And straightening her body, she summoned the will to open the study door. I'm a dangerous woman, she thought proudly, taking another step. I can plug a nickel at twenty paces. I can-

She didn't hear him coming. Not a footstep or a whisper or even a breath of wind. One second she was alone, the next a large, sweaty hand had clamped itself over her mouth. Cate struggled to turn, to drive an elbow back and into his ribs as she'd learned in self-defense class, but the man was upon her, pulling her into his body, his free hand locking onto her wrist, wrenching the gun loose with one furious twist.

"We're in the library," he said. "We've been waiting for you to join us."

Cate stopped squirming and allowed the man to guide her into her study.

Two men stood by the safe. They'd managed to open it, God knows how. One was perusing her journals, the other tearing through her desk. She knew their type, if not their names. The crew cuts, the aggressive eyes, the pumped-up shoulders and size-twenty necks.

"What are you looking for?" she said when he'd removed his hand.

"You know what," replied the man holding her. "Why are you talking to the police?"

"I'm not." Her fear had vanished, cowering before her mammoth indignation. "You're wasting your time."

"We'll see."

He let her go and spun her around, and for a moment she thought that was it, he was moving to the rough stuff right away. She had no illusions about her ability to guard her secrets. If they beat her, she would talk. Instead, the man brushed by her and devoted himself to a tour of her bookshelves. She remained where she was, quiet, suddenly embarrased by her nudity, covering herself.

After a few minutes, the man gave up his perfunctory search. "Anything?" he asked, turning to his colleagues.

Shrugs were their only response.

He approached Cate, taking her face in his meaty hands and bringing it close to his. He was older, with pitted cheeks, black eyes, and a slit for a mouth. "Keep your mouth closed," he whispered. "Understand?"

When Cate didn't answer, an angry expression contorted his face. "Understand?" he said again, squeezing her cheeks and twisting her jaw.

"Yes," she managed to grunt. "I understand."

A minute later they were gone, leaving the front door open behind them. Cate walked to the door and shut it. As an afterthought, she turned on the alarm. But as she climbed the stairs to her bedroom, a smile of bitter satisfaction played on her lips.

She had them on the run.

20

Stop it there!" shouted Howell Dodson, deputy assistant director of the FBI, slapping a palm onto his desk. "I want to hear the last part again."

Roy DiGenovese reset the digital recorder, punching the play button when he'd gone back exactly thirty-one seconds. A tinny voice began to speak, the Eastern European accent faintly noticeable.

"And what about the Private Eye-PO?" asked Konstantin Kirov. "What do you plan on doing to him? Surely you do not expect us to sit still while our good name is besmirched."

"I have some people on it already," answered Jett Gavallan. "With any luck, we'll have him located by tomorrow, day after at the latest."

"And then? All of us have our part to play to insure Mercury's future. We expect you to take any and all measures to silence this man. Nothing can stand in the way of Mercury Broadband's going public. Nothing."

"And nothing will. I'll see to it the Private Eye-PO's mouth is shut- permanently, if I have my way. In the meantime, these receipts refute his accusations nicely. I'd say we're back on track."

"Good," said Kirov. "It's time to put an end to this tomfoolery. There's already been enough snooping."

The recording ended, and DiGenovese turned the machine off.

It was eleven-thirty in Washington, D.C., and outside the temperature registered a sweltering ninety-two degrees. From his office on the second floor of the J. Edgar Hoover Building, Howell Dodson, chairman of the Joint Russo-American Task Force on Organized Crime, could see the early lunch crowd making their way to the mall in hopes of staking out shaded benches or dipping their big toes in the Reflecting Pool. It wasn't much of a view. The prime offices were on the opposite side of the building, facing south and offering a panoramic vista of the Capitol, the Washington Monument, and Mr. Thomas Jefferson, fellow Son of Virginia. One day he hoped to gaze out at the Lord of Monticello, but good views required good politicking, and good politicking required a cunning he did not possess.

"What do you say, Roy?" Dodson asked in a slow Williamsburg drawl, his voice the texture of cured tobacco. "Mr. Gavallan talking prudent business practice or did we just hear collusion among conspirators?"

"That depends on Mercury, sir. If the business is legit, I'd say we listened to a bunch of execs who want to stop someone from bad-mouthing their stock. If not, we just tuned in to a group of criminals discussing murder. Me, I opt for the latter. I think we caught some crooks red-handed."

"So the Private Eye-PO is correct? Mercury's nothing but 'a scam dog with mucho fleas'? That what you're saying, Roy?"

"We're getting the same information from our informant in Moscow. Why shouldn't we believe it?"

Dodson couldn't help but chuckle. Three years in the Bureau and Mr. DiGenovese still considered an informant's cant the holy scripture. The boy was a greenhorn. Yes sir. Nothing but a big-city hick. Dodson himself wasn't so much interested in whether what the Private Eye-PO said was correct as in how he came to be in possession of the information. And for that matter, just who in the hell he was. "What's the latest on finding this boy? Mr. Chupik have any luck?"

Lyle Chupik was the Bureau's in-house webhead and the man who'd been charged with tracking down the Private Eye-PO.

"Nothing yet, sir," said DiGenovese. "Says he's close to nabbing him, though."

"Close?" Dodson lifted a thumb beneath his suspenders and let them slap on his chest. "Close don't count but for horseshoes and hand grenades. Isn't that right, Mr. DiGenovese? Mr. Gavallan seems to think he'll have him located today. That leaves us one step behind. And I don't like stomping through another horse's droppings," he whispered, with just a smattering of menace. "Follow?"

"Likewise, sir."

"Good boy. It's time we considered using an outside source. Find me the name of that odd fella does some consulting for us. If I'm not mistaken, he doesn't live too far away. Get him in here this afternoon and put him to work. Here's a dollar. Go buy Mr. Chupik a couple of those chocolate Yoo-Hoos he's so fond of, and tell him better luck next time."

Howell Ames Dodson IV was a Son of the South and ever proud of it. He was tall and lanky, with a shock of brown hair that fell boyishly into devilish blue eyes that teased the world from behind a scholar's half-moon glasses. He favored poplin suits in the summer, worsted gabardine in the fall, and the finest manners all year round. He liked smartly striped shirts, exuberant ties, snazzy cuff links, and pocket squares. He was foppish and a bit of a dandy, and if anyone cared to say a word about it, he'd point them to his unmatched arrest-to-conviction ratio, the commendations he'd received from the President of the United States, and a certain article in the Washington Post he kept tucked away in his desk for just such occasions.

The article described the shooting of four Georgian mafiosi by an unnamed FBI agent in a sting gone sour in the city of Tbilisi late last summer. The article was sketchy in parts. It failed to mention that the agent had shot the men after escaping from their custody or that he'd pulled off the feat fifteen minutes after having two fingers on his left hand severed with a carpet knife.