I’d lived my whole life on the principle I won’t pee in your pool and you don’t pee in mine.

Somebody was not only pissing in my pool, they were defecating in it.

I couldn’t go back to my apartment, because as Super Agent had put it—it had been compromised. Compromised. A stupid word with a double meaning, neither of which were of any use to me at the moment. So there I sat in an impersonal apartment somewhere “safe”, surreptitiously listening in on Super Agent’s cell phone conversation with his superior. So far I hadn’t been very impressed by this other agent’s superiority, as it was his foul-up that had landed me here.

Super Agent ended the call and let out a frustrated sigh. “They were able to salvage a few things from your apartment. The rest is a total loss.”

Total loss as in fire. Fire as in firebombed. Firebombed as in a total and complete screw-up.

“Fantastic.”

“Insurance should cover most of it.”

“Yeah, if I had any.”

He stared at me as if I’d broken out my rusty Greek. “You don’t have insurance?”

“Oh, gee. Did we just stumble on the only thing you didn’t already know about me?”

He scrubbed his hands over his face. “Holy hell.”

“Yup. My thoughts exactly.” I opened my purse for my Furious Fuchsia lipstick, because what do you do when everything you own has been destroyed and you have two people out there who want to kill you? You freshen up, naturally.

“You amaze me.”

I looked up from the mirror. “How so?”

“You’ve just been shot at, everything you own is gone, and you’re sitting there touching up your face.”

“If I’m going down, I’m going down with lipstick on.”

He grinned at me, and I realized how long it had been since I’d seen that smile. There hadn’t been a lot to get cheered up over lately. Seeing it now put a lump in my throat the size of my Pontiac.

“I’m so freakin’ crazy about you.”

All I could do was stare at him. Stupidly.

He held up a hand. “I don’t expect you to respond. I just wanted you to know.” He came over to me and kneeled down beside me. “Will you go out with me?”

“Like a date?”

“Yeah.”

“I don’t know. I’m sorry. I just…I don’t know. Maybe.”

His smile widened. “I’ll take that maybe.”

“You’re a very odd fellow.”

“This is a very odd situation.”

I couldn’t deny that. This whole thing couldn’t get any stranger if a troupe of circus elephants suddenly traipsed through this crappy apartment with monkeys on their backs, juggling cats.

“What’s the plan?” I asked.

“The plan is for you to get some rest while I do some work.” He got up, kissed me on the cheek and went back to his computer on the rickety little dining table in the corner.

“It’s the middle of the day.”

“Watch a movie or something.”

I dropped the lipstick back into my purse, and it suddenly occurred to me that everything I owned was either in this bag or parked at the curb across from my burned-out apartment. I blinked, expecting tears, but it seemed I was all out.

Instead, I turned on the TV and flipped through some channels. “There’s no cable.”

“Sorry.”

I got up from the couch and wandered over to the window.

“Don’t stand there,” Super Agent said.

“What?”

“Get away from the window.”

Oh, right. Don’t make the killer’s job easy. I moved to the little kitchenette that was part of the living room/dining area and started opening doors. Not much to look at. Not much to do. I leaned against the counter and crossed my arms. I could see the computer screen over Super Agent’s left shoulder from this angle.

“Why are you looking at pictures of Quinn?” I asked.

Super Agent half spun around in his chair. “You know this guy?”

I walked over and looked at the screen as he clicked through some of the photos.

“Yeah. He worked on Chuck Puckett’s reelection campaign. An assistant to the assistant or something. Why? What’s he got to do with any of this?”

“That’s what we’ve been trying to figure out. The background search on him came back with some inconsistencies. Our surveillance only picked him up a few times and yet his name came up a lot in the senator’s correspondence. What do you know about him?”

“He came around more often in the last couple of weeks before Chuck Puckett was killed. His job was pretty much limited to being a glorified errand boy, as far as I could tell. He’d drop off this or pick up that. Those guys always used the back door, never the front. I don’t know. I didn’t pay close attention to him or any of them. All that campaign strategy stuff bored me.” I hitched a shoulder. “Mostly I just showed up looking gorgeous to attend his political events, shook some hands, drank some crappy champagne, and then he’d take me somewhere nice afterwards.”

“Arm candy.”

“Yeah, pretty much. I would have done more if he’d asked. He never asked.”

“Do you know Quinn’s last name?”

I thought for a moment. I hadn’t been lying when I said I hadn’t paid close attention to Chuck Puckett’s business. He bought me a dress, I wore it. He told me who to schmooze and I schmoozed ’em. He pulled me in front of the camera with him and I smiled. It was the least I could do for him after all he’d done for me.

“Taylor. No, Trask. Oh! I got it. Boyd. Quinn Boyd.”

“You went through the T’s to get to Boyd?”

“My mind is a strange and wondrous place.”

“No kidding. Can you tell me anything else about him? Maybe something about his background or something the senator might have said about him? Sometimes it’s the smallest slip that trips up these guys.”

“That’s kinda it. Wait. There was this one time when I caught him in Chuck Puckett’s home office going through his desk drawers. He claimed he was looking for a pen and paper to write a note. It didn’t make much sense to me at the time, but I let it go. Chuck Puckett seemed to trust him so I did too.”

“Did you ever see him use the senator’s computer?” he asked.

“Once, but Chuck Puckett was with him. They were working on something. Don’t ask me what. They’d been holed up in his office for a couple of hours. I went in to prod Chuck Puckett to eat something. He’d get busy and forget sometimes. He was diabetic, so eating was important. And I have no idea why I told you that last part.”

“You took care of him.”

“Someone had to. Anyway, they spent a lot of time together in those last few days, and it struck me as odd at the time. Quinn was just a flunky, but Chuck Puckett treated him as though he was absolutely vital to the campaign.”

“Hmm.”

“What does that ‘hmm’ mean? You know more than you’re telling me, don’t you?”

“You’ll probably find out eventually.”

“Find what out?”

“The senator and Julius Clemmons, AKA Quinn Boyd, were having an affair.”