“Yes, sir.”

“Very well. It is painful, but I will tell you. Margaret had told Stewart I had tried to kiss her in the kitchen during a party some months ago. However, it was a lie on her part. The fact is Margaret wanted to sleep with me. I didn’t want it, mind you, but she was insistent. Understand, everyone got a little drunk, so she really wasn’t herself. She kissed me and I kissed her back. Stewart was understandably angry and confronted me outside the gift shop, as Bobby Fisher told you.”

“What were the papers he was waving against your chest?”

“Papers? I don’t remember any papers. Stewart always carried papers, his notes on whatever he was thinking about at any given time. Oh yes, I remember, he pulled them out of his pocket and began waving them around. I have no idea what they were, Agent Savich, no idea at all.”

“Did you tell him the truth about Margaret?”

“Certainly not. I accepted his anger and apologized.”

Savich thanked him. He wondered how much he’d just been told was the truth. It had been a very long day. He needed to go home and play with Sean before he went to bed. He wanted to give Lily a chance to be with Simon Russo and enjoy herself without having to worry about a little boy stuffing polenta in his nose.

They took their leave about five minutes later. Callie saw them to the front door.

“We’ll do a very quick detour to headquarters,” Savich said to Ben. “I’ll give you some of MAX’s data to look over tonight, then try to relax,” Savich said. “I want your brain fresh in the morning. Oh yes, there’s something else all of you need to hear.” But he didn’t tell them about his conversation with Justice Wallace until they were outside.

“Incredible,” Callie said. “He actually accused my mom of coming on to him?”

“You don’t believe him, do you?” Ben asked.

“At this point,” Savich said, “I have no idea what to believe, but your mother, Callie, she seems gold-plated to me.”

“She is.”

When Savich pulled his Porsche into the garage at home at just after eight-thirty, he said, “After we play with Sean until he’s snoring, I’m thinking some big fat hair rollers might be fun. What do you think?”

“You’re teasing me. You know very well the moment Sean is down, you’ll spend three hours with MAX.”

“Hair rollers first,” he said, kissed her again, and grinned.

She rolled her eyes and climbed out of his sexy Porsche.

CHAPTER 21

SAVICH LAY ON his back, staring up at the ceiling, Sherlock tucked against him, asleep, her leg sprawled over his belly, her soft curly hair brushing against his jaw. Her breath was warm and steady against his neck. He should have been asleep, but Danny O’Malley’s girlfriend, Annie Harper, filled his mind. He wished there’d been time this evening to visit her at the hospital, to judge her state of mind, to see how coherent she was. To walk in and find your boyfriend’s murdered body, it was a ghastly experience for anyone, particularly an innocent young woman.

Well, there hadn’t been time. Tomorrow morning, first thing, he’d see to it. Savich knew that Annie had to know something, even if she didn’t realize it, he was sure of it. But right now he had to slow his brain down, had to get some sleep. First thing in the morning, he’d call George Washington University Hospital—

He was suddenly aware he was dreaming. He was also very strongly aware of himself being in the dream. Sherlock was there with him, pressed against him, but it wasn’t Sherlock he felt, it was a change in the air itself. It seemed suddenly heavier somehow, a bit more difficult to draw into his lungs. It wasn’t particularly frightening, just different, something he’d never experienced in a dream before. That heavy air seeped slowly into him, and with it, something that should have been solid, but wasn’t. He was no longer alone inside his mind; he was filled with something that stirred the hair on his arms, something he recognized because she was full-blown, right there with him.

It was Samantha Barrister.

How interesting that she was able to simply plug herself right into his brain. He still felt no particular fear, it was a dream, after all, nothing more. But he felt her fear, and her urgency, a dreadful urgency. She was waiting for him to acknowledge her, to let her know he was aware of her.

In that instant he saw her clearly. Her black hair, long and straight, nearly to her waist—an old hippie style from the early seventies when women parted their hair in the middle. She was wearing the same summer dress, the one she’d been wearing that night in the Poconos. She was very pretty, with dark blue eyes. Black Irish, that’s what she was, although he didn’t know how he knew. He’d been barely older than Sean when she’d been murdered.