Tail Spin

reason for him to tell you if he hadn’t made up his mind.” Was that the truth? To say it, flat-out, it sounded so simple and straightforward. She said, “Besides the three of you, he also told Greg Nichols. Yet you still doubt it, even after Jimmy told you the misery he’d been living with for eighteen months?”
    Quincy said, his voice dismissive, “I will say this one more time: it was a phase, nothing more. The senator was self-indulgent. He liked to analyze things to death—business, politics, a specific piece of legislation, how he was going to get back at another senator or congressman or staffer who got on the wrong side of him.
    “Look, I’m sure he felt very sorry about what happened to the little girl, he had a conscience, after all.”
    There was a malignant look on Laurel’s face, a look filled with cold rage, and it was aimed at Rachael. “If you have convinced these three FBI agents that we murdered our own brother, you have done the senator and our entire family, Jacqueline and her daughters included—not to mention the entire country—a grave disservice. You are contemptible, Miss Janes. And no, I will not call you an Abbott; you will never be an Abbott to us.”
    Laurel turned on her low-heeled pumps and walked away, Quincy and Stefanos, after one last caressing look at Sherlock, following in her wake.
    “I hadn’t expected them to speak so freely,” Savich said thoughtfully, watching them begin to work the room, the tall well-built man whose ego was bigger than his brain, and the dowdy woman covered in diamonds, with her powerful, vicious eyes. And Quincy, looking like a beautifully dressed royal adjunct.
    Sherlock said, “Do you know, the three of them have one thing in common. They all radiate clout. Look, there’s the senator from New Hampshire going over to them.”
    “They’re a big deal,” Rachael said. “They’re American royalty, rich—oozing confidence, used to getting what they want.”
    Savich said to his wife as he touched his fingertips to her ear, “I really like the jet-black earrings.”
    “You should, you bought them for me.”
    He could feel the tightly coiled energy rolling off her. “Yes,” he said slowly, “I did.”
    Sherlock said to Rachael, “You look perfect. You’ve struck the right note—classic outfit with a hint of pizzazz.”
    She did indeed, Jack thought. Rachael was wearing a long black gown, as were many woman in the room. Unlike them, Rachael wasn’t showing very much skin, but what showed was potent. She looked beautiful and pale and dignified. Jack imagined she was wound tighter than his grandfather’s watch, a ritual Jack had watched countless times when he was a little kid.
    Champagne flowed along with the stronger stuff. He saw Laurel and Stefanos speaking with the vice president. As each of them spoke, the vice president nodded solemnly. Several times, he leaned in to say something.
    Savich spotted Greg Nichols entering the room, three women and two men with him, former Abbott staffers all. He was wearing a tux, and should have looked buff and competent, but he didn’t. Something was wrong, something was off with him. He was moving slowly and awkwardly. Nichols looked up and met Savich’s eyes across the room. He caught Jack’s eye and nodded slowly. Then, strangely, he rubbed his stomach. What was going on?
    Greg Nichols felt sick to his stomach. He thumbed another Tums from the bottle and discreetly slipped it into his mouth. How many was that so far? Six? Seven? He hoped it was nerves. Nerves he could deal with, he’d had a lot of practice. No, he was going to have to face it, this was for real, probably the cioppino he’d had for a late lunch— a mistake, his secretary Lindsay had told him, what with the hullabaloo happening tonight with the movers and shakers, and he with his nervous stomach. All right, so the cioppino had been off, he’d known it after a few bites and stopped eating it. Curse Lindsay, she was right.
    He’d already had massive diarrhea and vomited twice. He thought there’d been a bit of blood, prayed he was mistaken, because that was scary.
    But maybe he was feeling a little better now. No, he felt like crap. For a moment, he watched the FBI agent Dillon Savich, the one who’d led the FBI press conference, and chewed faster on the Turns. And that damned agent Jack Crowne, who was sticking to Rachael like glue. Nichols knew he’d been checking on him, and if he didn’t know everything about