Bombshell Part 53

Georgetown, Washington, D.C.

Tuesday evening

Savich let out a contented sigh when he was finally seated at the dinner table with Sherlock, Delsey, and Agent Davis Sullivan, Delsey's pilot from Maestro, and her date for tonight.

He said, "Davis, I hear you're not new to the Bonhomie Club. You visited with Quinlan and Sally?"

"Yep, heard our boy play. He makes that sax wail."

"Who's playing tonight?"

"Ariel," Davis said as he spooned some of Savich's meatb.a.l.l.s and sauce over his spaghetti. "I could sit for hours and listen to her play. Talk about floating you in the clouds; she mellows you out better than any recreational drug back in college, not that I ever tried any, naturally, or inhaled."

Delsey said, "I thought you liked Vincent and Big Escape, people with nose rings and tattoos."

He patted her hand. "I love it all, even that retro stuff you like to blast. Sherlock, the spaghetti and meatb.a.l.l.s sure smell good. Thank you."

"Nope, not me. Savich is the spaghetti impresario in this household."

Davis grinned at Savich. "If the sauce and meatb.a.l.l.s taste as good as they smell, Savich, you've got to give me your recipe. Here, Delsey, load up." He pa.s.sed her the meatb.a.l.l.s and sauce and spooned Parmesan on top of his spaghetti. "I haven't heard you play yet, Savich. Quinlan told me you sing country and western and play the guitar? And you write a lot of your own stuff?"

"He sure does," Sherlock said as she forked up a bite of spinach salad. "We promise we'll invite you next time he plays."

Delsey took a bite of her spaghetti, closed her eyes, and murmured, "I'm having a spiritual moment here. Dillon, this is seriously excellent."

Davis said, "That's it, then, I gotta have the recipe, keep the cute girl here in my corner."

The garlic toast was pa.s.sed around, room made on everyone's plate for a bite or two of spinach salad, the Chianti poured. Sherlock felt herself begin to relax. She hadn't realized how tense she was. She took a deep breath, felt her shoulders ease. She watched Delsey and Davis argue and laugh, and they sounded pretty relaxed, too. Relaxed and relieved.

Davis raised his winegla.s.s. "Here's to the incredible drug bust in Maestro today. And no agents were seriously wounded."

After everyone drank, Delsey said, "I'm still amazed it was really Professor Salazar. I don't understand it. He's a world-famous cla.s.sical guitarist; he's feted everywhere he goes. And he's a drug lord? I still can't get my brain around it. The G.o.ds blessed him with everything."

Savich said, "I've learned that for some people family trumps everything. He's a Lozano, don't forget, weaned on the Lozano family business by his mother."

Delsey said, "I'm going to punch Griffin out the next time I see him. I can't believe he was crawling through that cave hours after he was shot in his leg. I was letting him have it when Anna grabbed the phone away and said the wound wasn't bad at all, and not to feel sorry for him." She grinned over her forkful of spaghetti. "Then they both laughed."

One minute Delsey was chewing on the incredible garlic toast, and the next she was standing over the DEA agent dead in her bathtub, then hurled into the stark terror when the gang member was straddling her, holding the knife to her throat in her bed at the B&B. She'd be dead if not for Griffin. She hadn't fallen apart, she'd controlled her fear, she'd handled things, she'd been ready to fight back, and now it was over.

She was alive, Griffin was alive, Anna was alive. She didn't have to fight her fear anymore. She trembled suddenly, felt the shakes start deep in her belly, as cold as the snow falling steadily outside the dining room windows. She hated the thin-as-paper voice that came out of her mouth. "It's all my fault, if I hadn't drunk like an idiot Friday night, then-"

"Then what?" Sherlock said. "The DEA agent's body wouldn't have been in your bathtub?"

"Well, that's true, but if I hadn't gone home early from that dreadful party, I wouldn't have never seen a body and I-you-all of us would never have been involved."

Davis chewed a meatball and swallowed. He leaned into her until she looked at him. "Hang it up, Delsey. None of it is your fault. You're blaming yourself for going home to your own place?"

He eyed her, saw that everything he had said was like blah, blah, blah in her ears. He put his arm around her and gave her a good shake. "Look at me."

She looked.

"Your brother made it through this, and so did you. They broke up a huge drug-smuggling operation today, seized millions of dollars' worth of drugs and weapons destined to be sold to kids on the streets. They captured or put an end to the people responsible. That's as good as it gets for us. You helped with that. You should be proud of your brother, and of yourself."

So stark, yet it worked. Delsey managed to nod and felt the ice in her belly begin to melt.

"That's better. Now eat some more of Savich's incredible spaghetti. The meatb.a.l.l.s, Savich, they're better than my mom's, I swear."

Delsey opted for a green bean on her plate and held it in front of her, frowning.

Sherlock said, "Go ahead, Delsey, you can eat the green bean and think at the same time."

She picked at a piece of garlic toast instead, the green bean still staked to her fork, her spaghetti untouched. "Sherlock, I'm so sorry about last night. I mean, I put Sean in danger, and you guys-"

Sherlock rolled her eyes. "Sean is all right. He decided the evil Incan mathematician, Professor Pahuac, had tried to break in after all. That's a character from one of his video games, and since Sean is very good at clubbing the professor with a canoe paddle, Sean said he'd go outside and stomp him. I told him Pahuac had probably already hightailed it back to his evil cave in Machu Picchu."

A bit of laughter, a good thing. Davis put a fork of twirled spaghetti to Delsey's mouth, and she opened up and in it went. She chewed, thoughtful.

She said, "Since the gang is all broken up in Maestro, maybe Davis and I can go to the Bonhomie Club after all; it might be good."

Savich said, "Someone has come after you twice now, followed you out here from Maestro. You saw that stolen SUV pa.s.s by right outside here this morning."

"You mean you don't think it's over, even with Salazar shot?"

"I don't know, Delsey, but I've dealt with gangs like MS-13 before. What they do can seem chaotic and disorganized, or it can look that way because they follow their own rules, not ours.

"You were never a threat to them except as a witness linking two of them to Agent Racker's death, and through him to Salazar and the whole operation. They made some big mistakes that night, and in a gang like MS-13 if you make a mistake that threatens the group, you fix it, eliminate the witnesses that made you a weak link in the chain, or the gang will cut you out themselves. Someone in the gang may still be under orders to kill you, or die himself. If that's true, we have to stop them."

"How are we going to do that?" Delsey asked. "What are you planning, Dillon?"

"Right now, Delsey, let's not worry about that. Let's all enjoy this good dinner and Davis's lame jokes. Sherlock made an apple pie for dessert."

Davis's eyes glittered even though he tried to hide it, at least from Delsey, but Sherlock recognized that look. Sullivan and Dillon had indeed been planning something, but she and Delsey would have to wait to hear what Dillon had in mind. Dillon appeared to be enjoying his dinner. No meatb.a.l.l.s, for him, of course, and not all that much spaghetti, either. He was saving room for the apple pie.

The Bonhomie Club

Washington, D.C.

Tuesday night