Extreme Prey Read Free Page B

on
Answer
and asked, “What happened?”
    “The governor needs to see you,” Mitford said. “Soon as possible.”
    “He get caught with a teenager?”
    “Don’t even think that,” Mitford said, as if thinking it might make it happen.
    “Yeah, well, in case you hadn’t noticed, I no longer work for the state,” Lucas said.
    “He needs to see you anyway.”
    “I’m up at my cabin. I could probably make it down tomorrow afternoon.”
    “Unfortunately, we’re in Iowa. We just left Fort Madison . . .” Lucas heard somebody in the background call, “Fort Dodge,” and Mitford said, “. . . Fort Dodge, on our way to Ames. We’ve got a noon speech there, tomorrow, followed by a reception at thestudent union. That’ll go on ’til two o’clock. We’d like you to be there by the end of the reception.”
    “What’s the problem?” Lucas asked, because there
would
be a problem.
    “I can’t tell you that because we’re talking on radios,” Mitford said. “Be here at two.”
    “I’m a private citizen now and I don’t necessarily jump when the governor—”
    “Two o’clock,” Mitford said, and he was gone.
    Lucas smiled at the phone: something
was
up.
    —
    “GOOD,” SAID HIS WIFE, Weather, when she called to check in. “He’s got something for you to do. You’ll stop driving Jimi nuts and I’ll get to see you tonight.”
    “Treat me right, I might even throw you a quickie,” Lucas said.
    “As opposed to what?”
    “Very funny,” Lucas said. “And I’m not driving Jimi nuts.”
    Jimi was the carpenter. “Yes, you are. Nuts. Like you did when you drove the contractor nuts on this house. Then you spend all day looking at Jimi’s ass, up on that scaffold. Which might explain the quickie-ness.”
    “She does have an exceptionally nice scaffold,” Lucas said. “Anyway, see you about seven o’clock. Maybe we can sneak out for a bite.”
    “Before or after the quickie?” Weather asked.
    “In between.”
    “Big talk, big guy.”
    —
    LUCAS WAS A BIG GUY , but not a lunk.
    He was a few pounds under two hundred, now, after much of a summer working on the cabin for three days each week. He’d had no easy access to restaurant food, the big killer, and so had been cooking on his own, mostly microwave stuff. He’d been running twice a day and doing early-morning weight work. Although he was a natural clotheshorse, he’d spent the summer in jeans, T-shirts, and lace-up boots, and was beginning to miss the feel of high-end Italian wool and silk and English shoes.
    Lucas was a dark-haired man, with a long thin scar tracking down from his hairline, across his tanned forehead, and over one eye to his cheek; not, as some people thought, cop-related, but an artifact from a fishing misadventure. Another pink/white scar showed on his throat, left over from the day a young girl shot him in the throat. A surgeon—who was not yet his wife—saved his life by cutting open an airway with a borrowed jackknife.
    —
    HE WAS NO LONGER A COP . He’d quit Minnesota’s Bureau of Criminal Apprehension when a combination of personality conflict and paperwork had finally done what street work hadn’t been able to do: push him out.
    When he was a cop, still working with the BCA, he’d done a number of quiet jobs for the governor and they’d grown to somewhat trust each other. Only somewhat: politicians could rationalize the Crucifixion of Christ. And had.
    The governor, Elmer Henderson, was currently campaigning for the Democratic vice presidential nomination, though that’s not what he said he was doing. He claimed to be campaigning for the presidency, but he knew quite well that rumors about his early interest in three- and four-way sex with young Seven Sisters coeds and fellow Ivy Leaguers, as well as in the life-enhancing effects of cocaine, would eventually get out and keep him from the nomination.
    However, he was liberal enough that he could nail down the lefty fringe of the party for a