ABSOLUTE POWER By: DAVID BALDACCI

care who knew they were there. Luther counted four, possibly five. They

turned left and headed his way.

The door to the bedroom opened with a slight squeak.

Luther searched his mind. Everything had been picked up or put back in

its place. He’d only touched the remote, and he had replaced it right in

line with the slight dust pattern. Now Luther could only hear three

voices, a man and two women.

One of the females sounded drunk, the other was all business. Then Ms.

Business disappeared, the door closed but wasn’t locked, and Ms. Drunk

and the man were alone.

Where were the others? Where had Ms. Business gone? The giggles

continued. Footsteps came closer to the mirror.

Luther scrunched down in the corner as far as he could, hoping that the

chair would shield him from view but knowing that it couldn’t possibly.

Then a burst of light hit him right in the eyes and he almost gasped at

the suddenness of his little world going from inky black to broad

daylight. He blinked rapidly to adjust to the new level of brightness,

his pupils going from almost full dilation to pinpoints in seconds. But

there were no screams, no faces, no guns.

Finally, after a full minute had passed, Luther peered around the corner

of the chair and received another shock. The vault door seemed to have

disappeared; he was staring right into the goddamned room. He almost

fell backward but caught himself. Luther suddenly understood what the

chair was for.

He recognized both of the people in the room. The woman he had seen

tonight already, in the photos: the little wife with the hooker taste in

clothes.

The man he knew for an altogether different reason; he certainly wasn’t

the master of this house. Luther slowly shook his head in amazement and

let out his breath. His hands shook and a queasiness crept over him. He

fought back the gri of nausea and stared into the bedroom.

@ p The vault door also served as a one-way mirror. With the light on

outside and darkness in his little space, it was as though he were

watching a giant TV screen.

Then he saw it and a fist of breath kicked out of his lungs: the diamond

necklace on the woman’s neck. Two hundred thou to his practiced eye,

maybe more. And just the sort of bauble one would routinely put away in

a home vault before retiring for the evening. Then his lungs relaxed as

he watched her take the piece off and casually drop it on the floor.

His fear receded enough to where he rose and inched over to the chair

and slowly eased himself into it. So the old man sat here and watched

his little woman get her brains screwed out by a procession of men. From

the looks of her, Luther figured that some members of that procession

included young guys making minimum wage or hanging on to freedom by the

width of a green card. But her gentleman caller tonight was in an

altogether different class.

He looked around, his ears focused for any sound of the other

inhabitants of the house. But what could he really do? In over thirty

years of active larceny, he had never encountered anything like this, so

he decided to do the only thing he could. With only an inch of glass

separating him from absolute destruction, he settled down quietly into

the deep leaffier and waited.

CHAPTER Two

THREE BLOCKS FROM THE BROAD WHrFE BULK OF THE UNYrED

States Capitol, Jack Graham opened the front door of his apartment,

threw his overcoat on the floor and went straight to the fridge. Beer in

hand he flopped down on the thread bare couch in his living room. His

eyes quickly perused the tiny room as he took a drink. Quite a

difference from where he’d just been. He let the beer stand in his mouth

and then swallowed. The muscles of his square jaw tensed and then

relaxed. The nagging prickles of doubt slowly drained away, but they

would reappear; they always did.

Another important dinner party with Jennifer, his soon-to be wife, and

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