Dirty Work (Stone Barrington 9)

“Tough?”

“Being married to a rich woman is a hard way to make a living,” he said.

“So, get a divorce.”

“I’ve learned to like my lifestyle, but I can’t afford it on a State Department salary.”

“So, if you want the lifestyle but not the wife, get somebody to kill her.”

He laughed. “You Texans,” he said. “I don’t want to end up the subject of some TV movie-of-the-week.”

It occurred to her that Washington might make a nice change of scene, at the moment. She could rent a car and drive down. “Oh, it can be done quite discreetly,” she said. “I can arrange it.”

“What?”

“You’d be at a Security Council session, or someplace with a lot of witnesses. She’d be the victim of a burglary gone wrong, or something like that. No one would ever be able to connect you to it.”

“You can arrange it?”

“I’m a resourceful person. I was thinking of traveling to Washington, anyway. It would be my pleasure.”

“That sounded as if you wanted to do it yourself.”

“I have some experience at these things.”

“What sort of experience are you talking about?”

“I lied to you, Jeff. I’m not a Texas matron, I’m a professional assassin.”

Purdue laughed heartily. “I’m not sure I can afford you,” he said.

“I’ll work cheap. Tell you what: Allow me the use of your suite through the weekend, and she’ll be dead by the middle of next week.”

“Y

ou sound serious,” he said.

“And you sound interested.”

He stopped eating. “All right, I’m interested,” he said warily. “Tell me why we wouldn’t get caught.”

“Because you and I have no history together that could be discovered later, and because I have no motive to kill your wife. Also, when I leave New York for Washington, I’ll no longer be Darlene King, but someone else, who will disappear the moment she’s dead.”

He set down his plate. “Ah, the stuff that dreams are made of,” he said wistfully.

“I imagine you’d be a very eligible man as a widower—handsome, well connected, and, finally, rich.”

“That’s perfectly true. But, if you’re what you say you are, why are you confiding in me? I could walk down the hall, rap on the door of the presidential suite, and tell the director about you. I’ll bet he would be interested.”

“Oh, you couldn’t do that, Jeff: You’d have too much to explain. You’d end up having to explain it to your wife, and she might react badly. You might find yourself living on your State Department salary. No, I’m perfectly safe confiding in you.”

“Convince me you’re what you say you are,” he said.

Marie-Thérèse set her plate on the room-service cart and got out of bed. She walked over to where her purse rested on a chair, dug out her little silenced pistol, walked back to the bed, and pointed it at Purdue’s head.

Purdue’s face froze.

“Oh, relax,” she said, “I’m not going to shoot you.”