her chest. “That means that the FBI should be ringing the doorbell
at any minute.”
“Nah, they’re not as smart as I am.”
She threw her empty coffee cup at him.
He snagged the cup out of the air and set it back on the table.
His reflexes were good. He was very fast. She said, “I’m awfully
glad I didn’t come any nearer to you. You could have nailed me in
a flash, couldn’t you?”
“Probably, but that’s not the point. I’m not here to hurt you. I’m
here to protect you.”
“My guardian angel.”
“That’s right.”
“Why don’t you think the cops and FBI will be here any moment?”
“They have to follow all sorts of legal procedures to get to the
goodies.” He paused a moment, grinning at her. “And I also sent
them on a wild-goose chase. I’ll tell you about it later.”
“All right. Let’s cut to the chase. If you’re not a cop, then who
are you and who hired you to help me?”
He shook his head. “For the time being I’m not at liberty to tell
you that. But someone wants me to clean up this mess you’ve gotten
yourself into.”
“I didn’t do anything at all. It was that demented man stalking
me who’s responsible. Oh, maybe like the cops in New York and
Albany, you don’t believe me, either?”
“I believe you. Would you like to know why the cops in New
York and Albany didn’t believe you? Thought you were a screwed-up
fruitcake?”
She nearly fell out of her chair. “I don’t believe this. You know
something the cops don’t? They thought I was crazy or malicious
or infatuated with the governor. Come on, what do you know?”
“They believed you were a fake because someone close to the
governor told them that it was all a sick sexual fantasy. When the
cops called from New York, that’s what the Albany police told
them. However, the threat to the governor was quite real, no question
about that, since someone shot him. They had to refocus,
think things over again.”
“Who in the governor’s office said that about me? Don’t you
dare just sit there staring at me. Damn you, I deserve to know who
betrayed me.”
“Of course you do. I’m sorry, Becca. It was Dick McCallum, the
governor’s senior aide.”
She nearly fell over in shock. “Oh, no, not Dick McCallum. Oh,
no, it doesn’t make any sense. Not Dick.” She looked stricken and
he was sorry for it.
She was shaking her head at him, not wanting to believe him but
afraid not to. “But why? Dick has never said anything mean to me
or acted like he had it in for me. He never asked me out, so there
wouldn’t be any sort of rejection involved. I didn’t threaten him in
any way. I was sure he liked me. I wrote most of the governors
speeches, for God’s sake. I didn’t head up strategy sessions or conduct
policy meetings or have anything to do with spin or scheduling
or anything that would be in his bailiwick. Why would he
do it?”
“That I don’t know yet. But to be realistic about it, it will probably
come down to money. Someone paid him a lot of money to
do it. Now, one of the cops in Albany told me he’d come to them,
supposedly feeling all sorts of guilty, but swearing he had no choice
because he was afraid you’d go after the governor. I promise you I
will find out why he did it. He’s got to be the key to this.” Actually,
he thought, Thomas Matlock was going over everything in
McCallum’s background, including where he got the small knife
tattoo on the back of his right shoulder blade.
She said slowly, thinking aloud really, “If Dick McCallum said
those things about me, then he must know about the stalker, maybe
even who he is and why he picked me to terrorize. Maybe Dick
even knows who is trying to kill the governor.”
“Yes, all of that is possible. We’ll see.”
“Do you mean ‘we’ as in you and me?”
“No.”
“Let me call the cops again. I’ll tell them I know about what