State Secrets

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David bent and tapped the side of the glass fishbowl with an impatient index finger. The two goldfish floated, one above the other, just staring at him, their shimmering fan-shaped tails barely moving.

“You guys are really boring, you know that?” he complained in an undertone. “I bought you to give this place some color and flash and what do you do? You just sit there, watching the world go by. Swim, dammit!”

The fish regarded him implacably, still hovering midway between the surface of the water and the bottom, with its blue rocks and shifting plastic fern and dime-store diver.

“No class,” David grumbled, turning away and wrenching the damp sweatband from his forehead in one irritated movement.

Still breathing hard from his customary morning run, he stumbled into the bathroom and took a quick shower. Later, as he dried himself and dressed—in the living room, for God’s sake—he wondered how the hell he was ever going to impress Holly Llewellyn with a place like this.

Draping a towel over his shoulders because his hair was still dripping wet, he took in the goldfish, the unmade sofa bed, the spots on the carpet. No class. Like those seventy-nine-cent goldfish, the place had no class.

The telephone rang and David, who had been indulging in a fanciful nostalgia for his real apartment in faraway Georgetown, was startled. He put images of good art, the hot tub in his bathroom and the ivory fireplace out of his mind as he lunged for the instrument.

“Goddard,” he answered, and the long-distance buzz coming over the wire told him that he’d been right. This was his call from Washington.

“Zigman here,” Walt replied. “The Bureau staked out the address in L.A., Goddard, but they must have muffed it somehow, because Llewellyn didn’t bite.”

David had a headache. He had hoped the FBI would be able to collar Llewellyn immediately; like a child about to have a sliver pulled, he’d wanted the whole thing to be over with. “He was an agent himself once. He probably knows the signs.”

“Yeah.”

“Does this mean I can drop the case and come back to Washington?” Part of David hoped it did, while another part wanted to watch Holly Llewellyn forever.

“Hell, no. The little lady sent him a letter, didn’t she? You saw it with your own eyes, Goddard. That means she’s in fairly regular contact with our boy, doesn’t it?”

David resented the “little lady” reference. Holly was so much more and the phrase seemed to demean her. “Holly is a woman, Walt. With a brain.”

Zigman’s laugh traveled three thousand miles to annoy David as instantly as if he’d been in the same room. “Goddard, you are going soft. Don’t get to liking this broad too much. She’s in line for an indictment herself, you know.”

“For what?” David snapped.

“Christ,” Zigman swore impatiently. “For aiding and abetting a fugitive. Are you going to wake the hell up, Goddard, or do I have to send somebody else out there to handle this thing?”

David bit back all the fury that surged like bile into his throat. He’d never been pulled from a detail in all the time he’d worked for the service, and he wasn’t about to start now. Besides, he couldn’t be sure how another agent would manage the situation. And it was delicate. Holly’s emotional state was delicate. “I can handle it,” he said.

“Wouldn’t have sent you if I didn’t think you could,” Walt replied in smug tones. His cigar stub was probably bobbing up and down in his mouth, and David wished he could be there to squash it into the man’s teeth. “Keep a sharp eye out, Goddard. Llewellyn could turn up there. If he does, I want him busted. On the spot.”

The thought made David half-sick, and he closed his eyes. His wet hair was dripping cold trails down his neck and he began drying it with one end of the towel. He could imagine the look on Holly’s face if he casually wrestled Llewellyn to the floor in her living room. “Yeah.”

“Can you handle him by yourself or do you want a detail? The Bureau has an office in Spokane—”

“You keep the Bureau the hell out of this, Walt! I mean it!” The outburst was too sudden, too emotional. David drew a deep breath and stopped toweling his hair to sigh. “Llewellyn is a former agent,” he reiterated a moment later, when he could speak more moderately. “If he sees a bunch of three-piece suits and crew cuts watching his sister’s house, how do you think he’ll react?”

“He’ll split, just like he did in L.A.”

“Right.” David sighed again, running one hand through his hair. “Let me handle this, will you, Walt? If I need the Bureau, I can always call them in.”

“All right,” Walt agreed in his gruff, wry way. “But you remember why you’re there. It isn’t to make fruitcake, Goddard. Or time.”

David’s headache was infinitely worse. “Yeah,” he agreed after a long, long time. “I’ll remember.”

“Good,” came the brisk reply. “When do you see the broad again?”

Enough was enough. He’d let that word pass once; he couldn’t do it again. “Don’t call her that again, Walt. If you do, your nose will be where your right ear is now. I’ll see to it.”

Zigman swore and rang off.

David held the receiver in his hand for a long time, doing some swearing of his own. Craig Llewellyn was going to show up in Spokane, he could feel it in his bones. It was only a matter of time. Holly was going to be destroyed by the inevitable arrest, by David’s deception.

Why the hell had he accepted the dinner invitation, dammit? Suppose there was a replay of that episode when he’d kissed her, in the kitchen? What then? David had spent most of the night reliving that ill-guided indulgence and imagining all the sweet pleasures that could have come after it.

He shook his head, trying to dislodge the thought, but his body recollected perfectly. Heatedly. He’d had his share of women, of course, but none had ever made him feel quite the way Holly did. She could reach past the hard finish painted over him by his Secret Service training. She could so easily reach past it.

Maybe Walt Zigman was right; maybe he was losing his ability to be objective. Maybe he was getting soft.

David allowed himself one rueful, humorless chuckle. Soft was definitely not the word. Not where Holly Llewellyn was concerned.

The day was a full and busy one, but it took forever to pass, all the same. Instead of thinking about her newspaper column, as she should have been, every turn of Holly’s mind seemed to lead to David Goddard.

Elaine was gathering together the leaves of the manuscript she had been working on, preparing to leave. “What time is the hunk coming over?” she asked.

Color leaped into Holly’s cheeks and pounded there. “What hunk?” she asked tightly, a little annoyed that Elaine could read her preoccupation so easily.

“Don’t give me that. I’m talking about your date with David Goddard and you know it. What are you serving? What are you wearing? Do you want me to take Toby home with me for the evening?”

“Once your questions start coming, there’s no stopping them, is there?” Holly countered, still flushed. She took the disk containing her pitiful effort at a cooking column from the computer and shut off the machine with an angry flourish.

Elaine was not intimidated, but she did back off just a little. “I could take Toby home,” she offered again. “Roy and I enjoy him so much, and—”

“Toby is staying right here!”

“Why? Do you need him as a buffer, Holly?”

Holly had been halfway out of her chair; now she sagged back into it. “I wouldn’t use Toby that way, Elaine,” she said, but the doubt in her voice bothered her.

“It’s all right, you know, to want time alone with an attractive man. It’s not going to scar Toby’s pysche or anything.”

In spite of herself, Holly chuckled. Elaine did have a way of lightening a situation. “Last night,” she confessed after a few moments of reflection, “David kissed me.”

“So?”

“So it was weird, Elaine. The earth moved. Bells chimed. All the corny stuff you see in movies and read about in books—it all happened.”

Elaine beamed. “That’s great!”

“It is not,” Holly insisted, her face set and serious again. “It’s terrible. That man is dangerous, Elaine.”

“Dangerous? Why?”

Now Holly felt foolish and she couldn’t quite bring herself to meet her friend’s eyes. “He’s not like Skyler. He’s—”

“Thank God for small favors.”

Holly was putting her computer disk into its paper folder, turning off the printer, clearing her desk. Anything to keep from looking directly at Elaine. “You don’t like Skyler, do you? I can understand why Toby doesn’t, but you should.”

“He’s all right,” Elaine conceded with a heavy and somewhat dramatic sigh. “It’s just that he’s so, well, you know, safe. Boring.”

“He’s reliable, that’s what he is,” defended Holly. “I might marry him.”

“If you do, you’re crazy. You don’t love Skyler, Holly.”

“How do you know?” Holly demanded. But she wished with all her heart that she could love Skyler, truly want him. Even need him. It made her mad that she couldn’t.

“If you loved him, ninny-brain, you wouldn’t be all hot and bothered because David Goddard is coming to dinner. You haven’t thought straight all day.”

Holly slumped. “I’m not ‘hot and bothered’!” she lied in a plaintive wail.

Elaine only laughed. “Let me take Toby home with me. Please? I promise to give him the most nutritionally balanced TV dinner in the freezer, and I’ll bring him home after your class lets out.”

Holly hadn’t even thought about the class. Dear Lord, that was one more thing to add to the worries she already had, like what she was going to serve David Goddard for dinner and what she was going to wear. She wanted to look attractive, but not predatory….

It was as though, by their long and friendly association, Elaine had learned to look right inside Holly’s brain and read her every thought. “Wear something sexy. Leopard skin, maybe.”

Holly laughed. “Leopard skin? This is a quiet, casual dinner, not a movie about barbarians! And I have no desire to look ‘sexy.’”

“Pity,” Elaine said, looking entirely serious. “A woman ought to wear something sort of Frederick’s-of-Hollywoodish once in a while.”

Holly only shook her head, amazed. She wanted to ask if Elaine herself ever wore such garments but didn’t quite dare.

“Hey, Tobe!” Elaine yelled, shaking off the look of deep thought, beaming again. “Come on! You’re coming home with me tonight!”