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“Bud Willis doesn’t send me anywhere.”
“Dammit, Randall,” she said, her spurious calm vanishing, “why are you here? And don’t tell me it’s coincidence—I won’t believe you.”
“I wouldn’t lie to you, Maggie—”
“Bullshit,” she said inelegantly.
“I’m here because of Francis Ackroyd,” he continued smoothly, ignoring her outburst. “But not because of his death. He was selling government secrets to the Eastern bloc. We were trying to put a stop to it.”
She blinked and digested the information in no more than a moment. “How?” she demanded. “How was he getting the information in the first place? How was he managing to pass it?”
Randall gave a long-suffering sigh. “If we knew that, dear heart, I wouldn’t have to be here. No one knows how he was doing it or who was helping him. He couldn’t have been doing it alone—that much is certain. The question is, who else was involved? Your sister seems a good possibility.”
“What!” she shrieked. “You’re out of your mind, Randall! Not that I didn’t already know that. Kate is the sweetest, most innocent, most loyal—”
“Kate’s in the midst of a nasty custody battle. Such things are notoriously expensive, and espionage pays quite well. She may not have known what she was getting in to, and then when she found out, she had a blowup with Francis at work, lured him back to her apartment, and murdered him.”
Maggie controlled her temper. Randall was very good at infuriating people, just to see them lose control and let something important slip. She wouldn’t give him that pleasure. “You don’t believe that.”
He smiled faintly. “No, I don’t believe that. But it’s a possibility.”
“What makes you think Kate had anything to do with Francis’s untimely death?”
“I happened to be in his apartment when you lugged his body back and dumped it onto the kitchen floor. That aroused my suspicions.”
“Damn you, Randall. Why didn’t you call the police and have me arrested?”
“The less the police are involved, the better. Let’s stop fencing, Maggie. I’m here, I’m involved, and there’s nothing you can do about it. I want to know what you know, and then I want your word that you’ll keep out of it.”
“I thought you wondered if I’d killed Francis myself,” she shot back.
He shrugged. “Did you?”
“Do you think I could kill a man in cold blood?”
“Undoubtedly. Particularly if it were me.”
“Don’t flatter yourself, Randall. I couldn’t care less about you one way or the other.”
“Then why are you clutching that cup and saucer like it’s about to fly out of your hands?”
She considered that for a brief moment and was tempted to throw them at his sleek, handsome head. Carefully, she loosened her tight grip on the china, smiling sweetly. “I’ve got a hangover, Randall. It makes me edgy.”
“You didn’t used to drink too much.”
“Give me strength,” she muttered imploringly to the dregs of her coffee. Her eyes met his, calmly. “I don’t drink too much as a general rule, Randall. Not that it’s any of your damned business if I want to become a lush.”
“It is when you’re involved in something I’m working on.” His voice was rich, smooth, unconcerned. She could almost believe it was pure self-interest that prompted him.
“Why are you working on it? Why didn’t they send someone else—why pick their handy elitist volunteer? I presume this is still volunteer work—you haven’t joined the CIA yet?”
“It’s still volunteer work. You know I never cared for joining groups.”
“Still the aristocrat. Why are you here, Randall?”
“We figured I’d be useful because of my connection with Kate’s family.”
“What connection with Kate’s family?” She racked her brain for some distant kinship with Brian’s silver-spoon relatives. No wonder she’d never trusted him.
