“Have you ever, over the course of your career, done this before, Nate?”

He wet his lips. “Not since I was an intern.” He glanced nervously toward the camera.

“Don’t worry about how this is going to look in your silly video,” Delores said. “We got what we needed from you, didn’t we, Richard?”

“Needed from me?” Nate asked, his voice going thin.

Richard said, “I think Delores is referring to your florid admission of breaching professional ethics.”

Nate’s jaw loosened. He opened and closed his mouth several times, without sound.

“Not that you need to worry about it getting out,” Richard continued calmly. “You were never going to leave this room with that video.”

“No. No, of course not. I didn’t intend to. I was making it for you only. And posterity.”

Delores snickered as she walked over to the camera and turned it off. “It’s superfluous now. And so are you, Nate.” She popped a pair of latex gloves from the box on the table and pulled them on. “Tell me what to do. More to the point, what not to do to screw up, and then leave me to do it.”

5:37 p.m.

Timmy returned from the kitchen alone.

Brynn’s spine stiffened. “Where’s Goliad?”

“Still in the kitchen.”

“Why?”

“He’s having a snack.” He came to stand directly in front of her.

She stood up. “I may get something to eat, too.”

He did a sidestep to block her path. “How come I get the feeling that you don’t like me?”

She assumed her haughtiest expression. “I can’t bear you, for a multitude of reasons. In fact, you make my skin crawl.”

He gave a soft whistle. “Listen to your smart-mouthin’.”

“Get out of my way.”

He shook his index finger inches from her face. “You were shagging that pilot, weren’t you?”

Before she could form another putdown, he was thrust forward with such force, Brynn had to leap out of the way to keep him from falling into her. As it was, he landed flat on his face, the thick rug saving his forehead from splitting open.

Rye, who’d sneaked up behind him and kicked him in his lower back, planted his boot on the back of Timmy’s neck, pinning him down. Leaning over him, he whispered, “If you utter a sound or move, I’ll break it. Swear to God, your skinny neck will snap like a wishbone.” Coming upright, he said, “Brynn, pat him down. Hurry.” Only then did she realize that Rye’s hands were bound behind him.

Without thinking twice about it, she dropped to her knees. Timmy looked at her out the corner of his eye, clearly terrified. He believed Rye’s threat. She believed it.

Timmy lay perfectly still as she searched his pockets. She found a knife in one.

“Check his ankles.”

A scabbard was strapped to his right one, a small knife in it.

“Cut these things off me,” Rye said.

Ordinarily, strong clippers were needed. Timmy’s knives were kept razor sharp. The first one Brynn applied cut through the tough plastic.

Rye said, “The reason he tried to crash my plane? The drug was never supposed to make it here.”

For a split second, Brynn’s eyes remained locked with Rye’s, but needing no further explanation for the moment, she ran to the double doors and burst through them.

Delores was about to uncap the vial.

“No!” Brynn lurched forward and rammed her shoulder into Delores. Knocked off balance, Delores careened against the IV pole, knocking it over and, in the process, dropping the vial.

Brynn caught it before it hit the floor.

“Give me that!” No longer beautiful and composed, Delores came at Brynn like an enraged she-cat. Brynn backpedaled away from her, quickly putting the vial behind her back and out of the other woman’s reach.

“Once the vial was opened, what were you going to do with it?” Brynn asked.

“No use lying.” Rye’s voice stopped whatever Delores was about to answer.

She spun around to find Timmy being held, his hands behind him and shoved up between his shoulder blades in Rye’s unyielding grip. Rye held one of Timmy’s own knives at his throat.

His punky arrogance had vanished. The young man’s eyes were wide, wild, mortally afraid. He squealed, “Tell him, you bitch.”

“Brynn, what are you doing?” Nate asked. “What is going on?”

Richard Hunt had stood, looking from Rye and Timmy, to his wife, to Brynn, who still clutched the vial in her fist behind her back.

Delores was the first to compose herself. She addressed Rye. “No doubt you’re Mr. Mallett. Such a pleasure to finally make your acquaintance.”

“I doubt it. Why did you have him try to crash me?”

“What a ridiculous notion.”

Rye shoved Timmy’s hands up higher between his shoulders. Brynn heard his shoulder sockets pop. Timmy hollered in pain. “You lying bitch.” Timmy rolled his eyes back toward Rye. “She paid me ten grand. She wanted the airplane to crash and burn. But it didn’t, and that started all this. Yesterday, she told me to get the drug here, no matter what, so—”

“Of course I told him that,” she said, still speaking smoothly and reasonably. But Brynn detected a tension in her phony smile. “I was making every effort to save my husband’s life.”

“Yeah?” Rye nicked Timmy’s throat, drawing blood.

That spurred Timmy to begin to babble. “She said to get it here so she could destroy the drug herself. That’s all there is of it, right? She didn’t want Hunt to get it. She said Goliad was too loyal to her husband to double-cross him. If Goliad had known what she was going to do, he would have stopped her or told her husband. So she hired me.”

Delores’s fists were clenched at her sides. “Shut up!”

Brynn, breathless with disbelief, looked at Nate. He had nothing to offer. He had backed into the wall and had one hand held over his mouth, whimpering. Richard Hunt’s gaze was trained on his wife.

In his deep, melodious voice, he said, “Delores?”

“They’re all lying, Richard.”

“Are they?” The senator was seething. “Goliad!” he shouted. “Where the hell is he?”

“Brynn.” Rye spoke her name sharply. “Out. Now!”

“Not with the drug.” Richard took a step toward her.

“Hold it, senator!” Rye said. “You touch her, and you’re gonna have a lot to explain to the media. Police are on their way here. And don’t rely on Lambert to lie for you. To save his ass, he’ll sing like a canary.”

Brynn hastily rounded the portable table, giving no regard to Nate, who whined her name as she passed him.

When she reached the open doors, Rye thrust Timmy forward and sent him sprawling at Delores’s feet. Then he banged the double doors shut, grabbed Brynn’s hand, and ran with her across the wide entry foyer into the formal dining room where a pair of French doors stood open.

“This is how I got in,” he said as he pulled her along behind him. “We gotta hurry. Wilson and Rawlins are on my tail.”

“Where are they?”

“Their SUV got stuck in a ditch when Rawlins was turning around to chase me down.”

“There’s more to that story.”

“Much.”

He approached the vehicle she recognized as the one that Goliad had used to transport them from the private landing strip. “Goliad,” she said. “Where is he?”

“Can’t be far,” Rye said.

“Are the keys in the truck?”

“With luck.”

The fob was in the cup holder. They scrambled in. Rye left the lights off as he sped down the lane to the main road. When he reached it, he turned right toward the landing strip.

5:44 p.m.

Timmy came unsteadily to his feet and, standing before Richard, pointed a finger at Delores. “She paid me. She didn’t want it to get to you. She said that a plane crash would look like an accident. Then when that pilot—”

“Enough!” Richard barked. “I get the picture.”

Nate was dismayed to find himself in this situation. When, where, had it all gone wrong? This was supposed to be his moment of triumph. Confounded by Delores’s deceit, he said, “You wanted it destroyed? All along? Why?”

Beneath her husband’s incendiary glare, she drew herself up, not with shame over having been found out, but with defiance. She shook back her hair. “For sixteen years, I’ve made all the important decisions. If it wasn’t for me, prodding you, pushing you, politicking for you, you would still be peddling tin houses. I was the locomotive, Richard. You were a cattle car I dragged along.

“Well, it was my turn. Publicly I would have mourned your death. ‘How horrible. He was so strong, so vital. Who could have predicted a rare blood cancer would bring him down? Mrs. Hunt is prostrate with grief.’

“That’s what they would have said.” She laughed. “But then, after the lavish funeral I would throw you, they’d be saying how brave I was to assume your place, your seat in the Senate. This is what Richard Hunt would want and expect from his widow, to take up the torch and carry on.” She smiled beatifically. “And it wouldn’t be too long before they forgot all about you.”