Old Town Alexandria: 4 June 9:10 P.M. Eastern time
Jax Alexander lived in a narrow brick town house overlooking the Potomac. He had inherited the house from Sophie’s father, the late Senator James Herman Winston. It was Senator Winston who had paid to send him to a string of expensive East Coast boarding schools—he kept getting kicked out—and, ultimately, to Yale. The Winstons were a venerable old Connecticut family who could trace their ponderous wealth and prestige back three centuries. It always grieved the senator that Jax took after his father, who was neither venerable nor ponderously wealthy.
The mist was drifting in off the water as Jax let himself into the town house’s paneled entry hall. Through the French doors in the living room, the river showed as a sheet of moon-struck silver that rippled lazily with the flow of the current. He could see the red message light blinking on the answering machine in the kitchen. Hitting the Play button, he headed up the stairs to pull an overnight bag from the closet.
“Hey, Jax.” Sibel Montana’s low, husky voice drifted up the stairs after him. “I got your call about the tickets to Turandot. I’ll be free tomorrow after four-thirty.”
Jax squeezed his eyes shut and swore under his breath. Sibel Montana was a brilliant, funny, long-legged lawyer with Williams and Connolly. It had been nearly four years since he’d met a woman who connected with him the way she did. But in the past three months he’d already had to cancel two dinner dates, a weekend in the Hamptons, and a trip to Barbados with her. Opening his suit pack on the bed, he punched in Sibel’s number on his phone and went to yank open the top drawer of the antique mahogany dresser that stood in an alcove overlooking the river.
Sibel’s voice was a warm contralto. “Hi, Jax.”
“I got your message,” he said, tossing boxers and socks into his bag. “I’ve got the opera tickets and reservations at the Old Ebbitt Grill. There’s just one potential problem. I need to go out of town. But I should be back by tomorrow night.”
There was a long silence at the other end of the phone. “That’s what you said the last time, Jax. You didn’t come back for two weeks.”
Jax retrieved his toilet kit from the bathroom. “I know. I’m sorry, Sibel.”
Sibel was a smart lady, and she had lived in Washington, D.C., for six years. It had taken her only two dates before she added Jax’s evasiveness together with a few other clues and figured out exactly what he did for a living. Now, she let out her breath in a long sigh. “You know, Jax…I don’t think this is going to work.”
He heard the break in her voice and stopped packing. “Don’t do this, Sibel.”
“I’m sorry, Jax. For a while I thought maybe I’d get used to it. But the closer we get, the more it bothers me. We all have jobs that require us to keep business out of our private lives, but with you, it’s so much worse. What kind of relationship can I have with someone who is constantly being sent out of town on a moment’s notice and who can’t even tell me where he’s going or what he’ll be doing?”
“Sibel—”
“I like you, Jax. I like you a lot. I think we could have had something special together. If you ever decide to change jobs, give me a call.”
“Sibel, please listen—”
“’Bye, Jax.” The connection ended.
“Son of a bitch.” He snapped his cell phone closed and tossed it on the bed beside his half-packed suitcase and the holster for his Beretta.