Tail Spin

even called a halt several times during his royal butt-kicking to stretch and rub his muscles, and give her a chance to hoot and dance.
    They stopped off at Dizzy Dan’s for pizzas, one vegetarian for Savich and Sean, the other a pepperoni for the carnivore.
    They ordered in two more when Savich’s sister Lily and her husband, Simon, walked in right behind them. A short visit, they said, but neither Savich nor Sherlock believed them once they made a beeline for Sean, a new computer game in hand.
    Lily was four months pregnant now, just beginning to show. “Practice is everything,” she told Sean every time he challenged her to another game of Treasures of the Ninja.
    They were finally asleep at midnight. Elvis sang in Savich’s ear just as he was revving his race car at the Indy 500. He was instantly awake. “Savich here. Oh, no. Yes, I understand. Yes, I’m sorry too.” He clicked off. Sherlock was propped up on her elbow. “Who was that? What happened?”
    “That was the hospital. Perky’s dead. The surgeon said she came through surgery fine. She was in and out of recovery in an hour, still doing fine, and back in her room. No need for the ICU. When the nurse went to check on her maybe an hour later, she was simply dead.” He slammed his fist against his night table. “I was going to assign an agent to guard her beginning tomorrow. I’m an idiot.”
    “It sounds like she died from a surgical complication.”
    “We’ll know tomorrow, after the autopsy. But what if it wasn’t from unexpected complications?”
    Savich cursed, something he so rarely did he sounded faintly ridiculous. Then he got up, pulled on sweatpants, and said over his shoulder as he walked out of the bedroom, “I’m going to see if I can’t come up with a plan to get things moving.” He was talking more to himself now than to her. “Yeah, and MAX can maybe do something with all those initials and numbers in Perky’s address book.”
    Sherlock didn’t sleep again until he came back to bed. She didn’t speak, simply curled up against him, her palm over his heart, and felt the strong, steady beat. She felt him begin to relax, and it simply all came out of her mouth. “You could have died. I was so scared this afternoon when she tried to kill you, Dillon, so scared I couldn’t help you. I wanted to kill you.”
    He kissed her hair, her ear. “Don’t you think it scared me spitless when she fired at you? And she looked at me the instant before she turned to you.”
    “I love you, Dillon. I loved you even when I kicked you into the wall mirror in the slam room.”
    “I won’t forget,” he said, and kissed her eyebrow. “We’ll deal with this in the morning, Sherlock. Go to sleep.”

THIRTY-ONE
    Washington, D.C.
    Thursday morning
    Jack and Rachael were nearing the Hart Senate Office Building on
    Constitution Avenue for their nine o’clock appointment with Greg
    Nichols in his new position with the senior senator from Oregon, Jessie Jankel, when Ollie called. “Turn on your radio, Jack, you’ll want to hear this. It’s Savich holding an FBI press conference.”
    Jack said to Rachael as he flicked on his turn signal, “I bet he’s speaking this morning because he has an agenda,” and he turned up the volume on the radio. “He’s got to address all the crap that went down yesterday at the Barnes & Noble, but then, it’s his show.”
    Savich had an agenda. He stood at Jimmy Maitland’s elbow, looking out over the sea of media faces from newspaper, radio, and TV, most of them familiar to him, seated in their plastic chairs, the TV people well-groomed, sharp, camera ready, the newspaper reporters looking on the seedy side in jeans, more like real people. He glanced over at Sherlock, gave her a smile and a nod. When Mr. Maitland introduced him, he stepped up to the mike, and looked out at the avid, hungry faces, ready to hurl their endless questions at him, eager for a sound bite or two.
    “I suppose most of you have heard about the disturbance at the Barnes & Noble bookstore in Georgetown yesterday afternoon.”
    There was a wave of laughter since every reporter in the room had swarmed over Georgetown, interviewing everyone within ten blocks of the Barnes & Noble. Steve Olson, the manager, had closed the store and stood out on the sidewalk to take their questions. It had been a special report weaving in and out of regular programming throughout the evening, some of the speculation rivaling the truth, which was