Page 2 of Lawbreaker

“I noticed. See you.”

“See you.”

She forced herself not to look toward the stretch limo, where Tony was sitting behind tinted windows.Probably still glaring at me, she thought as she unlocked her door and carried her bag inside.

Phillip James was almost purring as he spoke to the senator. “You don’t want me to tell what I know about you,” he spoke into the phone. “Now, do you?”

There was a grating pause. “No.”

He almost laughed at the force with which the single word was uttered. “I didn’t think so.” He drew in a breath. “So you’ll tell them you can’t dig up any evidence of wrongdoing.”

“I’ll tell them.”

“I’m counting on you,” James replied, and he hung up.

It was a relief. Tanner Everett had put him in a bad position. It was rotten luck that the man had so many damned scruples and that he’d actually protested the accidental killing of a few civilians. The operation hadn’t been that important, and they’d been attacked by some members of a village. He hadn’t paid much attention to where he was shooting. Automatic rifles weren’t so easy to control in the heat of battle. Everett made him sound like a murderer. It wasn’t as if a few ragged civilians would be missed in that mud-hut society. So some of the victims were children. What the hell. Stuff like that happened in firefights. Nobody got all up in arms about it. Well, most of his men didn’t. Everett wasn’t like the rest.

He’d tried to have the man killed in an overseas assignment. A handful of young agents had paid the price for that fumbled attempt, and now Everett had even more ammunition against him. But he couldn’t really prove anything. James had covered his tracks in South America, just as he’d covered them in Iraq. And the senator he was blackmailing wouldn’t dare go against him. One whiff of what James had in his office safe would cost the senator not only his well-paid career, but his reputation as well.

He leaned back in his desk chair, smiling to himself, and picked up his cell phone again. He dialed a number.

“Hi,” he said. “How’s things?”

“Hi, Dad” came the bright reply. “I’m just studying for exams,” his son replied.

“Study hard,” he told the boy. “I don’t want to spend the rest of my life supporting you.”

It was an old joke. They both laughed. James’s wife had died years ago. It was just his son, Bob, and him at home now. Not that Bob was at home. He was taking classes at a nearby college, learning to be an architect. The boy had real talent. He could draw so well. If there was one chink in James’s armor, it was his son. He’d do anything to keep the boy safe.

Over the years, there had been one or two attempts to get back at him through his child, but things had been quiet for several years now. He’d relaxed his scrutiny. Everett was the only real enemy he had at the moment, and that man wouldn’t lower himself to attacking a soft target like James’s son. It was one of the only things James admired about Everett. He only wished he’d known about the man’s ironclad principles before he’d tagged him to go on that black ops job in Iraq. It had come back to bite him.

But now he had a senator, and a powerful one at that, in his back pocket, and Everett couldn’t threaten him anymore. Life was good.

“You coming home this weekend?” James asked.

There was a slight hesitation. “Well, there’s this party,” his son began.

“Never mind. Have fun while you’re still young,” he replied, concealing his disappointment. After all, the kid was only nineteen. Let him enjoy college and all its perks.

“Thanks, Dad. Next weekend for sure,” he added brightly.

“For sure. Take care. Love you,” he added softly.

“Yeah. Talk to you soon.” He hung up.

James sighed. Maybe he should have been a little firmer with the boy when he was younger. He lacked a lot of social graces, and he wasn’t sentimental. But then, neither was Phillip James. Not at all.

Odalie was trying to hide her sadness while she took her voice lesson. She couldn’t understand why she’d become so morose lately. Maybe it was nerves. Maybe it was her monthly that was making her melancholy.

Maybe it’s Tony, she thought, and clamped down hard on the memory of that glare he’d given her before she got off the plane.

She hadn’t even thanked him for the ride, she recalled with a grimace.

“Now, now, young woman. Less absentmindedness, more attention to the notes,” her instructor chided with a smile.

“I’m sorry,” she said at once and laughed. “I’ve just come from my home in Texas and I’m missing my family.” It was a half-truth, but he seemed to accept it.

“At least you have a family to miss,” he said gently. “I lost my wife twenty years ago and we had no children. If I could not teach, I would have no life at all. I love my work. Especially, I love finding talent such as yours to nourish.”

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