Falling Awake

outwit him. In fairness, though, I have to admit that Lawson was somewhat distracted at the time.”
    “By what?”
    “He and Beth had had another one of their big blowups. It happens regularly. They’ve been married for years but they have a hard time living together. Probably because they’re too damn much alike. They go along fine for months and then, wham, they have a flaming row. In the normal course of events, Beth moves out for a few weeks. Eventually they both cool down and go backto bed. But while they’re apart, Lawson is not only more bad-tempered than usual, he doesn’t always focus well.”
    “So the situation with Scargill occurred while Lawson was upset because of the problems in his marriage?”
    “Yes,” Ellis said. “And unfortunately the breakup was an unusually bad event this time. In fact Beth and Lawson are still living apart. But that’s Lawson’s fault. He made a very, very big mistake right after Beth moved out.”
    “Let me guess. He had an affair?”
    Ellis raised his brows. “How did you know?”
    She shrugged. “Seemed obvious from what you’ve already told me.”
    “Lawson was very depressed. He thought his marriage was really over for good this time around. He allowed himself to get drawn into an affair with one of the members of his staff. Word got back to Beth eventually, of course.”
    “Who was naturally enraged because Lawson broke one of the unwritten rules of their marriage.”
    “Hadn’t thought about it in those terms,” Ellis said reflectively, “but that pretty much sums up the situation. The net result was that Lawson was not paying as much attention to his job as he should have been for a couple of months and that’s when Scargill went rogue.”
    Isabel whistled. “Good grief, I had no idea there was so much melodrama going on back there at Frey-Salter. But it’s not all that surprising, is it? Lawson’s agency may be a secret government organization but when you get down to the nitty-gritty, it’s justanother workplace environment where men and women are put together in close quarters under pressure. Bound to be some excitement.”
    “Trust me, the day Beth confronted Lawson with the affair, I heard the explosion all the way out here in California.”
    She looked fascinated. “You live here?”
    “I have an apartment just outside of San Diego.”
    “Huh. I just assumed you lived back in the Raleigh-Durham area near the Research Triangle Park.”
    “I did for a long time,” he said. “But about eight months ago I decided to move out here to California.”
    This was not the time to tell her that he’d made the move because he knew she lived in California and he wanted to feel closer to her. It had all been part of his grand plan to nudge his way gently into her life and see if he could make a place for himself. But that had been before Vincent Scargill.
    “I see,” she murmured.
    He straightened a little in his chair, refocusing. “Getting back to Scargill, it turned out there was one major flaw in his game-playing routine. To maintain his pose as a hotshot agent, he had to wait until the case hit Lawson’s desk before he could go into his big act. That generally didn’t take too long, of course, especially with kidnappings. But in the McLean case, I was a couple of steps ahead of him.”
    “How did you manage that?”
    “I’ve been doing this work for eighteen years,” he said dryly. “There are some advantages to age and experience.”

    She smiled slightly. “Such as?”
    “Such as having good connections with some of Beth’s people. A couple of them owed me favors. Like I said, one of them alerted me to the McLean case because it fit the profile I had given him.”
    “What did you do?”
    “I enlisted the help of two friends at Mapstone, guys I’d worked with in the past and knew I could trust. We located McLean’s compound. In addition to McLean and his ex, there were a handful of other people on the scene. Future leaders of the new society. We created a major distraction for them.”
    “How?”
    “Set fire to one of the outlying storage sheds. Most of the men rushed to put it out. When they were occupied, I went in, grabbed Angela McLean and got out.”
    “It was that easy?”
    “There were a couple of complications.” Namely the two guards who had been left behind, he reflected. But there was no need to go into unnecessary detail. “But no major problems.”
    “The wife must have been terrified.”
    He smiled,