Silken Prey

phone.”
    “This is messed up. This isn’t right,” Del said. “I mean, even if it’s true . . . she wouldn’t send this message.”
    “That’s what I can’t figure out,” Lucas said.
    “What’re you going to do?”
    “Get past the first flush of the party . . . have Sarah and Jane keep an eye on Dannon and Carver . . . and maybe when things have settled down a little, I’ll go in and get Taryn alone and brace her.”
    “You’ve been friendly with Green. Is there any possibility . . . ?”
    Lucas groaned: “I should have thought of that. Maybe they’re all using phones paid for by Grant.”
    “But why did she sign it ‘Taryn’ instead of leaving it alone?”
    “Dunno.” Lucas took his cell back and messaged Green: “Did you send me a note about C&D a few minutes ago?”
    Del said, “She’s driving, it might take a while for her to get back.”
    “She’s a woman, it won’t take—” Lucas’s phone chirped, and he looked at the message screen. It said, “No,” and the incoming phone number was wrong.
    He texted back, “Are all your phones billed to Grant?”
    Another ten seconds. “No.”
    “Any new info on C&D?”
    “No.”
    Del said, “Something’s happening, and we don’t know what it is.”
    They thought about it, and then Del said, “You gotta make a call, here. Do we take it in and show it to Carver?”
    “There’s no way he’d believe it: he’d figure we’re trying to ramp up the pressure,” Lucas said. “It’d completely blow the fact that we’re watching them full-time.”
    “But if he gets killed . . .”
    “Yeah.”
    “I’m not worried about him, man, I’m worried about
you
,” Del said. “If it got out that you got this message, and then didn’t do anything about it . . .”
    Lucas thought about that, then got on the radio to Bradley and Stack. He had to wait until the women got out of sight, where they could use their handsets. When they were both up, he said, “We’ve got a problem, and I can’t really explain it. But: we need to be all over Carver and Dannon. I need to come and talk with Taryn as soon as possible.”
    Bradley said, “Wait, wait . . . you won’t be able to talk to her for a while. Channel Three and Eleven called it for her. It’s a mob scene in here. . . . She’ll be up on the stage, making a speech . . .”
    Lucas could hear a wall of noise in the background, and he said, “Okay. Call me as soon as she gets offstage. But you and Jane
must
keep track of Dannon and Carver.”
    “That’s almost impossible, Lucas,” Stack said. “We can keep track of them, kinda, but they keep going backstage with these politicians, these out-of-bounds areas, and then they’ll pop out somewhere else. If we stay right on them, they’ll spot us for sure.”
    “Do what you can. Call me when Taryn gets offstage. The minute she gets off.”
    The party rocked on.
    Lucas rang off and Del said, “Maybe you ought to have them identify themselves, and tell Carver and Dannon that they’re bodyguards and they aren’t going away.”
    “Then we’re right back to where we started,” Lucas said. “With nothing—and with them knowing that we’re on them like a cheap suit. If we go to them directly, we’ll lose it all.”
    “Is that better or worse than somebody getting killed?”
    Lucas had to think about that, and finally said, “I want them.”
    They sat in the street for an hour, talking to Stack and Bradley, and were finally told that the noise and tumult were beginning to wind down. Most of the good food and booze was gone, and the less needy of the party faithful were beginning to leak out the doors, Bradley said. Taryn was thanking some fourth-level party worker and his big-hair wife, a guy who’d raised a quarter million or something.
    •   •   •
    D ANNON WAVED C ARVER into the back where the food service people were working, where the hotel functionaries were counting bottles and security guards were taking breaks, got him back to a side room with the soft-drink and candy machines and said, “She can’t get you all of it, not right now. She can get you a good part of it, if you’ll take gold.”
    Carver was truculent: “What’s a good part of it?”
    “Quarter million, give or take, in cash,” Dannon said. “She’s not sure of the exact amount, but it started at a half million that she stacked up over the last six years, for the campaign. As it turned out, she only needed about half