Secret Prey

at his farm, and Brandt’s asking for an emergency board meeting at ten o’clock. We’ve got to be ready.’’ Nancy Lu was the board secretary.
    Bone had been drinking milk out of the carton. He swallowed and said, ‘‘All right. Do they want the pitch today? What’d she say?’’
    ‘‘No pitch. They just want to sort things out. But I think you’ve got to go for it today. If you wait, things could get out of control.’’
    Bone scratched his head: ‘‘I don’t think they’d give it to me today, but we might kill McDonald off.’’
    There was a second of silence, and then Baki said, ‘‘Try to be more careful with your language. You talk that way all the time, and it could cause trouble.’’
    Bone grinned at the phone and said, ‘‘Yes ma’am.’’
    ‘‘Bring in your blue suit with the thin chalk line—is that clean?’’
    ‘‘Yes . . .’’
    ‘‘And the red-horsey Herme`s necktie and the usual shoes and so on. Also, wear jeans and one of those mock turtlenecks and the black leather motorcycle jacket and your cowboy boots. I’m not sure which you should wear and we have to talk about that. Don’t shave—you still have that electric razor in your office bathroom?’’
    ‘‘Yes.’’
    ‘‘Good. Mr. Bone, I think you should leave your apartment in ten minutes and meet me at the bank in fifteen. You should be here before anybody else.’’
    ‘‘I’ll be there. And listen. Call Gene McClure and tell him to get his ass in there. We’ve got to start looking at what Susan was doing. If there’s anything about the murder in her computers, we’ve got to know about it. I’ve been thinking about it all night.’’
    ‘‘Yes. That’s good.’’
    ‘‘Fifteen minutes,’’ he said. He hung up the phone, looked at it for a moment, said, ‘‘Whoa,’’ and headed for the shower. No shave? Motorcycle jacket and cowboy boots? Wonder what that was about.
    BONE CARRIED THE SUIT AND TIE WITH A WHITE shirt and a pair of black dress loafers into the elevator, and was met by Baki on the twelfth floor.
    ‘‘Good,’’ she said, taking the clothes. She was dressed in a tack-sharp blue suit and her hair was perfect. ‘‘Gene McClure is on the way in. He should be pretty quick. I scared him a little.’’
    ‘‘Good. Get him to me as soon as he comes in. Now: What’s this about the boots and jacket?’’ He looked down at himself.
    ‘‘We may want to reflect the image of a man who has been working all night to keep the bank going. Nobody else is in. I checked on McDonald, and he hasn’t been in, so as far as anybody knows, we’ve been working all night. Not even McClure knows you’re just coming in. I told him you were out for coffee.’’
    ‘‘I see . . . Listen, you gotta start calling me Jim.’’
    ‘‘Not yet,’’ she said. ‘‘Go get your computers up, and get ready for McClure. I’ve got to mess up my hair.’’
    ‘‘Here . . .’’ He reached out and pulled a few strands over her eyes, a couple out at the sides: ‘‘My God, you look different,’’ he said. And he thought that in the six years she’d worked for him, this was the first time he’d ever touched her, in any way. ‘‘But you’ve got to try to look a little tired.’’
    ‘‘I am tired,’’ she said.
    MCCLURE ARRIVED TEN MINUTES LATER, WEARING A rumpled suit over a clean shirt; the skin on his face was a scuffed pink, as though he’d scraped off his beard with an emery board. McClure was technically O’Dell’s second-incommand, although his position was bureaucratic rather than executive, and he had not been part of her inner circle. Pushing sixty, he was simply waiting for retirement and enjoying himself. But as O’Dell’s technical second-incommand, he was now running her department, if only for a few days.
    ‘‘Jim. Kerin told me about Susan. My God . . .’’ Bone peered at him and realized that he was really shocked. He liked that.
    ‘‘Murdered,’’ Bone said. ‘‘I’m as upset as you are, but we’ve got some things to get straight. We’ve got to balance everything out, tear through everything Susan was doing. We’ve got to make sure she wasn’t up to something . . . unusual.’’
    ‘‘Shouldn’t we wait for the board?’’ McClure asked doubtfully.
    ‘‘No. There’s an emergency board meeting this morning at ten o’clock, and they’re gonna need this information to put together some kind of response,’’ Bone said. Baki walked into the