There was a good deal of laughter.
Savich looked at Lucy again. “I could bring the Silvermans in for an interview, either together or separately, but the fact is, you and Coop have already found out what they had to say. We have no evidence yet of any complicity between them and the two men who tried to kill you, or the theft of the letter, so we don’t have enough probable cause to get a search warrant. They probably wouldn’t even speak to me without a lawyer at this point. So I’ll treat them as your family unless we find something definite to talk to them about.”
He paused for a moment, searching her face. “However, I’ve already done some checking into Alan Silverman’s financial dealings, and his longtime presidency at the Washington Federated Bank. You said you thought he was very rich, and retired from banking?”
“Yes, he retired nearly two years ago. As far as I know, he’s always had a great deal of money.”
“Lucy, he didn’t retire from the Washington Federated Bank like you were told. The board voted him out for gross mismanagement. He lost the bank a great deal of money in the recent financial crisis. The bank may be insolvent, and if the FDIC closes it, he will lose all the equity he has left. There’s even the possibility of an indictment. So, we can’t write off financial motives on his part, if he’s involved.”
How could he use the ring to fix this? It was odd, Lucy thought, but she wasn’t all that surprised. Ever since their visit to Uncle Alan’s house last night, she’d begun to see him with new eyes. Aunt Jennifer and Court, too. Now she wondered if she’d ever really known Uncle Alan, or his family. Her heart pounded. She’d never known her own father, either. She said, “I guess I understand why no one told me the truth about it. Maybe Court and Miranda don’t know what really happened.”
“One more thing, Lucy,” Savich said. “Whoever tried to kill you failed spectacularly. They’re going to be afraid now, afraid and maybe desperate. I want you and Coop to be very careful. Remember, close as a pair of jeans.”
CHAPTER 57
Georgetown
Friday night
Savich felt the length of his wife’s body beneath him, all loose and relaxed now. He breathed in the scent of her as he nuzzled her neck. He finally managed to lift himself off her and rest his weight on his elbows, but he couldn’t resist kissing her again. He loved her mouth, her tongue. It made him crazy. “Do you remember way back when you were staying with me so I could protect you? Like Lucy and Coop? And you had that very fortuitous nightmare?”
She hummed deep in her throat. “And you came galloping in on your white horse to save me. No, wait, it was white boxers. And you stayed, to my everlasting gratitude. Goodness, what a time that was, Dillon.” She hugged him tight. “The luckiest day in my life was when I shot you in Hogan’s Alley.”
He kept kissing her, then said, “Do you know I still have those pants I ripped that day?”
“I’ve seen them hanging in the back of the closet. Do you want to get them mended?”
“Oh, no, it would be like destroying a wonderful memory.” He laughed, rolled over on his back, and brought her against his side. “More than six years we’ve been together. Now we’ve got Sean, and another big honking mess on our hands, just like we did then.”
“Big honking messes—nothing new in that.” She kissed his neck, lightly rubbed her palm over his chest, then rested her face against his shoulder. “Our lives, I suppose, aren’t what you’d call exactly normal, are they? Not like the Perrys next door, for example, an accountant and a paralegal.”
“Would you want us to be in those types of professions? To be nine-to-fivers?”
“Since it’s never even been a consideration, I’d have to guess no. The thing is, Dillon, both of us are a perfect fit for what we do, a perfect fix for what we are, and that makes us really lucky. Sometimes I wonder what I’d have become if I’d never met you. I don’t think it would be a pretty picture, Dillon.”
He ran his palm down her hip, pausing here and there to knead. “Have I ever told you that you’ve got a lovely, twisted brain? I love to watch the way you figure your way through the murkiest problems. Let me add that when you take chances, it scares the bejesus out of me.”
“You’re not alone in that, but I guess it’s part of the job description. It’s what we are, Dillon, and I pray every day it’s what we will continue to be until we’re too old to aim our SIGs.”
“I find myself thinking it’d be nice to go fishing in a nice mountain lake somewhere—we’re eighty or so—and when we finally manage to row back to shore, there’ll be Sean and his family waiting for us, and all our grandkids.”