Dark Rivers of the Heart

first gotten the goods on him. She had asked, instead, for a job with the agency.
        Daddy had believed that she'd wanted the bunker job because it was so easy: nothing to do down there but sit, read magazines, and collect a hundred thousand a year in salary. He'd made the mistake of thinking that she was a not-too-bright, small-time hustler.
        Some men never seemed to stop thinking with their pants long enough to get wise. Tom Summerton was one of them.
        Ages ago, when Eve's mother had been Daddy's mistress, he would have been wise to treat her better. But when she got pregnant and refused to abort the baby, he had dumped hek. Hard. Even in those days, Daddy had been a rich young man and their to even more, and although he hadn't achieved much political power yet, he'd had great ambition. He easily could have afforded to treat Mama well. When she threatened to go public and ruin his reputation, however, he'd sent a couple of goons to beat her up, and she'd nearly had a miscarriage.
        Thereafter, poor Mama had been a bitter, frightened woman until the day she died.
        Daddy had been thinking with his pants when he'd been stupid enough to keep a fifteen-year-old mistress like Mama. And later he'd been thinking with his pants pockets when he should have been thinking with his head or his heart.
        He was thinking with his pants again when he'd allowed Eve to seduce him-though, of course, he hadn't ever seen her before and hadn't known that she was his daughter. By then, he had forgotten poor Mama as if she'd been a one-night stand, although he had been putting it to her for two years before he dumped her. And if Mama barely existed in his memory, the possibility of having fathered a child had been wiped off his mental slate completely.
        Eve had not simply seduced him but had reduced him to a state of animal lust that, over a period of weeks, made him the easiest of marks.
        When she eventually suggested a little fantasy role-playing, wherein they would act like father and violated daughter in bed, he had been excited.
        Her pretend-resistance and pitiful cries of rape excited him to new feats of endurance. Preserved on high-resolution videotape. From four angles.
        Recorded on the finest audio equipment. She'd saved some of his ejaculate in order to have a genetic match done with a sample of her own blood, to convince him that she was, indeed, his darling child.
        The tape of their role-playing would unquestionably be viewed by authorities as nothing less than forcible incest.
        Upon being presented with that package, Daddy had for once in his life thought with his brain. He was convinced that killing her would not save him, so he had been willing to pay whatever was necessary to buy her silence. He'd been surprised and pleased when she'd asked not for any of his money but for a secure, well-paid government job. He'd been 'less pleased when she'd wanted to know a lot more about the agency and the secret derring-do about which he'd bragged once or twice in bed.
        After"i few difficult days, however, he had seen the wisdom of bringing her into the agency fold.
        "You're a cunning little bitch," he said when they had reached agreement. He'd put an arm around her with genuine affection.
        He had been disappointed, after giving her the job, to learn that they would not continue sleeping together, but he had gotten over that loss in time. He really had thought that "cunning" was the best word to describe her. her ability to use her position in the bunker for her own ends didn't become clear to him until he learned that she had married E.
        Jackson Haynes, after a whirlwind courtship of two days, and had managed to put most of the powerful politicians in the city under her thumb. The she had gone to him to begin discussions regarding an inheritance-and Daddy had discovered that "cunning" might not be a sufficiently, descriptive word.
        Now she reached the end of the entrance drive to Cloverfield and parked at a red curb near the front door, beside a sign that stated NO SMOKING.
        ANYTIME. She put on the dashboard, relished the icy air of the Chrysler for one more moment, then stepped out into the August heat and humidity.
        Cloverfield-all white columns and stately walls-was one of the finest institutions of its kind in the continental United States. A liveried doorman greeted her. The concierge