LITMIR.BIZ

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      “Whatever happens, Pink, whatever they ask, or say to you, don’t say a word. Understand?”

      Kinda late for that, wasn’t it? “I understand,” I said anyway. “Ed, I left Mom at a party hours ago. Would you call and tell her what happened? They won’t let me make any more calls.”

      “Does she have her cell phone?”

      “Uh, no. It wouldn’t fit in her purse. The party was at Santorelli’s.”

      Dead silence. Then he said, “I’ll call.” And then, in a very cold voice, “Remember, say nothing.”

      “I remember.”

      But it was damn hard not to say anything at all, especially when they booked me for murder and embezzlement, took a mug shot, then locked me up in a room with a lot of extremely sorry-looking women. To be fair, I probably looked pretty lousy myself.

      I sat there all night and ignored everyone. One chick tried to pick a fight with me, but I turned away and closed my eyes and she finally laid off.

      It’s funny, the things we think of in times of major crisis. All that night, the only thing I could think about was Mrs. Han, and how much she wanted to go home, and how much I hoped that she’d gotten what she wanted. Maybe she was from Siberia, a very unwelcoming, cold place to live, but it was her home, and her people were there. I had people back in Midland, which was also somewhat unwelcoming—a long, dusty stretch of flatland, broken only by oil-lease roads and pumpjacks, covered with scrubby mesquite and cactus. I was determined to go back there, to be with my people. I vowed that I would, as soon as I found the bastard who framed me.

      Chapter 3

      By nine o’clock the next morning, I had a sketchy plan. But it was a start. One thing was sure—no way I was gonna sit around and wait for the police or the FBI to find out who set me up. Why would they, when they already had a perfectly good suspect?

      The guard, a hefty woman named Clara, came and let me out. She walked me down a long hallway, to a flight of stairs and another hall to a door with a window. Inside was Ed.

      I almost hyperventilated. God, he looked good. Like salvation and sex. Dressed in one of his killer navy suits, with a red silk tie that was exactly like every other tie in his closet and his usually longish dark hair freshly cut, he could almost pass for another one of the millions of suits walking around Washington. But not quite. Something about Ed is unlike any other man. Maybe because I know what he looks like naked. Or maybe because he’s got an attitude that even the most expensive Brooks Brothers suit can’t disguise.

      I’ve gotten in the habit of falling in and out of love with Ed, and at that moment I was dead dog certain he was the most supreme male on planet Earth. Overwhelmed with an emotion I never wear comfortably, I looked at Ed and wanted to marry him and have ten thousand of his babies.

      It’s probably a good thing he didn’t ask just then.

      Not caring if he hated my guts—and that’s not to say he did—I walked to him, slid my arms around his waist and burst into tears. I was so bummed out, I wasn’t even embarrassed about losing it.

      Being the supreme male he is, Ed wrapped me up and let me bawl all over him and get salty tears on his tie.

      Eventually, he set me away from him and pulled a chair out from the small metal table. He handed me a tissue from the box on the table and said, “This is some bad shit, Pink. They’ve got enough to nail your ass but good. They didn’t find anything in your loft here in D.C., or in your apartment in Midland, but it turned out the manager in Midland had taken all the boxes delivered to your door and stored them for you. There’s enough stuff to open a small Chinese antique shop.”

      I sniffled and watched him take the chair opposite mine, drag it around the table and sit next to me. “There were quite a few messages on your answering machine from a woman named Sasha, who was updating you about your plans to redecorate the house you’re buying.”

      “I don’t know anyone named Sasha, and besides, why would I make plans to redecorate a house I don’t own yet?”

      “You wouldn’t. It’s all part of the scam, Pink.” He leaned forward a little and looked directly into my face. “I want you to tell me everything, from start to finish. Don’t leave anything out. Got it?”

      Nodding, I blew my nose, tossed the snotty tissue toward the wastebasket, missed, then turned back to Ed. I told him all of it, my tears drying up the longer I talked and the more pissed off I became. By the end of it, I could have put any televangelist to shame, I was so righteous.

      In typical Ed fashion, he didn’t get too worked up about it. He reached out and smoothed my hair away from my face. “You look like hell.” His gaze dropped to the neckline of my dress, along with his hand. While his long, warm fingers dipped into my cleavage on the pretense of feeling the fabric, he said evenly, “Nice dress. I like that it’s pink. I bet Santorelli liked it, too.”

      Turning away from him, I didn’t rise to the remark. “What does how I look have to do with anything?”

      “You need to look more conservative to the judge for your arraignment.” He nodded toward a small bag next to the door. “I stopped at your loft after I left Santorelli’s.”

      I shot him a startled look. “You went to Santorelli’s?”

      “Your mother is over there. She spent the night.”

      I stood and walked around the perimeter of the small room. “I hear about five stories in your voice. So let me have ’em. First, what did Mom say about this?”

      “Lots, and most of it I can’t repeat because my mama taught me better.”

      “So she’s just mad? She’s not crying? I can take anything so long as she doesn’t cry. I hate it when she cries.”

      “Oh, she cried, then she went off on a shouting tangent, then she cried again.” He smiled wryly. “I’d like to beat up the senator and leave him for dead, but I gotta say, his dad is one cool dude. Did you know he was a POW in Vietnam?”

      “Yes, I know.”

      “It’s pretty weird, watching him and your mom. Can’t say I’ve ever seen Jane like that.”

      I stopped walking. “Like what?”

      Ed cocked his head to one side, as though he had to think about how to phrase his thoughts. Finally he said, “There’s some kind of strange chemistry there. On the surface, she can’t stand Lou. She must have told him to shut the fuck up at least five times, and I didn’t blame her because he kept coming up with wacked-out, commando ideas about how to help you. Jane said if we left it up to him, we’d all be in prison. Or dead.” Ed shook his head like he couldn’t believe it. “Lou is one of those guys who says exactly what he thinks, and to hell with being politically correct, or tactful, or whatever. He told Jane she couldn’t possibly be any help because she’s too damn emotional, that if she didn’t stop crying and shouting, he’d force-feed her a sedative.”

      “Did the castration take long?”

      Ed stared across the small room at me. “That’s the strange part, Pink. She agreed with him. Then she sat down and asked me what I planned to do to help you out of this jam.”

      I told him what I knew about Lou and his attraction to Mom, and what we’d all overheard through the ventilation system before the ambassador became so sick. “I can’t believe, considering how she insisted she wanted to leave, that she spent the night there.”

      “Naturally, after I called and told her you’d been arrested, she was upset. Lou wouldn’t let her take a cab and insisted on taking her home, but when they got to your loft, the cops were all over it and wouldn’t let her in. So Lou made her go back to Santorelli’s house with him, and she stayed all night. When I got there this morning, she was crying and he was fixing breakfast. Gave her a couple of fried eggs, bacon, sausage and toast

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