Silas’s eyes widened with surprise. “Pallas is back? When did that happen?”

Cameron shrugged. “I think just recently.”

The point, in her mind anyway, was that he was back and—at least temporarily—tangled up in her life once again.

“SO WHAT ARE you thinking?”

Jack rubbed his hand over his face and looked across his desk at Wilkins. “I’m thinking that if I never see another lawyer again for the rest of my life, it’ll be too soon.”

As expected, the footage from the hotel’s video cameras hadn’t produced any leads, and they’d now turned their attention to questioning Senator Hodges and his staff. Of course, his team of attorneys had made things as difficult as possible. But at least they’d learned a few things: several members of Hodges’s team had admitted knowing about his various affairs with call girls, and a handful even acknowledged knowing about Mandy Robards specifically.

The first two people they had interviewed were Alex Driscoll, the senator’s chief of staff, and Grant Lombard, his personal security guard. When questioned, both Driscoll and Lombard claimed to have been at home sleeping at the time of Mandy Robards’s murder. For both men, there appeared to be no evidence to either contradict or confirm this. They both acknowledged that they were aware of Hodges’s affair with Mandy Robards; in fact both admitted knowing that Hodges planned to see her the night of her murder. Lombard had made the arrangements with the escort agency (which Hodges admitted was something he asked Lombard to do “from time to time”), and Driscoll had attended the charity dinner with the senator and claimed to have learned then of Hodges’s plans to see Robards later in the evening.

Neither Lombard nor Driscoll had been particularly forthcoming about Hodges’s affairs, but as the senator’s bodyguard and chief of staff, they weren’t expected to be. And though neither had an alibi, seeing how both men claimed to be home at the time of the murder, sleeping alone (Driscoll was divorced and Lombard had never married), this again was not unusual. However, both did fit the rough physical description Cameron had given of the man she had seen leaving room 1308.

It wasn’t a lot, Jack knew, but it was enough to look into both men further.

“Let’s get Driscoll and Lombard’s phone records and cross reference them with the numbers we have for Mandy Robards,” Jack told Wilkins. “And we should pull their credit card statements for the past two years—see if anything unusual turns up. In the meantime, we need to get started on that list Hodges gave us of people he believes might have a grudge against him.”

Wilkins nodded in agreement just as the phone rang. Jack saw the call was coming from the lobby security desk.

“Pallas,” he answered.

“Officers Kamin and Phelps from the Chicago Police Department are here to see you. They say they have something for you from a Detective Slonsky,” said the evening security guard.

“Thanks—send them up.”

Jack hung up the phone and looked at Wilkins. “Kamin and Phelps are on their way up.” He frowned. “Aren’t those the guys Slonsky put on Cameron’s surveillance?”

Wilkins glanced at his watch. “They’re the evening shift, I thought.”

“So what are they doing here?”

“You’ll have to ask them that.” Wilkins seemed to sense the dark cloud of displeasure that was quickly moving in. “Let’s try to play nice here, Jack—remember that we’re working with these guys.”

When Kamin and Phelps arrived at his office, Wilkins rose from his chair and greeted them with a cordial smile. “Hello, officers. What brings you by this evening?”

The older cop introduced himself and his younger partner. “I’m Bob Kamin, this is my partner, Danny Phelps.” He held out a large sealed envelope. “Detective Slonsky asked us to bring this to you. He says it’s the lab report you’ve been waiting for.”

Jack got up from his desk and took the envelope from Kamin. “Thanks.” He caught Wilkins’s sideways glance and shot him a look to let him know that everything was cool. “So . . . for some reason we thought you were the guys assigned to Ms. Lynde’s surveillance. Guess we were mistaken?”

“Nope, you got it right,” Kamin said. “We do the night shift. Nice girl. We talk a lot on the way to the gym.”

“Oh. Then I guess Agent Wilkins and I are just curious why you two are here instead of with her.”

Kamin waved this off. “It’s cool. We did a switcheroo with another cop, see?”

“A switcheroo . . . right. Remind me again how that works?” Jack asked.

“It’s because she’s got this big date tonight,” Kamin explained.

Jack cocked his head. “A date?”

Phelps chimed in. “Yeah, you know—with Max-the-investment-banker-she-met-on-the-Bloomingdales-escalator.”

“I must’ve missed that one.”

“Oh, it’s a great story,” Kamin assured him. “She crashed into him coming off the escalator and when her shopping bag spilled open, he told her he liked her shoes.”

“Ah . . . the Meet Cute,” Wilkins said with a grin.

Jack threw him a sharp look. “What did you just say?”

“You know, the Meet Cute.” Wilkins explained. “In romantic comedies, that’s what they call the moment when the man and woman first meet.” He rubbed his chin, thinking this over. “I don’t know, Jack . . . if she’s had her Meet Cute with another man that does not bode well for you.”