Close Call (13 page)

“That would be—”

“Hit me, damn it!”

Without thinking about it, Sydney pulled her fist back and launched it toward Reese's stomach, using the strength in her legs to power the punch. Her fist thudded into her sister's midsection. For that moment, she wanted to drive it through her abs and her internal organs, clear through to her spine. Reese folded forward and staggered back with a pained “Ungh.”

Sydney rocked back on her heels and dropped her arms. Her right fist stung and her arm ached clear up to the shoulder socket. Hair fell over her eyes, and she
pfft
ed it back with a breath directed upward. She was breathing heavily, like she'd gone ten rounds with Mike Tyson. She felt no urge to hit Reese again. Earl's barks had changed to whimpers and he nosed Reese's ankle. Sydney actually felt worse about upsetting the dog than about slugging her sister.

Reese stayed hunched over, hands on her knees, but craned her neck to look at her sister. “Satisfied?”

Sydney took stock of her emotions. “Better,” she admitted. She started to say “I'm sorry,” but Reese stopped her with an upraised hand.

“Don't say it.” She straightened slowly, probing her midsection with two fingers. “You pack a wicked punch.”

They eyed each other. “Well,” Sydney said.

“Well,” Reese returned.

Sensing the changed atmosphere, Earl began barking again, in high, piercing yips.

“Shut up, Earl,” they said in unison. Earl smacked his butt on the floor and panted happily. It brought tentative smiles to both their faces.

“Montoya?” Reese asked.

“Montoya,” Sydney agreed.

Sydney

In the warm haven
of the kitchen, surrounded by cream-colored walls, a farmhouse sink, and black-streaked bricks framing the six-burner stove and oven, Reese pulled leftover Chinese out of the fridge and Sydney got two forks from a drawer. She could feel how she and Reese were being careful with each other, choosing words with care, giving each other clearance so they didn't bump hips or tread—literally or figuratively—on toes, treating this fragile detente as if it were as brittle as a brandy snap. It felt almost like they needed to learn, or invent, a new language. They'd spoken Big Sister–Little Sister for the first twenty years, and since then they'd spoken only Surface Civil. Sydney tried to imagine what their new language might be called, assuming they created one. It was too early to know.

“Still haven't learned to cook, I see,” she said, sniffing at a container labeled
Gen Tso's
before digging in. Then she worried that Reese would take that as a jab, and backtracked. “I didn't mean … Chinese is my favorite … ”

“No point.” Reese shrugged, unoffended. “No one's got time for celebrity chef TV shows or foo-foo ingredients like saffron threads or chan
terelles in a war zone, and since I got into true crime, I live out of hotel rooms more often than not. Room service and delivery suit me fine.”

Sydney secretly enjoyed cooking shows, but she didn't admit it. “Do you have a new project in mind yet?”

Reese shook her head. “No. I'm taking a break. A long break. This last one was hard.”

Sydney saw something haunted in her eyes and wondered for the first time what kind of toll it must take, talking to serial killers or mass murderers, getting into their heads. It must be a different kind of carnage than Reese had seen on battlefields around the world, more personal. She sensed her sister didn't want to talk about the toll the Bingle investigation had taken, so she didn't ask. Another time. For the first time in forever, she thought that there might really be “another time,” and a conversation that meant something.

“My publisher's got a two-week-long jaunt lined up when the book comes out in November. Until then … ” Reese gestured to their surroundings, and Sydney took it to mean she was going to occupy herself mainly with renovation projects.

Setting aside her
Gen Tso's
, Sydney pulled the lid off of Montoya's box of threats and slid her legal pad with notes across the butcher block countertop, which clearly was not original to the 1890s house but blended well.

“So,” Reese asked, “is Montoya as sexy in real life as he is on the tube?”

Sydney jerked back. “What's that supposed to mean?”

A puzzled look crossed Reese's face, followed by an impatient one. “For God's sake, Sydney. It doesn't mean anything. Or maybe it means I haven't been laid for a while and I'm due.”

Sydney calmed down. “He's a sleaze.” She gave it more thought. “Which isn't to say he doesn't have a certain appeal, a combination of confidence and charm. But he's still a sleaze.”

“Yeah, rumor has it that ‘Fidel' is a real misnomer. I don't know why his wife puts up with it. She doesn't seem like the usual milquetoast, stand-by-your-man political wife, willing to suck up any amount of humiliation in order to call herself FLOTUS one day.”

Like Julie Manley had been. Sydney let the thought go. “She's an architect, right?”

Reese nodded and tossed a bit of beef to a hopeful Earl. “Uh-huh.”

“So, not much chance she knows any contract killers.”

“Not so fast,” Reese said. “Before she married Montoya at nineteen, her name was Katya Van Slyke, but her mother's maiden name was Utkin.” At Sydney's blank stare, she added impatiently. “Do you live under a rock?”

“I certainly don't follow DC gossip, if that's what you mean. I know firsthand how vicious and wrong it is.” Sydney slammed the counter in exasperation and her cardboard container jumped, rice fountaining from it. Earl eagerly licked up the pieces that hit the ground.

“It's not gossip—” Reese started. “Never mind.” She grabbed a sponge and wiped up the rice. “Katya's uncle is a significant figure in the Russian Mafiya. He lives in New York. Her parents have always been careful to distance themselves from him, and of course there's no visible connection between him and Montoya—I don't even think Uncle Matvei was invited to the wedding—but I daresay he could pass a phone number to his niece if she asked. And then there's Jimmy.”

“Montoya's son? I've seen him in the background when Montoya does events.”

“Jimmy's got a gambling problem. Maybe addictive personalities run in the family—sex for Fidel, gambling for Jimmy. I don't know who he bets with, or if he owes money, but I can find out. If he's underwater with the wrong guys, Jimmy might be eager to come into his inheritance sooner rather than later. I've got a contact, a bookie friend—acquaintance, really—who owes me. He'll tell me who Jimmy's into.”

“So much for Fidel's personal life,” Sydney said, relieved that Reese knew how to find things out, just as she'd thought she would. “Now there's only this.” She thumped the box of threats.

“Let's get to it.”

An hour later, they'd both read all of the letters and taken notes. Sydney felt slimed by the hatred and vitriol pouring from the pages. The mail and email and social media drubbing she'd gotten after the scandal had been bad, but a lot of this was worse. No one had threatened to sodomize her and flay her alive before feeding her body to hogs. They were sitting on Reese's back deck, looking out over a rough-mown field so green it hurt her eyes, dotted with dandelions and wildflowers. Butterflies flitted. Birds twittered and chirruped from a line of woods edging the property. The people who'd written those letters couldn't live in the same world that she did.

Reese set down the last page and sat staring into space, drumming her fingers on the glass-topped table.

“Montoya seems pretty convinced the Imminent Revelation folks are the ones who hired the killer,” Sydney said. “His second choice is his opponent in the election, with the national Democratic Party chair a distant runner-up because of what he calls ‘intellectual differences.'” Sydney made air quotes.

“Yeah, he slept with the guy's wife,” Reese said.

Sydney didn't ask her how she knew that. Reese knowing things was why she was here.

Her sister rose. “I need a drink. Get you anything?”

It was only three thirty. “A bit early for me. Water?”

Reese returned minutes later bearing what looked like a gin and tonic for herself, a half-full bottle of gin with a monkey on the label, and a bottle of chilled Perrier for Sydney. Reese drank a good third of the G&T, then set it down.

Sydney rolled the cold Perrier bottle across her forehead before opening it. It hissed. “You're—you
were
—the investigative reporter … how do we go about figuring out if any of these people or groups really hired a hit man?” She felt like she'd drifted into a spy novel, or
The Godfather
, using terms like “hit man” and “take out.” Next thing she knew, she'd be saying “iced” or “sleeping with the fishes” or “collateral damage.”

Reese shrugged one shoulder. “We talk to them, carefully. We talk to people who know them, even more carefully. We do our research before we talk to anybody.” She knocked back most of the rest of her G&T with a rattle of ice.

“We've only got until Tuesday,” Sydney reminded her. She sifted a page from the pile. “I think Montoya's right about the Imminent Revelationists. There's something angrier, more violent in their letters than in most of the others. They sound serious. They're calling out Montoya for ‘polluting Adam's pure blood seedline by giving Jews, faggots, and the mud people access to America's land and treasure.' Repulsive. They threaten to blow him up, behead him, and give him a foretaste of the flames of hell, which must mean they want to burn him. I think we should look at them first.”

“Agreed. You do that—it's a computer drill. I'll work my sources to find out more about Jimmy Montoya's situation and see if Katya's been lunching with Uncle Matvei.” Reese poured another slug of gin into her glass and sipped.

Sydney worked hard to keep any hint of judgment or concern off her face, remembering Connie saying something in passing about Reese's drinking. She'd tuned it out at the time, as she'd tuned out any mention of Reese.

“Do you really donate to Winning Ways?” she asked, suddenly remembering Reese's remark before she'd hit her.

Reese swirled the liquid in her glass, letting the silver arc of it slice just to the rim, a hair's breadth from sloshing over. “People donate anonymously for a reason.”

Sydney could have pushed it, but she let it go, a pea-sized bubble of happiness or hope rising within her from the knowledge that her sister had been donating to the cause closest to her heart. It might just have been guilt money, Judas's thirty pieces of silver, but it might also have been a bridge, a way to stay connected. She would think of it as the latter.

Setting the glass down, Reese pulled her laptop closer. “You know,” she said, “we haven't paid any attention to that bit about ‘Time for round two.' That may offer an alternate way to figure this out.”

“How so?”

“If we take ‘round two' to mean that they—the killer and his client—have already killed someone else, who was it? What's the connection with Montoya?”

“Another politician,” Sydney said immediately. “Maybe they both supported a bill the mysterious client wants killed. Pun intended.”

“À la
The Pelican Brief
?” Reese said skeptically. “How many politicians would you have to kill off to affect legislation? Still, we should check it out. What kind of timeline is reasonable? Six months?”

“Go back a year,” Sydney said, watching Reese's fingers fly over the keyboard. A bee buzzed around her water bottle and she waved it away. “How many congressional members died in office in the past twelve months?”

It took only moments for the search engine to return an answer. “Three.” Reese turned the screen so Sydney could see it.

While Sydney read, Reese recapped. “Congresswoman Beth Howser, from the Fifth District in Colorado, died of a heart attack last August, just a year ago. Rodney Portentos, Congressman from Alaska, was killed in a car wreck in February, and Armand Fewell, Maryland's senator, died in a hunting accident.” She sipped her G&T and licked a drop off her lower lip.

“That's why there's the special election, to replace him,” Sydney said slowly. “Was there any doubt about it being an accident? What happened?”

Reese scanned an article or two. “Doesn't seem to be,” she said. “He was hunting turkey in South Dakota in May with a buddy, one Jermaine Washington, when he almost stepped on a rattlesnake, jumped and dropped his shotgun, and it went off. He was hit in the face and throat. Unlucky. They got him to a hospital and thought he was going to be okay, but he developed sepsis and died six weeks later. Not the way I want to go.” She continued to scroll down the screen.

Sydney made a note to talk to Jermaine Washington or Fewell's wife. “If he was murdered, it seems like the killer almost screwed it up.” She tapped her pen on the table, thinking. “Car wrecks can be arranged,” she said, “and heart attacks can be faked.” She felt faintly ridiculous even suggesting it.

“True,” Reese said, “but unlikely. The
Colorado Springs Gazette
says Howser had a history of heart issues; it was her third heart attack that killed her.”

“Probably not murder, then,” Sydney agreed.

“And Portentos's crash was a single-car wreck on an icy road in Fairfax County.”

“No cut brake lines or bullet hole in the tire?” Sydney asked, only half kidding.

“What kind of movies do you watch?” Reese asked, cocking a disdainful eyebrow.

Sydney didn't want to confess that she liked exactly the kind of action-packed thrillers that Reese's eyebrow was implicitly condemning. “The ‘round two' bit could also refer to something personal to Montoya, couldn't it? Maybe someone has a grudge against his family, a personal thing, not a political thing.”

“Possible. You'll have to ask him if any family members have died recently, though, because Montoya is too common a name, and it's not worth digging up his family tree to figure out his mom's maiden name and all that crap.” Reese shut her laptop, downed the rest of her drink in one go, scraped back her chair, and stood, putting a hand on the table to steady herself. “Let's get going.”

“Going? Where?”

“Your place. I'll get my gear. Ten minutes. I want to have a look around before dark.”

“Wait.” Sydney stood, too. “I told you, you don't need to move in with me.”

Reese gave her a level look. “If you think I'm putting in the time and effort to track down Jason's killer and the guy who hired him, only to have him put a bullet in you, you're batshit crazy. He's already been back once to plant the gun. Until we get this figured out, I'm sticking to you like stink on shit.” She headed for the stairs, no sign of the G&Ts in her steady walk.

“I don't need a bodyguard,” Sydney called after her. The thought of having Reese around 24/7 made her itch with discomfort.

Reese spoke over her shoulder. “If you don't have any Monkey 47 on hand, put the bottle in your purse.”

Sydney caved to the inevitable, stowed the gin bottle in her purse, and looked at Earl. “I suppose you think you're coming, too?”

He wagged his whole rear end and panted.

“Right. Then we'd better find you some food, because I don't think you'll like kiwi yogurt.”