Hot Pursuit (9 page)

Alfonse—who sported a Bahstan accent to die for and talked in telegram—was both huge and hugely disappointed that Dolphina, Jules and Robin’s personal assistant, wasn’t around. He was even more crestfallen to find out that she was on her honeymoon, after finally marrying her long-time boyfriend, Will.

“Didn’t think that would last,” Alfonse opined. “What did he, put a bun in her oven?”

“I don’t think so.” Robin had laughed, but then stopped.

He asked Jules now, “Do you think Dolph married Will because she’s pregnant?”

Jules turned from the toaster where he was monitoring his bagel, making sure it turned the perfect shade of brown. “No. I think she married him because she loves him.”

“And you don’t think she’s going to come back from Europe in three weeks and, like, quit because she’s having a baby?”

“Why would she quit? She knows she could have as many babies as she wants, and still work for us,” Jules pointed out, as always both calm and practical.

And freaking handsome as all get out, dressed for work the way he was, even though it was a Saturday.

The man could wear a dark suit and tie like nobody’s business. His handgun, secured in a shoulder holster tucked neatly up beneath his left arm, barely disturbed the lines of his well-tailored jacket.

Add a pair of dark sunglasses, and the whole FBI agent look was … Well, it was one that Robin would never tire of.

Ever.

“I don’t know,” Robin admitted. “I guess I was just spiraling into
worst-case scenario land. I miss her when she’s not here, and now that the show’s on hiatus …”

“Hiatus?” Jules repeated, losing a little of his calm. “Crap, it’s definite?”

Robin nodded. “It will be, yeah. That’s one of the reasons why I’m going over to the hospital to see Art. I gotta talk him into doing what he needs to do to get back to speed. Which is to
not
return to work until he’s healthy.”

Last week, Art Urban, the somewhat eccentric producer, director, and creator of
Shadowland
, the award-winning cable TV series that had helped put Robin back on the Hollywood A-list, had surprised the hell out of everyone who knew him by having a massive and near-fatal heart attack.

In true Urban fashion, he drove himself to the hospital before collapsing just inside the emergency room door.

Barely forty-five years old, he’d needed a triple bypass—and a major lifestyle change.

“He’s looking at at least two months recovery at this place out near Sedona. You know, in Arizona,” Robin continued. “He’s been talking about putting the show into Fredo’s hands while he’s gone, but…” He shook his head. “If he’s trying to de-stress,
that’s
not going to work. It would probably be worse for him—attempting to micromanage from thousands of miles away … ?”

“Two
months?” Jules asked as he got his bagel travel-ready, putting it on one of their plastic happy-monster plates that they used whenever Haley, Billy or any of the other under-ten set visited.

“At least two months. He really needs to go to this place—it’s a ranch and … I checked out the website. It’s like rehab for heart-attack survivors. They’ll get him off the cigarettes and train him to eat healthier and start exercising. He’s got to do it, or he’s going to die.”

“Shit.” Jules wasn’t happy. “This is the worst time for this—with Dolphina gone for another month—”

“Yeah, I know, but… He’s the show, babe. I mean, yeah, it’s him and
me
, but… If one of us is replaceable, it’s definitely me.”

“I happen to disagree.” Jules rinsed out his mug and put it into the dishwasher. “You’re the star of the show—”

“Yeah, and you’re fucking the star, so you’re not exactly impartial.”

Jules laughed. “Sweetie, I’m pretty sure I lost star-fucker status when you married me.”

“Yeah, but saying that you’re having marital relations with the star sounds boring.”

The amusement in Jules’s brown eyes glinted with something a little dangerous. “Really?”

Robin rested his chin in his hand as he gazed back at his husband. “I could just sit here all day with you looking at me like that.”

Jules came over and kissed him. “No, you couldn’t,” he said, “and no, as much I want to, I
can’t
stay home today, and while I appreciate your loyalty to Art, two months is a long time for you to be without a project. You should call Don. See if he can’t find something short term for you to do.”

“I know he can.” Robin’s agent was always trying to talk him into doing another movie. He looped his leg around Jules, keeping him close so he could straighten his tie. “Out in California. Which will suck. So, unless you can come with me, I’d rather stay in Boston.”

“Yeah,” Jules said, and it was a word loaded with the promise of an unhappy surprise, coming soon to this very kitchen.

“Ah, fuck me,” Robin said, letting him go. “When are you going? And please tell me it’s not Afghanistan
—fuck!”

It was. He could see in Jules’s eyes that not only was he going to the extremely dangerous war-torn country, but that he was going to be leaving much too soon.

“Max called just a few minutes ago,” Jules told him. “The departure date’s not set, but it’s going to be within the next few weeks. He was giving me as much of an advance warning as he could.”

Robin nodded as the Cheerios in his stomach turned to lead. Afghanistan. Again. God damn it.

“The President’s going,” Jules told him quietly. “He asked for me to be part of the advance team. I’ll be there for about a month before he arrives, and … I can’t turn that down.”

Robin met his husband’s steady gaze. “I would
never
ask you to—”

“I know,” Jules reassured him.

And there they were, Robin sitting on the stool at the kitchen island, Jules standing nearby, both of them ignoring their breakfasts.

“I’m going to call Dolphina,” Jules finally said, “see if she can’t suggest a replacement assistant until she’s back. You’re going to need help picking a project and—”

“Babysitter,” Robin interrupted. “Why don’t we just call it what it is? We’re looking for someone to babysit me while you’re gone. Shit, Jules, you know if you call her, she’s going to cut her trip short as soon as you
say Afghanistan.”

Last time Jules went to Afghanistan, everything had been fine. He’d come home a week later, safe and sound. But it had been a hard week for Robin—a very hard week.

Because on the trip before
that
one, shortly before their wedding, Jules had nearly died in Khandahar.

Living with the fear was part of being married to a man with an important and dangerous job. But it wasn’t easy. Sure, Robin was an actor, so he could smile and exude confidence—make like he was convinced everything was okay.

Out of all of his friends, Dolphina alone knew of the toll it took on him. She helped him schedule his work while Jules was out on a perilous assignment, helping him use it as a distraction, pretty much around the clock.

But here he was, with Jules again on the verge of leaving, with no work and no Dolphina. Talk about providing a challenge for the recovering alcoholic.

But okay. What didn’t kill him would make him stronger. Wasn’t that how the saying went?

“We’ll figure something out,” Robin told Jules, and told himself while he was at it. “Any chance you can, um, get a couple days off before you go?”

“I’ll ask,” Jules said.

Robin managed a smile. “Thank you,” he said.

Jules kissed him again and it was filled with such regret and apology, Robin knew it wasn’t a few days off that Jules was going to ask for.

So he grabbed Jules by the lapels and all but shook him. “Don’t you dare turn this down,” he said. “The freaking President—the guy we both voted for—asked for
you
. You’re going. I’ll be fine. We’ll figure something out. We’ll get me whatever babysitters or bodyguards you think I need, so you don’t have to be worrying about me while you’re over there. You got that, babe? Repeat it back to me: We’ll figure this out.”

“We’ll figure this out,” Jules agreed.

Sam wasn’t worried that Alyssa wasn’t in the hall.

Not at first.

His wife was a big girl. She could take care of herself, and then some. If she wasn’t in the corridor, it was probably because cell reception sucked in this city, with all of its man-made mountains and valleys.

Sam had tried to talk to Haley during the cab ride from the airport to the hotel where they were billeting the SEALs, and cell reception stank. After getting cut off twice, his daughter, old enough at age seven to put a little “of course my dad’s a moron” into her voice, God help him, had said with exasperation, “Daddy, just call me later, when you get back from your trip to the far side of the moon.”

Alyssa had probably gone looking for a signal that didn’t garble her incoming call from—had to be—Max Bhagat.

She and the high-level FBI administrator had been playing phone tag all morning, and yeah, okay, the first thing Sam had thought when Tony V. had announced that Alyssa had gone into hiding wasn’t
Oh, no, she might be in some kind of trouble
. No, the caveman section of his brain kicked in, as always too ready to get stuck, like a skipping record, thinking about the fact that his wife used to suck face with Max.

Forget about the fact that that had happened a million years ago, and that Sam had been married to his ex, Mary Lou, at the time. Forget, too, that Max was, himself, married now, with two beautiful kids of his own. Forget about the fact that Sam knew Alyssa loved him, loved Ash, loved this crazy life they were building together.

Sam’s caveman instincts were strong, and needed to be battled daily, if not hourly.

“See if she’s in the stairwell or down in the lobby,” he told Vlachic, who nodded and vanished. If Alyssa
was
finally talking to Max, he didn’t want to call her and interrupt. He turned to Jenn, who was responding to the assemblywoman—who, by the way, was the best-looking politician he’d ever seen in his life. Normally women who looked like Maria Bonavita were caught sneaking out the hotel room of a senator or congressman—proof that times truly were a-changing.

“On your cell?” Jenn was asking about the assemblywoman’s announcement that she’d just gotten a strange phone call.

“Yeah. My caller ID said it was from Margaret Bell,” Bonavita told her assistant, “but the voice on the other end was male.”

“I don’t think I know her,” Jenn said. “Margaret Bell … ?”

“Of course you do. Big donor. Really big.”

Jenn didn’t look convinced. “Could it have been her husband?”

“Come on, Jenn, you know Maggie. She’s one of Savannah’s
gym friends. Yours, too. Unmarried. Something of a plastic surgery addict
…?”

“Wait a minute—are you talking about Maggie
Thorndyke
with the collagen lips, who spends three hours, everyday, at the gym
…?”

“Bell-Thorndyke,” the assemblywoman said. “I thought she was dropping the Thorndyke. Or maybe I got it wrong and she dropped the Bell. I should fix that on my phone.”

“Excuse me.” Sam interrupted the fascinating conversation. “I can’t help but notice that there’s not a restroom here in the office. Is there one somewhere else on the floor? We’ve kind of misplaced our team leader.”

“I’m sorry, you must be Ken’s friend Sam,” Maria deduced, giving him a smile that seemed genuine in its sincerity. “And this must be Ashton. Hello, baby. Aren’t you the cutest?” She looked back at Sam. “He’s beautiful, and yes, but it’s kept locked. It’s down the hall to the left, past the dentist’s office. There’s a key—Jenni … ?”

Jennilyn, who would’ve been pretty if she got a decent haircut and then didn’t stand next to a woman who looked like Maria, rummaged through the clutter on her desk as Maria shook Izzy, Gillman, and Lopez’s hands, introducing herself and thanking them for coming all the way from California.

“So what did he say?” Jenn resumed her conversation with Maria as she handed two separate keys on two different colored strings to Sam. “Red’s the men’s, blue’s the ladies’ room.”

“Thank you,” Sam said. Izzy Zanella was the only one of the three SEALs in the room who was still breathing post-handshakes, so Sam gave him a choice. “Baby or keys?”

Izzy took the keys.

“Knock first, but check ’em both,” Sam ordered, and Izzy went out the door.

“He said,
Check your mail,”
Maria rasped the words in a low-pitch whisper. “Like that. It was creepy.”

“Mail or e-mail?”

“Mail. I think.”

“Maybe Maggie’s got a new boyfriend, and she convinced him to contribute to your reelection fund,” Jenn theorized.

“Where’s today’s mail?” Maria asked.

Lopez found his voice. “Maybe you should let me look at it first.”

Gillman stepped forward too, his tongue nearly down to his knees. “Yes, you should. Let us. Help you. Please.”

“Hold up,” Sam said. He included the SEALs. “Everyone.”

But Jenn had gone to the other desk and, no rummaging this time, picked up a small pile of letter-sized envelopes. She looked at him with eyes that were not average brown as he’d first thought, but almost golden with a hint of green. They brimmed with intelligence—and with her amused awareness of her boss’s impact on men like Dumbass and Dunderbrains here.

“The mail arrived right before you got here,” she told Sam. “I got as far as opening it. They’re all bills.” Sure enough the tops of the envelopes were all slit.

Sam dumped Ash into Lopez’s surprised arms. “Into the hall,” Sam ordered, and Lopez went.

“What’s your procedure for opening mail?” Sam asked.

Jenn looked from him to Maria and back. “It arrives, I check to make sure there’s a return address that we recognize, and it gets opened. I have a letter opener that I use—”

Sam took the mail from her. “And if there’s something suspicious?”

“I open it first,” Jenn admitted. “Using a Ziploc baggie.” She opened her top desk drawer and pulled out a box of the gallon-sized. “I put the letter and the letter opener inside, seal it, and … It’s awkward, but do-able. The theory being that if we do get anthraxed, we’ve already been contaminated by touching the envelope. But the baggie keeps it from getting further into the air. I open it immediately, again, because if I’ve touched the envelope, damage is already
done, and it’s better to know about it ASAP. But there was nothing suspicious in today’s mail, so I slit the tops, you know, all at the same time. It’s more efficient to do it that way.”