Dreaming Death (Krewe of Hunters #32) - Heather Graham Page 0,73

didn’t show the depth of his disappointment. He had hoped for something a little more.

“I saw the car,” Bram said. “I didn’t see the body—not until later, much later, after the dawn broke, after you and all the others came. I was out and about, you know.”

“Of course you were,” Stacey said.

“Right,” Keenan agreed. “Understandable. You couldn’t have expected someone to have left a mutilated body in Lafayette Square. I wanted to see you; Stacey wanted to meet you. We really weren’t expecting you to have anything.”

“I didn’t say I didn’t have anything,” Bram told him, frowning. He turned to the ghost of Philip Barton Key II. “Young people today! No patience.”

“We are on the trail of a really vicious killer,” Keenan reminded him.

“On the trail,” Bram growled. “Get on that trail fast! I’ve seen the newspapers, and that’s not the half of it, I’m sure.”

“Sir, do you know something that might help?” Stacey asked.

Bram nodded gravely.

“I didn’t see anything but the car moving away. Swiftly—but following traffic laws. It’s not what I saw that might help. It’s what I heard.”

“And?” Keenan said.

“They must have just carried the body from the car and put it down,” Bram said. “There were two of them—a man and a woman. I’m not completely sure what they were saying. She wanted something done right; he just wanted to be gone as soon as possible. I was already headed down the street. It was so late at night, so early in the morning, that there was nothing much going on. I wasn’t even sure where they’d come from, but at the time, I thought they were just a couple out doing some late-night partying—tourists, even if they did have a Washington politico car. But after, of course, when I heard what had happened, when I talked to Philip and saw all the reports... Well, it had to have been the killer or killers. Whatever it was, they were in it together. Maybe they were a couple just having a tiff after a late night. But with us both seeing that car and a mutilated body being left, I may be behind the times, but to me that sure as hell points toward something.”

* * *

“He’s cute,” Stacey said as they walked around the square.

Keenan eyed her as if she’d lost her mind. “Cute?” he queried.

“An older, grouchier you,” she said.

“A very grouchy me,” Keenan said. He stopped walking, and Stacey almost slammed into him. He was looking around.

“I doubt the murderer is coming back here for anything,” she said. “The next murder, he intends—or maybe now they intend—for it to happen indoors,” she finished quietly.

She’d seen the room shrouded in the mist. She’d seen the hearth.

“I love Lafayette Square,” he said, looking around at the historic buildings. He shook his head. “I love DC. Politics can get ugly, but the ideal remains, and people, our people, fight for their ideas and beliefs, and I also like to believe that, even when we take steps backward, we’ll take steps forward again.”

“I love it, too,” she said.

They were in public, but she took his hands. “And I’m a dreamer; I always believe that we’ll make it better, too.”

“Smith—whether he’s in on the killings or not—is a scumbag.”

“And, yes, sometimes, scumbags get into office. We have to believe they’ll be voted out.”

He nodded, gave himself a shake and apologized. “I’m sorry, I just... If Smith is in on this, he was making one of his statements, leaving the body here, in such an historic area.”

She smiled. “Much of DC is historic, you know.”

“Yes, of course. And...it’s home,” he said. “Shall we?”

Her smile broadened. Home, yes, and it meant more now than at any time since she’d moved in. He was referring to her apartment, and it was nice that he said it that way.

They’d only been together one night, she reminded herself.

And that didn’t matter; he was coming home with her again.

He made a face. “Should we grab some kind of fast food on the way?”

“How about I call for sushi and we pick it up?”

“That will work.”

He didn’t pull his hand away. It was late; not many people were out. She had a feeling that it didn’t matter. It wasn’t taboo in the FBI for two agents to be together—though, usually they weren’t in the same unit. With the Krewe, it was different, she knew.

Jackson Crow and Angela were married, for one. They were most often in the office, managing the many agents out in the field.