Flashback by Justine Davis (classic reads .txt) 📕

feel it was hot even when the weather was springtime mild as it was now.

“One,” she said, answering him as she unclipped her weapon and dropped it on the sofa beside her purse, “is that it is a rattler’s nest. Two, that they’re already scared.”

Justin stretched expansively. “Three, they’ve got a lot to lose, to risk the FBI coming down on them full force.”

“So…we shuffle everything and put those with the most to lose at the top.”

“Problem is figuring out who that is. I mean, what’s important to them might not seem that important to us.”

Alex sighed. “Like I said, irrational.”

“People get that way when they’re scared of losing something precious to them.” He yawned.

“They also get that way when they’re exhausted,” Alex said.

“Point taken. Shall we pick this up in the morning?”

“I hate to break it to you, but it’s been morning for hours now.”

“Well then,” he said, stepping over to her and beginning a gentle massage of her shoulders that made her knees threaten to give out, “we’re behind.”

“Mmm,” she murmured, suddenly all she could manage to say.

“Sleep first,” Justin said softly. “And then we’ll…attend to other things.”

She didn’t even remember hitting the pillow.

She did remember, with erotic clarity, when she’d awakened with Justin caressing her, sending her halfway to the top before she even had her eyes open. And then he’d slid into her and sent her the rest of the way, the sound of him shouting her name echoing in her ears.

“I’m beginning to see a pattern here,” Alex said.

“Me, too,” Justin agreed. “What’s yours?”

“That nearly everybody at the top of my list is back in D.C.”

“Yeah, I noticed that.”

“What was yours?”

“Actually, a lack of a pattern. I can’t see any correlation between repeated contacts and those bank withdrawals. Or her appointments. And she had just made one of those withdrawals three days before she was killed.”

Alex leaned back in his kitchen chair. “Meaning?”

“If she was being blackmailed, I’m not sure it had anything to do with her murder.”

“She was paying, so why would they kill the golden goose?”

“Exactly.”

She couldn’t deny the logic there. “I don’t know that it has anything to do with this silly spider thing, either,” she said. She gestured at the stack of e-mails they’d pulled off Christine’s computer.

“What did you find?” Justin asked.

“There’s a couple in here from somebody calling themselves only ‘A,’ and talking about spinning webs all over the world. I would have written it off as some spam about the Internet, World Wide Web and all that, if Marion hadn’t saved it.”

“What’s your feel?”

“I’ve got no evidence except my gut,” Alex said, “but I think this spider thing is something separate. Important but separate.”

“Your gut’s good enough for me,” he said. “Let me see your list.”

Gratified by his easy acceptance, she shoved the notepad over to him, curious to see what his reaction would be to the list of names. She’d pulled them out of the senatorial files, selecting people Marion had clashed with: people who didn’t agree with her philosophy and took it personally that she was so successful at spreading it; people whose expensive pet and pork-barrel projects she had shot down with vigor; people she had embarrassed by publicly exposing the flawed logic or outright deception in their positions.

It was a long list.

His reaction was a long, low whistle.

“Wow. This is some group of famous names.”

“Famous in some circles, infamous in others.”

“Talk about the echelons of power. You’re really going to stir up trouble if you go poking around these names.”

“I already have, judging by the condition of your car,” she said.

His mouth curved into a wry grimace. “Good point. So…what are you going to do?”

“Go back to where I started from, I guess.”

“Back to D.C.”

She nodded. “Got a copy of Don Quixote around? I need to read up on tilting at windmills.”

Chapter 14

Alex sat up in her own bed in the Alexandria house, achingly aware of how empty it was. And a little surprised at how quickly she had gotten used to Justin being with her. Not just for sex—not that it hadn’t gotten anything but better—but during the night, when she could feel his warmth, and in the morning.

She missed having him right here to talk to first thing, and that surprised her even more. She’d thought she was perfectly content alone. And perhaps she had been, but she was beginning to think it might have been because she didn’t know any different.

A sad state of affairs at her age, she thought, but she was smiling, knowing that state was gone now, blasted to pieces by her very own Dark Angel.

As if on cue, the phone rang. Justin had been so strongly in her mind she half expected it to be him, but it was her grandfather.

“Good morning, dear. Sleep well?”

Actually, no, she thought, but decided against saying so and having to explain why. While she was savoring the changes in her life, she didn’t quite feel ready to discuss them yet, not even with her beloved G.C.

They exchanged a few more niceties before he asked, “How did things go in Phoenix?”

She knew better than to lie to him, and she hadn’t forgotten the recent lesson he’d taught her about protecting him. “We had a little trouble, but we gathered a lot of information.”

G.C. chuckled. “A little trouble? My, but that’s a tactful way to put it.”

So he did already know. She’d suspected as much. The man had sources and contacts around the globe. And he was remarkably calm about such things.

And now he was chuckling, so he wasn’t going to come down hard on her. Not that he ever did, even when she had it coming.

“I’ve got a list of names I’d like to go over with you,” she told him. “Do you have some time?”

“Of course.”

That had been the answer she’d gotten her entire life, even well before she’d had the slightest idea how busy and prominent a man her grandfather was. He