Rachael laughed. “I don’t have an umbrella with me.”

“Old Nemo here has everything in a box in the backseat. Including umbrellas.”

“Nemo?”

Jack patted the dash. “Yep, I gave him that name when I drove into a swamp once. I thought he was a goner, but he started right up and steamed on down the road. I love Nemo, been with me eight years now, still runs faster than my dad when Mom chased him with a skillet.”

Rachael pictured the Toyota Corolla steaming out of a swamp and laughed, then settled back and closed her eyes. “What are we going to do now?”

“How about we take off a couple of hours, take a nap, maybe on one of the sofas in the living room, anything but that rock-hard bed you put me in last night.”

She didn’t answer him. She was asleep. Slowly, she slid into him, her head on his shoulder.

Jack managed to extricate his cell without disturbing Rachael and punched in Savich, told him about Millie’s identification of Perky as one of two people at Mel’s Diner Friday night, not more than a ten-minute car ride from Black Rock Lake.

Savich was quiet for a moment. Then he said, “Things are beginning to come together. From what you told me about Laurel and Quincy, I can’t see them killing Senator Abbott and Rachael themselves. Too messy for them. On the other hand, who knows? You done good, Jack. It won’t be long now.”

Jack hoped Savich was right, but he couldn’t see any light at all himself. He wondered as he drove through the thickening summer rain, Who hired you, Perky?

FORTY-TWO

Georgetown

Friday evening

Savich closed and locked the front door, set the alarm. He was tired and stiff, bummed because it was too late to hit the gym. He rotated his neck as he thought about stretching out in his bed and sleeping deep and dreamless, forgetting both cases. He turned to see his wife standing on the stairs, looking at him over her shoulder as she shrugged off her white oxford shirt. He stopped cold. He went instantly from bone-tired to wide-awake, let-me-lick-those-beautiful-white-shoulders lust. Had he really thought he was so tired he was nearly brain-dead? That was very shortsighted of him. Well, perhaps he was brain-dead, but the rest of him was wide awake.

He didn’t move, crossed his arms over his chest, a smile playing over his mouth, and watched the show.

Sherlock said nothing at all—what was there to say, anyway? She licked her tongue over her bottom lip as she unfastened the front clip of her bra. She waited, then slowly shrugged out of it while she shifted to stand nearly in profile to him. She gave him her over-the-shoulder smile while her fingers were busy, her movements slow and subtle, leaving just a bit to his imagination.

She pulled off the bra, one strap at a time, and tossed it at him over her shoulder, but it landed three feet short.

“Lightweight,” he said, and she laughed.

“You’re right, lace doesn’t weigh much.” She turned her profile to him again. Savich walked slowly toward her, all his attention focused on those hands of hers playing with the zipper on her pants. Then he saw the slow, downward slide. He did a fast fifteen-foot sprint, nearly tripping over her boots, which lay on the bottom step, her socks hanging out the tops. He saw she’d had the presence of mind to drape her navy blue blazer on the newel post. He loved those beautiful feet of hers.

Savich exercised great strength of will and stopped three stairs below her, waiting to see what she’d do next. He suspected he’d bite his tongue if he weren’t careful, particularly now that she was wriggling out of the pants. She was doing a major tease, slow, really slow, and she knew what slow meant.

He got a glimpse of that beautiful rear end of hers, the white lace panties that matched her bra, cut high on her thighs, and it pushed him over the edge. He ran up the stairs, grabbed her up in his arms, felt her laughter wash over him, and felt her mouth kissing his ear, his eyebrow, her hands tangled in his hair. He wanted to laugh with the sheer joy of it, but the fact was he needed to concentrate on getting to the bedroom without tripping because he was so far gone he didn’t know if he’d make it.

And he really wanted to make it.

It always seemed to him that time became both syrupy slow and galloped to hurricane speed when he was making love to her.

When at last he pulled her on top of him, when at last she had the energy to sit up, her strong white legs tight against his flanks, her palms flat on his chest, he marveled as he always did at the whiteness of her flesh against the darkness of his hands holding her.

She gave him a silly smile. “That was rather nice, Dillon.”

“Oh yes.” He looked up at her beloved face, saw her eyes were vague from pleasure, touched fingers to her fiery hair, tossed wildly around her head, and said, “I never tell you enough. You are my life.”

As he was hers, she thought, but the words fell away when he came deep inside her and she was kissing him, and the words she whispered in his mouth were, “You are so hot I can’t stand it,” and it was enough, too much, really, and he didn’t last as long as he would have wished, but she was with him, blessed be, so that was all right.

He was felled, so loose and relaxed it would have taken Sean jumping on top of him for a good three minutes before he moved. His breathing finally slowed, at least enough so he could think. His meager thoughts soon scattered when she began moving down his happy, lifeless body. He grabbed handfuls of hair when he felt her mouth on his belly, and he arched up, groaned.

“Music to my ears,” she whispered against him.

She finally fell asleep stretched out on top of him, her head tucked into the curve of his neck, her hair against his mouth. He didn’t feel it tickle, though, because his was the sleep of the dead.

When his cell phone belted out the Monday Night Football theme, he came instantly awake and looked with loathing at his cell phone half hanging out of his pants pocket on the floor beside the bed. Sherlock was stirring against him. He didn’t want to move her, but a phone call late on a Friday night couldn’t be good.

He managed to stretch out and grab his cell. “Yeah.”

He listened as he leaned back to rub Sherlock’s belly. She didn’t want to pull away from that big warm hand of his, but she did. She managed to sit up, saying, “What’s wrong, Dillon? What happened?”

“Someone just tried to kill Dr. MacLean.”

They left a sleeping Sean with Lily and Simon, and arrived at the hospital sixteen minutes later.