went rigid. Brady yanked him off of Grace, tucked the gun into the waistband of his own slacks and rolled the man to his back. A bullet hole marred the upper arm of his gray sports jacket. When Brady pulled aside the guy’s coat, he saw that a bloodstain had spread across the fabric of his dress shirt. But it was seeping, not pumping from an artery.
Grace pushed herself up off the floor, saw the blood and gasped. “The gun … We.” She gulped. “I didn’t mean to hit him! I was just trying to keep him from shooting me.”
“It’s just a flesh wound,” Brady answered, wondering if it was true.
Grace’s eyes had taken on a glazed look. “I hit him.”
The security guy stared at her. “You bitch.”
Working methodically, Brady reached for the handcuffs clipped to the back of the man’s slacks and cuffed his wrists through the wooden bed frame.
Then he dashed back down the hall. Kessler looked dazed, but he was sitting up and fumbling for the weapon that he’d dropped when he went down.
“No, you don’t.” Brady grabbed his gun arm and twisted. The man yelped.
“I have your gun. Just don’t do anything stupid, and we’ll all be okay,” he ordered. Raising his voice, he called to Grace, “Get in here.”
When she didn’t appear, he called her again—more sharply.
She came around the corner of the hall, walking like a drunken sailor, and he knew she was still reacting to the scene with Mosley. And reacting to the knowledge that the whole situation was spinning out of control very quickly.
Did that mean she really was innocent? Regardless, he had to keep her functioning so they could get out of here—because now he was in this as deeply as she.
“His getting shot wasn’t your fault,” he bit out. “You were fighting for the gun, and it went off.”
“In court, that will sound like resisting arrest,” she answered, then made a strangled sound when she saw the blood dripping from the other man’s head onto the floor.
“Yeah, me too,” he muttered. “And they’re not cops.”
“But they can get us both for assault.”
“Maybe they won’t want to.”
“Why not?”
“Depends on who they really are.” He looked at the man on the floor. “Head wounds bleed like a son of a bitch, so it looks worse than it is. Cover him while I make sure he’s not going anywhere.”
She held the gun in a two-handed grip while he got the guy’s cuffs, then helped Kessler to his feet and led him down the hall, where he secured him to the radiator pipe in his office The security guy glared at him. “You’re doing something pretty stupid here. She’s in this up to her eyeballs.” “How do you know?” “She was there.”
“But that doesn’t make her guilty of anything. She could have been at the wrong place at the wrong time.” “You her lawyer?”
“Something like that. I’ll worry about legalities later,” he tossed off as he began grabbing items from his desk.
When he was finished, he turned back toward Kessler. “Did Wickers send you?”
Kessler pressed his lips together.
“For what it’s worth, I know Wickers is trying to cover up what really happened.” Turning to Grace, he said, “Wait for me in the living room.”
She nodded, and he hurried back down the hall. The bloodstain on Mosley’s sleeve wasn’t much worse, but Brady stopped to grab a tie and make a tourniquet.
The man winced but said nothing.
Returning to Grace, Brady saw she still looked dazed and sounded alarmed when she asked, “What are we going to do?”
“Get out of here.”
When she didn’t move, he grabbed her arm and hustled her out of the apartment.
She seemed to come back to herself as they hurried down the hall. “Sorry you got caught in the middle of something nasty,” she murmured.
“We’ll figure it out,” he answered, determined to find out what was really going on.
IAN WICKERS SCRUBBED a hand over his face. It felt as if he’d been up for a week of Sundays. In reality, he was still within his normal workday. Normal. Yeah, sure.
He bent to the preliminary autopsy report that the DC Police Department had rushed through the system, given the celebrity of the dead man. To Wicker’s relief, it confirmed that John Ridgeway had died of a heart attack. At least he wouldn’t get caught in a lie over that.
It also listed the drugs in the man’s system, with a notation that more might be added to the list after more extensive tests. He recognized them all except one, sildenafil.
When he looked it up, he found it was the active ingredient in Viagra.
Son of a bitch. At least it wasn’t illegal. But had Ridgeway been stupid enough to use it when he knew it was contraindicated with the alpha blockers he was taking for his high blood pressure? Or did the woman give it to him without his knowledge? Maybe she’d said it was something else.
He picked up the phone and dialed Yarborough’s pager. A few minutes later, the man appeared in his office.
“How is the interrogation going?” he asked.
“She claims she was hired by Middle Eastern terrorists.”
“Is that credible?”
“Maybe.”
“What’s their motive? ”
“She says she doesn’t know.” The security man shifted his weight from one foot to the other. “What is it?” Wickers snapped.
“The longer we keep her here, the riskier it gets. I suggest we move her.” “To where?”
“To the facility we have in Northern Virginia.”
Wickers weighed the pros and cons. Starting this cover-up had been a knee-jerk reaction to protect John Ridgeway’s reputation. Now they were dealing with unanticipated consequences. Like what if the cops wanted to search the Ridgeway Consortium? That would be a little inconvenient if he was keeping a woman captive in the basement.
He sighed and looked up to find Yarborough watching him. “Move her.”
BRADY WAS TEMPTED to sprint to the back stairs. Instead he took Grace’s arm, and they walked sedately down the hall to the elevator.
“You could have turned me in to those guys,” she whispered.
“Would a bodyguard turn in the woman he’s guarding?” “You’re serious about that?”
“Yeah,”
