TailSpin - Catherine Coulter [128]
Sherlock said to Rachael, “You look perfect. You’ve struck the right note—classic outfit with a hint of pizzazz.”
She did indeed, Jack thought. Rachael was wearing a long black gown, as were many woman in the room. Unlike them, Rachael wasn’t showing very much skin, but what showed was potent. She looked beautiful and pale and dignified. Jack imagined she was wound tighter than his grandfather’s watch, a ritual Jack had watched countless times when he was a little kid.
Champagne flowed along with the stronger stuff. He saw Laurel and Stefanos speaking with the vice president. As each of them spoke, the vice president nodded solemnly. Several times, he leaned in to say something.
Savich spotted Greg Nichols entering the room, three women and two men with him, former Abbott staffers all. He was wearing a tux, and should have looked buff and competent, but he didn’t. Something was wrong, something was off with him. He was moving slowly and awkwardly. Nichols looked up and met Savich’s eyes across the room. He caught Jack’s eye and nodded slowly. Then, strangely, he rubbed his belly. What was going on?
Greg Nichols felt sick to his stomach. He thumbed another Tums from the bottle and discreetly slipped it into his mouth. How many was that so far? Six? Seven? He hoped it was nerves. Nerves he could deal with, he’d had a lot of practice. No, he was going to have to face it, this was for real, probably the cioppino he’d had for a late lunch—a mistake, his secretary Lindsay had told him, what with the hullabaloo happening tonight with the movers and shakers, and he with his nervous stomach. All right, so the cioppino had been off, he’d known it after a few bites and stopped eating it. Curse Lindsay, she was right.
He’d already had massive diarrhea and vomited twice. He thought there’d been a bit of blood, prayed he was mistaken, because that was scary.
But maybe he was feeling a little better now. No, he felt like crap. For a moment, he watched the FBI agent Dillon Savich, the one who’d led the FBI press conference, and chewed faster on the Tums. And that damned agent Jack Crowne, who was sticking to Rachael like glue. Nichols knew he’d been checking on him, and if he didn’t know everything about him already, he would soon enough. He’d know everything about all of them. It wasn’t fair, just wasn’t.
He looked around at the sea of powerful people, spouses hanging onto senators’ arms, staking claim to power. So much power concentrated in this one room—it was a terrorist’s wet dream. He easily spotted Secret Service agents from long practice. They were everywhere. There had to be FBI there, as well; they were better at fading into the woodwork.
He realized he no longer cared if Rachael spoke out or not. He was a lawyer, he knew how things worked. He’d roll over on Senator Abbott, no problem with that, since he was dead. Then he’d take the bar exam, and set up his practice in Boise.
He didn’t need this aggravation that was going to escalate into a shit storm. It was time to cut his losses. It was time to get out of Dodge.
He saw Laurel Kostas speaking to the ancient senator from Kansas, and at her elbow, nodding occasionally at something his sister said, stood Quincy, that good-for-nothing whiner the senator had tolerated only because he’d felt sorry for him.
His stomach was roiling, but the cramps had lessened a bit. He nabbed a glass of carbonated water from a waiter’s tray and sipped it. Maybe it would help settle his stomach, that’s what his mother had always preached. He saw his boss, Senator Jankel, all earnest, bending to eye another congressman’s wife, the old fool.
Dammit, he couldn’t think, his belly was on fire.
FIFTY-THREE
Savich saw a man out of the corner of his eye, a small man, dressed in a waiter’s uniform, duck behind a grouping of black-gowned women and tuxedoed men.
Savich moved quickly and, he hoped, discreetly. But he wasn’t as fast as Jack, who already had the man’s arm and was pulling him toward the kitchen.
Good. Jack would get it