Overkill(62)

She tugged loose the drawstring tie of his sweatpants. Her thumb skimmed the damp tip of his penis.

And her phone dinged the notification of a text.

They froze and held their breath. Only after the second ping did they resume their foreplay.

And then another text message came in.

“Fuck!” He pulled his hand from her pajama bottoms, flopped back onto the bed, and laid his arm across his feverish forehead. “Can you silence it? Can you ignore it?”

She rolled onto her side, reached for her phone on the nightstand, and squinted in order to read the text. “It’s the boss.” Then she made an inarticulate but mournful sound. “He’s seen us on TV.”

“Dammit! What’s he say?”

She lowered the phone and turned her head to look at him. “For me to call him without delay.”

Their gazes held for a moment before she scooted off the bed. “Excuse me.” She went into the bathroom and closed the door.

Zach got up and retied the drawstring. He went over to the sliding glass door that accessed a shallow terrace. The temperature was in the forties, but he stepped out barefoot and shirtless and breathed deeply to cool down his enraged cock—if that were possible—and clear his head.

He was out there for five minutes before he heard Kate coming out of the bathroom. He went back inside and slid the door closed. He only had to look at her to know that the conversation with the attorney general hadn’t gone well. “How angry was he?” he asked.

“Angry.”

“Like pissed, really pissed, or ranting and raving mental?”

She swallowed hard. “He was actually very controlled. He didn’t raise his voice once, not even when he told me that I would no longer be working on the Eban Clarke case. Indeed, there no longer is an Eban Clarke case.”





Chapter 27





It was Theo’s front door, but Eban answered the knock on it and greeted Cal with a grin of phony bonhomie. “Hey! I was beginning to think you’d be a no-show.”

Saying nothing in response, Cal looked past Eban at Theo, who was standing in the center of his living room, secreting distress from every pore. His smile was tentative. “Hi, Cal. You’re just in time for a beer.” He went around the eating bar into his kitchen and opened the refrigerator.

Cal stepped past Eban and went inside. “Thanks, but no beer for me. I won’t be staying long enough to drink it.”

Eban shut the front door. “This from the guy who used to chug one in thirty seconds. Back when he was unmarried and fun.”

He plopped down into an easy chair. “But just because Cal is a killjoy doesn’t mean we have to be, huh, Theo? Thanks,” he said as he took a cold longneck from him. “Sit, you two.”

Theo motioned for Cal to take the second easy chair, which left him with a straight-back. Cal felt for Theo, who was clearly out of his depth. More than likely, he hadn’t entertained a guest since the last time Cal himself had been here, which had been a week before his wedding.

Theo had hosted the quasi–bachelor party for just the two of them. He had served spaghetti and meatballs. They’d split a bottle of cheap champagne, and Theo had joshed with him about the entrapments of matrimony. They’d pretended to be sharing a good time between good buddies.

But after spending that awkward few hours together, Cal realized that they’d been going through the motions, each for the other’s benefit. He’d predicted that their visits and phone calls to each other would become more infrequent, and they had.

The Rebecca Pratt incident loomed large, an invisible but impenetrable obstacle that prevented them from reestablishing the friendship they’d had prior to it. Its impact on them had been equally profound.

It had made Theo even more timid and insecure than he’d been before being taken under Eban’s wing and subjected to his corrosive tutelage. While functioning in Eban’s autocratic shadow, Theo had developed a tentative self-confidence. But it had been dashed by the tragedy of Rebecca Pratt.

Following it and its punitive aftermath, Cal had become so steeped in guilt that if not for Melinda’s acceptance and love, he would have drowned in it.

Eban, however, seemed only to have been emboldened by the calamity. Having slithered through it with little more than a slap on the hand, he now behaved as though he were untouchable, immune to penalty. Sprawled in the chair, head tipped back to guzzle his beer, one would think he didn’t have a care in the world.

The troubling truth was, he didn’t. He. Didn’t. Care. And his utter indifference to decency made him not only despicable, but dangerous.

Melinda had met him only briefly, but long enough for her to be repulsed by his arrogance. She also had sensed his boundless capacity for treachery, and it had frightened her.

Tonight, she’d prepared a special dinner and had planned to follow it with an evening of cuddly celebration over the baby. So after their meal when Cal had announced that he was meeting with Eban and Theo, she’d been struck dumb.

Her silence didn’t last long, however. For the next hour, she’d argued, then pleaded with him not to go. She’d calmed down only when he’d held her tightly. “I love you. I love our baby. I love my life now. Which is why I must go, Melinda. If I don’t, Eban will keep coming here to pester us, or worse. I’ve got to sever all ties with him once and for all.”