Pop Goes the Weasel (Alex Cross 5)

Anything twelve or higher would dispatch him directly to Boo Cassady’s place for a kinky quickie before he went home to the dreaded family. A seven to eleven was total disaster—straight home to Lucy and the kids. Three, four, five, or six meant he could go to the hideaway for an unscheduled night of high adventure.

“Come three, four, five. Come, baby, come! I need this tonight. Need a fix! I need it!”

He shook the dice for what must have been thirty seconds. He made the suspense last, drew it out. Finally, he released the dice onto the gray-leather car seat. He watched the roll closely.

Jesus, he’d thrown a four! Defied the odds! His brain was on fire. He could play tonight. The dice had spoken; fate had spoken.

He excitedly punched a number on his cell phone. “Lucy,” he said, and he was smiling already.

“Glad I caught you at home, darling…. Yes, you guessed it, first try. We’re completely swamped here again. Can you believe it? I certainly can’t. They think they own me, and I suppose they’re half right. It’s the drug-trafficking rubbish again. I’ll be home when I can. Don’t wait up, though. Love to the kids. Kisses to everybody. Me, too, darling. I love you, too. You’re the best, the most understanding wife alive.”

Very well played, Shafer thought as he breathed a sigh of relief. Excellent performance, considering the drugs he’d taken. Shafer disconnected from his wife, whose family money, unfortunately, paid for the town house, the holidays away, even the Jag, and her fashionable Range Rover, of course.

He punched another number on the cell phone.

“Dr. Cassady.” He heard her voice almost immediately. She knew it was him. He usually called from the car on his way over to see her. They liked to get each other hot and bothered on the phone. Telephone sex as foreplay.

“They’ve done it to me again,” Shafer whined miserably into the phone, but he was smiling again, loving his flair for the overdramatic.

A short silence, then, “You mean they did it to us, don’t you? There’s no way you can get away? It’s only a bloody job, and one that you detest, Geoff.”

“You know I would if I possibly could. I do hate it here, loathe every moment. And it’s even worse at home, Boo. Jesus, you of all people know that.”

He imagined the tight little frown and Boo’s pursing her lips. “You sound high, Geoffrey. Are you, dear? Take your pills today?”

“Don’t be horrible. Of course I’ve taken my medications. I am rushed. I am high. On the ceiling, as a matter of fact. I’m calling between blasted staff meetings. Oh hell, I miss you, Boo. I want to be inside you, deep inside. I want to do your pussy, your ass, your throat. I’m thinking about it right now. Christ, I’m as hard as a rock here in my government-issue office. Have to beat it down with a stick. Cane it. That’s how we British handle such things.”

She laughed, and he almost changed his mind about standing her up. “Go back to work. I’ll be at home, if you finish early,” she said. “I could use a little finishing myself.”

“I love you, Boo. You’re so kind to me.”

“I am, and I could probably get into a little caning, too.”

He hung up and drove to the hideaway in Eckington. He parked the Jag next to the purple and blue taxi in the garage. He bounded upstairs to change for the game. God, he loved this, his secret life, his nights away from everything and everyone he loathed.

He was taking too many chances now, but he didn’t care.

Chapter 21

SHAFER WAS TOTALLY PUMPED UP for a night on the town. The Four Horsemen was on. Anything could happen tonight. Yet he found that he was introspective and pensive. He could flip from manic to depressive in the blink of an eye.

He watched himself as if he were an observer in a dream. He had been an English intelligence agent, but now that the Cold War had ended, there was little use for his talents. It was only the influence of Lucy’s father that had kept him in his job. Duncan Cousins had been a general in the army and now was chairman of a packaged-goods conglomerate specializing in the sale of detergents, soaps, and drugstore perfumes. He liked to call Shafer “the Colonel,” rubbing in his “rise to mediocrity.” The General also loved to talk about the glowing successes of Shafer’s two brothers, both of whom had made millions in business.

Shafer shifted his thoughts back to the present. He was doing that a lot lately, fading in and out like a radio with a bad connection. He took a settling breath, then pulled the taxi out of the garage. Moments later, he turned onto Rhode Island Avenue. It was beginning to rain again, a light mist that made the passing traffic lights blurry and impressionistic.

Shafer drifted over to the curb and stopped for a tall, slender black man. He looked like a drug dealer, something Shafer had no use for. Maybe he would just shoot the bastard, then dump the body. That felt good enough for tonight’s action. A sleazebag dope dealer whom nobody would miss.

“Airport,” the man announced haughtily as he climbed inside the taxi. The inconsiderate bastard shook off rainwater onto the seat. Then he shut the creaking car door behind him and was on his cell phone immediately.

Shafer wasn’t going to the airport, and neither was his first passenger of the night. He listened in on the phone call. The man’s voice was affected, surprisingly cultured.

“I think I’ll just make the nine o’clock, Leonard. It’s Delta on the hour, right? I picked up a cab, thank the Lord Jesus. Most of them won’t stop anywhere near where my poor Moms lives in Northeast. Then along comes this purple and blue absolute wreck of a gypsy cab, and merciful God, it stops for me.”

Christ, he’d been identified. Shafer silently cursed his bad luck. That was the way of the game, though: incredible highs and vicious lows. He would have to take this asshole all the way out to National Airport. If he disappeared, it would be connecte

d to a purple and blue cab, an “absolute wreck of a gypsy cab.”

Shafer stepped on the accelerator and sped out toward National. The airport was backed up, even at nine in the evening. He cursed under his breath. The rain was heavy and punctuated by rolling thunder and spits of lightning.