around his waist, and the next instant, his cummerbund fell to the floor.
He didn’t even feel the buckle come loose.
Staring into her eyes, all he could manage was to shake his head in amazement.
“Paul,” she whispered, “take me to your bed.”
He nodded, his Adam’s apple bobbing in his throat like a piston.
Still smiling, she led him into the room, where the couch was stacked with his work for Senator Sutton—journals and legal briefs and notepads.
He stopped in the middle of the room and waited, like a lamb on the altar.
Paul had left a reading light on over by the bed, and in its soft glow he watched her coming closer and closer.
“You are—”
“Shhh,” she said, putting a finger over his lips. “You saved me tonight. You were so brave.”
Even in his aroused, lust-blind state, he knew that wasn’t exactly true, but it didn’t matter. When he looked into her eyes, nothing mattered. She made him feel like a hero, and when she turned those dark, doe eyes up at him, the rest of the world fell away.
She undid his cuff links and the studs on his shirt. Watching her loosening his clothes, he could barely believe the chain of events that had led them here, like it was meant to be.
“I can’t believe you’re here with me,” he said.
“I am not in the habit of going home with strange American men,” she said.
“Am I strange?”
He had meant it as a joke, but the smile slipped off her face. “I am sorry,” she said. “I have been speaking English since I was twelve, but the idiom is still sometimes difficult for me. I did not mean that you were strange. I meant only that—”
“Oh, no,” he said. “No, no, no. I know what you meant. I’m sorry, I . . . I was trying to be funny. I’m sorry.”
“You do not think me easy that I am with you?”
He shook his head. “I think you’re a goddess, Monica. I just can’t believe it.”
“You make me feel beautiful,” she said. She turned in his arms and swept her hair away from her shoulders, exposing the back of her gown. “Will you . . . undo me?”
“Huh? Oh, yes.”
With trembling fingers he unhooked her gown. It fell, puddling at her feet.
And just like that, she stood before him, wearing nothing but a lacy black thong and high heels.
“Wow,” he said.
She led him to the bed and pulled him down beside her. He loved the way her hair spilled over the pillow, the way her lips glinted in the low light. Paul ran his fingertips lightly across her belly, over the tops of her slender thighs. Her skin was cool, smooth, a rich coffee–and-cream color that made his fingers seem unnaturally white.
She sucked in a breath, her back arching in pleasure, breasts straining toward him. She moaned softly. It was almost a purring sound.
Paul leaned in to kiss her, her mouth finding his hungrily, and soon they were tangled up together, arms and legs intertwined, flesh to flesh. A burning flush of excitement ran down his entire body as his lips grazed her neck, her shoulders, her breasts. He took one of her nipples between his teeth and another thrill shot through him to hear the gasp she made.
He found the edge of her thong, his fingertips dipping under the fabric. Her hips rose slightly, allowing him the room to pull them down. She found his boxer shorts next, and tugged them down. He was beside her now, naked, hard, and hungry.
His need for her overpowered him and he climbed between her legs. He grabbed her wrists and pushed them down into the pillow. He could feel great strength in her, and also that strength yielding to his pressure, accepting him, pulling him in.
She closed her eyes with a sigh.
He sank into her, closing his eyes as the warmth of her sex surrounded him. He began to move, her hips pressing against his, the two of them finding one another’s rhythm, pushing toward a release that was, for him, like going over a cliff.
Paul drove into her, again and again, unable to stop. Being with her he’d found a need within himself that was almost feral. He’d been with maybe ten women in his life, probably fewer, but never had it been like this. Never had he felt himself so overwhelmed by a woman, so completely enthralled by her power.
And then he felt his coming orgasm coiling inside him, demanding release. He opened his eyes and saw her staring back at him, nodding hungrily for him, urging him to push deeper. Paul went faster, drove harder. He felt himself growing close, too close, too soon, and slowed down again, backing away from his pleasure so that he could feel her body shudder.
Then, her muscles tensed. She curled against him. Her gasps turned into little panting breaths, her lips forming a perfect O as her fingernails dug deep into his back.
That was too much for him. He sped up again, his breaths quickening, growing harsh, and he buried himself as deeply as he could go within her, his whole body stiffening as he exploded.
Afterwards, Paul held himself above her, like he was doing a push-up, smiling between breaths that felt like a hammer against his ribs. He kissed her, then sagged down beside her, sweaty and spent. She nuzzled against his chest, a fingernail running over his still-heaving chest like the tip of a switchblade.
He sank into his pillow, laughing and gasping for breath at the same time. The whole world, for a moment, was forgotten. All that mattered was this moment . . . and at the moment, life was pretty damned good.
Playfully, she bit at his nipple, giggling as he convulsed.
“Hey!” he said.
“That was very nice,” she said.
He laughed again. He ran a hand through his hair, both surprised and proud of himself that he had worked up such a sweat.
“Very nice, indeed,” he said.
“You liked being with me?” she said.
He turned toward her, brows furrowed. Those eyes that had thrilled him so were now looking at him for approbation, and not for the first time that evening he felt everything that made him a man melt into a puddle of goo. She was simply amazing. Absolutely and unequivocally divine.
“God, yes,” he said, the hammering in his chest finally subsiding. “You were so nice. So very nice.”
“You made me feel good,” she said, and once again she cuddled against his chest, contented as a napping cat.
He didn’t speak. This was a moment of victory. It didn’t need any words, just his fingertips lightly dusting over her olive skin.
She smiled and closed her eyes with a sigh.
He was still running his fingertips over her hip when “Here Comes the Sun” started playing on his iPhone.
Monica looked up. “What is that?”
“That’s the senator,” he said.
“You have ‘Here Comes the Sun’ as her ring tone?”
“Long story,” he said. Actually, it wasn’t all that long of a story. She’d told him once that she’d been moved to tears watching the Clintons onstage as they’d learned he’d won the presidency, Fleetwood Mac’s “Don’t Stop” playing over the PA, and how she’d confided in him that she wanted “Here Comes the Sun,” the Richie Havens version, for her magic moment. He’d changed his ring tone that very night.
“Here, let me up,” he said, pulling his arm free from under her.
He went over to his pants and fished out his phone.
“Jesus, Paul,” Sutton said, not even waiting for him to say hello. “What are you doing?”
Paul looked back at Monica. She had rolled over onto her stomach, slender legs in the air, crossing and recrossing as she watched him. She put her lower lip between her teeth. A come on over here and fuck me smile was on her face.
“I . . . uh, I . . . well . . .”
“Damn it, Paul. I need you here. I’m at the Colson. Finally got Wayne to bed, the drunken bastard. But now I’ve got CNN calling me. They want a press conference. Where are you?”
“Okay, okay,” he said, trying to marshal his thoughts. “Hold on a sec.”
He held the phone in front of him and scanned through the missed calls. Shit, he thought. A ton of them. He’d silenced everything but Senator Sutton’s ring tone right before he got in the elevator with Monica, but he could see now that he’d missed calls from all the major news outlets. Christ, even Fox wanted to talk to him.
What in the hell was wrong with him? Any idiot should have seen this coming.
“Paul?” Sutton said.
“I’m here,” he said, putting the phone back to his ear. He went into scramble mode, and suddenly, his mind cleared. This was where he lived, where he was in his element.
Okay, he thought, Sutton’s at her apartment in the Colson. She wouldn’t want to move. And besides, bringing the press to her would put things on her terms. She would be the one calling on them, not them ambushing her. And with a dozen or so of them together, none of them would be able to dig too deeply. It would be perfect for the kind of sound bites the press, and the American public for that matter, had come to love Senator Rachel Sutton for.
“You should stay there,” he said. “Let’s use your office for the press conference.”
“Well, of course, we’re going to use my office,” she said. “I’m not going back to that hotel, not through those crowds.”
“Of course not,” he said. He was nodding to himself. This was already coming together. “Listen, just stay there. I’m going to get NBC, CNN, Fox—”
“Fox?” she said, sounding disgusted. “Those bastards will turn this into a right-wing feeding frenzy.”
“You’re a moderate now, remember?” he said. “And besides, with NBC and CNN there, they’ll balance each other out. And, don’t forget, this will give you a chance to reach out to the Hispanic vote.”
“What? How? You heard, right? Evangeline Ramos died tonight.”
The Mexican television star, he thought. He remembered her going down when the shooting started. A pity.
“We’ll use that as our lead-in,” he said. “Her husband is Juan Cavalos, president of Grupo Financiero Banamex. First thing out of your mouth, you express condolences for her many fans, then transition into her support for her husband. Put it in those terms and he can’t help but come out on our side. Anything less would dishonor his wife, and he can’t afford that.”
“Yeah,” Sutton said slowly, and he could picture her nodding into the phone, seeing the brutal logic of the move. “Yeah, okay.”
A pause.
“Paul?”
“Yes, ma’am?”
“That was pretty scary tonight. A lot scarier than San Antonio.”
He nodded to himself. She was right. In San Antonio, they’d been watching from the fourth floor of the Mexican Embassy as her motorcade drove into the ambush. They’d watched Agent Perez and his team engage the shooters from the Los Zetas Cartel, watched the gunfight rage down the street, watching the gutters fill up with blood. But tonight, they’d been right in the thick of things. The bullets had whizzed over his head while he cowered behind a table, a beautiful Mexican goddess trembling beneath him.
He glanced over at Monica. She was still smiling, but his own smile had vanished.
“I know,” he said into the phone. “I was scared, too.”
“How soon can you be here?”
Monica rocked her bottom back and forth for him. She licked her lips.
“Paul?”
“Yeah,” he said, shaking himself. “Yeah, I’m here. Um, I’ll be there soon, okay? Forty minutes maybe.”
“Hurry, Paul. Please.”
“I will,” he said.
He hung up the phone, then looked over at Monica. “Listen,” he said, “I hate to do this, but I have to go. Something’s come up. I have to handle this.” He knew he shouldn’t say too much, but damn was she incredible. “It’s about what happened tonight.”
“Will I see you again?” she asked.
“Yes,” he blurted out. “Yes. I’d like that. Can I call you?”
“May I call you?” she said.
She stood up, radiantly naked, and took her iPhone from her purse. She walked over to him and put her phone next to his.
He gave her his number and she dialed it.
“What ring tone will you give me, Paul Godwin?”
He thought for a minute. “Sam Cooke maybe. ‘You Send Me.’ ”
“I do not know it. But I look forward to hearing it.”
“And for me? What’ll you use for mine?”
“For you, I think it shall be Vicente Fernandez. He is always the best. I think I shall choose ‘Aca Entre Nos.’ ”
He had to think a moment for the translation. Just between us. Hmmm, not bad, he thought. “I like it,” he said. “Listen, I need to—” He pointed to the shower. “I need to get cleaned up and changed before I talk to the press.”
“Yes, certainly. Go ahead. May we leave together, when you’re done? I would like very much for you to hold my hand to my car. The city can be very scary at night.”
“Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, I’d like that.”
“Me, too.”
He went to the bathroom, and right before he closed the door, he saw her standing there, still holding her phone, wearing nothing but a smile, giving him a cute little wave.
He pulled the door closed, feeling like the king of the world.
 
 
As the bathroom door closed, Pilar Soledad let the playfulness and the encouraging smile that were the hallmarks of her Monica Rivas disguise fall away.
Her expression blank, she stared at the door, waiting, listening.
The shower came on, but she didn’t move until she heard the shower door open and the pattering rhythm of the water change. Then, sure that he was in the shower, she went to her purse and removed the adapter she had secreted away there. She plugged one end into her iPhone and the other into his. His phone was password protected, but that didn’t matter. The software built into her phone broke the four digit code easily enough. Having his phone number already plugged in made the process so much easier.
Her jail-breaking software completed the rest.
She watched as the display on her screen recorded the software’s progress. One by one, the Unix-based limitations Apple had built into the phone began to crumble until at last her phone had total access to his iPhone’s operating system. E-mail, calendars, text messages, notepads: everything opened for her inspection.
These Americans and their toys, she thought. Everything was here. His entire life, everything that mattered to him—and more important, to Senator Rachel Sutton—was right here for her to examine.
It was almost too easy.
When the process was complete, the software initiated an untethered jailbreak, and set up a worm that would migrate to his other Apple devices next time he synched them. From here on out, every update, every e-mail, every text would send a ghost copy to her device, giving her what the Americans so primly referred to as “the fly on the wall,” making his life, and hopefully that of Senator Rachel Sutton as well, an open book.
The program finished its run right as the shower stopped. Moving quickly, Pilar unplugged her adapter from his phone and put it back in his pocket.
She was a few feet from her purse, still wrapping the adapter around her finger when he stepped out of the shower, steam rising off his shoulders and a towel around his waist.
“Hey,” he said. He glanced at the adapter in her hands and cocked his head to one side. “What’s that?”
For a moment, she thought how easy it would be to kill him. A single strike with the blade of her hand to his throat, just below his Adam’s apple, and she could crush his windpipe. She could stand over him and watch as he choked and gasped away the last few seconds of his life. The whole pathetic display would be over in less than two minutes.
Unfortunately, as long as the senator was alive, and as long as he was her most trusted aide, Paul Godwin was worth more alive than dead. Far more, in fact.
Which meant this was a job for Monica Rivas.
“I was going to charge up my phone,” she said and moved a little closer to him. “But I have brought the wrong charger.”
“You can use mine if you want.”
“But there is no time, is there? You must leave in just a few minutes.”
“There’s a little time,” he said.
He wasn’t a bad looking man, she thought. Just a hair shy of six feet, perhaps a hundred seventy pounds. When he hit his forties, perhaps his light brown hair would thin on top, perhaps his belly would lap over his belt, but for now, he had a good body and a dopey but still charming smile that made her assignment not altogether unpleasant.
She tossed the phone and adapter cable on top of her dress, then stepped a little closer to him, her fingers toying with the loose knot holding the towel to his hips.
“You have a few minutes still?” she asked.
Pilar Soledad, back in character as Monica Rivas, stared up at him with her best doe-eyed innocent gaze.
“I, uh—” he stammered.
But he said no more, for with that the towel fell to his feet, and the woman he knew as Monica Rivas knelt before him, commanding his complete attention.