Silken Prey

carry. He was the horse, and happy about it.
    •   •   •
    O UT IN THE ENCLOSED pool, Taryn Grant finished drying herself and pulled on a robe. Carver was right: she was drunk, Dannon thought. She’d always taken a drink, and this night, at a campaign stop in a Minneapolis penthouse, she’d taken at least three, and maybe more, and two more back at the house, before she went for her swim; and she’d taken a drink with her, to the pool.
    He’d talked to her about it, and she’d told him to shut up. She could handle it, she said. Maybe she could. In Dannon’s experience, alcoholism was the easiest of the addictions to control. Look at Carver, for example.
    •   •   •
    T ARYN WAS PICKING UP a pack of magazines when the front gate dinged at them, then a quick, more urgent
buzzzzz
. Somebody had hopped the gate.
    Dannon snapped at Carver, “Get the camera. I’m on the door.”
    He started toward the front door, and as he went, pushed the walkie-talkie function on his phone. Taryn’s phone buzzed at her and didn’t stop, a deliberately annoying noise, impossible to ignore. She picked it up and asked, “What?”
    “Somebody’s inside, on the lawn, hopped the gate,” Dannon said. He pulled his gun. “Get in here with the dogs and stay on the phone.”
    “I’m coming,” she said. This is why she had security.
    Carver was on the same walkie-talkie system, and said, looking at the video displays in the monitoring room, “Okay, one guy, big guy, coming up the walk. He’s not lost, he’s walking fast. Wearing a suit and tie. Hands are empty.”
    “I’m inside, locking the doors,” Taryn said.
    “Guy’s at the door,” Carver said. “I don’t know him.”
    The doorbell rang and Dannon popped the door, gun in his hand; looked at the man’s face and said, “Ah, shit.”
    “Hello, mystery man.”
    •   •   •
    T ARYN HAD BEGUN DOING research for her Senate run two years earlier. She did the research herself—narcissistic personality disorder aside, she was a brilliant researcher, both by training and inclination. Much of the research involved selection of campaign staff, from campaign manager on down. She shared the research with Dannon, whose personal loyalty she trusted, because Dannon was in love with her.
    Because of that loyalty, and because of his history as an intelligence officer, she’d had him set up the shadow campaign staff—spies—to keep an eye on her opponent, Smalls. He’d also identified other possible assets: among them, Bob Tubbs.
    Tubbs was a longtime Democratic political operative, and had been considered for a staff job with the regular campaign, to be eventually rejected. “He’s been involved in some unsavory election stuff, so I want to keep our distance,” Taryn told Dannon. “But also, it’s good to keep him on the outside, in case we need somebody on the outside . . . somebody who could handle something unsavory.”
    The regular campaign staff, including the regular campaign manager, had no idea that the shadow staff existed.
    When it had appeared that Taryn would lose despite a good, solid campaign, Dannon had met with Tubbs to discuss other possibilities. He hadn’t identified himself, except as “Mr. Smith . . . or Jones, take your pick.”
    Tubbs probably wouldn’t have talked to him, if it hadn’t been for the 25K in the paper bag, and the promise of another twenty-five thousand dollars if Tubbs found a solution to the problem.
    Tubbs hadn’t even needed time to think about it. “Porter Smalls has a history of sexual entanglements,” he’d told Dannon at that first meeting. Then he’d told him how that might be exploited. And that he’d need a hundred thousand dollars to pull it off. “It’s dangerous. People have to be paid,” Tubbs had said.
    They met twice more: Dannon had demanded details, and names. At the last meeting, he’d handed over the other seventy-five thousand.
    “Time is getting short,” he’d told Tubbs. “By the way—we expect results. We are not people to be fucked with.”
    “You’ll get them,” Tubbs had said. “We’re already rolling.”
    •   •   •
    T UBBS WAS A POLITICAL.
    And this one time, a blackmailer.
    As he walked toward Taryn Grant’s door, a rippling chill crawled up Tubbs’s back. He was about to commit a felony, blackmail,
real blackmail
, not for the first time in his life, but never before like this: the payout would be life-changing. A man had to take