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“Hurry,” Lane urged, coming up behind her and wrapping his arms around her down-clad waist. “It’s freezing out here. The temperature must have dropped ten degrees since last night.”
“You don’t fool me,” Morgan retorted, sliding the key into the top lock. “You just want a cup of latte from my Impressa. Well, forget it. That baby’s for clients only.”
Lane chuckled, nuzzling her hair as she moved on to the bottom lock. “I’m an espresso man myself. And you’re damned right. In fact, if you refuse, I’ll be forced to tell Congressman Shore where you spent the night.”
Morgan tossed a grin over her shoulder. “I have a feeling he knows.”
“I’m sure he does.”
“Besides, if I wanted to keep Arthur in the dark about my sex life, I’d have cut the night short by an hour, and asked you to take me over to his and Elyse’s place. Everyone would have been asleep. I could have slipped into the guest room unnoticed.”
“True. But think what you’d have missed out on—what we’d both have missed out on.” Lane’s voice was husky, his lips warm against her ear. “Remember what we were doing an hour ago? Would respectability really have been worth sacrificing that?”
“No.” Morgan swallowed, her memories of what Lane was referring to vividly alive. Too alive.
She was about to respond with some lighthearted quip, when a gust of wind kicked up, swirling fine particles of snow around them and sending a torn sheet of paper tucked beneath the corner of her doormat flying directly at her.
Instinctively, Morgan’s hand came up, her gloved fingers closing around the tattered page. She pulled it away and glanced down at it, her brows knitting as she saw what it was. “Where did this come from?”
“What is it?” Lane peered over her shoulder.
“A photo of Arthur and Elyse. An old one. Elyse hasn’t worn her hair like that in years.” She pointed. “See? It’s dated November tenth, 1998.”
“Yeah, but it was printed yesterday. The date’s down here.” Lane indicated the lower-right-hand corner, which had survived the diagonal tear that had eliminated half the page. “Who printed this and why is it on your doorstep?”
“I have no idea.” Morgan turned the knob and pushed open the door, flipping on the light so Lane could see his way in. “Maybe Jill’s compiling a scrapbook of Arthur’s postelection…” Her words died in her throat as she gazed around. “What the…?” Her eyes widened with shock. “Oh my God.”
TWENTY-THREE
The office was trashed.
Papers were strewn everywhere. File cabinets were overturned, the folders in them dumped with their documents tossed around helter-skelter. Morgan’s desk was a disaster area, drawers pulled out and turned upside down, everything that had been in them scattered on the carpet. Ditto for the desktop, which had been swept clean.
Newspapers and magazines were tossed randomly about, pages ripped out, some shredded, some j
ust strewn around the ground floor like confetti.
“Shit.” Lane got a glimpse of the damage. He grabbed Morgan’s arm, stopping her from continuing into the building. “Don’t.”
“What?” She looked and sounded as dazed as she felt.
“Don’t go in there.”
“Why? Do you think someone’s still inside?”
“I doubt it. But you’re not going to be the one to find out. Plus, it’s a crime scene. You don’t want to contaminate it. Come on.” He pulled her outside.
Morgan’s teeth started chattering, whether from the cold or shock, she wasn’t sure. “Who would…? How could this…?”
Lane had already whipped out his cell and was punching in a number on speed dial. He plunged in without preliminaries. “Monty, someone broke into Morgan’s place and wrecked it. The ground floor, at the very least. No, I don’t know about the rest of the place. I didn’t let Morgan get that far. No, she wasn’t inside. She was with me. Yeah, all night. We arrived together, just now. Uh-uh, no one was home. Jill was at her parents’. She still is.” A pause. “Not yet. I called you first. Yeah, okay.”
He punched the off button on the phone. “As usual, one of my father’s gut feelings paid off. He spent the night in his office. So he’s in Queens, not upstate. He’ll be here in fifteen minutes. Let’s give him a ten-minute head start. Then we’ll call the cops.”
Morgan’s brain was starting to function again. “He wants to be here when they go inside to check things out.”
“Right.” Lane frowned at the hollow look in Morgan’s eyes, the fierce chattering of her teeth. “Come here.” He wrapped his arms around her, pressing her face against him and rubbing his gloved hands up and down her back, in a gesture meant to comfort as much as to warm.
“I guess down jackets aren’t what they used to be,” she mumbled into his coat, a feeble attempt at humor.
