always been something of a neat freak, hadn’t she? Had always liked everything in her life to fit into a neat little box. And from the look of things, she still retained those particular idiosyncrasies, even though she was back on the sauce now. Still, being a drunk didn’t mean that you also needed to be a slob. Dana Whitestone was proof positive of that much.
Shivering hard despite the heavy, almost oppressive warmth in the room, Nicholas allowed himself to enjoy all the many feelings that were rushing through his veins. Anticipation. Joy. Revenge.
Opening up Dana Whitestone’s purse, he counted out the bills inside her wallet. Eighty-one dollars. Then he took out her driver’s license and examined her vital statistics with great interest.
Born 20 September 1972, she was thirty-nine years old now, a Virgo in the prime of her life. And good thing, too. She remained young and healthy enough to prove the worthy foil Nicholas needed to drive him to the very top of his game, even if it was her remarkable brain that had always marked her greatest strength.
Placing Dana Whitestone’s wallet back into her purse, Nicholas then returned to the bathroom from which he’d stolen her panties a moment earlier. Leaning down, he ran his hand over the toilet seat where she did her dirty business. They all did their dirty business in the privacy of their own homes, didn’t they? Where they thought they were all alone and no one else in the world could see them.
Once again, how painfully wrong she’d been.
On his way out of the house, Nicholas stopped in each one of the rooms, planting small listening devices throughout. Some went behind furniture, others in potted plants. With the end game upon them now, it was absolutely vital that he tracked Dana Whitestone movements at all times. Just like his mother had always tracked his. That was key if everything was to go according to plan from here on out.
Finally exiting the quaint beach house five minutes later, Nicholas shuffled across the street with his head down again, completely confident in the knowledge not even the best investigator in the world could tell he’d been in the former FBI agent’s house. And thank God for that, too. Because Dana Whitestone was one of the best investigators in the world. Maybe even the best. Still, she had her own special little gifts, and Nicholas had his. To say the least, it should make for a very interesting match-up when the time finally came for the last act of the play to commence.
Back in his own bedroom two minutes later, Nicholas flopped down on his bed and lifted the pilfered panties to his face again. Breathing in Dana Whitestone’s intoxicating scent once more, in his mind he made love to her for the first time, though certainly not for the last.
As he’d expected, she proved to be a wonderful lover.
CHAPTER 37
Using both hands, Bill Krugman shielded his eyes from the bright Florida sunlight that was pounding down from the cloudless blue skies above.
Exotic-looking seabirds squawked high in the air overhead as he pressed his nose against the glass and tried to get a good look inside Dana Whitestone’s vacation house, tunneling his vision with his palms and fogging up the window with his breath.
Krugman could just make out a sparsely furnished living room that had been decorated with two wicker armchairs, a rattan settee and the kinds of oil paintings you might find at a neighborhood rummage sale for fifteen bucks apiece.
Watching this as she jogged back down Indian Bayou a few minutes after her odd encounter with the old landscaper at the church, Dana felt a cold lump of dread form deep in the pit of her stomach. The man known to everyone in the FBI simply by his title of ‘the Director’ didn’t come by to pay former agents a personal visit for no good reason. That couldn’t be good news for Dana under even the best of circumstances, and was probably enough to justify the expense of her running away to Bora Bora instead of the more easily accessible Gulf Coast of Florida.
Sweating like a pig by the time she’d finally turned up the driveway thirty seconds later, Dana blinked hard against the salty rivers of perspiration sliding down her forehead and into her eyes, stinging her retinas and blurring her vision.
For the most part, Indian Bayou was a quiet street that housed mostly seasonal residents – people who’d saved a year